In response, the civil servants, the Buddhist monks, and the high school students joined the college kids out in the streets. Hospital staff, teachers, and shop keepers rallied to call for an end to the repression and economic incompetence at the top. By mid-September, crowds estimated at 200,000 to 500,000 were marching in the streets, calling for a change of government. A new pro-democracy leader emerged, the charismatic daughter of Burma’s first post-independence leader, a young woman called Aung San Suu Kyi.

Terrified by the power of the public, the ruling junta ousted its head general, Ne Win, and the new leader, General Saw Maung, declared martial law. His thuggish protege, Than Shwe, became a Cabinet member. On September 18, the new govermment ordered the army to shoot into the crowds; an estimated 3,000 peaceful protestors, mostly students and monks, were killed.

If this all sounds hauntingly familiar, well, it happened again in September and October of 2007. Peaceful protests, led this time by the monks, were brutally crushed by Than Shwe’s government. Hundreds or thousands were killed, or disappeared.

Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, where she has been for most of the past two decades.

Identifying ways to do so would recognize a central geopolitical fact of our time: New Delhi is increasingly drawn into decision-making in the world’s most critical regions. Earlier this year, India voted with the other great powers on the UN Security Council to sanction Libya following Colonel Gaddafi’s brutal crackdown. Millions of Indians in the Middle East today are literal witnesses to history as Arab publics agitate for the same freedoms Indians themselves enjoy. And New Delhi’s posture toward developments in countries like Syria and Iran are of increasing consequence for decision-makers and publics alike.

These developments position New Delhi to help shape the Middle East – home to five million Indian citizens and most of India’s energy supplies. India is in fact better placed to work with the people of the region than nearly any other power. As the Times of India has noted recent events ‘present an opportunity to project New Delhi’s soft power, which is considerable in the region. (India) presents a working democratic model in a sociocultural environment far closer to the Gulf’s than Western democracies are—and with none of the political baggage of the latter.’

Officials have been understandably modest about India’s possible contribution to the Arab awakening. ‘Depending on how the situation develops, India will certainly try to position itself to be of advantage to forces of democracy so dear to India’s heart,’ says External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna. But he remains cautious: ‘India does not believe in interfering in the affairs of another country. We will take the cue at an appropriate time depending on how they want India to help. India will be willing to be of some assistance to them. But let the situation arise.’

It would appear that the situation has indeed arisen. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has raised the possibility of Indian support for upcoming elections in Egypt. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, has approached India for help with conducting nationwide elections. Given India’s remarkable success in regularly organizing elections for hundreds of millions of its citizens, it’s uniquely positioned to provide this expertise.

But might this be only the beginning, rather than the sum total, of India’s efforts on behalf of Middle East democracy? After all, the non-interventionist tradition is a relic of the time when India was weak and poor. It seems ill-fitted to the foreign policy of a country increasingly strong and prosperous.

As demands for democratic change swell from Benghazi to Beijing, India’s liberal system gives it a unique strategic advantage that New Delhi should seize.

India today brands itself on the world stage as ‘the fastest growing free market democracy’—drawing a none-too-subtle distinction with its Chinese rival. Acting on this belief, India already has worked to strengthen democratic institutions in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and, most prominently, Afghanistan.

India was one of ten founding members of the Community of Democracies and a leading co-founder of the UN Democracy Fund, dedicated to promoting good governance and human rights around the world. India has participated in the multilateral activities of the Center for Democratic Transitions, the Partnership for Democratic Governance, and the Asia-Pacific Democracy Partnership.

New Delhi hasn’t just a moral stake, but also a national interest in building on this record in the new Middle East. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and the Gulf states will need to establish the institutions of good governance, from strong political parties to independent judiciaries. New Delhi’s advice and assistance would make these countries better homes for Indian workers, better allies in stabilizing a region of great strategic importance to India’s development, more reliable energy suppliers, and more prosperous trade and investment partners.

The crisis of governance in the Arab world also presents an opportunity to strengthen US-India ties. Whether working together with India or independently toward similar ends, the world’s largest democracies bring complementary strengths to the hard task of building a culture of democracy across the Arab world.

The fall of the Berlin Wall wasn’t the beginning of the end, but became a symbol of the dissolving of the Iron Curtain and the start of the reunification of the (East) German Democratic Republic and the (West) German Federal Republic. It was the result of a long struggle for independence in several countries of the Soviet Union. A struggle that was initiated bravely by the Polish trade union Solidarnosc, publicly and strongly supported by the Polish born Pope John Paul II.

The fall of the Wall without any violence or intervention by East German or Soviet forces encouraged other countries to initiate their own fight for independence. Soon after, the Soviet Union collapsed which changed the global picture completely.

The constitution established six constituent republics in the federation: Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. Serbia also had two autonomous provinces: Kosovo and Vojvodina.

By 1992 the Yugoslav Federation was falling apart. Nationalism had once again replaced communism as the dominant force in the Balkans.

Slovenia and then Croatia were the first to break away, but only at the cost of renewed conflict with Serbia.

The war in Croatia led to hundreds of thousands of refugees and reawakened memories of the brutality of the 1940s.

By 1992 a further conflict had broken out in Bosnia, which had also declared independence. The Serbs who lived there were determined to remain within Yugoslavia and to help build a greater Serbia.

They received strong backing from extremist groups in Belgrade. Muslims were driven from their homes in carefully planned operations that become known as “ethnic cleansing”.

By 1993 the Bosnian Muslim government was besieged in the capital Sarajevo, surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces who controlled around 70% of Bosnia.

In Central Bosnia, the mainly Muslim army was fighting a separate war against Bosnian Croats who wished to be part of a greater Croatia. The presence of UN peacekeepers to contain the situation proved ineffective.

American pressure to end the war eventually led to the Dayton agreement of November 1995 which created two self-governing entities within Bosnia – the Bosnian Serb Republic and the Muslim(Bosnjak)-Croat Federation.

The settlement’s aims were to bring about the reintegration of Bosnia and to protect the human rights but the agreement has been criticised for not reversing the results of ethnic cleansing.

The Muslim-Croat and Serb entities have their own governments, parliaments and armies.

A Nato-led peacekeeping force is charged with implementing the military aspects of the peace agreement, primarily overseeing the separation of forces. But the force was also granted extensive additional powers, including the authority to arrest indicted war criminals when encountered in the normal course of its duties.

Croatia, meanwhile, took back most of the territory earlier captured by Serbs when it waged lightning military campaigns in 1995 which also resulted in the mass exodus of around 200,000 Serbs from Croatia.

In 1998, nine years after the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy, the Kosovo Liberation Army – supported by the majority ethnic Albanians – came out in open rebellion against Serbian rule.

The international community, while supporting greater autonomy, opposed the Kosovar Albanians’ demand for independence. But international pressure grew on Serbian strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, to bring an end to the escalating violence in the province.

Threats of military action by the West over the crisis culminated in the launching of Nato air strikes against Yugoslavia in March 1999, the first attack on a sovereign European country in the alliance’s history.

The strikes focused primarily on military targets in Kosovo and Serbia, but extended to a wide range of other facilities, including bridges, oil refineries, power supplies and communications.

Within days of the strikes starting, tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanian refugees were pouring out of the province with accounts of killings, atrocities and forced expulsions at the hands of Serb forces.

Returning them to their homes, along with those who had fled in the months of fighting before the strikes, became a top priority for the Nato countries.

Meanwhile, relations between Serbia and the only other remaining Yugoslav republic, Montenegro, hit rock bottom, with Montenegrin leaders seeking to distance themselves from Slobodan Milosevic’s handling of Kosovo.

Yugoslavia has disappeared from the map of Europe, after 83 years of existence, to be replaced by a looser union called simply Serbia and Montenegro, after the two remaining republics.

The arrangement was reached under pressure from the European Union, which wanted to halt Montenegro’s progress towards full independence. However, Montenegrin politicians say they will hold a referendum on independence in 2006.

The death of Yugoslavia is only one of many momentous changes that have occurred since the end of the Kosovo conflict.

Slobodan Milosevic lost a presidential election in 2000. He refused to accept the result but was forced out of office by strikes and massive street protests, which culminated in the storming of parliament.

He was handed over to a UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, and put on trial for crimes against humanity and genocide.

Kosovo itself became a de facto UN protectorate, though some powers have begun to be handed back to elected local authorities. One of the main problems in the province is getting Serbs who fled as Yugoslav security forces withdrew in 1999, to return to their homes.

Conflict between Serbs and ethnic Albanians threatened to erupt in late 2000 in the Presevo valley, on the Serbian side of the Kosovo border, but dialogue between Albanian guerrillas and the new democratic authorities in Belgrade allowed tensions to evaporate.

There was, however, a major outbreak of inter-ethnic violence in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in 2001, again involving the Albanian minority. This was contained by Nato peacekeepers and ultimately resolved by political means.

Although some Muslim-majority countries have been troubled by radical Islamic political groups, Indonesia has experienced a peaceful consolidation of its political environment. This has included the emergence of groups with a variety of political platforms. In the Indonesian Parliament, for instance, the Prosperous Justice Party, which is considered to be the largest post-reform Islamic political party in the country, has tackled various items of importance to the national agendas together in collaboration with secular parties.

Indonesia has faced demands by some groups to implement strict interpretations of Islamic law in various regions, most notably in the province of Aceh. However, a majority of Indonesian Muslims hold dearly to the religious rights of all groups as protected under the national Constitution and, as a result, have not endorsed the formal implementation of a conservative interpretation of Islamic law.

While this proves that Islam and democracy can coexist in Indonesia, does it necessarily mean that we should reach a similar conclusion when it comes to the future of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa?

Robert W. Hefner, an anthropologist from Boston University, credits large Indonesian Islamic organizations such as the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah, each having approximately 80 million and 14 million members respectively, with making a difference when it comes to Indonesia. Their social activities, which involve such things as establishing schools, hospitals, orphanages and other social institutions, have set an example for how to balance Islamic principles, democracy, and nation-building. The activists of these movements have also been engaged in activities such as the anti-corruption movement, creating good governance, and helping develop public policies and budgeting in local governments.

Some scholars credit the Indonesian cultural tendencies of conflict avoidance. For example, the Indonesian scholar Taufik Abdullah says that the large sizes of Islamic organizations in Indonesia, as opposed to the splintering that would accompany the dissemination of smaller organizations, have made Indonesian Muslims appear more unified.

An Islamic scholar from Indonesia, Azyumardi Azra, has said that the Muslims in Indonesia emphasize the accommodative nature of Islam. This, he believes, is why they easily accepted democracy, human rights and other relatively new ideas.

The Indonesian experience offers two insights for what is prospectively the emerging democracies in the Middle East and North Africa. First, the presence of Islamic civil society organizations allows these organizations to play an active role in strengthening democratic states; and second, the diversity within Islam can be a strength that encourages the acceptance of change and societal differences. This, in turn, inspires not only individual piety and political ideals, but also the type of humanitarian initiatives that are necessary for nation-building.

Having successfully brought the column to a halt, the man climbed onto the hull of the buttoned-up lead tank and, after briefly stopping at the driver’s hatch, appeared in video footage of the incident to call into various ports in the tank’s. He then climbed atop the turret and seemed to have a short conversation with a crew member at the gunner’s hatch. After ending the conversation, the man alighted from the tank. The tank commander briefly emerged from his hatch, and the tanks restarted their engines, ready to continue on. At that point, the man, who was still standing within a meter or two from the side of the lead tank, leapt in front of the vehicle once again and quickly reestablished the man–tank standoff.

Turkey is now a major player in its own right, in the Middle East and far beyond. This has caused consternation in both the United States and Europe, leading to growing concern that the West is somehow “losing” Turkey.

Yet Turkey’s “distinctiveness” in the Middle East is not necessarily detrimental to the West. On the contrary, Turkey could represent an important asset to its European and American partners.

But this does not mean that Turkey’s potential influence in the Middle East is automatically of benefit to the West. Turkey’s promise in the region hinges on its consistent pursuit of democratization at home and a rules-based foreign policy. Moreover, the benefits of Turkey’s influence in its immediate neighborhood can be realized only if the EU proceeds in a more honest and robust way with the accession process, and if the US begins to treat Turkey as an indispensable partner in the region.

Turkey is belatedly engaging with the Middle East by mediating conflicts, developing economic relations, and liberalizing the movement of people, all initiatives aimed at promoting regional peace, prosperity, and openness. This is exactly what Turkey had been doing in its relations with the ex-Soviet world since the 1990s without attracting much attention from the West.

By contributing to the integration of the Middle East into the global system, Turkey’s democracy and market economy are having a positive spillover on its southern neighbors, however modest. Developing channels of cooperation with Turkey in order to tap into Turkey’s potential to contribute to regional peace and stability in the Middle East is thus imperative for both the US and the EU.

But Turkish democracy itself is not yet consolidated, and this is a precondition for Turkish foreign policy to become an asset for the EU and the US. EU-driven reforms have changed the political landscape in Turkey dramatically, but the transformation toward liberal democracy is far from complete, as the country’s current bout of political instability and its prime minister’s not infrequent populist outbursts suggest.

Domestic shortcomings and political polarization have fed a temptation to drift away from a foreign policy driven by universal values. This is where continued engagement by Turkey’s transatlantic partners remains vital. A survey in July 2009 found that 64 percent of respondents in seven Arab countries believe that Turkey’s EU membership prospects makes Turkey an attractive partner for reform in the Arab world, underscoring the direct link between Turkey’s foreign-policy potential and its EU accession course.

The Obama administration’s approach to Turkey has been constructive. There has also been effective practical cooperation on the future of Iraq and Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli relations, and Lebanon. Even on Iran, the differences are more about means than objectives. Turkey’s improved standing in the Middle East can also help the US with democracy assistance in the region. The US must consider partnering with Turkish civil society in this regard, serving the cause of strengthening democracy both in Turkey and its neighborhood.

The EU’s role is even more critical. Having engaged Turkey in the accession process, the EU appears to have abandoned Turkey, failing to live up to its decades-old commitment — made by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer — to negotiate Turkish membership in the Union in good faith.

The Turkish political system needs the sense of confidence that comes with EU engagement and the real prospect of membership in order to pursue the systemic political reforms that are still needed. Revitalizing EU membership talks is the only way to reconstitute trust between the government, liberals, and the secular establishment, and in turn reinvigorate the reform process in the country.

If the accession process resumes and its credibility is restored this would allow Turkey to continue acting as an economic, cultural, political, and social hub in its neighborhood, benefiting the EU, the neighborhood, and itself.

Turkey’s new regional prominence has transformed a static Cold War barrier into a potential catalyst for regional peace, prosperity, and stability. But this change cannot be taken for granted and requires support from the EU and the US. The West has never owned Turkey, so debating who “lost” it is pointless. What is needed, instead, is a serious debate about the conditions that will allow Turkey to fulfill its transatlantic promise.

Heather Grabbe, a former senior advisor to the Enlargement Commissioner, analyzed the situation as such:

“EU membership is always oversold. People expected that when they joined the EU, there would be lots of money for everybody, the economy would improve immediately, corruption would go down. In fact, membership of any international organization cannot give you that overnight. But they are a lot better off than they would have been if they had not done the EU process. Unless you have a really major institution outside, guiding along the way, criticizing where necessary, it is really hard to galvanize domestic politicians, the judges, prosecutors, the police to change things. And that’s why people expected once you join the EU their country would look like Sweden—but of course it doesn’t—it looks like a better version of Romania.”

To some degree today’s students can assess the costs of this war for themselves. There is no question that the cost in human lives is high. The financial toll of the war also contributes to our growing debt problem. It is today’s high school students who will be paying for the war for decades to come.

Weighing the costs of the war in terms of civil liberties, however, will be more difficult for younger generations. They do not know what the United States was like before passage of the USA Patriot Act, the opening of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and the government’s increased surveillance of ordinary citizens and profiling of ethnic and religious minorities. It is vital that students have the opportunity to critically engage the question of whether and to what extent limiting civil liberties is a just or even effective response to the threat of terrorism.