Perhaps one of the most apt descriptions of the White House’s Egyptian dilemma has been offered by veteran journalist and former assistant secretary of state under president Jimmy Carter– Leslie H. Gelb - when he wrote that this administration would have to be forgiven “for not knowing whether to ride the tiger or help put him back in a cage.”
There were some awkward moments in the last week of January, when Hillary Clinton spoke of the Mubarak regime as a “stable” government and Vice-president Joe Biden explained that, as a faithful ally and a friend of Israel, the Egyptian president could not be defined as a dictator.
The sheer idiocy and smugness of the powerful, compounded by decades of geostrategic blindness and unwarranted support for whatever Tel Aviv does or says, suffices to explain such disastrous comments. But we must admit that the Obama administration was relatively quick to adjust to the situation. According to insiders, it took the US officials a little while to catch up, but around Sunday morning (January 30), they finally understood that the tiger would never go back in its cage.
If not very elegant, the discreet effort to nudge Mubarak out of power without appearing to betray him too shamelessly is probably the least worst solution for a superpower that has tied itself in knots in the Middle-East. Of course, the trick might not work so smoothly. In any case, it looks a bit too much like Obama’s typical desire to be everybody’s friend, cajoling simultaneously the dictator, its blood-soaked security apparatus, the unfathomably cautious army hierarchy and the embattled populace.
Now, as witty and suggestive as it is, Gelb’s tiger metaphor has its limits. It relies too much on unspoken assumptions about one favorite scarecrow of the western psyche: the infamous “Arab street.” One of the most striking and durable effects of the Tunisian and Egyptian rebellions might well be a radical shift in the image of the Arab masses in the West and elsewhere.
One almost feels the frustration in some corners. What, no bloodthirsty crowds spitting their hate for “our freedoms”, calling for jihad and burning American flags? Bearded and beardless youths marching in solidarity? Veiled and unveiled women protesting together against the tyranny? Constitutional lawyers, hip bloggers and fiery trade unionists joining hands with galabiya clad street vendors and pious housewives? Well, that is unsettling.
The Arab democratic revolution is not only shaking the bars of the cruel cage built by the modern pharaohs and sultans, it is almost unwillingly tearing down a wall of prejudice. Of course, one should not shift too quickly from a demonic image to an idyllic picture. The Middle-East is ripe with contradictions between classes, communities and generations, and there’s no scarcity of peddlers of hate among local political entrepreneurs and ideologues.
Nevertheless, the slow accommodation between secular aspirations and religious revivalism is a fact. Among other things, it is proven by the cautious but growing collaboration over civil rights and fundamental liberties between various segments of the liberal center, the left and the Islamists in Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan.
This kind of democratic learning process can certainly be thwarted or reversed, but this also depends on the attitude of the dominant foreign powers. Preaching popular sovereignty and the rule of law while making exceptions when Hamas, Hezbollah or the Muslim Brothers win too many votes in regular elections is not the best way to convince a region that already has many justified colonial and postcolonial grievances against the West.
For hardboiled western foreign policy realists and local autocrats, the “Arab street” has always been perceived as a problem. During the Tunisian and Egyptian protests, with their very marginal amount of violence and their extraordinary level of spontaneous discipline, self-organization and civic-mindedness, the despised populace has proven that it can be a key part of the solution. The onslaught of Mubarak’s thugs engaging in brutal provocation aims to break this peaceful image. “We want to keep this country safe, they want to destroy it,” explained a young female student to a foreign visitor stunned by the efficiency of self-managed crowd control and garbage disposal among the protesters on Tahrir Square.
Since Muhammad Ali’s reforms in the XIXth century, Egypt had often been viewed as a beacon of progress, enlightenment and social experimentation in the Arab world. Its fall to the status of third rate praetorian regime and stooge of the triple alliance between Washington, Tel Aviv and the House of Saud is one of the features of Mubarak’s regime that most hurts the pride of thoughtful Egyptians.
A few years ago, when asked why Egypt had lost its role as the center of Arab thought and culture, and whether its decline could ever be reversed, Ahmad Fouad Negm, a rebellious poet and folk hero, answered the following: “Egypt is a candle submerged by the river. When the earth is dark, Egypt comes out of the river and lights the world.”
This light is burning again, and it will be hard to smother.
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Globalization might already sound like a stale catchword, but the new interconnected reality it describes still has surprising tricks up its sleeves. So what do you do when you’re a leftish French writer born in Africa and living in South America, with a background in Slavic Studies, a worried fascination for emerging Asian powers, and interests ranging from classical political philosophy to Bollywood film music? Read, travel, wonder. And send scattered dispatches from modernity’s frontlines.
Marc Saint-Upéry is a French journalist and political analyst living in Ecuador since 1998. He writes about political philosophy, international relations and development issues for various French and Latin American publications and in the international magazines Le Monde Diplomatique and Nueva Sociedad. He is the author of El Sueño de Bolívar: El Desafío de las izquierdas Sudamericanas (Bolivar’s Dream: the Left’s challenge in South America).
