August 06, 2006

The Scene in Egypt

NYT:

The scene has become routine: day and night, in small, run-down teahouses all over this teeming city, men sit quietly smoking harsh tobacco from water pipes with their eyes glued to television news from Lebanon. And around the city, there is a similar reaction: despair.

Not despair over Lebanon — that provokes anger. The hopelessness has begun to boil over as Egyptians see their own country’s problems in the mirror of Lebanon. They are feeling the powerlessness of living under an autocratic system, and confronting the poverty and corruption of their third-world economy.

“As an Egyptian, there is nothing I can personally do,” said Sayed Abdul Aziz, a hospital security guard staring up at the Egyptian news as it showed a Lebanese child, bandaged with his legs blown off. “We have so many pressures here in our daily lives. I have to make a living, that’s my first concern when I wake up. Everything is expensive. It’s harder to make a living.”

For decades, the Arab-Israeli conflict provided presidents, kings, emirs and dictators of the region with a safety valve for public frustration. Middle Eastern leaders were all too willing to allow their people to rant against Israel and champion the Palestinian cause, rather than focus on domestic politics or economic concerns.

That valve no longer appears to be working in Egypt. The anger against Israel remains, but now is melding with fury, and despair, over the many domestic problems for which Egyptians blame their own government. The war has encouraged many Egyptians to focus their anger inward, rather than outward, according to political analysts, political advocates and ordinary people on the street.

After an Israeli strike last Sunday collapsed a Qana building, killing 29 civilians, most of them children, Egyptians took to the streets of downtown Cairo in a protest that demonstrated the trajectory of emotion. “Long live your struggle, Lebanon,” the crowds chanted. “Oh Beloved Hezbollah, strike, strike Tel Aviv,” they chanted.

“Down, down with Mubarak,” they chanted, referring to President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

Max Boot is right! This is just the time to cut off funding to that dreary Pharaoh Mubarak (with the country already grappling with endemic poverty, contributing to further radicalization). Why, we might even get the Camp David Accords shredded by the next "democratic" government we usher in to the region--more 'creative destruction'--you know, just to keep things interesting!

More:

Everything making people angry is coming out,” said Gasser Abdel Razek, a lawyer and board member of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. “I don’t think the regime is comfortable any more.”

By most accounts, Qana was the turning point. The image of so many dead children angered and depressed people. But it was not the first time a conflict with Israel had been viewed here as another link in a chain of domestic frustrations.

Mr. Abdel Razek said the connections began to be made in early 2001 as the second Palestinian intifada raged. He said advocates who had initially focused on trying to get medicine and food aid to the Palestinians soon began to see a link between struggle in Palestine and the lack of democracy back home.

“Activists started linking the lack of democracy in Egypt and what was happening to the Palestinians,” Mr. Abdel Razek said. “We understood we could not change what our government was deciding on the issue, and the Palestinians are paying the price.”

The war in Lebanon, he and other analysts agreed, has accelerated that evolution, so that people look at Lebanon and complain about gas prices. They look at Lebanon and complain about government corruption. They have even used Lebanon to attack the government’s efforts to control the political message delivered by imams across the country.

Lots of talk about 'root causes' these days, isn't there? Pity no one in power in Washington seems to be focusing on the 800-pound mother-of-root-causes staring us all in the face. That is, the need for Israel to reach comprehensive peace treaties (along the lines Brent Scowcroft recently described) with each of its neighbors (not least so the ones already in place with Jordan and Egypt are not imperiled in the future), and the concomittant need for economic reforms, accompanied by incremental political ones, to take place in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. More 'shock therapy' and 'creative destruction' (whether broadening of the Lebanon war, incursions in Syria, military action against Iran, continued failure to stabilize Iraq, and so on) are only going to fuel further radicalization in the region. I mean, does anyone believe, for instance, that the Israeli action in Lebanon is weakening Hezbollah's influence in the body politic there? On this last, see here for some background on Hezbollah's deep grass-roots support among the Shi'a of southern Lebanon. Needless to say, the havoc wreaked to Lebanon's economy, and concomittant weakening of the central government, only heightens the appeal of sub-governmental actors who combine social welfare arms with their military wings. But wait, I forgot. We are totally eliminating Hezbollah, of course, as it's one of the root causes holding Condi's transformation initiatives at bay, so there's nothing to worry about....

...now, snark aside, let me say here that the Israelis have certainly achieved increasing the deterrent effect on Hezbollah who, in the future, will think very long and hard indeed about kidnapping any IDF personnel across the international border, or launching rockets again once hostilities have ended. This is a good thing. But the over-reaching manner by which the offensive was pursued (full air and naval blockade, extensive bombing north of the Litani, etc), combined with the fact that the draft UNSC resolution is not seeking an immediate cease-fire (to include a withdrawal of Israeli forces back across the border), makes it very, very difficult for the Lebanese (not least, Nabih Berri) and the Syrians to do what we all want them to do, namely rein in Nasrallah and his Iranian proxy attributes. Hezbollah is a major Lebanese political party, and it is not fair of it to play hand-maiden to Tehran. But to lessen Iranian influence, we need to get buy-in to our strategy from key political actors in Lebanon, and at least to some extent, the Syrians. I'm not sure this resolution, in its present incarnation, is going to get us there. And thus the risk of miscalculations and the conflict growing remain very real, which is a very worrisome prospect indeed, not to mention continued tragedy for innocents both in Israel and Lebanon who are being slaughtered daily.

Posted by Gregory at August 6, 2006 04:53 PM