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A new power rises across Mideast - -

By Scott Wilson & Daniel Williams

A Changing Arab World

A New Power Rises Across Mideast

Advocates for Democracy Begin to Taste Success After Years of Fruitless Effort

By Scott Wilson and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 17, 2005

First of two articles

BEIRUT -- Early this year, a small group of advertising executives, journalists and political operatives began meeting around the crowded tables of a popular cafe here to plot an opposition media strategy for Lebanon's spring parliamentary elections.

Among them was Said Francis, whose urbane crew cut and black turtleneck sweater suggested his position as the regional creative director of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Employing reams of scratch paper, cigarettes and coffee, the group members argued over color schemes and slogans.

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Samir Kassir, an influential Lebanese newspaper columnist and opposition organizer, has long spoken out about the role of Syria in Lebanon. (Michael Robinson-chavez -- The Washington Post)

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Stirrings of Democracy
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The mission was a long, almost hopeless quest to upend years of Syrian political domination. "Like all Lebanese, we thought we were experts on politics," recalled Francis, who volunteered his time on the politically sensitive campaign. "But progress was slow."

Then a bomb exploded Feb. 14 along Beirut's waterfront, killing former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The media group immediately put its election strategy into action as tens of thousands of protesters flooded Beirut's central square demanding that Syria pull out of Lebanon. The group's choices -- the red-and-white color scheme and "Independence '05" slogan -- were broadcast across the Middle East.

Suddenly, Francis and his colleagues were at the cutting edge of the Arab world's democratic spring.

The photogenic protests were the result of the rising power of a network of political reform movements in the Arab world, organized by young, Westernized and technology-savvy activists who had been attacking the rigid underpinnings of their closed societies for years without much success. Now, Francis and his group were seeing results. The Martyrs' Square protests helped trigger the fall of the Lebanese government and force Syria to pull its army and intelligence agents out of Lebanon, a stunning retreat.

"No one will be able to deny that the people have finally forced an Arab government to leave," said Wael Abou Faour, a young Druze Muslim political leader who helped draft the media strategy



    
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