A neutral view of the Egyptian revolution and its players

Note: After a friend requested it, I am putting this article I wrote on February the 2nb 2011 back. It represented my views (based on my own ideas and experience) on what was happening in Egypt around the time their revolution was gaining a huge momentum.

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A neutral view of the Egyptian revolution and its players

The way the situation in Egypt has evolved took the world by surprise, albeit with less surprise than the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia. For decades, there has been an implicit belief that Arabs in general, Egyptians in particular, and their young generations, are not able to deal with political and economical demands of modern life. The assumption was that they needed a guardian and the likes of Mubarak and Ben Ali were there to fill that role. The Egyptian revolution has proven that Egyptians are actually capable of expressing their views in a peaceful manner and that they actually were on a patience mode. Their patience has now run out.

 As soon as the revolution gained momentum and the world turned its attention away from Tunisian events and to Egypt, I held a clear thought on what the possible outcomes of it would be and I now think that the next one to two weeks will be critical. The criticality does not refer to whether the revolution will be success or failure, because there will be no clear win or loss, but to what extent the existing regime in Egypt will have been damaged. A scratched regime will focus on cleaning up the ranks from the “bad” apples, while a badly or fully damaged regime will fold and a new system will be born.

Let’s analyse various factors that have the potential to impact on the outcome of the present events in Egypt.

So far.. Not so good

Motivated by the events in Tunisia and its quick success in toppling a twenty three years old regime, Egyptians picked up where Tunisians left and started their own revolution against a rigid and stubborn regime. To some extent this revolution has already been successful in the fact it has uncovered to local and international populations what the Mubarak regime is based on: ruthlessness, hate of opposition, military mentality, limited economical social and political aptitude, and a total lack of respect or care for their countrymen. What the peaceful manifestants in Cairo have endured so far resembles a fight for independence, and the procedures with which police (official and civilian-dressed alike) are abusing protesters clearly shows that they have been well trained for such exercise and that action plans have long been drafted and rehearsed. It was just a matter of choosing which of the steps to take next against the protest. The rhetoric and the essence of messages coming from the government clearly show that there is no will to listen to the street and to the 7 million people throughout Egypt who went out last Tuesday calling time on Mubarak’s rein.

One must not be surprised by the government’s resistance to listen to its people because it is neither able to listen, as they were never trained or used to listening to them, nor do they want to listen because of the cloud hovering over their legitimacy. Many, if not most, of people in the government may have not been where they are now if the previous elections were indeed fair and honest. For the government, therefore, listening means losing powers, which will lead to a complete downfall just like it happened to Ben Ali’s circle. The inevitable investigations that would follow such downfall would almost certainly find many members of the parliament and the governments of the last thirty years guilty of some sort of abuse (financial, legal, or human rights abuse). It is indeed normal that thirty years of ruling do bring with them a sense of comfort, safety and less carefulness. Mubarek and his circle will not be resigned to endure humiliation like Ben Ali did, and that is why Mubarek repeatedly mentioned that he would die in Egypt. All this concludes that the regime will not go away spontaneously and concede defeat. Impossible!

The Army game

This takes us to the military element of the Egyptian crisis. I was extremely surprised by the general naivety of the Egyptian masses in the way they believe and trust their army. They strangely seem to forget that Mubarak is from the army having replaced another army man (Sadat), who came after yet another army man (Abd Ennasser), who took over from another army man (Muhammad Naguib). Egypt is not ruled by Mubarek. It is ruled by the army. And to call on the army to change the regime is like calling on Israel to protect Palestinians. The army did attempt to take advantage of the general feeling from the population by sending a strong support message initially and then moving to ask protesters to return to their home and then backing out and letting the “baltagya” and police harass them. This all was part of a full and compiled effort to quash the Egyptian revolution and return back to the submissive mentality the regime grew accustomed to. One likely reason behind Egyptians believing in their army is its history of pride and struggle against stronger armies such as Israel. Another more likely reason is the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia. There, the army did not stay neutral but instead moved to protect the population and chased militias and assailants weighing heavily towards the change of regime. However, the one single yet big difference between Tunisian and Egyptian armies is that Ben Ali repressed his army and instead favoured police, effectively making them a silent enemy. On the other hand, in Egypt, Mubarak is the army and the army is Mubarak, and Egyptian army, as a whole unit, will not topple Mubarek because that would amount to treason. They might play a game, but it will all have to be with Mubarak's blessing..

Uncle Sam:

The United States of America have been publicly summoned by Israel to ensure the next regime (if any) respects the pacts between the two countries, and like any other nation in the west they are afraid that the Islamists might take over the control of the country –They love to consistently remind us about the Iranian case. Regardless if these Islamist threats are true or not, they surely play into the hand of the Egyptian regime. The recent footage of thousands praying in the middle of the manifestation in Cairo and moving up and down in a harmonic and devoted way must certainly have added more panic to the western and Israeli mood.

The influence of the USA on the Egyptian army is very strong, beyond a mere friendly relationship. Because Egyptian army receives most of its equipment and services free of charge from the USA, they are bound to negotiate any matter from a weaker point of view. On the other hand, the Americans don’t feel obliged to back Mubarak himself or any other military personality, and that explains while the initial words coming from the USA’s officials were about a swift and complete change of regime into a more democratic style. However, they are also aware that as soon as Mubarak is out of the equation, the people would actually feel even more powerful, just like in Tunisia, and would demand more reforms and force more changes adding more unpredictability into the context effectively putting the USA and Israel back to square zero. The USA will not want that and therefore they have already shown resistance to the idea of forcing a deep change of regim in Egypt.

The people

So far, we have concluded that all influential players on the Egyptian political scene are unlikely to change (or to want to change) the status and the regime in Egypt, and I have purposefully excluded the Egyptian opposition from the equation because, just like in Tunisia, 3 decades of marginalisation made them uninfluential, untrustworthy, and often accused of attempting to ride the wave of the revolution.

For the Egyptian revolution to succeed in changing the regime, it needs to divide-and-conquer the opinions in the government, the army and the USA. This could for instance be displayed in the army becoming fractioned with one significant side (implicitly or explicitly) supporting the revolution, and with the opposition in the USA taking advantage of the Egyptian situation to attack their own government. There are in fact many scenarios of the divide-and-conquer process, but the main question remains how could they be achieved?

For that to happen, and as absurd as it may sound, the Egyptian revolution needs a lot of dead.

So far, about 300 people died in Egypt and that is roughly the same number of people who died in the Tunisian revolution. The number is of a different significance to the two countries because Tunisia is almost one eighth of the Egyptian population. The number of the dead in Egypt so far gives a soft aspect to the uprize and gives the present regime a feel that with time it may fade away. From historical perspective, successful revolutions against despot regimes often came with a blood bath: Romanian revolution, Iranian revolution, Algerian independence war, Bolshevik revolution, French revolution, American independence wars, etc., all had a lot of blood shed in them.

A large number of dead people usually serves as a motivator to the living to continue the fight and as a propeller of the conflict’s human aspect to a degree that usually neutral parties can no longer remain indifferent to it. As the count of the dead rises, the pressure on the ruling regime increases and a serious will to surrender some of the powers as part of an attempt to contain the situation starts. Indeed, peaceful riots, while they are important, would only make the regime uncomfortable, but deaths make them accountable. The accountability would likely force the regime to further resist changes because it means they would now have to answer serious accusations if they are to step down. However, as the number of dead continues to rise even further, the resistance would ultimately start to fade and a desperate will to negotiate would take its place.

It is important to understand that in no way should this article be considered as an invitation to escalate the Egyptian revolution to bloody levels. Rather, it is a mere pragmatic analysis based on historical patterns and the specific characteristics of Egypt and its revolution. And if the protest continues to be wide and strong, I expect the Egyptian government to attempt to end it with the use of much more brutal force, advancing as argument the fact this protest is impacting economically and socially on all Egyptians, including those who are not involved or even sympathising with it. Such course will either break the revolution or help it divide-and-conquer the opinions, which would be the catalyst for the revolution’s victory. That is why the next 2 weeks are in my view very crucial.