Mubarak is gone!

Lost in the incredibly gripping stories emerging from Egypt in recent weeks has been any discussion of links between the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions.  This lack of analysis also marginalizes discussion of which countries – in North Africa and elsewhere – might be next.

Issandr El Amrani’s article goes some way to addressing the linked questions of “why Tunisia – why Egypt?”

We’ll see where the revolutionary baton will be taken up next.  The great danger here is that these uprisings for democracy will go the way of those that came at the end of the Cold War in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and elsewhere: popular revolts will lead to the establishment of formal democracy, but in tandem with augmented neo-liberal economic policies.  If this is the result of the present uprisings, there will truly be reasons for bitterness.

But it’s better not to indulge such gloomy thoughts.  For now, the people of Tunisia and Egypt and their supporters all around the world have just cause for feeling triumphant.