Egypt erupted in violence over the weekend as protestors and police battled once again for control of Tahrir Square.  Genuinely shocking brutality by Egyptian security forces has left at least 22 dead and many hundreds wounded.  The chaos, still ongoing a week before the scheduled beginning of Parliamentary elections, has thrown Egypt's already extremely shaky political transition into doubt. It is not likely the second coming of the Egyptian revolution of which many enthusiastic participants and outside onlookers dream. But it shows with painful clarity the costs of the incompetence of Egypt's military leadership and the urgency of a rapid transition to civilian rule. 

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Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians packed Tahrir Square today demanding an end to military rule.  Islamists and non-Islamist forces combined forces on the eve of Parliamentary elections in a show of popular strength demanding a real, rapid transition from military rule to democracy.  The size of the turnout and the unity of the message will send a strong, and incredibly important, message to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces: it should not delay a transition to civilian rule, it should back off from its proposed pro-military supra-constitutional document, and it should stop its abuses of military courts and emergency law.  

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Egypt's first post-Mubarak elections are scheduled to begin in less than two weeks. It would be hard to exaggerate how badly the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has prepared for these pivotal transitional elections. The election law is baffling and incoherent. Election preparations seem haphazard. The rules keep changing. People barely know what or who they are voting for. Some activists plan to boycott. Islamists seem poised to win big. The election is shaping up to be far messier and difficult than it needed to be. 

And yet despite all of that, holding these elections is still the right move. For Egypt to make a transition to a more democratic, legitimate and accountable political order it has to actually start making that transition. And that means elections. And here, there are some all too rare good signs. There has been no backsliding on the SCAF's commitment to hold these elections despite ample opportunity to postpone them, and there will even be international observers of a sort. On the other side, while some activists have decided to boycott the election they seem to be in the minority. And the Obama administration recognizes the importance of the election and is determined to do what it can to hold the SCAF to its commitments and to assist with the transition. Holding elections now still remains the best choice for Egypt. But everyone needs to prepare for the likely outcome to make sure that the vote actually does begin a real transition to a democratic Egypt rather than digging its early grave.

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The Arab League is today considering the demand by the Syrian National Council, human rights organizations and a wide array of other actors that it freeze Syria's membership over its killing of civilians. Few expect that the Arab League will seriously affect the Assad regime's behavior.  But the very fact that it is even considering such a move is frankly astonishing.  Since when do Arab leaders agree that a regime's legitimacy can be forfeit if it kills too many of its own people?

The rapid spread of a new norm against Arab regimes killing their own people is a frankly astonishing, but largely unremarked, change in the regional game.  Since the Arab League backed the UN intervention in Libya in March, the idea that regimes might be sanctioned for their domestic brutality has become a normal part of the Arab political debate and enshrined in official Arab League resolutions. Both the GCC's political transition plan for Yemen and this month's Arab League peace plan for Syria condemned regimes for their violence and called for far reaching political changes.  They haven't stopped the violence.  But the idea that they should is something genuinely new -- and has major implications beyond the immediate outcome in either country.

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Mustafa Abdul Jalil, leader of Libya's interim National Transitional Council, declared the end of the war and the liberation of Libya on Sunday following the controversial death of Moammar Qaddafi.  Judging by the tenor of discussion in the United States, you would think that this was an unmitigated disaster -- a humiliating end to an illegal war which prevented the UN from acting in Syria, massacred civilians, and opened the door to state failure, warlord violence, reprisals, and radical Islamist tyranny.  (Though at least we can be relieved that the rebels can now get their mack on.)  That's quite a catalog of failure dominating the public discourse at a time when the official war has come to an end, and most Libyans are celebrating Qaddafi's demise and planning a democratic transition towards a post-Qaddafi future. In fact, the intervention in Libya has been broadly successful and has helped to give Libyans the opportunity to build the country which they so deeply deserve. 

There's every reason to be cautious about Libya's future, of course.  There will be massive challenges facing the emerging new country, from independent militias to tribal and regional conflicts to the legacy of decades of the systematic destruction of independent civil society.  But nobody denies that.  Despite what Google tells me is 64,300,000 articles warning that "now comes the hard part in Libya," this is a straw man. I have heard almost nobody arguing the opposite -- certainly not the White House, which consistently has warned that "We’re under no illusions -- Libya will travel a long and winding road to full democracy. There will be difficult days ahead."

But for all those concerns, the intervention in Libya should be recognized as a success and real accomplishment for the international community.  The NATO intervention did save Libya's protestors from a near-certain bloodbath in Benghazi. It did help Libyans free themselves from what was an extremely nasty, violent, and repressive regime.  It did not lead to the widely predicted quagmire, the partition of Libya, the collapse of the NTC, or massive regional conflagration.  It was fought under a real, if contestable, international legal mandate which enjoyed widespread Arab support. It did help to build -- however imperfectly and selectively -- an emerging international norm rejecting impunity for regimes which massacre their people.  Libya's success did inspire Arab democracy protestors across the region. And it did not result in an unpopular, long-term American military occupation which it would have never seemed prudent to withdraw.

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Tunisians are voting today for a Constitutional Assembly, ten months after the fall of President Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali.  Despite considerable turbulence along the way, including growing political polarization and ongoing economic frustration, the early reports on election day are encouraging.  Turnout is high and voters enthusiastic, and thus far there are few signs of any official manipulation or fraud.  This is an exciting day for Tunisia and for the whole Arab world.  The election results will only set in motion new political struggles over the formation of a government and the contents of a new Constitution, and won't solve the deep economic problems of the country. But they are a promising and essential starting point for the creation of a legitimate, accountable and democratically elected civilian government.

We will have a lot of coverage of the elections results in the coming days.  While we wait for the returns, check out recent coverage of Tunisia on Foreign Policy's The Middle East Channel:

-Putting Tunisia's Democracy to the Test, by Erik Churchill

- Tunisia's Test, by Fadil Aliriza

- Tunisia's Surprising New Islamists, by Ellen Knickmeyer

-Divine Election, by Don Duncan

-Don't Tunisians want to vote?, by Erik Churchill

- Suspicion and Strategy in the New Tunisia, by Chris Alexander

- Tunisians agree on more than they realize, by Nathan Brown

- Tunisia's New al-Nahda, by Marc Lynch

- Tunisia's Forgotten Revolutionaries, by Lauren E. Bohn

And for more background, download POMEPS Briefing #1, Tunisia: Protests and Prospects for Change, from January 25, 2011 .

President Barack Obama's announcement today of a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 should be cause for real celebration.  This is the right decision, at the right time.  It may have been forced upon the administration by Iraqi political realities. But the end result will be a mutually agreed upon and orderly American withdrawal from Iraq on the timetable which both Bush and Obama promised but which few believed would ever really happen. This should be seen as a positive moment for America and for Iraq. Indeed, removing the distraction of the polarizing and largely irrelevant debate over the presence of U.S. troops could actually improve the chances of building a positive, enduring relationship with Iraq -- though that opportunity could all too easily be lost.   

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Yemeni human rights activist Tawakkul Karman was announced last night as one of the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.  For once, the Nobel committee really got it right.  Karman has been a tireless, creative and effective advocate for human rights, media freedoms, and democracy in Yemen for years.  And Yemen's struggle for change has been largely forgotten by the world in spite of its almost unbelievable resilience in the face of dim prospects for success.  She represents the very best of the new Arab public.  Now let us hope that the award sparks the international community to refocus on Yemen's forgotten revolution and push hard for the political transition which it so desperately needs and deserves.

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