January 26, 2011 – 1:12 pm
MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/Getty Images
Egyptian plainclothes police officers arrest a demonstrator during anti-government protest in Cairo
Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: Rulers across the Middle East and North Africa are keeping close tabs on the latest street protests in Cairo. Especially after similar tumult led to the summary ejection of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s autocratic president.
The spread of the Jasmine Revolution to Egypt raises the stakes.
To begin with, Egypt is larger: there are 80 million Egyptians, compared with 10 million Tunisians. It is also the U.S.’s most important ally in the region (after Israel) and the second-largest recipient of its largesse.
But many of the grievances being expressed by ordinary Egyptians are the same as those that brought Tunisians out onto the streets — lack of democracy, high unemployment, corruption and rising food prices.
In an editorial, the Nairobi, Kenya-based Daily Nation writes,
“Something unprecedented is happening in the Arab world, especially in northern Africa, which could prove as important as the wind of change that ushered in pluralism in the rest of the continent two decades ago.
Citizens of countries in which despots of various shades reigned unchallenged for ages are now challenging the status quo by pouring into the streets and demanding change.
The uprising in Tunisia, which forced the country’s president to flee, may well turn out to be a harbinger of more changes to come in that region …
Ironically, the West is becoming jittery because there has been a similar uprising in Egypt, a far more important country than Tunisia in geopolitical terms.
Egypt is the cornerstone of the fragile peace in the Middle East, and it is understandable that few people, especially Israelis and Americans, would want the balance of power in the region upset.
Nevertheless, the street protests are a wake-up call to autocratic Arab governments to start reforms lest change, which they cannot control, comes knocking from the streets.”
There have been revolts before in Egypt, but, as Simon Tisdall notes in The Guardian,
“Tuesday’s large-scale protests were different in significant ways, sending unsettling signals to a regime that has made complacency a way of life. ‘Day of Rage’ demonstrators in Cairo did not merely stand and shout in small groups, as is usual. They did not remain in one place. They joined together – and they marched. And in some cases, the police could not, or would not, stop them …
But Egypt is not Tunisia. Egypt is a much more efficient police state, a much harder nut to crack. Its leader [Hosni Mubarak, 82] is as tough and as canny as an old fox. Its military and ruling elite is in hock to the Americans to the tune of US$2-billion a year – and the American republic, itself born of revolt, has no love of revolutions…
There is no revolution in Egypt, yet. But, hypothetically, if Mubarak were to fall, the consequences would be incalculable – for Israel and the peace process, for the ascending power of Iran, for U.S. influence across the Middle East, and for the future rise and spread of militant, anti-western Islam. And not least, for 80 million Egyptians.”
The former head of the UN nuclear watchdog is one Egyptian who believes change is coming. Mohammed ElBaradei told Der Spiegel the demonstrations mark the beginning of an historic process.
“The Egyptians have recognized that they must take their fate into their own hands. For the first time in the country’s recent history, they are really prepared to take to the streets. The culture of fear that the regime cultivated has been broken. There is no turning back now. Activists anticipate the biggest demonstrations in decades. These protests are a snowball that could turn into an avalanche …
Perhaps we are currently experiencing the first signs of an ‘Arab Spring’ (e.g. similar to the so-called Prague Spring of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1968). Our neighbours are watching Egypt, which has always played a pioneering role. I hope that my country will be one of the first in which freedom and democracy blossom. We Egyptians should also be able to achieve what the Tunisians have done.”
At The New York Times, Mark Landler examines the challenges posed to U.S. foreign policy.
[T]he administration is grappling with volatile, potentially hostile forces that have already realigned the region’s political landscape … it is proceeding gingerly, balancing the democratic aspirations of young Arabs with cold-eyed strategic and commercial interests. That sometimes involves supporting autocratic and unpopular governments — which has turned many of those young people against the United States.
President [Barack] Obama called Mr. Mubarak last week, after the uprising in Tunisia, to talk about joint projects like the Middle East peace process, even as he emphasized the need to meet the democratic aspirations of the Tunisian protesters …
But critics say bottom-up efforts have failed to open up political space in Arab countries … Steven Heydemann, a vice-president at the U.S. Institute of Peace, argued in a blog post this week that the time had come for the United States to confront Arab leaders more forcefully, demanding that they repeal emergency laws and scrap state security courts, which they use to exercise arbitrary power.”
compiled by Araminta Wordsworth
awordsworth@nationalpost.com
awordsworth@nationalpost.com
Posted in: Full Comment, World Politics Tags: Araminta Wordsworth, Egypt, Full Comment Abroad, Hosni Mubarak, Protests, Tunisia, U.S. Foreign Policy, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/26/protests-in-egypt-raise-the-stakes-across-middle-east/#ixzz1CEcSEfcw
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