CAIRO: A 49-year-old Egyptian restaurant owner set himself on fire outside the Egyptian parliament Monday morning. Abdou Abdel Moneim Gaafa could not afford to buy bread, and no one in his local government would listen to him. In Mauritania, 43-year-old Yacoub Ould Dahoud reportedly drove to a government building in the capital after saying he was unhappy with the government and torched himself in his car, according to witnesses and local journalists. Mamier Lofti, a 36-year-old Algerian father of four set himself ablaze on Monday after failing to meet with the governor of his rural province. Local sources told the German Press Agency that Lofi and a group of other residents had tried to meet with the governor numerous times to discuss jobs and housing. Last week, three Algerian men set themselves on fire in separate parts of the country. Monday's acts of self-immolation come one month after 26-year-old Tunisian vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire after police confiscated his vegetable cart. Bouazizi soon became a martyr to Tunisian demonstrators who managed to oust 23-year President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali last week. From the moment Ben Ali fled Tunisia last Friday, journalists, politicians, and analysts have asked two questions: Will this be a domino effect? And if so, who is next? Tunisia's success in ousting its long-time autocratic ruler has sent shockwaves throughout the Arab world. Frustrated citizens look to Tunisia with hope and governments with varying degrees of fear. Self-immolation is a drastic move, one only a truly desperate person would make. Why else would a father of four set himself on fire and leave his family behind? Across North Africa and the Middle East, tensions are rising. Algeria has seen weeks of protests and at least four acts of self-immolation. In Egypt, frustrations have been rising for months: the murder of Khaled Said by Alexandrian police last summer brought thousands of Egyptians to the streets, and November's parliamentary elections saw at least a half-dozen deaths. Yet Egypt has not seen civil unrest on the scale of Tunisia's, and is unlikely to do so in the near future. Hosni Mubarak's government is smart: the prices of staple products such as fuel and bread are kept low enough to be just barely affordable. And Egyptians are still too afraid of their government and its security forces – Cairo has the highest concentration of police of any city in the world – to go to the streets in the numbers that a revolution requires. What's more, Tunisia's troubles are far from over. Ben Ali may be gone, but many of his closes allies remain in place, including those in key ministries: defense, interior and the foreign ministry. Opposition leaders have been brought into the interim government, but it is not enough for Tunisia's people: they took to the streets once more on Monday, demanding that Ben Ali's ruling party be removed entirely from the government. Their demand is unlikely to be met. Bouazizi's desperate act of setting himself ablaze in Tunisia was indeed a catalyst – but Tunisia's demonstrators were already on the streets when he died. Gaafa's symbolic act will likely become another painful sore for the Egyptian people, as Khaled Said is, but for Egypt's masses, it is not enough to bring them to the streets. BM
