This is a good picture of how the US presence in Iaq (and more of course) is stirring things up, but with very uncertain outcomes.
``Something is extremely wrong in this Arab world,'' said Mansour al-Jamri, editor-in-chief of the Bahraini Al-Wasat newspaper, and a prominent opposition figure in the Gulf country. ``You cannot turn a donkey into a horse.''
With a massive U.S. military presence in their midst, and a Bush administration determined to see real change, Arab leaders are facing their biggest collective challenge ever.
They are squeezed from both sides.
On the one side is an increasingly sophisticated population that is more connected to the world thanks to the satellite and the Internet, and more aware of democracy's potential to empower them.
On the other is rising Islamic fervor, fueled by poverty and despair of secular governments' inability to give their people anything to be proud of.
Given all that, al-Jamri and others wonder whether Arab regimes can take the risk of embracing real democracy, knowing it may mean their ouster by one side or the other.
``If there are political reforms, then power will slip from their hands,'' said Hisham Kassem, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.
A democratic process will take time and patience, he says, and the reforms so far may seem superficial, but they show that the American message is sinking in - that ``this issue cannot be taken as a joke.''
Theodore Kattouf, the U.S. ambassador to Syria until last August, said that in the Arab-Islamic world today, elections with real political parties are important, but ``People have to know that the process is fair and transparent, that their votes count.''
Some Arab regimes have had bitter experience with elections, especially where they boosted Islamic fundamentalist parties. Algeria held a multiparty election in 1992 but aborted it when Islamic parties looked like winning, and a decade of ferocious bloodshed ensued.
Jordan held a parliamentary election in 1989 in which Islamic legislators made impressive gains, only to lose popularity when it became clear they could not deliver on their promise to improve living conditions.
