Following the long drawn out death rattle of the now departed former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak the country finds itself united in jubilation at the victory of the will of the masses, but slowly sobering to the realities recently awoken. Mubarak ruled in totality for over thirty years, with the tentacles of his power stretching across and into all aspects of Egyptian social, political and economic life. His regime also controlled, and involved high ranking members of, the Egyptian state security forces, the same security forces he has now handed over power to. Mubarak has managed to stay in power by including those who may be most threatening to his regime, and rewarding them handsomely for their loyalty, he played a Machiavellian game with the world community, serving as the shining light in the eyes of Western diplomats with his upholding of the Egypt-Israel peace accords and his active aversion to radical Islamist factions, particularly the extreme, yet electorally popular, Muslim Brotherhood. The question moderate Egyptians must ask themselves is “Did Mubarak go of his own accord or was he nudged aside by a beast upon which he sat, a beast he fed and accommodated, a beast which now sees him as a liability and so discards him, ready to reimpose itself on the Egyptian people under a different guise, or is this a genuinely historic moment in Arabian politics, where people power can create secular democracy?”
Former vice president, under Anwar El Sadat, Hosni Mubarak came to power after the assassination of the Egyptian President in 1981 by a group of Islamist soldiers in the army of the state, an attack in which the vice president was himself wounded. Mubarak learned a lot from his former boss, from not engaging militarily with Israel, for risk of worldwide exposure and internal instability, to mimicking Sadat’s paranoia with regards both to highly ranking religious figures and to liberal academics. As a former commander in the Egyptian Air force, Mubarak could expect, and received, some support from the armed forces and was allowed to use the full force of the state to ensure that he would not meet the same fate of Sadat, reintroducing the Emergency Laws which had been suspended for 18 months before Sadat’s death. His intelligent playing of the Egyptian reaction to Gulf War helped solidify his military relationship with the USA, leading, indirectly to almost $14 billion worth of Egyptian debt being forgiven by the world community, emboldened him further, confident in the realisation that as long as he was friendly to the worlds superpower, he could act as he pleased with his own population. He even went as far as to promote himself as the voice of Arab moderation with regards to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, a role the Americans rewarded him handsomely for, with annually financial support for his military. This led to several decades of suspended democracy, a period in which Mubarak was said to have earned up to $70 billion in kickbacks and legitimate business profits, and a period in which economic growth in Egypt stagnated and unemployment remained high until belated reform in at the beginning of the century.
His rise to and hold on power seem to mirror a lot of developing world dictatorial regimes; crush opposition, appease the world’s policeman and consolidate your power consistently. The major difference was the geography and cultural role of his country in the region, and indeed in world politics. As the most populous Arab nation in the world, the only Arab nation to have survived more than a week at war with Israel, the cradle of Middle Eastern civility, the holder of the keys to one of the busiest shipping channels in the world, and home to the largest indigenous Islamist organisation in the world, Egypt is more than a little bit special. It is central to American attempts to pacify the region, legitimise its own involvement with the internal politics of the area and keep the Muslim Brotherhood tightly under heel, without getting their hands dirty. To the end of pacification and dominance in the region they pumped funds and weapons into an already swollen military, making sure that they were hooked on the drug of armaments and keeping the tap open as long as the policy flowed in their favour. The military is well aware of its role in Egyptian society, as it is aware of where its loyalty lies, and one questions how many top brass were actually in Tahir square, or welcomed developments in the country, in the past few weeks. More likely they were in a secret locale meeting with old masters and advisors, keeping to the script. There would be a revolution, Mubarak lived by his cutthroat agenda and he would be required to fall on his sword, allowing the less public face of his regime into the saddle to usher in ‘change’. On the streets it looked like a miracle, power finally falling into the laps of the people after so many years of suppression. Unfortunately in the doctrine of realpolitik they were just too important to be free, the institutions of their state needed to be managed by strong, capable people, loyal to the aims of the Western diplomats. Unlike Tunisia, which was strategically unimportant, Egypt could not be allowed turn to anarchy, full democracy, or worse, religious rule. This is why this transition has taken place, it’s no victory, it’s just a changing of the whips.
Mubarak will most likely retire to be with his money, in Switzerland or among friends cultivated during his long rule, allowed enjoy the fruits of his labour by a world aware that he ‘did his duty’, aware that he was only as powerful as he was let be, only as tyrannical as it suited others. The real task is how to deal with the next few weeks, the next few months. What form will the new regime take? It will have to modernise itself, the image of a military strongman at troop parades has been done to death, and they will have to be more cunning. I expect it will be an educated man pushed to the fore, an intelligent, non-aligned civilian with just the right degree of malleability and uncertainty over his position that he will ‘need’ the help of the military and Mubarak’s former advisors, thus perpetuating the goals of the regime. Egypt, along with Saudi Arabia, is the keystone to American Middle Eastern policy, its key to how the US deals with its own perceptions of radical Islam and it is just far too important to be left to chance. So in answer to the question posed in the opening paragraph with regards to Mubarak’s decline, we must distort our perceptions of a strong man atop a pile of advisors and military men and realise that they were all part of one unstratified ruling elite, with him as figurehead, under the patronage of the USA, and removing him does not cut the head off the snake, it merely trims the fingernail of military control, allowing regeneration and a renewal of the same policy focus. This time, at least, the people should expect some of their grievances to be addressed, not only as a token gesture but also because protests cost money and stability and the regime will be eager to avoid one again, so at least some solace and economic advance can be taken from the efforts of the masses in Cairo and elsewhere.
11/02/11
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