Mohamed Bouazizi, a humble Tunisian street vendor who self-immolated on 4 January in protest at his treatment by the authorities, could hardly have imagined that his death would have sparked a chain reaction of rage that so far has toppled the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt and has now engulfed Libya, where Gaddafi and his sons fight for their political survival with all the brutality at their disposal.
In Egypt, the original anti-government protests – as has been the case elsewhere throughout the Arab world – were the result of decades of corruption and inefficient crony capitalism at the top. The system ensured widespread poverty and unemployment, particularly among Egypt’s young people, who had known no leader other than Mubarak. It also silenced all political opposition through a repressive police state. Mubarak’s apparent grooming of his son Gamal to assume the presidency in a seamless dynastic succession was also the spur for much anger and frustration.
Egyptians undoubtedly felt humiliated, but the uprising was not only the work of the poor masses. Many middle-class, highly-educated Egyptians were at the heart of this revolt; they had been exposed to progressive ideas and understood social networking as a medium for coordinating protest. The demonstrators genuinely seemed to want Western-style democracy and were prepared to fight and even to die for that dream. All this amazing people power took Western intelligence services and experts somewhat by surprise.
Egypt brings home to the political class in the West the stark dilemma of geostrategic policy in the Muslim world: whether to support stable secular tyrants as the devil you know or whether to allow Islamist theocracy to possibly take root by encouraging free elections.
Is there a middle way? Can secular, moderate democracy develop in Arab countries? Certainly there's no reason why Islamic countries can't be democratic – look at Indonesia, Bangladesh, Turkey, Malaysia and the Maldives. But these are all Asian countries, and for sure there is no democratic tradition in the Arab world for Egypt and Tunisia to emulate. Above all it’s worth remembering that democracy is not just about free elections. It’s about fundamental human rights as well, including a free press, an independent judiciary, equality of the sexes and freedom of religion, expression, and assembly, which usually takes years to establish in a country's political culture.
However, if such genuine democracy is likely to thrive in the Arab world, Egypt could perhaps be its standard-bearer. At least there are few divisions ethnically (Egyptians are almost all Arabs) and Christians are the only sizeable religious minority. This situation contrasts with other Arab countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, whose Muslim majorities are divided into Sunni, Shia, Druze and Alaouite communities and are thus potentially less cohesive.