Sand dance
The
resignation of Hosni Mubarak was inevitable: the old man
tried to hold things together, failed, and so resigned.
Not only did he face growing dissent from the young,
educated and English-speaking middle class, but he lost
the support of his American backers. He left his post
with as much dignity as possible, not fleeing abroad
like Ben Ali of Tunisia, but to his residence in Sharm
el-Sheikh.
In
all the excitement the quality of reporting by the
Western media has been unbalanced beyond description.
Sensing a great historical moment the press corps surged
into Cairo and interviewed the small minority of
English-speaking Egyptians, presenting their views as
representative. This folly was exposed in one amusing
BBC television report when John Simpson, the BBC’s
veteran world affairs editor ventured out of Cairo to
talk to some real fellahin. He and the camera crew ended
up being arrested, because the locals became
increasingly offended by his line of questioning.
Simpson had ventured into the real Egypt: an Egypt the
culturally-ignorant West now thinks should have
Western-style democracy. But before we can consider the
future, we need to reflect on the past, and what it has
actually meant for the Egyptian people.
Mubarak may not be flavour of the month in the foreign
press and the Cairo intellectuals, but he was actually a
wise dictator. In the years of his presidency he
encouraged the private sector to grow independently from
government and has generally reduced the level of state
involvement in the economy. That is a wisdom notably
lacking in Western leaders. By sticking to Anwar Sadat’s
peace agreement with the Israelis, he got the army paid
for by the Americans, ensuring it was not a burden on
the state. Consequently income taxes have been kept very
low by Western standards, with the subsistence farmers
(fellahin) paying nothing, and the highest rate of 20%
only kicking in at the equivalent of US$7,000,
considerably higher than the average income. There are
no other significant taxes. Above all, he provided
thirty years of stability.
While there is much to criticise, such as police
brutality, in the Muslim world the faults of the Mubarak
regime are normal statist behaviour and generally
accepted. Stay out of trouble, and you are left alone to
go about your business. Mubarak was aware that the
overwhelming majority of Egyptians is not bred to
democracy and only respects strong leaders. Not to
recognise these cultural differences has been a
fundamental mistake made by both President Obama and
David Cameron, the two leaders who feel they have to
comment on these issues. It would have been far better
if they had made no public comment and allowed their
officials to work behind the scenes in the interest of
stability. Instead, their public statements have been
crucial for the success of the demonstrators, and at the
same time have probably alienated the silent,
impoverished Muslim majority who value loyalty over
democracy, as John Simpson so rudely discovered.
That is a brief summary of the factual background, so we
can now turn to the prospects for Egypt and therefore
the region. In doing so, we must dismiss comparisons
with the fall of the Berlin Wall and other “peaceful
revolutions”. For a peaceful revolution the majority of
the newly-enfranchised electorate has to support it,
which is not the case in Egypt. Instead, there are
disturbing similarities with the fall of the Shah of
Iran in 1979. The then British Foreign Secretary, David
Owen, casually remarked in a BBC television interview in
December 1978, that the Shah had lost all credibility
and it was only a matter of time before he was deposed.
The effect of this careless talk was the Shah was indeed
deposed within a month, and Iran rapidly descended into
its black theocracy.
Owen’s public statement and the circumstances
surrounding it have a striking similarity to the way
Mubarak has been undermined thirty-two years later, and
so is a strong pointer to the eventual outcome.
For
the moment, the Egyptian army is in charge, and with the
Americans as their paymasters, there is little doubt
they will arrange a transfer of power from an interim
government through democratically-held elections as they
have promised. But there is no way of knowing who will
arise to fill the considerable political vacuum. The
Muslim Brotherhood is listed as a potential favourite,
but the political power-balance within that party is
also certain to shift before an election can be held,
now that there is the prospect of real power. But as was
the case following the Shah’s downfall, Egypt represents
a golden opportunity for extremists to turn the nation
into a Muslim state that completely rejects western
values, and fights the Muslim crusades against the
Capitalist West and Israel. And we can be certain that
the Iranian secret services are hotly pursuing the
opportunity.
If
Iran succeeds in turning Egypt into a puppet state, she
will have surrounded the Arabian peninsular, which has
been her strategic objective for some time. Then the
West is in real trouble. Saudi Arabia would be well
advised to reconsider her foreign relations as a matter
of urgency, particularly if her own intelligence
confirms Iranian activity in Egypt. It will be a
difficult choice: does she stick with the Western
nations, who have proved to be such treacherous allies
to Mubarak, or do they seek appeasement,
Chamberlain-style, from Ahmadinejad? It will be a
finely-balanced decision. A third, and better option,
may be to talk to China, and join the Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation, thereby gaining the security
protection of both China and Russia. China and Russia
could be the future, America and Europe the past. And at
least SCO members do not clumsily interfere with your
internal politics.
The
implications for the West are extremely worrying, and it
has unwittingly boxed itself into a corner. It is beyond
the scope of an article of a thousand words to propose a
solution or predict an outcome. Instead, it is
sufficient to point out that the removal of Mubarak has
been a very dangerous development for both Egypt and the
West and it is to be much feared, not celebrated.
14 February 2010
