Washington hand in Egyptian tragedy

History is repeating itself as the land of the pharaohs rapidly descends into chaos in the wake of a popular uprising.

COMMENT

Students of history will find it all so predictable. History is repeating itself with another revolution, and in Egypt’s case, for the second time. This is like lightning striking the same spot twice, a rare occurrence. The wonder in Cairo is that the enveloping drama, if not tragedy, did not take place much sooner than 30 years.

However, there’s no great mystery in this. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak did a thorough job, over three decades, of destroying the legitimate opposition and taking hundreds, if not thousands, of political prisoners. One still remembers his public boast in the wake of 9/11 that “such a thing will never happen in Egypt. We are on top of the situation here”.

The people, nameless and faceless, finally took to the streets spontaneously. They realised that no politician was going to stand up for them, especially when elections were routinely rigged. The social networking sites merely facilitated the process in the quest for change and reform. Egypt is by no means an isolated case.

It took 20 years before people’s power saw the back of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, 30 years with Suharto in Indonesia, and 50 years after Tito in Yugoslavia. Getting rid of Taib Mahmud in Sarawak is still work in progress after 30 years. The same thing can be said about the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) after 54 years of almost a one-party state.

Perhaps there’s something to be said for the theory that it takes at least 50 years to create a revolution considering that it has to go through the stage of the writers, students growing up on the writings, students-turned-politicians making an issue of the writings, the revolution, the coming of change and reform and finally the bureaucrats institutionalising the reforms. The political tsunami of 2008 in Peninsular Malaysia came after 51 years.

Washington should gallantly do in Cairo what it once did in Manila, that is, send in a helicopter to airlift the president to exile.

However, this – sending in a chopper – may only happen, if at all, when the Egyptians surround the presidential palace in Cairo as the supposedly timid Filipinos did several decades ago in Manila. Twenty thousand people around Malacanang were enough to persuade Marcos to leave the palace for what was to be the relative safety of a nearby military base. Instead, the Americans flew him to Hawaii and exile. They prevented him from leaving until he was finally in a casket.

Volatile region

US President Barrack Obama has turned out to be a huge disappointment if the remarks attributed to him in the media are any indication. He should not have publicly advised, nay pleaded with Mubarak, not to entertain any notions of offering himself for re-election in September this year.

This is not the kind of language that Egyptians like to hear from anyone, especially the Americans who have been behind Mubarak for so long under the misconception that he was the best guarantee of “security and stability” in a volatile region. No one seriously thinks that the question of Mubarak being returned for yet another term to power arises. The people out in the street in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt, in particular Alexandria and Suez, among other towns and cities, will continue to maintain the momentum of their pressure on the Mubarak regime. Mubarak should leave now or risk being torn from limb to limb by the mobs still prowling the streets of Cairo.

It’s no secret who will eventually replace the Mubarak regime in Cairo. The Islamists, with the legitimate opposition all but destroyed, are poised to fill the looming power vacuum in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood, once a tiny splinter group not worthy of a second look, has been mentioned but there are other Islamic factions as well.

Washington can pat itself on the back for having facilitated the rise of the Islamists to power in Egypt as they earlier did in 1979 in Iran by looking the other way as the Shah committed terrible atrocities against the opposition in the country and his people. In their desperation, the people turned to the Ayatollah Khomeini who would not have otherwise come to power. The Iranians, under normal circumstances, are too pragmatic a people to put the mullahs in charge of government. In this case, they had no choice in the matter as the Ayatollah was the lesser of two evils. Today, the Ayatollahs are the only evil in Iran.

All over the Arab world, it’s the same old story. The west, America in particular, has been busy shoring up unpopular regimes. They did not preach in these states the same message of democracy that they practised at home. The legitimate local political opposition in tatters, if not destroyed, the Islamists realised that the only thing preventing them from seizing the reins of power was western, in particular American, support for the governments squatting on them. Hence, 9/11 and the advent of global terrorism fuelled by militant Islamists.

Ruling elite

Washington tried to make amends in Iraq and Afghanistan, hanging their once blue-eyed boy Saddam Hussein in the former and chasing out the Islamists in the latter. It may be a case of too little, too late.

It would be a sheer wonder if the Islamists, the Taliban, don’t return to power in Afghanistan.

In Iraq, Shi’ite Iran exercises considerable influence on the Shi’ite majority in that country even as the Sunnis, once the ruling elite, keep up a low-level insurgency and the Kurds hang on to an uneasy autonomy in the north.

The Islamists, like the reds in Moscow after 70-odd years, will finally realise that democracy is the best guarantee of a shared destiny with the attendant benefits of peace, prosperity, stability and security. They are unlikely to accept this for the moment. The Bolsheviks, a tiny group, made the same mistake in 1917 when they seized power in Russia and executed the Tsar and his family and many of the aristocrats. Their day of reckoning with the wrath of the people came in 1985.

The international community’s interest in Egypt and the Arab world in general is the security of global oil and gas supplies on which so much of the fate of the world economy hinges. Democracy does not imperil business as usual in the energy trade. It would be a different ball game altogether if the Islamists, as the only organised political force, were to seize power in Egypt and thereafter in nation after nation in the region. - FMT