3 weeks since Egypt set off the chain of events that has rocked the Middle Eastern Nation, Meosha Eaton

Taking a walk down the road of the chain of events across the Middle East that has taken the world on an unexpected shock wave!  See details and recap as reported by Reuters:

* Clashes reported in Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Libya
* Obama says Mideast rulers must "get out ahead of change"
* Rulers mix economic, political concessions with repression

 (updates throughout)

    By Paul Taylor

    PARIS, Feb 16 (Reuters) -

Anti-government protests inspired by popular revolts that 

toppled rulers in Tunisia and Egypt are gaining pace around 

the Middle East and North Africa despite political and economic 

concessions by nervous governments.
Clashes were reported in tightly controlled oil producer
Libya, sandwiched between Egypt and Tunisia, while new protests
erupted in Bahrain, Yemen, Iran and Iraq on Wednesday.

The latest demonstrations against long-serving rulers came
after U.S. President Barack Obama, commenting on the overthrow
of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, declared: "The world is
changing...if you are governing these countries, you've got to
get out ahead of change, you can't be behind the curve."
With young people able to watch pro-democracy uprisings in
other countries on satellite television or the Internet, and to
communicate with like-minded activists on social networks hard
for the secret police to control, authoritarian governments
across the region have grounds to fear contagion.

 

Protests spread across Yemen on Wednesday demanding an end
to the president's three decades in power, and a 21-year-old
demonstrator died in clashes with police in the south, witnesses
and medical sources said.

In Sanaa, capital of the Arabian Peninsula state, hundreds
of government loyalists wielding batons and daggers jumped out
of cars to chase around 800 protesters marching in the streets.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a U.S. ally against al Qaeda
who has been in power in fractious Yemen for 32 years, was
quoted by the state news agency as saying the unrest was a
foreign plot to foment chaos in Arab countries.

Saleh has pledged to step down when his term expires in 2013
and offered dialogue with the opposition, but radical protesters
are demanding he go now.

In Bahrain, protesters poured into the centre of the capital
Manama on Wednesday for the third successive day to mourn a
demonstrator killed in clashes with security forces on Tuesday.
The emirate has a history of protest over economic hardship,
the lack of political freedom and sectarian discrimination by
the Sunni Muslim rulers against the Shi'ite majority.

Some 2,000 protesters demanding a change of government were 

encamped at a major road junction in Manama, seeking to emulate
rallies on Cairo's Tahrir Square that toppled Mubarak.
Though itself only a minor oil exporter, Bahrain's stability
is important for neighbouring Saudi Arabia, where oilfields are
located in an area populated by an oppressed Shi'ite minority.

    
DISTURBANCES AT IRAN FUNERAL

In Iran, supporters and opponents of the hardline Islamic
system clashed in Tehran during a funeral procession for a
student shot at an anti-government rally two days ago, state
broadcaster IRIB reported. Both sides claimed Sanee Zhaleh was 

a martyr to their cause and blamed the other for his death.

Monday's rallies in Tehran and several other Iranian cities
were the first staged by the Green pro-democracy movement since
security forces crushed huge protests in the months after
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed 2009 re-election.

Hundreds of opponents of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in
power since 1969, clashed with police and government supporters
in the eastern city of Benghazi in Wednesday's early hours, a
witness and local media said.

 

Reports from the port city, 1,000 km (600 miles) east of the
capital Tripoli, said protesters armed with stones and petrol
bombs set fire to vehicles and fought with police in a rare
outbreak of unrest in the oil-exporting country.

Gaddafi's opponents used the Facebook social network to call
for protests across Libya on Thursday. 
In Iraq, three people were killed and dozens wounded in the
southern city of Kut as protesters demanding better basic
services fought with police and set government buildings on
fire, hospital and police sources said.
 

Some shouted, "Down, down (Prime Minister Nuri al-) Maliki's
government, down, down with corruption," echoing rallies that
have buffeted other parts of the Arab world, although Maliki
unlike other Arab leaders was democratically elected. 

Iraq is still struggling to get back on its feet almost
eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator
Saddam Hussein. Infrastructure is dilapidated, electricity is in
short supply and jobs are scarce.

POLITICAL, ECONOMIC CONCESSIONS

Rulers in several countries, drawing lessons from events in
Tunisia and Egypt, have announced political changes and moved to
cut prices of basic foodstuffs and raise spending on job
creation in efforts to pre-empt spreading unrest.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promised to lift a
19-year-old state of emergency soon and has acted to reduce the
cost of staple foods in the North African oil and gas exporter.
Authorities deployed an estimated 30,000 police in Algiers
on Saturday to prevent a banned pro-democracy march. Several
hundred protesters defied the ban and dozens were detained.

A coalition of civil society and human rights groups and an
opposition party vowed afterwards to demonstrate every Saturday
until the military-backed government is removed.
 

Morocco, where the main banned Islamist opposition movement
warned last week that "autocracy" would be swept away unless
there were deep democratic reforms, announced on Tuesday it
would almost double state subsidies to counter an increase in
commodity prices and address social needs.

Syria, controlled by the Baath Party for the last 50 years,
released a veteran Islamist activist on Tuesday after he went on
hunger strike following his arrest 11 days ago for calling for
Egyptian-style mass protests, human rights activists said.

Jordan's King Abdullah has sacked his prime minister and
appointed a new government led by a former general who promised
to widen public freedom in response to anti-government protests.
Countries with oil and gas wealth such as Saudi Arabia and
Algeria appear better placed than poorer countries like Egypt
and Tunisia to buy social peace.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Elections in Africa, Posted by Meosha Eaton

Feb 16 (Reuters) - Ugandans vote on Feb. 18 in presidential and parliamentary elections for control of east Africa's third largest economy that sits on the cusp of an oil boom.

Here are details of past and upcoming elections in Africa this year. The dates are based on current planning by authorities but may change.


JANUARY: Jan. 23 - CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (CAR) - Presidential elections.
-- Francois Bozize, in power since a 2003 coup, took 66 percent of the ballots cast in the Jan. 23 election, the electoral commission announced, eliminating the need for a second round run-off and paving the way for a new 5-year term.

Jan. 31 - NIGER - Presidential and legislative elections.
-- Niger's veteran opposition leader Mahamadou Issoufou took 36 percent of the first-round vote against second-place finisher Seyni Oumarou's 23 percent. They will face each other in a March 12 run-off, with Issoufou seen favourite after securing the backing of four other parties accounting for another 30 percent of the first-round vote.
-- Oumarou represents the party of former president Mamadou Tandja, ousted in a February 2010 coup.
-- The election is meant to cement the restoration of civilian rule nearly a year after soldiers toppled Tandja after he orchestrated a constitutional rejig to extend his rule of the uranium producing country.


FEBRUARY:
Feb. 6 - CAPE VERDE: Legislative elections.
Cape Verde's main opposition party conceded defeat in the parliamentary elections after the ruling PAICV gained 51 percent of the vote, giving it 37 seats in the 72-seat National Assembly. Feb. 13 - CHAD - Parliamentary elections.
-- Chad's first parliamentary election in eight years went ahead smoothly despite some delays in voting, observers said of a poll that will test President Idriss Deby's grip on the oil-producing African state.
Feb. 18 - UGANDA - Presidential and parliamentary elections.
-- Incumbent President Yoweri Museveni is tipped to win a closely fought contest against his arch rival Kizza Besigye.


MARCH:
Early March - BENIN - Presidential elections.
March 12 - NIGER - Second round of presidential elections.


APRIL:
April - DJIBOUTI - Presidential elections.
April 2 - NIGERIA - National Assembly elections.
April 3 - CHAD - Presidential elections.
April 9 - NIGERIA - Presidential elections.
April 13 - MADAGASCAR - National Assembly elections.

MAY - MADAGASCAR - Presidential election scheduled. However a new road map put forward by Southern African mediators recommends a poll between May and November.


JUNE/JULY - SAO TOME & PRINCIPE - Presidential elections.



SEPTEMBER:
September - EGYPT - Presidential elections.


OCTOBER:
October - CAMEROON - Presidential elections.
October - ZAMBIA - Presidential and Parliamentary elections.
Oct. 11 - LIBERIA - Presidential elections and elections for the House of Representatives and junior Senators.


NOVEMBER:
Nov. 27 - DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - Presidential and National Assembly elections.


DECEMBER:
December - GABON - Legislative elections.

Sources: Reuters/www.eisa.org

(Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)

Q&A, What's next for Yemen's road to political turmoil? Posted by Meosha Eaton

As reportd by Reuters:


* Protests gather momentum, spontaneity
* Revolts in Tunisia, Egypt galvanise opposition
* Al Qaeda could exploit chaos if Saleh overthrown


By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

Feb 15 (Reuters) - Hundreds of pro- and anti-government demonstrators clashed in Sanaa on Tuesday in the latest unrest to hit Yemen, where the fall of autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia has galvanised opposition to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Protesters who had first called for reform now carry posters with the message "Leave, leave" to Saleh, a crafty military man who has ruled the fragile southern Arabian state for 32 years.

Saleh, a U.S. ally against al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, has offered concessions, promising to step down in 2013 and asking for talks with the opposition, which has agreed to negotiate.

Here are some questions and answers about the Yemeni crisis:


COULD SALEH BE TOPPLED?
Protests are still fairly small, but have become bigger, wilder and more spontaneous since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's overthrow. Change in Yemen, a deeply tribal society awash in guns, could be a bloodier process than in Egypt.

Mubarak's removal and an outbreak of popular unrest in Yemen uncoordinated with the formal opposition coalition are new factors in Yemen's troubles, said Yemen analyst Gregory Johnsen.

Saleh, who scrapped a trip to Washington this week, faced "very critical" weeks, the Princeton University scholar added.
There have been few indications so far that Saleh, 68, has lost the loyalty of the armed forces, police or security services which have helped keep him in power for three decades.

But the president, whose impoverished country is running out of oil and water, now has fewer resources to grease the network of patronage and favours used in the past to buy the loyalty of unruly tribes and members of his own military-security elite.
"Saleh will fall if he persists on using repressive tactics," said Philip McCrum of the Economist Intelligence Unit, saying his promise to step down in 2013 had bought him some time, but that Mubarak's ouster had changed the playing field.

"These new protesters are not Houthis (northern rebels), they are not southern secessionists, nor are they Al Qaeda militants. They are ordinary, disaffected Yemenis. If he doesn't treat them with respect, that disaffection will grow rapidly."
Fear of chaos in Yemen, however, is far more real and frightening than in Egypt -- a factor Saleh can play on.
"Saleh may be the architect
 of many of Yemen's problems today, but he is also the person who has kept the country together for these past 30-odd years," McCrum said.
"Also, Saleh still commands a broad swathe of public support and there is a significant section of society who don't want to see him go and may mobilise against his opponents."


WHO COULD TAKE OVER?
Ruling Yemen would be a daunting challenge for anyone. Saleh himself has likened the task to "dancing on snakes' heads".
He has no obvious successor, although many Yemenis believe he had hoped to lever his eldest son Ahmed, head of the Republican Guard and the special forces, into the post.

Saleh has disowned that idea. "No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock," he said on Feb. 2 alluding to proposals by his party on term limits that might have kept him in office.

Yemen is emerging from a civil war with northern rebels and is fighting a violent secessionist movement in the south. Much of the rugged countryside in both areas already defies central government control, which has always been fitful.
If Saleh fell, another military man might make a grab for power, but further conflict and fragmentation would be likely.

The loosely allied opposition parties are in poor shape to take over. They are now reacting to protests, not leading them.

"The opposition is very confused at the moment, there's no leader that's emerged. There's a variety of different leaders in the opposition that are trying to get a handle on this, but no one really knows what direction to turn," Johnsen said.


WHAT IS FUELLING UNREST?
Saleh has repressed his opponents on occasion, but he prefers to co-opt them and to manipulate powerful constituencies to support him, while maintaining a semblance of democracy.

What really drives popular rage is the widespread corruption fostered on his watch, enriching a privileged elite even as Yemen's 23 million people sink deeper into poverty and despair.

About 40 percent live on less than $2 a day and a third suffer chronic hunger. In Saada, a northern war zone, 45 percent of children are acutely malnourished, UNICEF says.

Unemployment is about 35 percent, said Yemeni political analyst Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, citing government estimates.

The cash-strapped government is almost powerless to meet the needs of its fast-expanding population and might swiftly lose control if it cannot pay wages to public servants and soldiers.

A tumble in the Yemeni rial forced the central bank to inject some $850 million, around 15 percent of its reserves, into the market to support the currency in 2010.
Yemen also finds it hard to absorb foreign aid. Only a tenth of the $4.7 billion pledged by donors in 2006 has been disbursed due mainly to administrative hurdles, officials say.

Yemen's water crisis, among the world's worst, is aggravated by irrigation for qat, a mild narcotic leaf beloved by Yemenis.

Thus Saleh has scant room for economic concessions.
"People are upset. They want Saleh to leave. He's been in power for 33 years and has destroyed the country," said Abdullah al-Faiqh, a political science professor at Sanaa University.


WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF INSTABILITY?
Apart from the dire impact on a population already short of jobs, education, food and security, turmoil in Yemen alarms neighbouring oil giant Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Their main worry is that Osama bin Laden's Yemen-based network, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), would acquire a safer haven for attacks beyond Yemen's borders.

"Popular-driven regime change in Yemen is the U.S. and Saudi nightmare scenario," said McCrum. "The idea of the country falling into political limbo, where AQAP is free to operate, will give U.S. and Saudi officials cold sweats."

Washington aims to spend $75 million to double the size of a special Yemeni counter-terrorism unit, a U.S. official said on Monday. The funding, yet to win Congress's approval, was part of a wider effort to pile pressure on AQAP, the official said.
Washington seems to be signalling support for Saleh, though it has sometimes questioned his commitment to fighting AQAP.

"But Yemen could possibly present Washington with a very tricky moral conundrum," McCrum said.

"It has clearly stated that it is on the side of those seeking liberty but if it chooses to continue supporting Saleh in the face of growing popular opposition, then the U.S. could risk losing what little political capital it has left in the Middle East."

Surprised by Egypt, experts divided on what next, Posted by Meosha Eaton

As reported by Reuters:


* Risk analysts divided after Egypt's unexpected uprising

* Predict wildly different outcomes for country, region

* Assessing long-term lessons, implications will take time


By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent
LONDON, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Caught off guard by the overthrow of long-time leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, political risk analysts are at odds over what happens next in the region.
Does Egypt's unpredicted revolution mark the beginning of the end for autocrats across the region and beyond? Or does it show a remarkable survivability of authoritarian elites?
Perhaps turmoil in North Africa is a sign of things to come in Russia or China as masses empowered by social media demand democracy and rights. Or maybe it is the latest indication of the decline of the United States as a geopolitical force?

Now military police have cleared the last protesters from Cairo's Tahrir Square, risk analysts and pundits who completely failed to predict the overthrow of leaders in Egypt and Tunisia offer wildly differing predictions of what happens next.
For some the best advice is simply to expect the unexpected.

"There is plenty of scope for further unrest in Egypt and elsewhere in the coming days/weeks," said Royal Bank of Canada in a research note, hedging its bets but challenging those who contend that Egypt's crisis might be over.
"Strategy: continue monitoring events in the region as there remains plenty of opportunity for event risk to materialise."

For U.S.-based political risk consultancy Stratfor, what is striking is how little has truly changed. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak may be gone, but the country remains in the hands of his top generals.

"The week began with an old soldier running Egypt. It ended with different old soldiers running Egypt with even more formal power than Mubarak had," Stratfor wrote.

"We do not want to be killjoys now, since everyone is so excited and happy. But we should point out that, in spite of the crowds, nothing much has really happened yet in Egypt. It doesn't mean that it won't, but it hasn't yet."

Most analysts agree that Egypt's neighbours, particularly those with empty coffers and growing young frustrated urban populations, are most at risk of similar events. But opinions vary as to whether there will be a tide of further uprisings or whether revolutionary zeal will swiftly fall off.

"One way or the other, we continue to believe that recent events in Tunisia and Egypt are likely to prove a significant turning point for the region as a whole," wrote Nomura political analyst Alastair Newton.

"But it remains to be seen how quickly other regimes may be forced to change and what direction such changes might take."

SIGN OF U.S. DECLINE?
Those who only three weeks ago said it was unlikely events in Tunisia would repeat themselves in Egypt now say they do not see an immediate domino effect across the region. Power elites elsewhere will do what it takes to retain office, they say.
For those looking for reasons to be alarmed, Saudi Arabia leaps out as another state with ageing leaders, internal strains and a potentially devastating impact on global oil supply in the event of trouble.

Demonstrations in nearby Bahrain could be an early warning sign, they suggest.
For liberals, radicals, firebrands and academics who long hoped for the collapse of strongmen across the region, the uprisings are a sign they are on the right side of history.

Some see it as as another slap in the face for the United States, which tried to export democracy to Iraq by force with disastrous results while backing dictators elsewhere.
"It's a turning point for U.S. power across the region," said Rosemary Hollis, professor of Middle Eastern studies at London's City University. "They have been exercising their influence through these autocratic regimes and now the tide is turning."

For those fixated by the rise of China -- which overtook Japan on Monday to become the world's second largest economy -- there are several ways of viewing events in North Africa.

Clearly, the speed with which unrest developed has alarmed at least some in Beijing, prompting them to block searches for the word "Egypt" from social networking sites. Mubarak's fate indicates authoritarianism does not always equal stability.


IMPACT BENEATH THE SURFACE?
But richer, fast-growing China is very different to Egypt -- and some argue events in Cairo could actually benefit Beijing.

They say the way Western capitals unceremoniously dumped Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali, making clear they would not support bloody crackdowns, might prompt some of Washington's more awkward autocratic allies to seek new friends.
"The real impact may be beneath the surface," said Anthony Skinner, associate director of British political risk consultancy Maplecroft. "Authoritarian states dependent on the U.S. will be worried. They may look to get support from elsewhere. Chinese aid is rather more no-strings-attached."

Both Iran and Myanmar were able to suppress uprisings with minimal economic damage, primarily because neither was dependent on Western aid or investment.
Zimbabwe, Sudan and Sri Lanka have also found Chinese support offers a bulwark against Western criticism.

Maybe that misses the immediate threat. In a research note on Monday, Bank of New York Mellon suggested the key lesson of Egypt and Tunisia was the political danger of rising food prices. Drought in China could push prices higher still and provoke further unrest elsewhere, it warned.

But Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, says some pundits and media have simply become too caught up in the excitement of events on the streets and cautions against drawing too many conclusions elsewhere.
"In short, we're not all Egyptians," he said.

(editing by Paul Taylor)