"Ever since the Arab Spring, many people here have been pining for an American Autumn," says Charles Blow in the New York Times. "The closest we've gotten so far is Occupy Wall Street." For almost four weeks, Occupy Wall Street activists have gathered in Manhattan's financial district to protest corporate greed, corruption, and social and economic inequality, among other things. The movement's website states, "We Are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends." 

Many disagree. Blow describes the protests as "a festival of frustrations, a collective venting session with little edge or urgency, highlighting just how far away downtown Manhattan is from Damascus." James Joyner at Outside the Beltway states, "What these movements have in common: frustrated youth loosely organized using social media …It's simply insulting to compare the two."

What can the American protestors learn from the more experienced "Arab Spring" protestors? In a Foreign Policy Magazine article entitled "From Tahrir Square to Wall Street," veteran Egyptian protestor Mosa'ab Elshamy offers his advice to the Occupy Wall Street activists on what makes a successful protest movement. Most importantly, Elshamy says, is that protestors have a unified platform. They must first agree on a set of simple and broad demands in order to attract a wide base of support, which is exactly what Occupy Wall Street lacks, according to most critics.  

Almost one month after the start of protests in New York City, the Occupy Wall Street movement has shown surprising staying power. The movement has spread to over 70 US cities and has been endorsed by several labor unions, celebrities, and politicians. But will it succeed in bringing accountability and equity to the US financial system, or will it fizzle as protestors are dispersed by a cold New York winter? 

(Photo: Occupy Wall Street protestor marches up Broadway in New York.  Mike Segar / Reuters)

I arrived in Tunis on January 1, only a few days after a wave of rallies had erupted due to the suicide of an unemployed college graduate, who torched himself after police confiscated his fruit cart, cutting off his only source of income. Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, sold fruit and vegetables without the necessary vendor's permit in the town of Sidi Bouzid, located 160 miles from the country's capital Tunis.

At the time, Tunisians had been protesting for a couple of weeks over poor living conditions, high unemployment, government corruption and repression. Three people had been killed in the protests by the time of my arrival. The atmosphere was tense, public protests were rare in Tunisia where dissent was usually repressed; however, no one I spoke to in Tunis believed then that these demonstrations would lead to the ouster of President Zein El Abidine Ben Ali who eventually fled the country to Saudi Arabia after ruling Tunisia for 23 years.

The Jasmine Revolution, as it is dubbed now, was not televised on Tunisia's main television station, Tunisie7, nor did it make headlines in the local press, but the news spread like wildfire on Facebook, YouTube, mobile phone, and to a lesser extent on Twitter (most of the tweets were from outside Tunisia).

Prior to my arrival to Tunis, I had spent the past five weeks in the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories debating social media, its impact on youth, and its relationship with journalism in the Arab world with my interlocutors.

It is very easy, but over-simplistic and naive to decide on a social media interpretation for the Jasmine Revolution, as we have been witnessing by many bloggers and self-appointed Middle East experts, many of whom neither speak Arabic nor have spent an extended period of time in the Middle East. They desperately want to convince us that Tunisians needed an external technological Western invention in order to succeed. A Twitter revolution of some sorts, as they previously labeled the Iranian Velvet Revolution, as though Arab masses were not capable on their own of saying "enough is enough."

Certainly social media was used as a communication tool for Tunisians to air their frustrations with the economy, unemployment, censorship, and corruption. But many factors lead to its success, such as a well organized trade unions movement, and the most potent weapon in the Arab world, the youth.

Population ageing is widespread across the world, but most Arab countries have been experiencing a youth explosion. More than one third of them are now unemployed. Tunisia is a bit different since it is one of the few Arab countries that opted for a family planning policy initiated during the rule of its first president, Habib Bourguiba. Tunisia, however, has also adopted a development plan with a focus on higher education, leaving a large number of young college graduates unemployed.

When I was driving around in Tunis, posters of President Zein El Abidine Ben Ali were sprinkled throughout the city with the slogan, "Together We Meet Challenges," a slogan meant to tout his plan of development by focusing on job creation, increasing revenue and enhancing Tunisia's positioning and influence on the regional and international scales. This obviously has failed, leaving a country of over- educated youth, many of whom are unemployed or doing menial jobs. Mohammed Bouazizi was the catalyst for their revolution.

Today, millions of Arab youth are disenchanted with politics and live a dramatic rupture with the state. Restrictions on freedom of expression, though improving in several countries, dominate the mass media in the Arab world. Social media has in many instances opened the door for them not only to share ideas, but also to take action. We've seen a vivid example of this during the Jeddah floods when the Saudi government tried to suppress the news about the devastation caused by nature due to poor infrastructure in the Arab world's richest country, but the news quickly spread on Facebook and the internet by concerned young Saudis. We've witnessed a bread revolution in Egypt, also driven by high unemployment and poverty; again initially transmitted to the outside world by young bloggers before it became international headlines.

Throughout history, when social discontent can no longer be contained, people have taken to the street to demand change. Having the most rudimentary technology, or none at all have not prevented these movements, a case in point being hand printed pamphlets distributed prior to the French Revolution, Gandhi's ability to inspire and mobilize through the exponential power of word of mouth, and the leaflets and tape recordings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini speeches that were smuggled into the country prior to the Iranian Revolution.

Mohammed Bouazizi's self immolation was the expression not only of his despair, but that of youth throughout Tunisia ready to explode. Although they are an educated tech-savvy generation who were able to use social media as a tool, the underlying force was not a byproduct of this and the current situation would have come to pass with or without it.

Crediting social media with these revolutions however, trivializes them and does a disservice to the deep rooted issues that cause them.

As I was leaving Tunis on January 4, news spread again like wildfire of Mohammed Bouazizi's death at a hospital in the town of Ben Arous. Today, Mohsen Bouterfif died. Mohsen doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire on Thursday after a meeting with the mayor of the small city of Boukhadra who was unable to provide him with a job and housing. Boukhadra is in Algeria.

Article first published on the Huffington Post

For a number of Arab countries, including Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt, 2010 witnessed yet another round of disappointing parliamentary elections.  

In all three countries, ruling parties faced serious competition from the opposition. However, as elections neared and campaigns heated up, the undermining of opposition parties intensified. The authoritarian regimes' methods ranged from media censorship and mass arrests to violent crackdowns.

On October 23, 2010, Bahrain, the only Gulf state that allows political organizations known as "societies," held its third parliamentary elections. The predominantly Shiite Gulf state, ruled by a Sunni government, managed to pull off a reasonably free but unfair election. Granted, no reports of direct electoral fraud emerged after the election but it was preceded by a crackdown on government critics, a clampdown on the media, the intimidation of opposition members, and arrest of prominent activists.

Undeterred, the Shiite-led Wefaq Party participated and swept 18 of the 40-seat Council of Representatives. But for Bahrain’s Shiite majority that has long complained of discrimination in accessing government jobs and housing, the election did not lead to a change in the political makeup of the government since the members of the upper house, Bahrain’s main legislative body, are directly appointed by the king.

Unlike Bahrain where main opposition group Al-Wefaq and Sunni Islamist groups Al-Asalah and Al-Menbar participated in the elections, Egypt and Jordan’s opposition parties chose to boycott theirs. The hope that elections in those two countries might provide a glimpse into democratization in the Middle East were quickly dashed as the rigging or manipulation of the vote was carefully crafted long before election day. 

On November 9, 2010, Jordan held parliamentary elections that were also perceived as free but unfair. The Jordanian government passed a new electoral law earlier that year that was viewed by the opposition as favoring tribal allegiances at the expense of political and social platforms. This led the Muslim Brotherhood and its political wing, the Islamic Action Front, to boycott the elections citing a “lack of genuine desire for reform” on the part of the government.

As a result, loyalists to Jordan's King Abdullah II and tribal-affiliated candidates won most of the upper and lower house seats. And although the boycott damaged the credibility of the elections, the royal family was able to cling on to power domestically while preserving its democratic image internationally.

On November 28, 2010, Egypt held its parliamentary elections after violently clamping down on the opposition. In the weeks and months leading up to the parliamentary election, the government carried out wide-scale sweeps, targeting members and supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Despite the latter's participation in the first round, it failed to secure any seats, citing vote rigging, fraud and ballot stuffing. 

Both the liberal Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the run-off round on December 5, 2010 and with 97 percent control of the People's Assembly, President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party managed to further tighten its grip on power in Egypt.

The electoral farce held in Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt is part of what has become a familiar political game aimed at diffusing Arab anger and frustration with stagnating and unpopular regimes. Indeed, Arabs are growing tired of meaningless elections that merely offer a facade for change but leave them even more cynical about the possibility of a democratic transition of power.  

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index for 2010 classified all three countries as “authoritarian” and the Middle East and North Africa region as the most repressive globally. How much longer will these crumbling regimes be able to quell popular mobilization? And if boycotting campaigns keep on failing to delegitimize these regimes, one has to wonder what opposition parties will do next.

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Will it be a strike against Iran by the U.S. and or Israel? Will there be political upheaval in Egypt after Mubarak's reign? And will Israel invade Lebanon or Gaza? These are some of the questions that can be heard on the streets of Cairo, Amman, and Beirut.

2010 is far from over, yet we have witnessed a series of close encounters in the Middle East that created major tensions and pushed everyone to the edge: a war on the Yemeni Saudi border, rapid deterioration of relations between Israel and Turkey over the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, skirmishes between Israel and Lebanon over the cutting of a tree, and the looming prospect of an attack on Iran to mention a few. But what's really troubling is how fast attitudes have changed towards President Obama from a year ago; specifically in the period after newly-elected Barack Obama delivered his "New Beginning" speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds from a podium at the University of Cairo in Egypt.

Just yesterday, on Thursday, August 5, a poll released by the Brookings Institute in conjunction with Zogby International revealed a substantial change in the assessment of President Obama, both as President of the United States and of Obama personally. According to the poll, early in the Obama Administration, in April and May 2009, 51% of the respondents in six Arab countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates) expressed optimism about American policy in the Middle East. In the 2010 poll, only 16% were hopeful, while a majority - 63% - were discouraged.

The poll's results show another dramatic shift in public opinion on Iran's potential nuclear weapons status. While the results vary from country to country, the weighted average across the six countries is telling: in 2009, only 29% of those polled said that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would be "positive" for the Middle East; in 2010, 57% of those polled indicate that such an outcome would be "positive" for the Middle East.

So what's wrong with earlier assessments that Arab countries were "freaked out" by a nuclear Iran?

Unfortunately the US government, and to a larger extent western reporters, have been spoon-fed this information by intelligence apparatuses of certain despotic Arab regimes. No one bothered to ask the average person on the street this question.

Although the poll was conducted before Obama's recent confirmation of the end of all combat operations in Iraq by the end of August, Arabs believe that the troubles of Iraq are far from being over. July has been a very deadly month in Iraq.

Recently, Saddam Hussein's former deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz, has accused the US president of "leaving Iraq to the wolves."

Last but not least: "Palestine is still the issue" to borrow from John Pilger's title. The poll leaves little doubt that the major decline in Obama's popularity has a lot to do with the disappointment in the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Arabs have lost hope that President Obama will be able to deliver on his promises.

I've been in and out of the Middle East five times this year, and if tension could be described as a cloud, you'd need a knife to cut through the one created by recent political events in the region. Everyone seems edgy and expecting war. President Obama must act fast to bring back some of the magic he had early on in the region with his messages of "hope" and "change". Now he needs to deliver on real promises before it is too late.

Article originally published on the Huffington Post
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