Berlin to Tripoli

The Arab uprising reminds me of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then I got on a plane and joined thousands chipping away at it, intent upon its destruction. In most cases we hacked away with greater effort than effect as I remember the concrete being as hard as it had been unforgiving.

For Berliners that day, destroying that wall, was not just about thumping at some symbol of historic injustice — it was personal.

That same sense of personal outrage is there in the events which were ignited when a Tunisian vegetable seller set himself aflame in protest against corruption and police brutality; a single action that sparked the Jasmine revolution, which spilt over into toppling Egypt's Mubarak, the clashes in Bahrain and the see-saw of brutalities metered out by Libya's Gaddafi.

It will be for historians to sift the dust once it has settled but the overriding similarity between Berlin and these uprisings must be that they represent reactions against repression for which there was no democratic release valve.

Elections are now promised in Egypt and Tunisia but this means uncertainty.

Berlin prefigured the stable democratisation of Eastern Europe. But what of the Arab world? Take Egypt; the possibility is for the emergence of a pro-Western government that will respect Egypt's treaty with Israel and continue as the leader of moderate Arab opinion.

The worst case will be an unstable country in which the Muslim Brotherhood (an Islamist organisation shunning the West) calls the shots with profound implications for us all.

As with Berlin twenty years ago history is in motion on a truly profound scale — there is little that outsiders can do but encourage and warn — a dynamic that served Berlin well two decades ago but which today is less certain in its consequences.