Egypt

02/03/11

Like many of you, I have spent the last week devouring news from Egypt. As I watched some of the footage coming in on CNN this past weekend, I couldn't help but think back to a few days in the spring of 1989 when I sat glued to the TV watching events unfold in Tiananmen Square. Although some of the images were similar, the protests that have swept through North Africa, first ending the 28 year long rule of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and now threatening to break the decades-long dictatorship of President Mubarak in Egypt, are different from the student demonstrations in China 22 years ago in several significant respects.

The most fundamental difference is philosophical. Economics provided a backdrop for the Tiananmen Square protests and the catalyst was the death of a reform minded member of the Chinese government named Hu Yaobang, but the central thrust of the protests was more abstract – simply put the students that were the driving force wanted more democracy. By contrast, the protests in North Africa are not fueled by a desire for self governance. There are cries for a government that is more responsive to the needs of the people, particularly economic needs in the form of more and higher paying jobs, and demands that the current government step down, but there is no solidified desire to replace the government with a democratic system. In the last day or two, some leaders have emerged asking for democratic reforms in Cairo and Mubarak has offered to liberalize election laws, but the crowds demanding his immediate ouster have only grown in number. It is by no means certain that if and when Mubarak is replaced, a true democracy will spring forth.

The United States has a history of propping up dictators when it suits our interests and Egypt is no exception. It has long been one of our strongest allies in the region, but unlike other dictatorships that we supported as a bulwark against communism only to see them become hostile to American interests post cold war, Egypt has remained a friend to both the United States and Israel. It seems self obvious to many that we should be supporting the reform movement because we support the spreading of democratic principles, but if Mubarak's government is replaced by another dictatorship, then the cause of freedom is not advanced and we run the very real risk of empowering a more fundamentalist totalitarian government that would be a threat to American interests and Israeli sovereignty.

The demonstrations in Tiananmen Square triggered protests in other parts of China, most notably Shanghai, but they were relatively small in scale and scope. In Egypt, as it was in Tunisia, the unrest is widespread. The use of social networking and easy availability of cell phones helped spread the North African protests in ways that were not available to the students in China. As a result, it is considerably easier for crowds to converge in multiple locations, making containment a much bigger challenge. In what has become known to most of the world as the Tiananmen Massacre, the Chinese army forcibly ended the protests in June of 1989. In Egypt today, the military has taken to the streets but has made no attempt to quell the protests and has shown some tentative support to the protesters. It's unclear whether the Egyptian army has been ordered to maintain a hands off posture or if the army itself has decided to abandon Mubarak. Given the number of people involved, the latest estimates have a quarter of a million people in the streets in Cairo, and the fact that the demonstrations span multiple cities and are not contained to small areas of each city, it's equally unclear how effectively the army could end them.

The Egyptian army is the most modern army in the region, due largely to long term military aid from the United States. With the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, it seems likely that any new government that manages to coalesce after Mubarak is gone will be more fundamentalist to the detriment of US and Israeli interests.

Wednesday morning brought about something new as counter demonstrations emerged after the government used state sponsored media to ask supporters to take to the streets. The anti-Mubarak faction claims that counter demonstrators are a mix of undercover police and paid hoodlums, but according to the AP, the bulk appears to be middle class families satisfied by the concessions that Mubarak has already made and worried about long term damage to the economy caused by the unrest. In Cairo's Tahrir Square the situation became tense as the two sides moved from hurling words to hurling objects at each other. Pro government demonstrators, some carrying machetes, threw chunks of concrete and bottles at the anti-Mubarak protesters, who returned in kind. The army, which has been widely praised for its neutrality, remained on the sidelines in plain view of both factions. The anti-government demonstrators, who had taken the army's silence as a sign of support, has expressed feelings of betrayal now that the army isn't moving in to protect them from the counter protests.