(February 2, 2011 - Special to ‘The Bengal Post’)




by Praful Bidwai




The people of tiny Tunisia (pop. 11 million) could scarcely have imagined that their fight against the despotic rule of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali would trigger off the Arab world’s first real revolution, based on a mass upsurge—unlike palace coups or top-down regime changes elsewhere. Even less could they have expected it to spark the much greater flame that’s engulfing the Arab world now, especially its largest country, Egypt (pop. 84 million), where millions of people, young and old, men and women, intellectuals and municipal workers, are pouring out into the streets.




Yet, that’s just what is happening as President Hosni Mubarak’s oppressive 30-year-long reign seems to be coming to an end. Mubarak has offered to quit in September and not seek re-election. But that has satisfied nobody, not even the US, Egypt’s greatest backer since 1979. The central questions today are, What kind of post-Mubarak scenario will emerge in Egypt? How will the momentous events under way affect social and political balances in the West Asia-North Africa region?




The Egyptian situation is extremely fluid. But it is clear that Mubarak’s new cabinet, with former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as the vice-president, will be unacceptable to the people. Suleiman is a trusted US ally and long-standing CIA collaborator who implemented the notorious policy of “rendition” of terror suspects to extract confessions under torture. Suleiman has been the main conduit between Mubarak and Washington, under whom torture was long practised in Egypt.




Numerous parties, including the National Association for Change led by former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood, secular parties, and organisations like the 6 April Youth Movement (created in solidarity with industrial workers), support or have joined the anti-Mubarak mobilisation. But none leads it, certainly not the Muslim Brotherhood.




How the different actors play their cards remains extremely fuzzy at the moment. But some things are clear. One, the mobilisation is fuelled by popular anger at the extremely corrupt Mubarak dynasty, police brutality, widespread poverty, lack of housing, high food prices, and unemployment. Unemployment runs at 34 percent among young people, who form almost two-thirds of Egypt’s population. These are structural, not transient, factors, and won’t go away.




Two, the movement is now broad-based, with different regions and social layers participating in it. It has a broadly secular character and is primarily focussed on domestic issues. It lacks a cohesive leadership. So, the post-Mubarak transition is likely to be messy, even tortuous. And three, the army has refused to act against the demonstrators, and in places, is joining them. Soldiers won’t open fire on protesting crowds or stop people from painting anti-Mubarak slogans on battle-tanks.




Some of the social and political pathologies that mark Egypt afflict most Arab countries too. People’s bottled-up anger and frustration are the same everywhere, as is lack of freedom. And so are poverty, lack of healthcare and employment. Most young Arabs are moderately educated, worldly-wise and aspire to jobs in a modern economy. Such jobs are a rarity. The youth have no future. Egypt’s upsurge could well be replicated in other Arab countries.




A fall of the Mubarak regime would break a long-standing pattern in the Arab world, in which autocratic regimes, strongly backed by the West, used to prevail amidst a persistent democratic deficit. This deficit is indeed huge. Only three of the Arab League’s 22 countries can be called some kind of democracy: Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and Iraq.




Even here, democracy is flawed, thanks to a denominational distribution of offices between religious and ethnic groups, or exclusion from power of the winners in free and fair elections (e.g. Hamas). In most other Arab states, elected legislatures exist in some form. But they wield very little power; and it is subject to the ruling families’ will. Often, elections are held only as safety-valves to vent frustration.




A democratic transformation of Egypt could prove a historic moment in all of West Asia-North Africa, which reshapes it and opens a new epoch, in which people’s basic needs and aspirations are respected, and where power does not flow from the barrel of the (usually imported) gun.




What does this mean for the West and Israel? The West would be loath to lose Mubarak, its loyal ally, and Israel’s closest regional friend. But it may have no choice, unless it wants to court intense popular hostility, as it did in 1979 by backing the detested Shah of Iran. The West has some paranoid anxieties about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over from Mubarak. But the Brotherhood isn’t like al-Qaeda-Taliban. It isn’t militarist and includes diverse traits. So, the world must deal with it, as it should with Hamas.




Israel is extremely nervous at the prospect of losing an indispensable ally, crucial to maintaining Gaza’s status as an open-air prison and perpetuating confusion and divisions in the Arab world. A democratic radicalisation of the Arab Street would bring the Palestinian issue to the fore.




If Egypt’s next government decides to open the Rafah crossing with Gaza, it will break Israel’s siege of the Strip. This could reverse Israel’s hitherto-remarkably-successful gains in bludgeoning the Palestinian Authority’s leadership into surrendering its primary claims to sovereign statehood and land, accepting a series of Palestinian Bantustans, leaving illegal Israeli settlements untouched, and giving up the right of return of 5 million Palestinian refugees.




Post-Mubarak Egypt won’t have the same relationship with Israel. That could greatly alter regional political equations.