People power wins

Finally, faced with 18 days of awesome people power, Hosni Mubarak had to eat humble pie. There are many battles that lie ahead for the Egyptian people, but the present moment is the one to savour and to marvel at the persistence and resilience of Egyptians of all walks of life and various hues refusing to be diverted by the regime’s thugs and the ambivalence of the Army to retain their non-violent vigil for change in the appropriate setting of the Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo.

There are lessons to be learned from the Egyptian people’s triumph. First, even a region as numbed as the Middle East and North Africa — West Asia for us — by decades and centuries of autocratic rule is not immune to the virus of freedom. The propitious factors that brought about the Egyptian triumph were a complex mix: the Tunisian example showing that people can overturn a long oppressive Arab regime, prevailing economic hardships combined with high food inflation, the Internet revolution and the social network sites enabling a young savvy generation to subvert the control mechanisms of the state, the Al Jazeera satellite television channel in Arabic with its bold reporting transforming the Arab world and a sense of humiliation of an oppressed people who could feel the air of freedom in the world.
The brave Tunisians showed the way, but the fall of the Mubarak regime represents a tectonic shift in the Arab world. US President Barack Obama said that Egypt would not be the same again; indeed, the Arab world will not be the same again. Egypt, the most populous Arab nation and the traditional leader in the region, has been punching below its weight because the compact it made with the US meant that it had sold itself for $1.3 billion in military aid each year to protect Israel and the peace treaty it signed with Jerusalem. It had lost the headquarters of the Arab League after it signed the peace treaty and it took Cairo much diplomatic footwork
and long years to rehabilitate itself.
It was, indeed, a curious fact that West Asia was the only region of the world, with the exception of Israel and an Iran whose revolution was transformed into a theocracy, that seemed immune to the winds of change. First Tunisia and now Egypt have changed that sorry state, and the reaction of other regional states shows how nervous they are. Israel was rooting for Mr Mubarak because he was seen as the guarantor of the peace treaty and helped stymie the Palestinians through an inhuman blockade and pretended there was a peace process. Other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Syria have their own anxieties. But two crucial factors that helped maintain the autocratic nature of Arab states were America’s need to buttress the Israeli state in continued occupation of Palestinian land since 1967 and exaggerated fears of Islamic fundamentalism if the strong men would go. Western interest in the region, of course, stemmed from its oil and gas riches.
Circumstances vary from country to country, but it will now be very difficult for other rulers of the ilk of Mr Mubarak to ward off what began in Tunisia. Some have already tried to give sops to their people, others promise of greater breathing space. But the atmosphere in the region is brittle and any spark can unleash people power, which has proved so effective in upsetting long-ruling autocracies.
The strong men have no answer to the new menace, as they view the tsunami that has hit their old comfortable worlds. One must distinguish between the Gulf monarchies and the other states. Gulf rulers, flush with oil and gas money, have a compact with their subjects: cradle to grave welfare in exchange for their quiescence in the political field. For others, economic problems and rising inequities are ticking bombs waiting to blow up their regimes.
Apart from Israel, some other Arab states pressed Washington, itself torn between political prudence and a pitch for democracy, to let Mr Mubarak stay. The US administration was divided between those in favour of Mr Mubarak and others opposed to his continued rule, given the nature of the protests. Strangely, President Obama’s special envoy to Mr Mubarak publicly supported the defrocked President remaining in charge till the planned September handover. Having relied on autocrats for so long for reasons of state, the US could hardly jettison them,
the Israeli issue always trumping America’s West Asia policy.
A black chapter in the drama preceding Mr Mubarak’s fall concerns the attitude of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He publicly endorsed Mr Mubarak’s presidency during the transition process, accenting stability above everything else, very similar to the vocabulary US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was using at that time. As Mr Ban’s distinguished predecessor, once removed, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, has revealed in his book after the US had blackballed him for the usual second term, the head of the UN administration must maintain his equation with the organisation’s most important member. But there is a difference between accommodating the US and being subservient to it. It is a tragedy for the UN that its highest functionary should choose to please the US and vote against freedom and justice.
But this is Egypt’s moment of glory and no one can take it away from the Egyptian people. If Tunisia showed the way, Egyptians demonstrated that an entrenched dictatorship underpinned by a ruthlessly efficient secret police apparatus — America’s favourite for the rendition of suspected terrorists from Afghanistan — can be brought down in two and a half weeks.