Why Egypt matters after Tunisian Revolution
The unrest in Egypt follows an uprising in Tunisia two weeks ago, in which President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was toppled after 23 years in power.
The Tunisian upheaval began with anger over rising food prices, high unemployment and anger at official corruption – problems which also left many people Egypt feeling frustrated and resentful of their leadership.
If Egyptian unrest turns into an Egyptian revolution, the implications for the Arab world – and for Western policy in the Middle East – will be immense.
Egypt matters, in a way that tiny Tunisia – key catalyst that it has been in the current wave of protest – does not. It matters because its destiny affects, in a range of ways, not only Arab interests but Israeli, Iranian and Western interests, too.
Egypt, the most populous Arab state, can help determine the thrust of Arab policies – whether towards Israel or Iran or in the perennial quest for Arab consensus on issues that matter.
Above all, the Egyptian state has traditionally had a strength and solidity that made its collapse seem unthinkable. Even now, with so much that is uncertain, that state and its basic structures may survive – with or without Hosni Mubarak, the country’s president for the last three decades.
Islamist wild card
If there is a power vacuum, who is likely to fill it? Will the powerful military intervene to restore stability? If they did, would the protesters accept such a scenario – or would they, like their Tunisian counterparts, keep up the pressure for radical change?
And – the wild card that troubles Western policy-makers most – could the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s Islamist opposition movement, somehow exploit the protests to come to power?
Right now, that scenario seems far-fetched. The Brotherhood is trying to jump on the bandwagon of a youthful and largely leaderless protest movement.
They are not in front. They are trying to catch up. But the situation is volatile. New leaders – nationalist or Islamist, civilian or military – could emerge if the country is engulfed in chaos.
Regional consequences
If the Mubarak regime were to collapse – which is still a big “if” – the fall-out would affect virtually every key player in the region and every key issue.
For Arab autocrats, it would signify the writing on the wall in a far more dramatic way than the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia.
For Arab protesters, it would be a great boost, fuelling the idea that the region has entered a new era of “people power”.
It would deal a blow to an already enfeebled Middle East peace process. Egypt was the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, back in the 1970s. A change of regime would alarm Israeli leaders and deepen the siege mentality among many Israelis.
It would affect business confidence, regionally and even globally, especially if oil prices shot up.
Finally, it would pose painful dilemmas for Western policy-makers who have long favoured gradual political reform in the region, fearful that the alternative could be the breakdown of stability and the rise of extremism.
Right now, Arab rulers and Arab citizens are glued to their TV screens, computers and mobile phones for news of how the drama is unfolding.
It will be some time before the smoke and tear gas settle, and the new face of this troubled region begins to come into focus.
Three decades of one-party rule
Political protests may be rocking Egypt with a new, non-ideological force, but President Hosni Mubarak and his allies have not veered from a playbook they have followed through nearly three decades of one-party rule.
As always, the government has responded to the unrest primarily as a security issue, largely ignoring, or dismissing, the core demands of those who have taken to the street.
“My analysis is, the government will leave them until they reach a level of exhaustion,” said Abdel Moneim Said, a member of the President’s ruling party and the director of the government-owned newspaper and publishing house, Al Ahram.
The Egyptian leadership, long accustomed to an apolitical and largely apathetic public, remains convinced that Egypt is going through the sort of convulsion it has experienced and survived before.
The leaders see in the protest an experience similar to the events of 1977, when Anwar el-Sadat, then the President, announced plans to end subsidies of basic food items, setting off 36 hours of rioting across the country. They see a repeat of the threat the government faced from Islamist militants in the 1990s, which it violently suppressed. And so the leaders have fallen back on a familiar strategy, deploying security forces, blaming the Islamists and defining their critics as driven by economic, not political, concerns.
“I can’t think of anybody that I know that has any concern about the stability of the regime,” Mr. Said added. But the Egyptian playbook is not just calling for a strategy that runs on the fumes of history. Like the protesters, Mr. Mubarak and his allies appear to have learned lessons from Tunisia’s popular revolt.
The main one appears to be not to give an inch.
While Tunisia’s ousted president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, went on television and offered his now frequently mocked concession “I understand you”, Mr. Mubarak has remained silent, leaving it to his proxies to try to calm the unrest. That may be because neither side in this fight has much room to manoeuvre.
The opposition does not have an available political path to change, other than protest. And Mr. Mubarak has little to offer because he has systematically eviscerated civil and political institutions, creating a system that allows change to come only through his party and his allies, said political analysts here.
The Mubarak administration is blind to this weakness, however, seeing itself as strong and having the support of the majority.
“Egypt’s system is not marginal or frail,” Interior Minister Habib al-Adli told a Kuwaiti newspaper. “We are a big state, with an administration with popular support. The millions will decide the future of this nation, not demonstrations, even if numbered in the thousands.”
Loyalists, like Mr. Said of Ahram, remain committed to a view that sees the nation’s different constituencies as divided by ideology and demands, and therefore easily picked off with simple offerings like a pay raise or a Cabinet shuffle. Change, the party line goes, will come slowly, and only from the inside.
So far, there is virtually no recognition, at least publicly, that Egypt has already changed. - New York Times News Service
Massive protests rock Egypt
A string of draconian measures enforced by authorities has fuelled the Egyptian uprising, which on Friday began to seriously question the future of the 30-year-old dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak.
By nightfall, the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in downtown Cairo was on fire, and protesters had stormed the Foreign Ministry building. As Egypt’s revolt flared uncontrollably, the Army was called out to reinforce a curfew that was imposed at 7 p.m. local time.
Several waves of protesters have overwhelmed police in Suez city, on the edge of the Suez canal, a key international waterway. The opposition Muslim Brotherhood claimed on its website in the evening that the port city of Alexandria is “completely under the People’s control (and) police forces (have been) surrounded in (a) football field.” But by night the Army, the bastion of Mr. Mubarak’s regime, was apparently moving in to re-establish control over Egypt’s second largest city.
Amid high drama, the approaches leading to Cairo’s Tahrir (liberation) Square, the focal point after nightfall of Tuesday’s clashes, had, by afternoon, emerged as a major battleground. Braving a barrage of teargas, at least 20,000 protesters packed the Qasr al-Nil Bridge that connects Giza, famous for its Pyramids to Tahrir Square.
Thousands of activists clashed with security forces outside of Al-Azhar Mosque, in Islamic Cairo after Friday prayers, AFP reported.
A Reuters report from Cairo said at least five protesters were killed during the clashes. It was not immediately clear how they died.
Reports of protests and heavy violence poured without a break from Alexandria, Suez, the Nile delta and the Sinai desert, illustrating the massive countrywide sweep of the irrepressible protests.
The spate of demonstrations witnessed have come in the face of an intense security crackdown. Mohammad ElBaradei, a future reformist presidential hopeful who returned to Cairo on Thursday night was put under house arrest following afternoon prayers at the Giza mosque. Prior to his detention, he said that the end of the regime was “imminent.”
“They [the regime] are completely desperate. I hope the pictures will be everywhere to show how barbaric, petrified, and dictatorial the regime is. Now it’s the people versus the thugs.”
Ibrahim Eissa, former Editor-in-Chief of the Arabic daily Al-Dostour, who was at Mr. ElBaradei’s side, said the regime “seems terrified that these protests are turning into a full-fledged revolution.
Mubarak sacks cabinet and defends security role
President Hosni Mubarak has defended the role of Egypt’s security forces in suppressing anti-government protests which have rocked the country.
Mr Mubarak also dismissed his government and said a new cabinet would be announced on 29.01.2011.
Mr Obama said he had told Mr Mubarak to respect the rights of the Egyptian people and refrain from using violence against peaceful protesters – but he said the protesters also had a responsibility to express themselves peacefully. He urged the Egyptian leader to take “concrete steps that advance the rights of the Egyptian people” and deliver on the promises of reform in his address. “Violence will not address the grievances of the Egyptian people. And suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away,” he said.
Egypt protesters increase pressure – 31.01.2011
Opposition movement calls for “march of millions” on 1.02.2011 in a bid to topple president Hosni Mubarak.
Egyptian protesters have called for a massive demonstration and a rolling general strike on Tuesday in a bid to force out president Hosni Mubarak from power.
The so-called April 6, 2010 Movement said it plans to have more than one million people on the streets of the capital Cairo, as anti-government sentiment reaches a fever pitch.
The call came as Mubarak swore in a new cabinet in an attempt to defuse ongoing demonstrations across the country.
But opposition groups say personnel changes will not placate them and have said they will continue until the president steps down
Courtesy: BBC
Dream Dare Win
www.jeywin.com
*****
The unrest in Egypt follows an uprising in Tunisia two weeks ago, in which President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was toppled after 23 years in power.
The Tunisian upheaval began with anger over rising food prices, high unemployment and anger at official corruption – problems which also left many people Egypt feeling frustrated and resentful of their leadership.
If Egyptian unrest turns into an Egyptian revolution, the implications for the Arab world – and for Western policy in the Middle East – will be immense.
Egypt matters, in a way that tiny Tunisia – key catalyst that it has been in the current wave of protest – does not. It matters because its destiny affects, in a range of ways, not only Arab interests but Israeli, Iranian and Western interests, too.
Egypt, the most populous Arab state, can help determine the thrust of Arab policies – whether towards Israel or Iran or in the perennial quest for Arab consensus on issues that matter.
Above all, the Egyptian state has traditionally had a strength and solidity that made its collapse seem unthinkable. Even now, with so much that is uncertain, that state and its basic structures may survive – with or without Hosni Mubarak, the country’s president for the last three decades.
Islamist wild card
If there is a power vacuum, who is likely to fill it? Will the powerful military intervene to restore stability? If they did, would the protesters accept such a scenario – or would they, like their Tunisian counterparts, keep up the pressure for radical change?
And – the wild card that troubles Western policy-makers most – could the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s Islamist opposition movement, somehow exploit the protests to come to power?
Right now, that scenario seems far-fetched. The Brotherhood is trying to jump on the bandwagon of a youthful and largely leaderless protest movement.
They are not in front. They are trying to catch up. But the situation is volatile. New leaders – nationalist or Islamist, civilian or military – could emerge if the country is engulfed in chaos.
Regional consequences
If the Mubarak regime were to collapse – which is still a big “if” – the fall-out would affect virtually every key player in the region and every key issue.
- For Arab autocrats, it would signify the writing on the wall in a far more dramatic way than the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia.
- For Arab protesters, it would be a great boost, fuelling the idea that the region has entered a new era of “people power”.
- It would deal a blow to an already enfeebled Middle East peace process. Egypt was the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, back in the 1970s. A change of regime would alarm Israeli leaders and deepen the siege mentality among many Israelis.
- It would affect business confidence, regionally and even globally, especially if oil prices shot up.
- Finally, it would pose painful dilemmas for Western policy-makers who have long favoured gradual political reform in the region, fearful that the alternative could be the breakdown of stability and the rise of extremism.
Right now, Arab rulers and Arab citizens are glued to their TV screens, computers and mobile phones for news of how the drama is unfolding.
It will be some time before the smoke and tear gas settle, and the new face of this troubled region begins to come into focus.
Three decades of one-party rule
Political protests may be rocking Egypt with a new, non-ideological force, but President Hosni Mubarak and his allies have not veered from a playbook they have followed through nearly three decades of one-party rule.
As always, the government has responded to the unrest primarily as a security issue, largely ignoring, or dismissing, the core demands of those who have taken to the street.
“My analysis is, the government will leave them until they reach a level of exhaustion,” said Abdel Moneim Said, a member of the President’s ruling party and the director of the government-owned newspaper and publishing house, Al Ahram.
The Egyptian leadership, long accustomed to an apolitical and largely apathetic public, remains convinced that Egypt is going through the sort of convulsion it has experienced and survived before.
The leaders see in the protest an experience similar to the events of 1977, when Anwar el-Sadat, then the President, announced plans to end subsidies of basic food items, setting off 36 hours of rioting across the country. They see a repeat of the threat the government faced from Islamist militants in the 1990s, which it violently suppressed. And so the leaders have fallen back on a familiar strategy, deploying security forces, blaming the Islamists and defining their critics as driven by economic, not political, concerns.
“I can’t think of anybody that I know that has any concern about the stability of the regime,” Mr. Said added. But the Egyptian playbook is not just calling for a strategy that runs on the fumes of history. Like the protesters, Mr. Mubarak and his allies appear to have learned lessons from Tunisia’s popular revolt.
The main one appears to be not to give an inch.
While Tunisia’s ousted president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, went on television and offered his now frequently mocked concession “I understand you”, Mr. Mubarak has remained silent, leaving it to his proxies to try to calm the unrest. That may be because neither side in this fight has much room to manoeuvre.
The opposition does not have an available political path to change, other than protest. And Mr. Mubarak has little to offer because he has systematically eviscerated civil and political institutions, creating a system that allows change to come only through his party and his allies, said political analysts here.
The Mubarak administration is blind to this weakness, however, seeing itself as strong and having the support of the majority.
“Egypt’s system is not marginal or frail,” Interior Minister Habib al-Adli told a Kuwaiti newspaper. “We are a big state, with an administration with popular support. The millions will decide the future of this nation, not demonstrations, even if numbered in the thousands.”
Loyalists, like Mr. Said of Ahram, remain committed to a view that sees the nation’s different constituencies as divided by ideology and demands, and therefore easily picked off with simple offerings like a pay raise or a Cabinet shuffle. Change, the party line goes, will come slowly, and only from the inside.
So far, there is virtually no recognition, at least publicly, that Egypt has already changed. - New York Times News Service
Massive protests rock Egypt
A string of draconian measures enforced by authorities has fuelled the Egyptian uprising, which on Friday began to seriously question the future of the 30-year-old dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak.
By nightfall, the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in downtown Cairo was on fire, and protesters had stormed the Foreign Ministry building. As Egypt’s revolt flared uncontrollably, the Army was called out to reinforce a curfew that was imposed at 7 p.m. local time.
Several waves of protesters have overwhelmed police in Suez city, on the edge of the Suez canal, a key international waterway. The opposition Muslim Brotherhood claimed on its website in the evening that the port city of Alexandria is “completely under the People’s control (and) police forces (have been) surrounded in (a) football field.” But by night the Army, the bastion of Mr. Mubarak’s regime, was apparently moving in to re-establish control over Egypt’s second largest city.
Amid high drama, the approaches leading to Cairo’s Tahrir (liberation) Square, the focal point after nightfall of Tuesday’s clashes, had, by afternoon, emerged as a major battleground. Braving a barrage of teargas, at least 20,000 protesters packed the Qasr al-Nil Bridge that connects Giza, famous for its Pyramids to Tahrir Square.
Thousands of activists clashed with security forces outside of Al-Azhar Mosque, in Islamic Cairo after Friday prayers, AFP reported.
A Reuters report from Cairo said at least five protesters were killed during the clashes. It was not immediately clear how they died.
Reports of protests and heavy violence poured without a break from Alexandria, Suez, the Nile delta and the Sinai desert, illustrating the massive countrywide sweep of the irrepressible protests.
The spate of demonstrations witnessed have come in the face of an intense security crackdown. Mohammad ElBaradei, a future reformist presidential hopeful who returned to Cairo on Thursday night was put under house arrest following afternoon prayers at the Giza mosque. Prior to his detention, he said that the end of the regime was “imminent.”
“They [the regime] are completely desperate. I hope the pictures will be everywhere to show how barbaric, petrified, and dictatorial the regime is. Now it’s the people versus the thugs.”
Ibrahim Eissa, former Editor-in-Chief of the Arabic daily Al-Dostour, who was at Mr. ElBaradei’s side, said the regime “seems terrified that these protests are turning into a full-fledged revolution.
Mubarak sacks cabinet and defends security role
President Hosni Mubarak has defended the role of Egypt’s security forces in suppressing anti-government protests which have rocked the country.
Mr Mubarak also dismissed his government and said a new cabinet would be announced on 29.01.2011.
Mr Obama said he had told Mr Mubarak to respect the rights of the Egyptian people and refrain from using violence against peaceful protesters – but he said the protesters also had a responsibility to express themselves peacefully. He urged the Egyptian leader to take “concrete steps that advance the rights of the Egyptian people” and deliver on the promises of reform in his address. “Violence will not address the grievances of the Egyptian people. And suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away,” he said.
Courtesy: BBC
Dream Dare Win
www.jeywin.com
*****
