FOR most of its 66-year history, the Arab League was a powerless organisation, dominated by autocratic regimes that made sure it never criticised their lies and crimes. But suddenly, this year, it woke up and changed sides.

Last March, the Arab League suspended Libya's membership because of dictator Muammar Qadhafi's brutal attempts to suppress the revolution, and voted to back a no-fly zone in Libya. That led directly to the UN resolution authorising the use of force to protect civilians from Qadhafi's army, and ultimately to the tyrant's overthrow and death.

Last Saturday, the Arab League acted again, suspending Syria's membership. It did so because President Bashar al-Assad has not carried out the commitments he made to the League about ending the violence against Syrian civilians (an estimated 3,500 killed so far), pulling the army off the streets of Syrian cities, releasing the thousands of recently imprisoned protesters and opening a dialogue with the opposition within two weeks.

On Sunday, the Arab League's secretary-general, Nabil al-Arabi, called for “international protection” for Syrian civilians as the organisation lacked the means to act alone. “There is nothing wrong with going to the UN Security Council because it is the only organisation able to impose” such measures, he added. And he said that during a visit to Tripoli, the newly liberated capital of Libya.

Everybody understood the significance of his saying it there. The Arab League explicitly rejects foreign military intervention in Syria, and Nato would never take on Assad's regime anyway. But al-Arabi was implicitly saying that what is happening in Syria now is comparable to what was happening in Libya six months ago, and that all measures short of war are justified to stop the slaughter in Syria and remove the dictator's regime.

Then on Monday, King Abdullah of Jordan finally said aloud what almost every other Arab leader has been thinking: “If Bashar [al-Assad] has the interest of his country [at heart] he would step down.”

It's particularly striking coming from Abdullah because the two men are not just neighbours. They both came to power in 1999-2000, replacing fathers who had ruled over their respective countries for decades, and they were both originally painted as reformers. True, Bashar al-Assad is not technically a king, but he is equally the product of a dynasty — and here is his closest counterpart in the Arab world publicly giving up on him.

King Abdullah added that on his way out, Bashar should also “create an ability to reach out and start a new phase of Syrian political life”. Decoded, that means that Syria's problems cannot be ending just by changing horses. The whole Baathist regime, and the near monopoly of power by the Alawite minority that underpins it, have to go too.

This is astonishing stuff. One year ago, nobody would have believed it possible that 18 of the 22 members of the Arab League would vote, in effect, for the peaceful removal of the oppressive Syrian regime, or that the Jordanian king would dare to be so frank about his neighbour's problems and options. What has wrought this miracle?

It would be nice to say that the rapid and largely non-violent spread of democracy in the Arab world has brought enlightenment even to the most deeply entrenched authoritarian regimes, but it would not be true. Only three of the 22 Arab League members (Tunisia, Egypt and Libya) have actually had democratic revolutions, and their example has not transformed the attitudes of all the other members. What drives this response is mostly fear.

The Arab League said nothing when Bashar al-Assad's father slaughtered up to 40,000 Syrians while putting down a revolt in the city of Hama in 1982, but his son's brutality is simply unacceptable today. Arab leaders can no longer ignore the mass killing of Arab citizens. Some of them would like to, but uncensored Arabic-language mass media, broadcasting directly from satellites, have made it impossible. Everybody knows what's going on.