By Rami G. Khouri The Daily Star, Lebanon

My pleasure at speaking this week in Ottawa at a gathering at the International Development Research Center of Canada was compounded by the very thoughtful questions and comments that members of the audience offered.

The audience raised new questions in my mind about what is likely or possibly may occur in the Arab region, as the current citizen revolt moves into its seventh month. The issues they raised revolved around the reality that there is no certain outcome to the developments in assorted Arab countries. While I and many other Arab citizens feel that the wave of democratic transformations will continue to wash across most of the region, sweeping away old and young autocrats and opening the door to new democracies, this is by no means certain.

Economic pressures, for one, could easily create such immense stresses on families that many Arabs who celebrated the Tunisian and Egyptian regime changes may welcome the return of strongmen who restrict citizens’ powers but provide more jobs. I doubt this will happen, but we can never rule it out. The demands of children’s stomachs crying out for food that many families cannot afford to buy are immensely powerful drivers of political behavior.

Another threat that some audience members raised was related to the potential break-up of some countries into smaller units that could be more easily controlled by regional or foreign powers. The first Arab revolt against the Ottomans around a century ago occurred simultaneously with the Sykes-Picot accord, by which France and Great Britain carved up the Arab east into smaller units that were put under the rule of locally chosen leaders whom the Europeans knew they could trust. It is possible that the current transformations might result in security vacuums that local parties or foreign powers could exploit to fragment some Arab states into smaller units that would then be more reliant on foreign support or protection.

Read more:
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)