Category Archives: democracy

The Arab world gets real on democracy

Rhami Khouri writes:

The overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the transitions to new governance systems in Egypt and Tunisia – with others sure to follow – promise the birth of a more democratic, humanistic Arab world, assuming the transitions persist, which I believe is certain. Here are 10 things that may emerge from the current changes and which will determine if real democratization is underway, for these are the attributes that the Arab people have been denied throughout the past century:

First, real self-determination: Egypt and Tunisia may be the first instances of Arab countries that truly define themselves, their national values and their policies, on the basis of their people’s will and sentiments, rather than the decisions of a handful of self-imposed or foreign-installed rulers.

Second, real sovereignty: This may be the first time that modern Arab states implement domestic and foreign policies on the basis of the consent of the governed, rather than according to the desires or dictates of foreign powers.

Third, real politics: This may be the first time that modern Arab states experience the thrill and complexity of genuine politics, by which a variety of legitimate local actors negotiate the exercise of power and the routine transfer of incumbency from one group to another.

Fourth, real nationalism: This may be the first time that Arab societies forge a nationalist spirit that accurately reflects the sentiments, rights and aspiration of their own people, rather than merely the exploitative narrow goals of self-imposed rulers or hysterical crowds those autocrats callously manipulate.

Fifth, real constitutionalism: This may be the first time that modern Arab states see their own citizenry writing the rules of how power is exercised and how public authority is apportioned among the institutions of state, in the form of a constitution that actually represents a constituent population.

Facebooktwittermail

Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt reveal potent challenge to Middle East seats of power

The New York Times reports:

As protesters in Tahrir Square faced off against pro-government forces, they drew a lesson from their counterparts in Tunisia: “Advice to the youth of Egypt: Put vinegar or onion under your scarf for tear gas.”

The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world — a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.

They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons. Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade — but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley.

As their swelling protests shook the Egyptian state, they were locked in a virtual tug of war with a leader with a very different vision — Gamal Mubarak, the son of President Hosni Mubarak, a wealthy investment banker and ruling-party power broker. Considered the heir apparent to his father until the youth revolt eliminated any thought of dynastic succession, the younger Mubarak pushed his father to hold on to power even after his top generals and the prime minister were urging an exit, according to American officials who tracked Hosni Mubarak’s final days.

The defiant tone of the president’s speech on Thursday, the officials said, was largely his son’s work.

“He was probably more strident than his father was,” said one American official, who characterized Gamal’s role as “sugarcoating what was for Mubarak a disastrous situation.” But the speech backfired, prompting Egypt’s military to force the president out and assert control of what they promise will be a transition to civilian government.

Now the young leaders are looking beyond Egypt. “Tunis is the force that pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the world,” said Walid Rachid, one of the members of the April 6 Youth Movement, which helped organize the Jan. 25 protests that set off the uprising. He spoke at a meeting on Sunday night where the members discussed sharing their experiences with similar youth movements in Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Iran.

Facebooktwittermail

When democracy weakens

Bob Herbert writes:

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.

So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.

The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.

Facebooktwittermail

The West can no longer claim to be an honest broker in the search for peace

Gary Younge writes:

The events of the last month in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere have challenged the way the west thinks of the Arab world (and how the Arab world thinks of itself). What remains to be seen is the extent to which these ongoing events confront the way in which western powers view themselves and their relationship to the Middle East.

Over the last decade in particular, the Arab world has increasingly been depicted in the west as a region in desperate need of being tamed so that it can be civilised. It has been portrayed as an area rooted in religious fervour, where freedom was a foreign concept and democracy a hostile imposition. Violence and terrorism was what they celebrated, and all they would ever understand. Liberty, our leaders insisted, would have to be forced on them through the barrel of a gun for they were not like us. The effect was to infantilise the Arab world in order to justify our active, or at least complicit, role in its brutalisation.

While this view has been intensified by the 9/11 terror attacks, the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq, it was not created by them. “There are westerners and there are Orientals,” explained the late Edward Said, as he laid out the western establishment’s prevailing attitude to the region at the turn of the last century, in his landmark work . “The former dominate, the latter must be dominated, which usually means having their land occupied, their internal affairs rigidly controlled, their blood and treasure put at the disposal of one or another western power.”

So the sight of peaceful, pluralist, secular Arabs mobilising for freedom and democracy in ever greater numbers against a western-backed dictator forces a reckoning with the “clash of civilisations” narrative that has sought to overwhelm the past decade. It turns out there is a means of supporting democracy in this part of the world that does not involve invading, occupying, bombing, torturing and humiliating. Who knew?

Facebooktwittermail

America, welcome to the era of Arab democracy

Amjad Atallah and Daniel Levy write:

The stark realization slowly dawning on Washington is that the United States cannot be on the right side of Arab democracy if it is on the wrong side of Palestinian freedom. Israel’s security and peace treaties are certainly compatible with a recalibrated American policy in the region, but not the continuation of occupation and inequality for Palestinians. This shouldn’t pose such a conundrum: the status quo has constrained the prospects for both the Arab and Jewish-Israeli publics. For all of its qualitative military edge and American backing, Israel does not feel secure, accepted or calm about its future.

Things get messy though when America fails to apply its own values to the Middle East. Some are advocating for precisely that values-free option, apparently believing that the adage of Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East is not so much a lament as an aspiration. That translates into continued support for Arab autocracies or insisting on what might be called democracy minus for Arab countries in which the balance between military and civilian rule still rests primarily with the former, and by denying democratic Islamist parties the right to participate in peaceful politics.

Representative government in the Arab world will inevitably include a role for Islamists, something seized on by democracy’s opponents as a scare tactic to plead for the continued rule of the authoritarian devil we know. Those warning of a Khomeinist takeover are either desperately ignorant of Arab reality or intentionally misleading. Iran’s system of theocratic republicanism carries no attraction for the Arab pro-democracy movements. If anything, it is Turkey’s system of parliamentary citizen-state democracy, which is held up as a model.

There is another way to look at this region in transition and to plan for the future. The best option for getting this right and being credible is in allowing American policy to reflect American political values.

Imagine that: American foreign policy that isn’t riddled with hypocrisy!

George Bush — with a less than democratic spirit — used to say, you’re either for us or against us. The same can be said about democracy: you’re either for democracy or against it.

We no longer live in an era where something called democracy can be reserved for a privileged minority. Those who now claim that democratic rights should only be selectively recognized are, quite simply, opponents of democracy.

Facebooktwittermail

In Egypt the seeds of a new world order and the end of Western supremacy

An Egyptian woman cries as she celebrates the news of the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

Some think the Middle East isn’t ready for democracy — in truth it’s the West that isn’t ready.

Nicholas Kristof duly notes:

Egyptians triumphed over their police state without Western help or even moral support. During rigged parliamentary elections, the West barely raised an eyebrow. And when the protests began at Tahrir Square, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the Mubarak government was “stable” and “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

Commentators have repeatedly referred to the Obama administration playing catch-up during the Egyptian revolution, yet its seeming inability to track fast-changing events was merely an expression of its unwillingness to embrace the direction those events were heading.

Immediately after Hosni Mubarak resigned, Jake Tapper from ABC News tweeted that he couldn’t find anyone in the administration who thought that whatever comes next would be better for U.S. interests than Mubarak had been.

The dictator’s departure is not being celebrated in Washington. The leaders of the free world have a singular lack of enthusiasm for freedom.

The administration has not merely repeatedly stumbled, but has functioned as a dead weight, attempting to slow the pace of what may become the most significant transformation in world order since the birth of Western colonial power.

America’s friends in Israel have been equally unenthusiastic about the turn of events. After Mubarak’s defiant speech on Thursday night when he insisted he would sit out his term as president, “Israel breathed a sigh of relief,” according to Israeli commentator, Alex Fishman. The respite must have felt dreadfully brief.

But if Americans want to grasp the significance of the Egyptian revolution, they need look no further than this country’s much bloodier assertion of people power: the American revolution.

For the first time in Egypt’s history, the Egyptian people have made a declaration of sovereignty and claimed their right of self-governance. Is that not something that every person on the planet who cherishes life and liberty can joyfully celebrate?

As Western leaders now line up, having no choice but to express their support for the revolution, while sagely offering guidance and assistance in managing an “orderly transition” to a democratic system, they do so with a palpable ambivalence.

People power is in jeopardy of sweeping the Middle East and undoing the carefully constructed “stability” through which for most of the last century the West has managed the control of its most vital resource: oil.

Worse for the United States, the Egyptian revolution now undermines the US government’s ability to sustain an unswerving loyalty to the preeminence of Israel’s security interests.

A democratic Egyptian government will not have the autocratic latitude that until now enabled Mubarak’s complicity in the siege of Gaza or his willingness to participate in the charade of a peace process going nowhere.

Stepping back from the most obvious regional implications of what is now unfolding, there is a more far-reaching dimension.

When in 1990 President George HW Bush used the phrase “new world order”, his words had an ominous ring both because they implied that this would be an American-defined order but also — on the brink of the first Gulf War — a militarily-imposed order. The new order was synonymous with the dubious claim that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented an American “victory” in the Cold War.

A new world order worthy of the name, however, should represent something much more significant than the strategic reapportioning of power on a geopolitical level. It should involve the reapportioning of power through which global affairs become the people’s affairs. It should mean that international relations can no longer be conducted within the confines of intrinsically undemocratic arenas where ordinary people have no voice.

The people-power unleashed in Egypt has the potential to serve as a democratizing force that not only threatens autocratic leaders in the Middle East but also technocratic and nominally democratic leaders in the West — those whose complacent style of governance has depended on the political passivity of the populations they nominally serve while providing ready access for corporate interests to exercise their undemocratic influence.

The West, far from representing a model of democracy ripe for export has instead long been mired in a post-democratic phase where the foundational concept of demos, the people, has withered.

Individual wealth has supplanted the need for social solidarity as citizenship has been substituted by consumerism. Our material self-sufficiency has robbed us of the experience of mutual reliance and worn thin the fabric of society.

In a new world order, a new democracy might spread not just further east but also further west.

There is also a bittersweet note in this moment.

The Western exporters of democracy delivered the war in Iraq and yet as we witness events unfold in Egypt, it’s hard not to wonder what might have been possible had the people of Iraq, without Western help or hindrance, been allowed the same opportunity to claim their own freedom.

Facebooktwittermail

Rural Egyptians support the revolution

Reuters reports:

Beyond Tahrir Square, beyond the boundaries of the sprawling capital, beyond even the provincial cities where protesters joined the call to topple President Hosni Mubarak, rural Egypt is restless for change.

Scraping a meagre living from the land, farmers and rural workers in Egypt’s agricultural heartland have watched the largely urban uprising that has shaken the ruling system and many back the web-savvy youths who galvanised the nation.

A few have turned up in Cairo in their galabiyas, the robes worn in the fields, although most are too busy trying to feed their families. But many believe it is time for a new era, even if some think Mubarak should stay on a few months more.

“The revolution is good … It will give us stability but the protest should stop and the president should be allowed to stay until the end of his term,” said farmer Fawzi Abdel Wahab, working a field near the Nile Delta city of Tanta.

“If the president doesn’t do as he promised, Tahrir Square is still there and the youth will not die, they can go back,” he said, his wife and daughter nodding in agreement.

The protesters want Mubarak to quit now. Mubarak has said he will step down at the end of his term in September.

The protests may have begun with an educated youth and liberal, urban elite, but a tour of the Nile Delta suggests discontent is more widespread. Mubarak’s government needs to do more than meet the aspirations of the middle class.

“The ideas the youths called for in their revolution express those of all Egyptian people, including farmers and residents of rural areas who, like the rest of Egyptians in big cities, face the same needs and suffering,” said analyst Nabil Abdel Fattah.

Satellite dishes that litter roof tops of small country dwellings or village coffee shops spread the word far and wide.

“New media, mainly satellite channels, have managed to spread the message of the revolution everywhere, including rural areas,” said Abdel Fattah of the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.

Facebooktwittermail

The American-Israeli led anti-democratic alliance

“Never insult the Arabs,” advised Amos Gilead, former head of Israel’s Political-Military Bureau, speaking on Monday at the influential Herzliya national security conference.

But he wasn’t appealing for an improvement in Israeli-Arab relations since he only had a few Arabs in mind — Hosni Mubarak and other leaders “that are supporting stability and are coping with terror and have proven themselves along decades.”

As for Gilead’s views about the advance of democracy in the region, such a prospect presents nothing less than a path to hell.

“If we allow,” Gilead said, then edited himself realizing that democracy should not be presented as something Israel can allow (or forbid) and thus he continued in less instrumental terms, “or if there is democrative process in the Middle East, it will bring for sure — or, let’s say, quite sure — dictatorships which will make this area like hell.”

The Obama administration — which has yet to face any form of governmental pressure it was willing to resist — is now showing itself in much deeper sympathy with those voices who present democracy as a threat than those who claim democracy as their right.

The New York Times reports:

As the Obama administration gropes for the right response to the uprising in Egypt, it has not lacked for advice from democracy advocates, academics, pundits, even members of the previous administration. But few voices have been as urgent, insistent or persuasive as those of Egypt’s neighbors.

Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have each repeatedly pressed the United States not to cut loose Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, too hastily, or to throw its weight behind the democracy movement in a way that could further destabilize the region, diplomats say. One Middle Eastern envoy said that on a single day, he spent 12 hours on the phone with American officials.

There is evidence that the pressure has paid off. On Saturday, just days after suggesting that it wanted immediate change, the administration said it would support an “orderly transition” managed by Vice President Omar Suleiman. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Mr. Mubarak’s immediate resignation might complicate, rather than clear, Egypt’s path to democracy, given the requirements of Egypt’s Constitution.

“Everyone is taking a little breath,” said a diplomat from the region, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing private conversations. “There’s a sense that we’re getting our message through.”

While each country has its own concerns, all worry that a sudden, chaotic change in Egypt would destabilize the region or, in the Arab nations, even jeopardize their own leaders, many of whom are also autocrats facing restive populations.

Like frogs that refuse to jump out of pot of hot water because its temperature is only rising slowly, those autocrats and their Western allies who now equate stability with their ability to act as a judicious brake on change, have a will to survive that is guiding them down a path of self-destruction.

Slow but sure are the watchwords of the proponents of an “orderly transition” to democracy in Egypt. Yet even as they profess a desire to see democratic change unfold and claim no interest in dictating the outcome of a democratic process, this posture of non-interference is contradicted by a clear intent to dictate the pace of change. The will of the Egyptian people will be respected — but not just yet.

What the West is telling the Arab world is this: be patient living under dictators we like because if you get rid of them you’ll end up being ruled by dictators we don’t like. Now, as ever, the West treats Arabs as being incapable of building their own democracies.

But beneath this veneer of contempt lies a much deeper fear: that a Middle East made up of truly self-governing independent nations fully in control of resources upon which the West depends will no longer bow to Western interests. That’s a prospect the West dreads to contemplate.

Facebooktwittermail

“Keep giving us our oil”

Venice Beach, California, might not be the best place to take the pulse of American opinion. Or is it?

Would Geena and Jenna be relieved or disappointed to learn that Egypt now consumes about as much oil as it produces and that most of the relatively small volume it exports goes to Italy?

Maybe Egypt just belongs to that long list of countries that most Americans know little about and care even less — at least so long as those countries that have it “keep giving us our oil.”

Meanwhile, our Goldilocks president (who thinks Egyptians need more democracy — as though they already have some — and who clearly doesn’t want the freedom spigot turned on too fast) will probably take comfort in the following numbers — a perfect marker of success in centrist politics: that public indifference and ignorance provide a reassuring level of support for a steady-as-she-goes approach on a course going who-knows-where.

Americans do not have a clear point of view about how the massive anti-government protests in Egypt will affect the United States. More than half (58%) say the protests will not have much of an effect (36%), or offer no response or are noncommittal (22%). Of the minority that thinks the protests will have an effect on the U.S., nearly twice as many say their impact will be negative rather than positive (28% vs. 15%).

This lack of agreement notwithstanding, a majority (57%) says the Obama administration is handling the situation in Egypt about right, while much smaller numbers say the administration has shown too much support (12%) or too little support (12%) for the protestors.

As for whether California comedian Kassem G was able to gather a representative sample of American opinion in Venice Beach, Pew’s findings would indicate he was only gathering the views of about half the country: 52% of Americans, during two weeks of media saturation coverage, said that they had heard little or nothing about what’s been happening in Egypt.

Perhaps the phrase, living under a rock, should be changed to, living in America.

Facebooktwittermail

The Muslim Brotherhood bogeyman

Nicholas Kristof writes:

Maybe my judgment is skewed because pro-Mubarak thugs tried to hunt down journalists, leading some of us to be stabbed, beaten and arrested — and forcing me to abandon hotel rooms and sneak with heart racing around mobs carrying clubs with nails embedded in them. The place I felt safest was Tahrir Square — “free Egypt,” in the protesters’ lexicon — where I could pull out a camera and notebook and ask anybody any question.

I constantly asked women and Coptic Christians whether a democratic Egypt might end up a more oppressive country. They invariably said no — and looked so reproachfully at me for doubting democracy that I sometimes retreated in embarrassment.

“If there is a democracy, we will not allow our rights to be taken away from us,” Sherine, a university professor, told me (I’m not using full names to protect the protesters). Like many, she said that Americans were too obsessed with the possibility of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood gaining power in elections.

“We do not worry about the Muslim Brotherhood,” Sherine said. “They might win 25 percent of the votes, but if they do not perform then they will not get votes the next time.”

Sherine has a point. Partly because of Western anxieties, fundamentalist Muslims have rarely run anything — so instead they lead the way in denouncing the corruption, incompetence and brutality of pro-Western autocrats like Mr. Mubarak. The upshot is that they win respect from many ordinary citizens, but my hunch is that they would lose support if they actually tried to administer anything.

For example, in 1990s Yemen, an Islamic party named Islah became part of a coalition government after doing well in elections. As a result, Islah was put in charge of the Education Ministry. Secular Yemenis and outsiders were aghast that fundamentalists might brainwash children, but the Islamists mostly proved that they were incompetent at governing. In the next election, their support tumbled.

It’s true that one of the most common protester slogans described Mr. Mubarak as a stooge of America, and many Egyptians chafe at what they see as a supine foreign policy. I saw one caricature of Mr. Mubarak with a Star of David on his forehead and, separately, a sign declaring: “Tell him in Hebrew, and then he might get the message!” Yet most people sounded pragmatic, favoring continued peace with Israel while also more outspoken support for Palestinians, especially those suffering in Gaza.

I asked an old friend here in Cairo, a woman with Western tastes that include an occasional glass of whiskey, whether the Muslim Brotherhood might be bad for peace. She thought for a moment and said: “Yes, possibly. But, from my point of view, in America the Republican Party is bad for peace as well.”

Little does she seem to know: the Democratic Party is no better.

Let the Islamists share in governance — then they’ll lose their popularity.

It’s easy to see why this argument appeals to many an American liberal. Strangely, an equally persuasive argument — let them govern, they might govern well — has yet to gain any traction, at least in the US.

But look at Turkey. Are we supposed to believe that the success of the AKP has come in spite of them being Islamists, or, is it possible that lack of corruption presents such a stark contrast with politics-as-usual that the success of the Islamists has more to do with their integrity than anything else.

If the contest is not between Sharia and democracy, but between integrity and corruption, shouldn’t we be rooting for integrity, irrespective of the banner it might carry?

Hannah Allam reports:

[T]he Brotherhood said earlier this week that it would recognize all of Egypt’s international treaties, a thinly veiled reference to the country’s longtime peace agreement with Israel.

To many observers, the reference signaled a willingness by the Brotherhood to negotiate with Western powers. Still, the Brotherhood eventually would like to put Egypt’s pact with Israel on the ballot in a national referendum, which would all but assure its rejection.

Israeli leaders have long professed the desire for peaceful relations with all their neighbors — as though the Egyptian people and the Jordanian people counted for nothing, Mubarak and King Abdullah being the sole peace contractors.

The fictitious peace that may soon be in jeopardy has merely been secured by American bribery, without the consent of the American taxpayer. Shouldn’t we be demanding a real peace and shouldn’t Israelis want such a peace — one that does not hinge on the “stability” of dictatorial rule?

Facebooktwittermail

Slavoj Zizek and Tariq Ramadan on the future of Egyptian politics

Many American academics and pundits from thinktankland should study the way Slavoj Žižek expresses himself. Passionate, emphatic, uninhibited, eccentric, and humorous — above all, a man who knows what it means to speak your mind. This is a display that shows that deep analysis does not need the protection of cover-your-ass-caveats or manicured sobriety. It can be an act of genuine self-expression.

The pre-condition though is that to speak your mind, you must know your mind and that is a dangerous enterprise.

In relation to Žižek’s central point — that the loss of the Left has come at a hefty price — it’s worth considering the pernicious influence of the sporting metaphor as it shapes American political thinking. Which is to say: the effect of the assumption that that which is defeated must by its nature be inferior; that those who lose are lesser. Guided by such thinking, we would have no reason to be concerned about the loss of species or the loss of cultures. As though the perfect condition would be one of victorious homogeneity.

And note: if democracy was by its nature something truly Western, would we now witness so much Western ambivalence about the birth of Egyptian democracy? On the contrary, the West’s ambivalence exposes the degree to which universal and socialist values have been marginalized in the West. As though we should have reason to doubt that human solidarity is a good thing.

Facebooktwittermail

Freedom lies behind a closed door that can only be broken down by a bleeding Arab fist

Tariq Ali writes:

“Freedom lies behind a door closed shut,” the great Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawqi wrote in the last century. “It can only be knocked down with a bleeding fist.” More than that is bleeding in the Arab world at the moment.

The uprisings we are witnessing in Egypt have been a rude awakening for all those who imagined that the despots of the Arab world could be kept in place provided they continued to serve the needs of the West and their harsh methods weren’t aired on CNN and BBC World. But while Western establishments lull themselves to sleep with fairy tales, ordinary citizens, who are defeated and demoralized, mull their revenge.

The French government seriously considered sending its paratroopers to save former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pleading with officials in Washington to delay Hosni Mubarak’s departure from Egypt so that Israel has time to prepare for the likely outcome. Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair is even describing the Egyptian dictator as a “force for good.”

The almost 200 pro-democracy citizens who have been killed don’t bother him too much. That’s small beer compared with the tens of thousands dead in Iraq. And a desperate Palestine Liberation Organization is backing Mubarak and repressing solidarity demonstrations in Ramallah on the West Bank.

Facebooktwittermail

It’s not radical Islam that worries the US – it’s independence

Noam Chomsky writes:

‘The Arab world is on fire,” al-Jazeera reported last week, while throughout the region, western allies “are quickly losing their influence”. The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator’s brutal police.

Observers compared it to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences. Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless properly tamed.

One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the east European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased. That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo-hwan, Suharto and many other useful gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with routine efforts to try to ensure a successor regime will not veer far from the approved path. The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist General Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt’s vice-president. Suleiman, the longtime head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself.

Facebooktwittermail

Mubarak’s day of departure? Live upates

WATCH AL JAZEERA LIVE

Sarah A. Topol says:

Many ask me about America, puzzling over the Obama administration’s comments about the protests. There’s a lot of frustration, but most say they want the United States to butt out.

“This revolution is an Egyptian revolution against Mubarak and his policies—we don’t want another client regime. We are capable of doing things without America. I don’t need America to teach me about democracy or human rights,” Amira Howeidy, a journalist, told me. A fluent English speaker, Amira got worked up, and then apologized. “I’m not trying to be combative,” she said as I tried to redirect the conversation.

Others just can’t figure it out. “Does Obama really want democracy in Egypt?” one woman wearing a niqab asked me.

The Guardian:

Egyptian blogger @suzeeinthecity has tweeted what she says are the seven demands of the protesters (see the four drawn up by youth groups we detailed at (5.05pm)

1. Resignation of the president
2. End of the Emergency State
3. Dissolution of The People’s Assembly and Shora Council
4. Formation of a national transitional government
5. An elected Parliament that will ammend the Constitution to allow for presidential elections
6. Immediate prosecution for those responsible of the deaths of the revolution’s martyrs
7. Immediate prosecution of the corrupters and those who robbed the country of its wealth.

Jack Shenker has been speaking to people within the youth movement in Egypt, mainly based online, who have told him they have four very specific demands. They do not represent everyone but they do constitute an important part of the opposition:

• the removal of Hosni Mubarak and the “whole apparatus of the Mubarak regime”;
• a committee which will appoint a transitional government, the committee to be made up of 6 named senior judges, six representatives from their youth movement and two members of the military
• a council to draw up a new constitution, which would then be put to the people in a referendum
• elections at national and local level in accordance with the constitution.

One of Egypt’s youngest revolutionaries!

The Guardian reports:

The Cairo office of al-Jazeera was ransacked by pro-government “thugs” today, as the Arabic language news channel also said its news website had come under attack by hackers.

Al-Jazeera said its office had been stormed by a “gang of thugs” who burned equipment, on a day of reports of escalating violence against journalists covering the Egyptian uprising.

Brian Whitaker provides this constitutional reading on the political train of events on the horizon:

Whatever happens to Mubarak, there has to be a presidential election no later than September. The [Muslim] Brotherhood have said they will not contest that. In the absence of any inspirational leaders who can galvanise popular opinon, my feeling is that the presidency will probably be won by a compromise candidate — the one regarded as least objectionable by the largest numbner of people.

There is no requirement for parliamentary elections until 2015, since a new parliament was (fraudently) elected last year for a fixed term of five years. To dissolve the parliament legally before 2015, there would have to be a national referendum.

This means that Egypt may be lumbered for several years with a parliament that is overwhelmingly dominated by Mubarak’s NDP party. One option would be to investigate the fraud in last year’s election and disqualify some of the NDP members, presumably triggering by-elections in their constituencies.

For the Brotherhood to have any prospect of becoming the largest party over the next few years, therefore, either parliament would have to be dissolved by referendum or a very large number of NDP members would have to be disqualified and their vacant seats won by the Brotherhood.

The Economist says:

“[D]espite the ugly scenes mid-week, the developments in Egypt should be welcomed. A downtrodden region is getting a taste of freedom. In the space of a few miraculous weeks, one Middle Eastern autocrat has fallen, and another, who has kept the Arabs’ mightiest country under his thumb for 30 years, is tottering. The 350m-strong Arab world is abuzz with expectation; its ageing autocrats are suddenly looking shaky. These inspiring events recall the universal truth that no people can be held in bondage for ever.

For some in the West, which has tended to put stability above democracy in its dealings with the Middle East, these developments are disturbing. Now that the protests have sucked the life out of Mr Mubarak’s regime, they argue, the vacuum will be filled not by democrats but by chaos and strife or by the Muslim Brothers, the anti-Western, anti-Israeli opposition. They conclude that America should redouble its efforts to secure a lengthy “managed transition” by shoring up either Mr Mubarak or someone like him.

That would be wrong. The popular rejection of Mr Mubarak offers the Middle East’s best chance for reform in decades. If the West cannot back Egypt’s people in their quest to determine their own destiny, then its arguments for democracy and human rights elsewhere in the world stand for nothing. Change brings risks—how could it not after so long?—but fewer than the grim stagnation that is the alternative.

Washington Post: Israel contemplates a prospect it dreads — inserting its forces into the narrow Philadelphia corridor between Egypt and Gaza.

David Corn describes the Congressional mechanics involved in the US cutting off military aid to Egypt — a decision yet to be made.

Justin Elliot on one of Washington’s most vocal Mubarak cheerleaders, Leslie Gelb.

London-based, Master Minz — a female rapper from Casablanca, Morocco — sings BACK DOWN MUBARAK!

“Lost world we are the solution
This shit don’t smell like a flower
It’s the rise of people power”

Larry Diamond writes:

Hosni Mubarak’s exit from power under the pressure of volcanic popular protests will have wide repercussions throughout the Arab world. It will accelerate the momentum of democratic change in the region, and open the possibility of electoral democracy emerging in the Arab world’s largest and most influential country. If Mubarak can be induced to exit peacefully and soon, and the way can be paved to a free and credible presidential election in September, the authoritarian exceptionalism of the Arab world may begin drawing to an end.

Sarah Carr, whose mother is Egyptian and father British and who didn’t feel safe going out yesterday because her “mother’s genes seem to have been on strike when I was formed,” describes how state-sponsored xenophobia briefly took hold of the streets:

The worst thing about this is how very un-Egyptian it is. Much is made of the legendary Egyptian hospitality, and for good reason. Egyptians take care of their guests. Which is not to say that xenophobia or racism doesn’t exist, and doesn’t exist in its worst forms. But very generally speaking I’ve felt safer and more looked after in Egypt than anywhere else in the world.

The descent into murky hatred coincides with a concerted state media campaign against foreigners and sinister “foreign agents” who are behind the Tahir protests, a continuation of previous campaigns against foreigners which have targeted e.g. Palestinians, religious minorities, gays, Shias…etc. State media is an extension of the regime. Add this to a security vacuum and the withdrawal of the police and a desperate regime and uncertainty and you get this, another highly convenient instance of manufactured discontent.

Brian Whitaker comments on Amr Moussa’s presence in Tahrir Square today:

Moussa’s unexpected appearance in Tahrir Square is interesting, and perhaps significant.

He served Mubarak for many years as Egypt’s foreign minister before becoming head of the Arab League. There were suggestions at the time that Mubarak had kicked him sideways because the president was becoming jealous of Moussa’s popularity (he was generally regarded as adopting a fairly tough position regarding Israel).

About the time of his removal from the foreign minister, a pop song containing the line “I hate Israel and I love Amr Moussa” became a hit in Egypt.

In 2009, Moussa hinted that he might run for the Egyptian presidency in the 2011 election. In February last year, he also had a meeting with Mohamed ElBaradei which aroused a good deal of speculation.

3.15PM — Gregg Carlstrom: “Inside Tahrir Square, protesters have a ‘press officer’ helping journos. Outside, thugs ransacked AJA’s Cairo bureau. #jan25 #egypt”

2.25PM (local) — Sharif Kouddous: “On a balcony now with birds-eye view. Tahrir is an ocean of people. This is simply massive. #Egypt”

Facebooktwittermail

The Middle East’s freedom train has just left the station

Christopher Dickey spoke with Nawal El Saadawi, an 80-year-old protester, about her refusal to go home when the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square turned violent. “They have a strategy to frighten us and to starve us,” she said.

Rami G. Khouri writes:

To appreciate what is taking place in the Arab world today you have to grasp the historical significance of the events that have started changing rulers and regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, with others sure to follow. What we are witnessing is the unraveling of the post-colonial order that the British and French created in the Arab world in the 1920s and 1930s and then sustained – with American and Soviet assistance – for most of the last half-century.

It is fascinating, if insular, to focus attention, as much Western media are doing, on whether Facebook drove these revolts; or to ask what will happen if the Muslim Brotherhood plays a role in any new Egyptian government. The Arabs are like a bride emerging on her wedding day to face people commenting on whether her shoes match her gloves, when the real issue is how beautiful and happy she is.

The events unfolding before our eyes in Egypt, after Tunisia, are the third most important historical development in the Arab region in the past century, and to miss that point is to perpetuate a tradition of Western Orientalist romanticism and racism that have been a large cause of our pain for all these years. This is the most important of the three major historical markers because it is the first one that marks a process of genuine self-determination by Arab citizens who can speak and act for themselves for the first time in their modern history.

Facebooktwittermail

Standing up for democracy

As the Million Egyptian March takes to the streets of Cairo, is President Obama finally ready to take a strong stand on the side of the people?

In The Guardian, Michael Tomasky writes “Obama is in no position to offer the moral thunder the protesters and their supporters everywhere crave.” Why? Because “the US should not be dictating outcomes any more. The modern world requires a US posture that is more fluid and subtle, and that no longer seeks to call the global shots.”

Having watched events over the last week as closely as one can from a great distance, I would say there has been no lack of moral thunder. It has come from the voices of the Egyptian people.

Having demonstrated their pride, dignity, and collective power with such force, I don’t think they crave anything from Washington or anywhere else — bar the fulfillment of their single demand: that Hosni Mubarak stand down.

To the extent that the expectations of many Egyptians and others are directed towards Washington and Obama, it is perhaps with the hope that anyone who supports democracy would celebrate the extraordinary sight of democracy being born.

Obama’s inhibitions probably say less about the fear of being perceived in the Middle East as the leader of an imperial power which still insists on calling the global shots, than in being seen by his fellow Americans supporting a revolution that they fear.

Indeed, as Benjamin Netanyahu compares the Egyptian revolution of 2011 with the Iranian revolution in 1979, Obama surely fears some form of retribution from AIPAC in 2012 if he is portrayed as having undermined Israel’s security. Above all, the 2012 incumbent presidential candidate does not want to be cast as having played a role in shaping Egypt’s future.

The most courageous thing Obama could do at this point would not be to make some grandiose expression of American support for the Egyptian people — an expression which this late in the day would carry little credibility. No, if he wants to stand up in defense of democracy, he should addressing a domestic audience — one that apparently has lost faith that democracy is a good thing.

If Americans can’t support the democratic rights of Egyptians, what does that say about how seriously we want to protect our own rights? After all, the unalienable rights upon which America was founded were not conceived as American rights but universal human rights. If we don’t stand in solidarity with Egyptians, have we not also lost faith in the principles upon which America was founded?

Obama once declared:

I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.

But what held the greater significance? The sentiment and meaning of Obama’s words or the fact that he delivered them as the honored guest of Hosni Mubarak?

Facebooktwittermail