The stakes in Egypt are obviously huge right now. But it feels like we're all paying too little attention to the situation in Yemen, which Obama counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan has been described as fearing could become another Waziristan-like haven for terrorists, and where political anarchy almost certainly plays into al Qaeda's hands. The WSJ reports today on opposition efforts to organize demonstrations in the country's mountainous rural areas.

Over 3,000 opposition supporters gathered in the town of Maweya in Taiz province, in southern Yemen, condemning alleged oppression by the ruling party of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, according to eyewitnesses. And in Dhammar province , in central Al-Hada district, the opposition was able to gather more than 1,500 followers, in a district considered a stronghold for the ruling party.Monday's protests are much smaller than demonstrations that drew thousands to the streets of San'a, the capital, and other urban centers late last week. Opposition leaders said they were now targeting rural areas, where loyalties to tribal and local authorities often outweigh any allegiance to Mr. Saleh's central government. They have promised country-wide demonstrations on Thursday.

Could Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh be the next to go? At CNN.com, Yemeni expert Daniel Martin Varisco says it's not likely:

Tunisia appears to be an exception rather than a harbinger of radical change for Yemen. The protests in Yemen reflect genuine concerns, but they are less about the present government being evil than its being ineffective.

So far the protests in the capital have not resulted in bloodshed, but allowed factions to voice the concerns they have been complaining about in private and with friends. Many Yemenis, looking at the aftermath of regime change in Iraq, prefer the existing government's ability to provide relative security over any new civil strife.

Varisco adds that just one out of ten Yemenis have internet access, a big obstacle to organizing in a repressive state.

Still, you can be sure that the Obama team is watching this one very, very closely.

The news that Hillary Clinton has called all our ambassadors back to Washington for a mass meeting at the State Department is further evidence--in part, at least--of the damage that Wikileaks has done to U.S. diplomacy. I know that there have been "official" reports about the damage not being severe, but that's not what I've been hearing from people in the diplomatic community.

The biggest fear is that repressive countries like China, which has undoubtedly hacked into the Wikileaks stash by now, will find and jail people who served as sources for U.S. diplomatic assessments. New York Times editor Bill Keller addressed this in his solid Sunday magazine piece about the weird Mr. Assange; and while Keller made a convincing case that sensitive sources were protected by the newspapers involved, he didn't--and couldn't really--address the security of the main Wikileaks stash. There is a very strong possibility that people will be jailed, or worse, as a result of Assange's irresponsibility; we may not know the fate of such people for months, if ever.

The second problem, more abstract, is the chilling impact that the leaks will have on US diplomatic cable traffic. Yes, it was great fun to learn that Muammar Qaddafi gadded about with a buxom Ukrainian nurse, but if a diplomat knows that her/his reporting may become public, he/she will be less likely to include the candid assessments that are crucial for U.S. negotiators when they're dealing with foreign leaders. This has undoubtedly hurt our ability to figure out diplomatic strategy over the past few months; I'd be surprised if Clinton isn't telling the Ambassadors that she wants cables that are as candid as possible at the meeting today.

The notion that foreign leaders might stiff us or react angrily as a result of the leaks--the "damage" denied in the reports cited above--is a real, but lesser problem. On the other hand, you don't want to take the chance that the mercurial Qaddafi will allow Al Qaeda to stage an operation from his territory just because he's ticked off at the U.S. diplomat who wrote the Ukranian nurse report.

Assange is an anarchist. His access to secret documents is dangerous, but--sadly--probably not illegal. The alleged leaker, Private Bradley Manning, should be held to account if found guilty and locked away for a very long time--as the victims of these leaks may well be. That doesn't mean, however, that Manning should be mistreated, or held in solitary, or denied visitors. It means that he should be subject to the full strength of the law.

Read More…

Another installment in our continuing look at the impact unemployment will play in key 2012 election states. Today's Columbus Dispatch writes in some detail about Ohio's economic trajectory. Here's the good news for Barack Obama:

Ohio's unemployment rate declined for the last nine months of 2010 to 9.6 percent in December, from a high of 11 percent in March. Only six states saw a better improvement in their jobless rate last year.

The Buckeye State also improved its rankings from 2006 in the number of new manufacturing jobs, the increase in its gross state product and other indicators, the newspaper's review shows.

But it's probably outweighed by the bad:

Moody's is forecasting that Ohio will see a 3.7 percent increase in gross state product this year, up from 3.2 percent last year but less than the national forecast of 3.9 percent in 2011. The firm also is projecting that Ohio will add 51,000 jobs this year and 100,000 in 2012.

Still, that would be only a dent in the nearly 419,000 jobs that Ohio has lost since the official start of the recession in December 2007, and economists say other troubling signs remain.

In the housing market, for example, Ohio's foreclosure rate was 38th worst in the nation last year. That means only 12 other states had a higher rate, after Ohio's foreclosure filings rose 6.4percent last year, according to RealtyTrac, a California firm that follows the housing market.

Housing prices also are expected to continue falling this year before they start rebounding again, Sears said.

"Housing is still a disaster, and it's going to take longer for things to work out there," Brock said.

Meanwhile, the state's new Republican governor, John Kasich, needs to close a large budget gap without raising taxes (per his campaign promise). That means big spending cuts, which will surely mean thousands more job losses at the state level and a contractionary effect on the state's economy. Ouch.

If the liberation of Egypt weren't in progress, this story from Afghanistan would be huge front-page news. The losses at Kabul Bank, first reported to be several hundred million in the Times last summer, are actually in the neighborhood of $900 million. Apparently, the bank directors--perhaps including Hamid Karzai's brother Mahmoud--took a substantial portion of the assets, leveraged them and invested in Dubai real estate, which promptly crashed. The Afghan government does most of its business through Kabul Bank; if it fails, the government won't be able to pay its civil servants--and a fair amount of international aid, deposited in the bank, may be washed out as well.

The question now is: bail out Kabul Bank or let the Karzai government collapse? The answer, I think, is bail out Kabul Bank, but only if Karzai steps aside in favor of Abdullah Abdullah, who finished second in the rigged presidential election--or a respected technocrat like Ashraf Ghani, who could lead a caretaker government until new elections are held.

The estimable Dexter Filkins, who broke this story last summer, has left the Times for higher ground at the New Yorker and has a piece on this subject this week, which I haven't read yet but will recommend sight unseen.

Note: Several commenters below seem to think I'm suggesting that the U.S. bail out Kabul bank--an understandable mistake, given our recent history. But I think this is a job for the international community, especially those countries--I'm talking about you, China--who are getting the benefits of the stabilization of Afghanistan (mineral extraction contracts etc.) without helping to pay for the war. The U.S. can play a role in this, but it certainly shouldn't be the lead dog. We're doing plenty already.

A new dawn broke in Tunis with the ouster of its long-time corrupt dictator. After years of repression, news organizations suddenly were allowed to criticize the government. Committees were formed in parliament to create laws allowing independent political parties and to make democratic changes to the constitution. The hated State Security Court was disbanded in favor of the regular judicial process. Democracy was sweeping Tunisia and it was all thanks to the country's reformist new leader: Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

That was how the New York Times reported the situation back in December 1987, a month after Ben Ali ousted Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's iron-fisted ruler since the end of French colonialism in the late 50s. Political change is not always what it seems in the Arab world. As Tunisia celebrates the ouster of the dictatorial Ben Ali 23 years later, and the world watches with awe as protestors in Cairo, Amman and Sana'a rise up against their oppressors, change is once again sweeping the Arab world. But from the Western perspective it is not clear whether to fret about it or to embrace it.

In truth, Washington has to do both, since it has little or no control over the situation, especially in the most volatile of the uprisings, in Egypt. “What happens [there] is truly up to the Egyptian people,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on CNN Sunday. The weak hand is all the more stark because so much is at stake for Washington in the crisis. In Egypt, the U.S. has an important partner in counterterrorism operations, a key interlocutor in the Arab-Israeli peace process and a pliant granter of overflight rights and passage through the Suez for troops. Yemen's festering al Qaeda affiliate is the most active terrorist threat the U.S. faces right now. And in Lebanon, where political change is also afoot, the danger of war with Israel is real.

Having concluded early on that they have little ability to control day-to-day events in any of these countries, officials at State and the White House are trying to map out a strategy to influence the coming months. That means avoiding picking sides to avoid alienating whoever may emerge in power; citing first principles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (to which Egypt and others are signatories even though they uphold them only rhetorically); and say just enough to keep that most important constituency—Americans—off the backs of top officials.

Read More…

When George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, there was widespread talk about how the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the hoped-for birth of democracy would provide an inspiration to an Arab world largely stultified by authoritarian dictatorship. The great wave of reform, of course, never materialized. Until now. But there is, of course, precious little evidence that Iraq's extremely nascent and fragile democracy has inspired what's happening in Egypt. If so, however, it would represent another way in which that invasion has backfired in unexpected ways. The autocrats that the Bushies hoped to topple  were figures like Syria's Bashar al-Assad and the theological rulers of Iran. Instead the masses have now come for one of America's principal allies in the region.

It is, of course, possible that this popular movement isn't finished. Al Jazeera reports that, while Damascus has been calm, there are signs of anxiety on the part of Assad's regime:

On Friday evening, as protests in Cairo reached a crescendo, the streets of Damascus were unusually quiet, with many people staying at home to watch the news. Syria's state-run media quoted some news reports from Cairo, but offered no comment or analysis on the situation.

By Saturday morning life had returned to normal with few signs, on the surface at least, that the authorities were concerned about potential unrest....

Online, however, it was a different story. Internet users reported a significant slowdown in the web, with searches for news on Egypt often crashing browsers.

Heavy user traffic could be an explanation but in Syria, where thousands of websites deemed opposed to state interests are blocked and where Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media are banned, authorities denied accusations they had restricted the service to prevent citizens hearing about events in Cairo.

Earlier this week, though, authorities banned programmes that allow access to Facebook Chat from mobile phones, a cheap and easy means of staying in touch that had exploded in popularity among young Syrians.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, reporting on Arab executive opinion from Davos, throws some cold water on the idea that Saudi Arabia could be next:

Few of them expected a revolution to spread across the oil-rich nations of the Persian Gulf and the United Arab Emirates, where the governments are monarchies, which often do not create the types of expectations that accompany a democracy. Rulers in these countries use their oil wealth to invest in social stability by ensuring their own people lead comfortable lives through subsidies on things like electricity, education and food.

“Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries are going to be spared because they are not democratic regimes,” said Jamal Khashoggi, the general manager of Al Waleed 24 News Channel. People there “don't feel cheated because there are no elections,” he said. By contrast, he said, “I can feel the agony of an Egyptian when he sees how democracy is mocked.”

Sounds plausible, and yet who could have predicted a week ago that Hosni Mubarak would be on the brink of ouster?

On CNN and Fox today the Secretary of State took the U.S. position on the situation in Egypt a tonal step further, calling for an "orderly transition", suggesting that the administration is beginning to view embattled President Hosni Mubarak's days as numbered. She was careful in both appearances not to take sides explicitly, saying the U.S. stands with all Egyptians.

U.S. statements are unlikely to have much affect on the immediate situation. "There's not a lot of opportunity for the United States to influence events,” says Jon Alternman, director of Middle East programs at CSIS, and a former State and NSC official. “The protesters don't care about the U.S., and at a time of maximum peril for the government, [the Egyptian leadership is] not looking for outside advice or arm-chair quarterbacking.”

But it is becoming increasingly hard to see how Mubarak can survive the end of the year: elections are slated for next September and at this point he probably can't win or steal the vote. The U.S. will have a better chance of influencing a slow handover of power over the next six to nine months than trying to drive fast changing events on the ground. Clinton's statements suggest that's the developing American strategy.