There seem no end to the upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa: protests continue in Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Bahrain and Iran. Egypt seems a calm oasis for the moment.
The first revolution begins its slow and fractious process. The discontent with the existing elite has resulted in further resignations from the interim government and the legalisation of the Islamist movement, Ennahda. This development recalls the warning from many analysts: the most organised movements are able ot capitalise on the chaos.
Can the protestors avoid the danger of Islamism: one regime, one vote, then everlasting government, freedom forever revoked. The reports that protests have avoided references to existing issues: Palestine, Islam and Israel are far from the truth. They have voiced their demands after victory. Only the desperate rulers invoke the traditional scapegoats to save their hides. Their own lies no longer work. You can't portray Israel as the wolf when you huffed and puffed on your own people.
The original inchoate coalitions have fractured as disciplined Islamist movements give voice to their traditional goals in rallies. Can the western media convey the Islamic symbols within which protest and death is presented and celebrated? Is there not a greater willingness to martyr for a cause than we would see in equivalent demonstrations elsewhere; a more casual brutality in beating and shooting demonstrators? For the existing regimes, life is cheap and devalued.
When life is that devalued, civil wars will follow. What do the Libyans have to lose? Their lives, their homes, their honour. Once war starts, barbarity swiftly follows...