Egypt's Tiananmen: The masses in Cairo's Tahrir Square tonight. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
Egypt at this very moment is an astounding scene: The "day of rage" protests have built up, hour after hour, city after city--Cairo, Alexandria, Suez. Tens of thousands of people have taken to streets and squares, replicating in force the uprising in Tunisia. They poured out of mosques and into the streets, 30 years of repression welling up into explosions of defiance against President Mubarak's curfew.
In Suez, armored vehicles were attacked and torched. In Alexandria, protesters demonstrated and threw rocks. And in Cairo, the city is on fire, metaphorically and literally: the nation's ruling National Democratic Party headquarters (there is nothing democratic about the NDP) is aflame. Al-Jazeera is reporting that six floors of the headquarters are aflame. Earlier today, Mubarak, besieged and likely terrified that his rule is no more sure than Tunisia's Ben Ali was earlier this year, ordered the Internet shut and most communications out of the country down. Late today, he ordered the army onto the streets of Cairo and Alexandria. Remarkably, the military has been welcomed, and soldiers have been seen leaving their tanks, shaking hands with protesters and sharing water and smiles. In Alexandria, The Times reports, "Riot cops and kheffiyeh-wearing youngsters smiled and shared water bottles as piles of tires still burned. The chairs and bottles stopped raining down from apartment building balconies. Thousands stood on the six-lane coastal road, the gentle green waves of the Mediterranean at their backs, as they got on their knees and prayed."
As much as Egypt's internal security forces and police are despised--for their brutality, their reflexive habit of torturing their wards, their arrogance--the Egyptian army is revered and beloved, though it isn't clear so far what the army's intention is, or to what extent it will go to enforce Mubarak's curfew orders. What appears relatively clear-0-through the smoke and the shards--after Friday is that the police have lost control of the cities: a first, crucial step on the way to the regime's collapse, if the army is unable or unwilling to assume control.
Just as clear is Mubarak's desperate thuggery. Not only is he attempting to crush the uprising; he's also put Mohamed el-Baradei under house arrest. El Baradei, the Nobel laureate and former director of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, defied Mubarak and returned to Egypt this week in likely preparation for a run for, if not at, the presidency.
The Obama administration throughout all this has been shamefully coy, borrowing a page from French President Nicolas Sarkozy who, in the days before Tunisian President Ben Ali's downfall, stuck close to his old ally and even offered to train his riot police. (U.S. aid, about $3 billion a year's worth, does, in fact, finance the training and execution of Mubarak's police state.) Hillary Clinton today did what Hillary Clinton does: she played coy, calling for "a dialogue between the government and people of Egypt," as if the government hadn't had 30 years to hold that "dialogue." The question is: what are Clinton and the Obama administrations willing to do now to force that dialogue? What have Clinton and the Obama administration, what has every administration before it going back to Anwar el Sadat (who was no less of a pharaoh in his repressive ways, but who at least was willing to test the limits of change), done to encourage, rather than retard and divert dialogue while enabling repression?
Mubarak(Getty Images)
The American hand in Egypt is compromised. It has stood by Mubarak all these years. It's standing by him still. Egyptians aren't fools. They see and know why: Egypt to the United States is an Israeli ally first, a nation of 82 million people second.Mubarak's downfall could also mean the downfall of American policy regarding its largest, most important Arab ally. It could be the Iranian Revolution of 1978 all over again, with a Sunni hue. Certainly the Obama administration is just as worried as Obama.
But the fear, on this side anyway, should not obscure the reality. Should Egypt's regime fall, it's not at all a given that what would rise in its place would be either less authoritarian or necessarily Islamist, especially if El Baradei has anything to say about it: he represents the face and voice of reform in a way that Iran's Mir-Hossein Mousavi does not. Mousavi's baggage is too plastered with stickers from Ayatollah Khomeini's bloodiest years (the 1980s). El Baradei's political past is relatively spotless. And he would not be the sort of leader who would abrogate the treaty with Israel or radically alter relations with the United States. He is the sort of reform the State Department could live with.
Sill, he'd also be likely to face a battle with other pretenders to the Egyptian throne, including the Muslim Brotherhood--whose nature should not be misinterpreted, either: the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is not the radical, Islamist monochrome western fearmongers make it out to be. It's a political force representatives of large segments of Egyptian society. It's credibility is drawn in proportion to the Mubarak regime's repression.
As I'm writing this I'm watching Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, taking questions, and calling the situation "very fluid." This morning's "Presidential Daily Briefing" lasted 40 minutes, focused entirely on Egypt. Clearly, the White House is in a state of crisis. "President Obama has not spoken with President Mubarak," Gibbs said. That, too, is indicative of the fence Obama is trying to straddle, although when Gibbs was asked if Obama stands by Mubarak, there was no endorsement from Obama.
That does speak loads, but not necessarily the full load.
"Violence is not the response," Gibbs says. But no mention of the people's civil rights. No mention of the people's inherent human rights. No mention of the people's years of grievances, except in passing: "grievances that have been in place for a number of years," is how Gibbs phrased it. Too many roundabouts in that characterization.
Beyond that, Gibbs is back into his most frequent-flying mode of not answering questions. Don't expect the administration to do better inc coming days, though it will be interesting, should Mubarak board the plane waiting for him at Cairo airport, where that plane will take him. Saudi Arabia, mecca of authoritarianism and regression, is now Ben Ali's autumnal home. Maybe the Saudis can open a resort for fallen dictators. And build it with enough room for themselves when the time comes. They, like Mubarak, like Bouteflika in Algeria, like Jordan's and Morocco's royalty, like so many others in this Middle East of arrested development, have held back 350 million Arabs long enough. It has long been time for them to go. All of them. It's quite simple, really: if you've not been democratically elected, you don't belong. No qualifiers. No exceptions. Eid mubarak.
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Outstanding column.
Most Americans remain oblivious, unfortunately, to the Egyptian Awakening. Of all the pictures, videos, tweets and reports I have seen today, the most disturbing was a TV correspondent in Cairo showing the camera one of the tear-gas canisters now littering the streets. As people pick them up and examine them they see on all of them “Made in USA.”
This is surreal. You can’t make up anything as stupid and diplomatically damaging as that. Those spent canisters are more damaging to US image in the world than civilians killed by drone air strikes.
There is no second chance to make a good first impression. Thus far, unlike other demonstrations abroad in the past, I have not seen the burning of American (or Israeli) flags. Reports are that half of Egyptians are under 25 years of age. It’s not easy, but we are managing to give yet another generation negative views of America.
Thank you Pierre. You always provide not just context but history, motivation, underlying issues, and a narrative that’s glorious in its language and power. I’ve been turning to the Guardian for details on what’s going on but understand the situation so much better after reading your thoughts.