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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Perspectives |
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Politics |
Autumn of the Pharaohs
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| How the reverberations of Egypt’s revolution sounded across the rest of the Middle East |
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SUHAIB SALEM / REUTERS |
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| A woman celebrates in front of a tank near Tahrir Square in
Cairo after Hosni Mubarak’s exit.
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| W |
HEN IT FINALLY CAME, many did a doubletake.
The statement by the Egyptian vice
president, Omar Suleiman, was so short
that there was a pause after he ended with
an imploration that God help us all. And then, a sonic wave
of rejoicing pulsed from Tahrir Square and continued late
into the night. |
You did not have to be Egyptian or Arab to feel pride
at what had just been accomplished: after 18 days of protests,
over 300 deaths and many more wounded, the army
flinched and removed Hosni Mubarak. That military men
remain ostensibly in charge of the country mattered little
next to the symbolic import of what had happened: a ruler,
one of them, had been deposed. The sense of the protest
movement’s righteousness, of justice at long last rendered,
is universally, intuitively understandable.
Even so, this moment was particularly rich in symbolism
for Arabs. When they looked at the protestors celebrating,
much as they looked at the celebration a few weeks earlier
in Tunis, their reaction was not just one of support. It was
one of recognition: on the streets of Cairo, they saw themselves.
They instinctively understood the humiliation that Egyptians felt, because it was so similar to their own: the
feeling of being taken for granted by your rulers, of being a
subject rather than a citizen, of being constantly manipulated
by powers whose credibility has long run out.
It is fair to point to the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser in
Egypt as a symbol of many of the Arab world’s ills. But this
is to forget that, for several generations, it also represented
an era of great optimism. It is no coincidence that, for the
past week, Egyptian television has been replaying the patriotic
songs of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s era—the period
most associated with Egypt’s leadership on the world stage
in the modern era.
What happens in Egypt matters, and usually doesn’t just
stay in Egypt. Some of this is because it was the first Arab
country to encounter European colonialism with the invasion
of French troops led by Napoleon in 1798, an event that
prompted generations of Egyptians and Arabs to ponder
why Europe had made such a prodigious technological and
intellectual leap while this part of the world had stagnated.
Egyptian scholars of the 19th century were among the first
Arabs to head to Paris or London to imbibe that knowledge.
But it was not only Egyptians that led this change: Egypt in
the late 19th and early 20th century attracted all sorts of
activists, intellectuals and entrepreneurs from around the
region and beyond.
Egypt’s cultural capital is partly why the events of the recent
weeks, culminating in the toppling of Mubarak, have
had such an electrifying effect on the rest of the region.
From an Arab perspective, it is as if a new Egypt had been
born. The country lately mostly associated with the pervasive
mediocrity of Mubarak’s rule, whose regional clout had
largely eclipsed and had been maintained by Western support,
now seems born-again. Many Egyptians I spoke to in
Cairo described a leaden weight coming off their shoulders.
The question is not, for the moment, whether they will have
an Islamist or secular government, or whether their relationship
with Israel and the West will be antagonistic. It is,
first and foremost, a sense of regained dignity. That dignity,
and that of Tunisians, is now the envy of the Arab world.
Perhaps not un-coincidentally, these uprisings for dignity
are also a revival of the pan-Arabism that was associated
with Nasser’s Egypt. This new pan-Arabism is not based
just on shared identity or a rejection of colonial powers and
Israel. It is based on a shared experience of dictatorship and
a shared rejection of it. For the first time in decades, a new
pan-Arab ideal is being forged, around ideals of universal
human rights and a right to genuine political representation
that transcends the corporatist ethos of the nationalist regimes
of the 1950s and 1960s or their Islamist alternative.
The wave of unrest that is now shaking a long slumbering
Arab world does not yet have a clear outcome. Transitions
to democracy, or even simply better governance, will be difficult. The deposed regimes left many booby-traps
behind, from failing educational systems to sectarian rifts.
A political leadership that has the moral authority to guide
the transition process in a positive direction and convince
those eager for change in their lives to be patient has yet to
emerge. No doubt there will be difficulties ahead. For now,
many Arabs are feeling both apprehension and exhilaration
about this uncertainty: for the first time in many years,
it finally seems like politics exist.
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