The Mid­dle East and North Africa is again a pro­foundly dif­fer­ent place than it was in De­cem­ber 2010 or even in Jan­u­ary 2011. The biggest de­vel­op­ment is the down­fall of Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak as a re­sult of the up­ris­ing in Tunisia that brought down Pres­i­dent Ben Ali. As a pop­u­la­tion with over 80 mil­lion peo­ple and a major strate­gic power, the suc­cess of the up­ris­ing ex­po­nen­tially in­creases the mo­men­tum of pro­test­ers in the re­gion that has ex­isted since Tunisia’s Jas­mine Rev­o­lu­tion.

Major un­rest has struck al­most every sin­gle coun­try in the Mid­dle East and it has spread as far as China, Al­ba­nia, Be­larus and Venezuela. The gov­ern­ments in the re­gion are now en­gaged in a del­i­cate bal­anc­ing act of of­fer­ing major con­ces­sions while at times or­der­ing se­cu­rity forces to use vi­o­lence to dis­perse es­ca­lat­ing demon­stra­tions. Every gov­ern­ment is closely watch­ing de­vel­op­ments in the en­tire re­gion to de­ter­mine their own course of ac­tion. Coun­tries like Bahrain and Yemen have of­fered major con­ces­sions, in­clud­ing eco­nomic aid pack­ages and more po­lit­i­cal free­dom, while the Libyan gov­ern­ment has cho­sen to use an in­cred­i­ble amount of vi­o­lence. The fate of these gov­ern­ments will de­ter­mine what the lead­ers in the re­gion de­cide are the best ways to stay in power.