Running Up the Score

By John Tabin

Let's once again check the score:

The development of the Afghan state is going surprisingly well (S. Fredrick Starr details the correction of problems that he and other experts once warned of in the current issue of the National Interest), and now some other spots in that neighborhood bear watching. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan each held parliamentary elections on February 27, both fraught with irregularities favoring the leadership -- including the muzzling of the press.

While the Tajik opposition is for now too fractured and weak to seriously challenge strongman Imomali Rakhmanov's dominance, in Kyrgyzstan, where run-off elections for many parliamentary seats will come on March 13, democracy activists talk of a Kyrgysz "Lemon Revolution," modeled on last year's successful Orange Revolution in Ukraine (which was itself inspired in part by the Rose Revolution in Georgia). There have been large protests, but so far they seem mostly limited to the southern part of the country -- but if there is no Lemon Revolution this month, it may still come with the presidential election in October.

In Lebanon, too, the Orange Revolution has had its influence, as protesters have borrowed Ukrainian techniques for their effort to push the Syrians out; they've already succeeded in forcing a pro-Syrian government to resign. Iraq's successful election was another important catalyst: "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," Druze Muslim leader Walid Jumblatt told David Ignatius of the Washington Post last week. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

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