3 failure. Sectarian tensions were the key to the trouble in Bahrain, where a Sunni monarchy rules over a restive Shia majority. Islamists, the bogeymen of the west and the enemies of all autocratic Arab regimes, have not - yet - played a significant role. Still, Ennahda in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt have new opportunities in multi-party systems that will in turn change them. The killing of Osama bin Laden was a timely reminder of the defeat of jihadi ideology in an Arab world being transformed by people power. Another variable has been the response: French support for Ben Ali was embarrassing; the US was praising Mubarak days before he departed. Muammar Gaddafi had no friends - and the Arab League was crucial in providing a figleaf for UN-sanctioned Nato intervention. Bashar al-Assad, by contrast, has yet to be condemned by the UN for a crackdown that has cost at least 1,300 lives. Bahrain is too strategically important to face more than a rebuke from the US. Elsewhere in the region, Israel is nervous about the demise of Mubarak. Turkey fears instability in Syria. The Palestinians, eclipsed by drama elsewhere, are trying to learn lessons. Iran's support for the Arab uprisings is sheer hypocrisy given its crushing of democratic protests since 2009. Now the EU and the US must stop being seen by Arabs as "partners for dictators" in the words of the Tunisian academic Ahmed Driss. Billions of dollars will be needed to support democracy and development. Tunisia and Egypt fear instability as they face free elections. But the really hard transformational work, as the respected commentator Rami Khouri has observed, "will start in the years after the new parliaments are elected and the complete infrastructure of political governance is forged according to the will of the majority". HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018087