Opening Ceremonies: That's an athlete at the Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, last year. He could also have been rehearsing for more meaningful demonstrations. Some of those demonstrations have begun in Yemen. (Hannah Johnston/Getty Images)
Actually, no, Hosni Mubarak was not the longest-serving Arab dictator. That dishonor goes Libya's Muammar el-Qaddafi, in power since 1969, who today found one way to deflect the mounting anger of the Arab street. Don;t march against me, he told his flock. March on the Palestinian territories. (Actually, the self-serving deflection aside, he didn't have a bad idea at all: head for head for "the Palestinian borders, olive branches in hand in a sign of peace." And "If they find themselves repulsed by the enemy," he said, referring to Israel, "then let them set up camp on the borders. You have to create a problem before the world will act." In other words: get their attention. Then again, maybe Muammar should worry about hos own territories first, where his legitimacy ins no greater than that of Israel's military rulers of the occupied territories: no one elected him. He doesn't speak for Libyans, let alone for Palestinians or other Arabs. Last week he had potential opponents arrested for beginning to organize protest marches online.
Another dictator serving longer than Mubarak is Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power since 1978. His version of democracy is similar to Mubarak's, where every few years he pretends to get reelected by massive majorities of his loving constituents. Some of those loving constituents, about 1,000 by some reports, were on the streets of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, today.
The Times, in a by-lined dispatch by two reporters (one in Sanaa, one in New York), nevertheless cites witnesses saying that protesters marched on the presidential palace in a third day of protests, which raises the question: why weren't those reporters on the scene? Sanaa is not an overly large city (1.7 million people or so), though some of the details suggest that they had reliable information: "Unlike the earlier protests in Yemen, which were highly organized and marked by color-coordinated clothing and signs, the spontaneity of the younger demonstrators appeared to have more in common with popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, where opposition groups watched from the sidelines as leaderless revolts grew into revolutions."
But the government is in full arrest mode: 120 people arrested in two days, and marchers on the presidential palace were "violently repulsed by armed security forces, both uniformed and in plain clothes, with some armed with stun guns, witnesses said." No mention who the makers of those stun guns happen to be. The United States furnishes arms and economic aid to Yemen. The United States is also a leading producer of stun guns, as American police forces tend to like the weaponry as much as Yemen's do.
"Since Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt on Friday," the report continues, "police officers, some of them armed, have filled Sana's central square -- which, like its Cairo counterpart, is called Tahrir Square -- blocking access with concertina wire to prevent protesters from gathering. Witnesses reported seeing men in plain clothes with AK-47s on the street."
The AK-47 has been the Middle East's all-purpose tool, of repression included. Arab leaders are learning quickly from Egypt. Act fast. Bring out the barbed wire. Bring out the weapons. Be ready to use them. Maybe they figure that by murdering a few people early or arresting them en masse, they'd stave off the natural progression of popular revolutions--the swelling demonstrations, the placating concessions, the eventual crumbling.
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