Emergency rule as a ruse to keep rivals in check

The concept of emergency rule has been at the forefront of much of the unrest in the Middle East. Some countries have been in a "state of emergency" for decades, long after their citizens felt any threat. Others have only recently implemented the emergency laws, in an effort to quell uprisings turned too large and violent for the governments to rein in. Although meant to help a country in times of danger, emergency law has sometimes been turned into a political tool.

Syria

President Bashar Al Assad defied expectations on Wednesday that he would lift Syria's decades-old state of emergency after nearly two weeks of protests that have presented the gravest challenge to his 11-year-old rule.

Lifting the country's state of emergency, in place since 1963, has been a key bargaining chip in the ongoing protests in Syria that have focused on demands for reform rather than the end of Al Assad's rule.

Egypt

One of the key demands of the Egyptian protesters seeking to oust former President Hosni Mubarak was to end more than four decades of almost uninterrupted emergency rule. Hosni Mubarak is gone, but that emergency rule is still in place.

It has been there since 1967, aside from a brief lifting in the early 1980s. It was reinstated in 1981 with the assassination of then president Anwar Sadat.

Mubarak claimed a state of emergency was necessary to enable the country to fight terrorism and drug trafficking, but the law was often used to stop the work of journalists, activists, and political opponents.

Egypt's interim military government has so far declined to lift the state of emergency.

Tunisia

A state of emergency was declared in Tunisia after longtime authoritarian leader Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali was ousted in mid-January.

It remains in place today, frustrating the country's reformers who turned out in the streets to call for an end to Bin Ali's rule and for political freedoms.

Tunisia's emergency rule banned any gathering of more than three people and allowed security forces to fire on those not obeying orders.

Algeria

Algeria is one of the few countries in the Middle East and North Africa that seems to have been able to quell any rumblings of unrest with concessions — and its lifting of 19 years of emergency law could be part of that.

In 1992, a militant Islamist political party looked poised for a major parliamentary victory. To prevent the party's victory, Algeria's parliament was dissolved. Party supporters responded with violence throughout the country, and a state of emergency was declared in 1992 in order to bring the country back under control. However, terrorism and violence plagued Algeria throughout the 1990s, in spite of emergency rule.

When Tunisia's unrest began spreading throughout the region in early 2011, including Algeria in February, President Abdul Aziz Bouteflika approved the lifting of the emergency rule, one of the key demands of opposition groups for years. The concession appears to have quieted the situation in Algeria, which has not — as of yet, at least — seen the destabilising protests witnessed in many other Arabic countries.

Bahrain

Bahrain instituted a state of emergency on March 15 after weeks of anti-government protests. The emergency law, intended to last three months, authorises the country's armed forces to take all actions necessary to protect the country and citizens' safety, according to the announcement of the law.

The state of emergency announcement came the day after Bahrain's government allowed 1,000 Saudi troops into the country to help it maintain order; the following day, security forces cleared the capital's main protest encampment.

Yemen

After more than 40 people were killed in a government crackdown on Yemen's protesters on March 18, President Ali Abdullah Saleh declared a 30-day state of emergency in the country, as well as a curfew.

The state of emergency, approved by a poorly attended parliament vote on March 23, suspends the constitution, heavily restricts public gatherings, bolsters the powers of security forces, and allows for suspending or seizing media operations.

Emergency rule, however, has done little to quell the country's unrest.