Scirocco of 2011 blows down the house of cards By Gul Jammas Hussain

Farrah Zafar · #1 Thursday, February 24, 2011

The winds of change are definitely blowing across the Arab world like the scirocco that arises in the Sahara and blows across North Africa.

And this time, it seems the political scirocco of 2011 is blowing down the house of cards in a number of countries.

Already, people power movements have triumphed in Tunisia and Egypt and ended the retrogressive regimes of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, and it seems that this is just the first act.

The Tunisian and Egyptian nations succeeded in this first phase of a long struggle by strictly maintaining the time-tested tenets of unity, faith, and discipline, and strictly observing non-violent methods, bringing to mind the movements of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

In Egypt in particular, despite countless provocations by the Mubarak regime, the protestors never abandoned the non-violent people power path.

Millions of demonstrators showed great determination and protested for eighteen straight days to oust Mubarak. They never gave in until the Mubarak regime buckled under the intense pressure, and finally Mubarak’s grim-faced newly installed vice president appeared on TV and announced his pharaoh-president’s resignation.

The fires of hope that the people of Egypt and Tunisia lit in January ignited a number of other fires across the Middle East and North Africa.

For example, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and Libyan Leader and Guide of the Revolution Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi are now clutching at straws in order to avoid a Mubarak-like exit.

High-ranking Libyan diplomats and army officers have started to defect from the Gaddafi regime and are calling on him to step down over his government’s bloody crackdown on protesters and civilians who were not even involved in the uprising.

Apparently, the rats are jumping off the sinking ship.

In an unbelievable move, on Monday the Gaddafi regime sent gunships, helicopters, and warplanes to bomb civilians in Benghazi, Tripoli, and many other towns. First, they attacked a funeral in the capital and then they dropped bombs indiscriminately on the civilian population, according to independent reports.

In a live broadcast on Al Jazeera television, Tripoli resident Adel Mohamed Saleh said, “Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead. Our people are dying. It is the policy of scorched earth. Every 20 minutes they are bombing.” Fathi al-Warfali, the Libyan activist who heads the Swiss-based Libyan Committee for Truth and Justice, said he was getting the same reports in Geneva.

The bodies of civilians and protesters shot to death by forces loyal to Gaddafi were left on the streets of Benghazi and Tripoli.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, citing sources inside the country, said on Wednesday that at least 1,000 people had been killed in the crackdown on protesters in Libya.

Frattini also said he understood the eastern region of Cyrenaica, where much of Libya’s oil is located, was no longer under Gaddafi’s control after violent attempts to crush protests there and elsewhere in the country, Reuters reported.

Gaddafi’s brutal tactics have turned the entire country against him. Hundreds of thousands of people have come out onto the streets to demand that Gaddafi step down after over four decades in power, but the wily ruler does not want to see the writing on the wall.

In Bahrain, the protesters initially were not trying to depose King Hamad but only made a number of demands, calling for a constitutional monarchy, fair elections, the release of all political prisoners, and the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa and all members of parliament.

But the February 17 pre-dawn attack on demonstrators sleeping in Manama’s Pearl Square, the epicenter of anti-regime demonstrations, may have been a mortal mistake for the Bahraini royal family.

After the incident, the protesters occupying Pearl Square began saying they would not go home until King Hamad abdicates.

New York Times journalist Nicholas D. Kristof, who was in Bahrain, described the attack in these words: “Then the Bahrain government attacked the protesters early this week with stunning brutality, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and shotgun pellets at small groups of peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. Two demonstrators were killed (one while walking in a funeral procession), and widespread public outrage gave a huge boost to the democracy movement.”

Kristof added, “King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa initially pulled the police back, but early on Thursday morning he sent in the riot police, who went in with guns blazing. Bahrain television has claimed that the protesters were armed with swords and threatening security. That’s preposterous. I was on the roundabout earlier that night and saw many thousands of people, including large numbers of women and children, even babies. Many were asleep.”

On February 1, Jordan’s King Abdullah II dismissed Prime Minister Samir Rifai.

On Wednesday, seven members of the Yemeni parliament resigned from President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s ruling party to protest against the government’s violence against demonstrators, which has led to a number of deaths.

There have also been pro-democracy demonstrations in Morocco this month.

On Wednesday, Saudi King Abdullah rushed home after three months abroad and announced a series of benefits for Saudi citizens amounting to $10.7 billion.

Also on Wednesday, Algeria’s cabinet adopted an order to lift a 19-year-old state of emergency as a concession to the people in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the tide of uprisings sweeping across the Arab world.

The sudden scirocco of 2011 has surprised everyone, and it is still not clear what the political landscape of the Arab world will look like when the storm subsides.

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