'This could be our 1989'

The events of the past month raise more questions than answers in north Africa, but one thing is clear: Arab regimes can never go back to what they were

If one day, a people desire to live,

then fate will answer their call

And their night will then begin to fade,

and their chains break and fall.

THESE STIRRING lines from the Tunisian poet Abul-Qasim al-Shabi’s most famous work were first used in colonial uprisings against the French.

Shabi did not live to see his country gain independence – he died in 1934, at the age of 25 – but eight decades after he wrote them his verses have, in the tumultuous early weeks of 2011, helped fan nothing short of revolution.

The above lines, which many Arabs learn at school, have been chanted by protesters across the region and printed on banners and T-shirts. In Lebanon a TV anchor used them to sign off a triumphant report on the ousting of Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Along with excerpts from another Shabi poem, To the Tyrants of the World– "He who grows thorns reaps wounds" – they have ricocheted across Arab blogs, newspapers and Facebook.

Shabi is “leading us from his grave”, one veteran Jordanian dissident said last week.

The momentum of the past month has been such that even the most seasoned observers of the region have grown wary of predicting too confidently what might happen next.

A little over two weeks ago, when street protests dislodged Ben Ali in Tunisia, many dismissed the tremors that were being felt in a handful of other Arab countries. Tentative comparisons with 1989, when revolution swept eastern Europe, were rejected as absurd. But that was before the ripples spreading from the Maghreb to the Levant and the Arabian peninsula turned into demonstrations more than a million strong in Egypt; rage on the streets of countries including Yemen, Algeria and Oman; and rallies in Jordan that prompted a nervous king to sack his government and appoint a new prime minister. Anxious rulers in Libya, Morocco and Kuwait have hurriedly introduced subsidies on food and other items in an attempt to placate populations transfixed by the happenings in Cairo and Tunis.

A few cling to the belief their countries will remain immune. “It will not touch us. We don’t have the problems that Tunisia and Egypt had to begin with,” says one north African diplomat, despite the fact his country witnessed student protests in December.

Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, cautions against jumping to conclusions about how the upheaval may evolve. “This is an entire region which has been in need of profound reform for a very long time. How it was triggered in this particular moment, and how it is going to catch elsewhere, I think is still very difficult to ascertain.”

The quickening situation in Egypt this week, and growing turmoil elsewhere, have prompted the question of whether the Arab world is experiencing a “1989 moment” similar to the heady days that led to a domino-like collapse of Iron Curtain regimes, or whether it more resembles 1968, when youth-driven revolts in the West proved the impetus for less dramatic, but still important, social and political shifts.

“This could be our 1989,” says the Egyptian commentator Maha Azzam. “The potential is there, the desire is there on a popular level . . . It is not going to happen overnight; there are many obstacles. But we are on the path to it now – it is not a matter of if, but when.”

The example of Tunisia, where, for the first time, popular protests resulted in the overthrow of an Arab leader, is a potent one. “The experience of Tunisia will remain the guiding light for Egypt and may be so for people in Yemen, Sudan and the rest of the Arab world looking for change, with a readiness to accept risk, especially given that even the worst possibilities are better than the status quo,” wrote Talal Salman, editor of Lebanese newspaper Al Safir, in an editorial.

Many Arabs say an important psychological barrier has been broken. “Tunisia showed us two things: how weak the government really is, and how regaining the street can help make a difference in the political sphere. Once you break your fears and stay out in the street, in the long run you can force change,” says Amr Hamzawy of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut.

Alaa al-Aswany, the best-selling Egyptian novelist and political activist, has repeated this message while addressing protesters in downtown Cairo. "Fear is what keeps a dictatorship in place," he told The Irish Timesfresh from a rally last week. "When the people overcome their own fear, that is the end of the dictator."

The fact that after Tunisia came Egypt, given its political and cultural stature in the Arab world, is significant. "It is impossible to speak about a healthy situation in the Arab world if Egypt is sick," wrote Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab Al-Hayatnewspaper in an editorial.

The Arab world is far from homogeneous, however, and the fallout from the protests that have roiled Tunisia and Egypt will play out very differently in each country, depending on its political history, culture and demographic profile. Nevertheless, some of the ingredients feeding into the Arab winter of discontent are similar: young populations, chronic unemployment, lack of civil liberties, rising food prices – all capped with sclerotic and greying regimes. Hosni Mubarak has presided over Egypt for 30 years; Ben Ali was in power for 23 years; and Muammar Gadafy has kept a tight grip on Libya since 1969.

The two icons of the protests so far are Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian fruit seller who, frustrated in his efforts to make a decent living, set himself on fire in front of a government office; and Khaled Said, an Egyptian businessman two years older than Bouazizi who was beaten to death by police last summer. Their stories, apart from triggering protests in their respective countries, chimed more broadly with young Arabs chafing under the repression, cronyism and stagnation that have long smothered too many societies in the region.

“As it turned out, the entire Arab world is full of Mohamed Bouazizis,” said the Moroccan novelist Laila Lalami.

In a region where the under-30s make up about two-thirds of the population, simmering resentment together with tantalising glimpses of other worlds and other ways of life through the internet and satellite TV made for a combustible mix.

For young, politically engaged Arabs like twentysomething Mohamed, who grew up in the Gulf and has been involved in activism for several years, the protests spreading across the region have restored his faith in his peers.

“I had been extremely pessimistic about the prospects of the current generation of young Arabs rising against the despots, for two reasons: I believed that advances in technology had enabled the security forces to snuff the first signs of resistance, and secondly, the apparent apathy of most youth, who seemed more interested in the latest mobile phone or the Spanish football league then their political rights,” he said in an e-mail. “I was dead wrong. Technology and in particular social media was the rallying call and the fuel that fed the fire of outrage, and the apathy turned out to be instead an ailment of regimes that after years of corruption began to rot from the inside out.”

The events of the past month raise more questions than answers. What country will be next? Will momentum stall? What happens after an Arab regime topples? Who or what will fill the vacuum in societies where political discourse has long been suffocated?

One thing is certain: a corner has been turned. “Even if the attempted revolutions fail, Arab regimes can never go back to what they once were. They will live in fear of the next revolt,” says Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Centre. “The opposition will wait in anticipation of the next revolt. The stability of any regime is no longer guaranteed.

“Leaders have not caught on. They seem to still think they can offer half measures to appease their people. But the lesson of Tunisia and Egypt – as well as Yemen, Jordan and many others – is that Arab populations, after waiting and waiting, have run out of patience.”