Agree that this is not the time and place for provoking. We do, however, need to be in front of these and engaging the governments hard to open talks now with the people to ward off more turmoil. Not broadsides of advice from US podiums, but private talks. Not against blazing into town in Airforce one to have those private talks, but give these guys the ability to come out and announce their own changes without the words being fed to them acorss the airwaves.

My advice is contained in my model. First create "hope" through giving the people legal, trusted and certain means to engage and shape government. What these are will vary by culture, country, time. This is first because these are things that can be designed and approved at the stroke of a pen, and because this is the off ramp from insurgency.

Then I would advise them to look hard at how they can shore up and repair the populaces perceptions as to the legitimacy of the government. To look at and address how just the populace finds the rule of law to be and also to address deep-seated perceptions of disrespect where they exist. These are the drivers of insurgency.

Are the people hungry and poor? Certainly, but that alone does not make an insurgency. It typically takes the presence of some disconnected royal living in unearned opulence that can casually suggest when told that the people are staving and that they have no bread to "let them eat cake." A populace also without hope, with no justice under the law, treated with disrespect, and that has come to question a legitimacy to rule that they may once have supported.