Restoring Sanity

There has been a massive amount of interference on the part of the West, the United States and the European Union, in Egypt's affairs in the current upheaval of demonstrations in Cairo. Egypt has suffered a heavy financial blow as a result of the insistent demands of anti-Mubarak protesters who have taken over the city's Tahrir Square in almost two weeks of protest against the continued governance of President Mubarak.

The normal affairs of the country have ground to a halt. Businesses have closed, manufacturing has been stalled, foreign investors have decamped, tourism has stagnated, trade, export and import have all been impacted. Egypt's surprisingly good rebound from the recession where its GDP was growing at 6% has now contracted, its stock exchange and its banks in a state of confusion.

A shrilly vocal minority of social and political activists all with one demand in common has paralyzed the country. The government has made a number of historic concessions to the demands of the protesters, but they adamantly refuse to leave despite the fact that an agenda has been advanced that will see their demands in large part recognized and a change in administration undertaken.

Most of Egypt is desperate to return to normal. People want to resume working, they want to be able to withdraw funds from banks, to obtain food for their families, to live with the security of knowing that roving thugs will not loot their businesses nor their homes. The police, who had reacted to the protesters with their usual tough responses were replaced by the army, which quietly oversees order.

The crowds in Tahrir Square carry signs printed in English, obviously aimed at the international audience of foreigners transfixed with the power of a historical overturning of a traditional Middle Eastern system of governance, whose powerful message is infecting the other autocracies and dictatorships with protests. Politicians and army generals visiting the square have unsuccessfully attempted to persuade protesters to decamp.

The protesters appear to be awaiting greater attention from the international community. The U.S. dispatched a special envoy, a former administration's choice for ambassador to Egypt, who met with President Mubarak, and concluded based on their conversation, and with surveying the situation that it would be wise to honour the president's intention to see his country through to a change in administration to ensure an orderly transition.

President Barack Obama lost no time in challenging his own envoy's conclusion, stating that this was his personal opinion, not reflective of that of the U.S. administration. Which begs the question, why send special envoy Frank Wisner to Cairo then, to begin with, if his judgement based on his background knowledge of the country was not to be honoured?

"Mubarak must stay in office in order to steer those changes through... This is an ideal moment for him to show the way forward.", he stated. In fact, reasonable heads of state like that of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged patience and that it would be well to stand back and let Egypt work itself out of its current impasse toward a workable resolution, and not, as has been done by the U.S. and the E.U., abandon a long-time ally.

"The views he (Wisner) expressed today are his own. He did not coordinate his comments with the U.S. government", stated a U.S. State Department spokesman. And yet the latest news out of the situation reveals that the U.S. and European countries are perhaps revising their earlier rash statements, and accepting the feasibility of having President Mubarak remain as president, with his newly-appointed vice-president Omar Suleiman, taking the reins of his new station to relieve the president.

The Egyptian army, President Mubarak's political administrative colleagues, many ordinary Egyptians would far prefer an orderly transition with their president remaining at the helm, until September elections, to afford him the dignity of an orderly departure and an orderly progression to a new political order.

Mohamed ElBaradai, formerly with the UN's IAEA, and Abu Musa, ending his two terms as head of the 22-member Arab League, stand by, both bravely offering themselves as new presidential material, one a convenient front for the Muslim Brotherhood, both willing to break peace ties with Israel. They are in touch with the Arab Street, which the National Democratic Party apparently is not.

What should remain a matter of deep concern to both Egyptians and the larger world community is the potential for the Muslim Brotherhood which is reputed to have a million members in the 90-million population of the country, to insinuate itself into a position of power and authority. Its Islamist agenda, calling for a more fundamentalist society is not attractive to all Egyptians.

But its call for an end to the peace treaty with Israel, and to renew the possibility of war with Israel is a popularly-shared one within the greater Egyptian population. And that is obviously no guarantee of a return to peaceful relations with their neighbour. If that does come to fruition it will send the Middle East spiralling back into the bitter waste of incessant wars.

That would succeed in destabilizing the entire Middle East, and inevitably draw other countries into attempts to pacify the situation. People will die, not only among the military, but hugely civilian populations, given the more advanced military machines stockpiled throughout the region. Warring countries' infrastructure will be heavily damaged, their economies eroded.

Hostilities unleashed by the Muslim Brotherhood, joined by Hamas and by Hezbollah and Iran, and Syria, enlisting finally the engagement of Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and possibly Turkey, will result in a scorched landscape from which the countries involved will never quite recover.

Change is not always quite as beneficent as imagined, when long-term thought does not engage the imagination.