IT IS a region known for rulers and despots, where power passes from father to son and opposition is silenced by the secret police.

Yet in the space of only a few weeks the Arab world has experienced a political upheaval that could signal a Levantine revolution in democracy like the collapse of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe 16 years ago.

In quick succession, Palestinians have voted in a free and fair election for a new president, eight million Iraqis have defied the bloody insurgency to elect a representative Government and even conservative Saudi Arabia has tasted its first morsel of democracy in the form of municipal elections.

The campaigns, voting and results have been beamed across the region on the new Arab satellite television channels, which are generating unprecedented political debate among the Arab people and breaking the once powerful state monopoly on information.

While the top-down reforms, often the result of pressure from America and other foreign influences, have sown democratic seeds, it is the dramatic events unfolding at present in Lebanon that offer the real prospect of people power triumphing in a Middle Eastern state.

The assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese Prime Minister, triggered a series of angry demonstrations against Syria’s occupation of Lebanon. The pro-Syrian Government in Beirut has resigned, Damascus has promised to withdraw its 14,000 troops within months, and the Lebanese have every hope of holding free elections in May.

They will be followed in July by Palestinian parliamentary elections, in which Islamic militants could be returned to high office, and in September by presidential elections in Egypt, where opposition candidates will be able to challenge Hosni Mubarak for the first time in his 24-year rule. In the Gulf a similar trend is under way with states such as Qatar and Bahrain encouraging multiparty politics.

“What happened in Beirut is the beginning of spring in the region. It’s a turning point,” Abdulellah al-Khatib, a former Jordanian Foreign Minister, said.

“It is a democratic electric shock,” Karam Gabr, the managing editor of Rose el-Yousef, an Egyptian political weekly, said. “The winds of change blowing through Cairo could sweep away quite a few regimes in the region. They will be faced with the march of democracy in the Middle East.”

Just months ago such predictions would have been unthinkable. The region was convulsed by the violence in Iraq, the continuing bloodshed in the Holy Land and the terrorist campaign in Saudi Arabia.

What triggered the region’s change of fortune is the subject of heated debate, but it is clear that both fate and design were responsible.

President Bush can certainly claim some credit. Two years ago he set out to make Iraq “a dramatic and inspiring example for other nations in the region”. The rosy predictions of his neoconservative supporters have not been realised, but Iraq has become a symbol of the power of the people over the gun.

Even Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader whose fiefdom was once pounded by a US Navy battleship, has conceded that his criticism of US policy was misplaced.

“It is strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq,” the man leading Lebanon’s uprising against Syria said. “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world,” he told The Washington Post.

But there have been other catalysts for which Washington can claim no credit. The US has required help from some unlikely quarters. Al-Jazeera television, a consistent critic of US policy, has nonetheless pioneered a revolution in Arab journalism that has made the debate possible.

And it was Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Iranian-born spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shia Muslims, who insisted on holding elections in Iraq in the face of American objections.

Arguably the greatest catalyst for change was the death of Yassir Arafat in November. His passing opened the way for elections in January and has led to the first real drive for peace between Israel and the Palestinians in years.

The same is true in Lebanon. The murder of Mr Hariri, the man credited with rebuilding his country after 15 years of civil war, sparked a popular uprising against Syria that has left the one-party state in Damascus looking vulnerable and isolated.

But the fast pace of change does not necessarily mean that the Arab world is destined for a bright new democratic future. Many of the reforms announced in the Arab world may prove to be cosmetic changes instituted by rulers who have no intention of sharing power. Egypt and Saudi Arabia announced their “reforms” under intense pressure from Washington, but there are doubts that President Mubarak or the Saudi Royal Family would allow elections that could sweep them from power. The insurgency in Iraq shows no signs of abating and the new Government must stave off civil war.

“It is important now to focus on what needs to be done by all concerned parties, rather than argue about who started the ball rolling,” Rami Khouri, the Editor of the Beirut Daily Star, said.

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