Well, Mauritania, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Sudan, Western Sahar, Egypt, Morocco are far from the Middle East region.
They're all in North Africa. Morocco and Mauritania are west of UK, and France, for example, being south of Spain.

It is interesting how they can easily be perceived as Middle East, I suppose because they are culturally "non western" in many ways.

And, I suppose that cultural difference, practically often resulting in less democratic regimes, is also the common denominator of the recent uprising.

Lybia is in fact just off the coasts of Sicily, south of Italy, and in the 80is Geddafi did bomb one of our islands, as you may remember. Culture and vision of the world creates a distance way bigger than the georaphic one, and critical times like ours happen to remind us all that democracy stops just round the corner.