Egypt Revolution

Egypt’s hope revolution: Will it change the Arab world?
SOME ISSUES have already been settled. For example, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s son will not
succeed him. This takes the future away from Mubarak’s grasp. There is now a recognition across the Arab
world that Al Jazeera news channel, headquartered in Qatar, became the credible carrier of news and images
from Tunis to Cairo. BBC and CNN scrambled to catch up. For once they were second or third best.
Al Jazeera is now compulsory watching for anyone trying to follow the West Asian world. For years New Delhi
dragged its feet, resisting full-fledged Al Jazeera coverage from India. Some months ago, all documentation
were cleared. Indeed, a launch party was held, Ministry of External Affairs officials in due attendance. But after
all this why are the historic events in West Asia not being televised in India?
Happily Indian journalists, both television and print, have turned up in Cairo to give us, by way of relief, an
Indian perspective on the unfolding events. And they are on their own, unlike in 2003 when a bevy of them
cheerfully allowed themselves to be “embedded” in Kuwait to cover American “victory” in Iraq. Just imagine, if
the Indian media were to turn up in Cairo in full force, this could well be a defining moment, the Indian global
media that would then liven up the Foreign Office and be seen worldwide.
Tanks, torture, brutal police force, prisons packed like sardines and the frightful ‘mukhabirat’ or secret service
are the stilts that keep dictatorships steady. Straightforward information, modern communications, Twitter,
Facebook are anathema to such regimes. Little wonder these lines of communication were snapped. Why have
Al Jazeera offices in Cairo been shut down but not others? BBC and CNN, for instance. Can they be managed
more effectively without the competition from Al Jazeera showing them up?
If you visit the magnificent India House on the Nile, the ambassador
in earlier years would have taken you on a tour charged with
nostalgia: “There in that sofa sat Nasser and Nehru.”
Nasser died in September 1970 and Anwar Sadat succeeded him in

October of that year. Having something of the Muslim Brotherhood in
his background, he did not have to grapple with his conscience to
abandon Nasser’s Arab Socialism and join the American camp when
the Cold War was at its most intense. Indeed, in 1979 he signed the
peace treaty with Israel for which he paid with his life. He was
assassinated in 1981, clearing the way for Hosni Mubarak’s
dictatorship, which has lasted 30 years.
In a bipolar world, non-alignment, which Nehru and Nasser had

nurtured, seemed relevant. But when Egypt, under Sadat, crossed
over to the other side, he had abandoned the Nehru-Nasser idea of Youthquake Growing unemployment
non-alignment too. and rising prices are the main
reasons that triggered the revolution
in Egypt
If New Delhi’s relations with Egypt dwindled because of Cairo
switching sides during the Cold War, it logically follows that there
should have been a repair in these relations after the Soviet collapse PHOTO: AP
that caused New Delhi to lurch towards the US and Israel the way
Sadat had done. Hosni Mubarak, after all, sat squarely on the Israeli-
American lap.
This did not happen. In fact, foreign policy towards the Arab world since the 1990s revealed a different reality.
New Delhi’s engagement of the Arab world was only part of its outreach as leader of the non-aligned. With
non-alignment having lost relevance, India quite incredibly lost interest in the Arab world — a complete
departure from Nehru’s vision. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states were exceptions largely because of substantial
remittances and oil supplies.
An exponential growth in high-tech arms supplies from Israel could have been cited as one of the reasons for
tactical Indian distancing from the Arab world. But this did not make sense because most of the Arab states
(except Syria and Lebanon) were western puppets.
And now that the democratic urge is ascendant in Tunisia and Egypt, will the world’s new “risen power”,
aspiring for a permanent seat at the Security Council, step out of its diplomatic “purdah” in the Arab world?
For proper perspective of current developments, one has to place the region against the events of past 60
years. In 1951, Britain and the US snuffed out democracy in Iran by removing the elected government of
Mohammed Mosaddegh because he nationalised western oil interests. From that day, western strategy in the
region has been conditioned by the twin interests of oil and Israeli security.
At the other end of the spectrum, Nasser was stoking political Islam quite unintentionally by keeping in jail for
10 long years, Saiyyid Qutub, who spelt out a plan to recreate the Muslim world on Quranic grounds. His book
Milestones advises Muslims to prepare themselves for “a life until death in poverty, difficulty, frustration,
torment and sacrifice”. Qutub recommends “offensive Jehad to carry Islam throughout the earth to the whole
of mankind”. Somewhere here are the ideas perfected by al Qaeda.
IT IS generally believed that the manufacture of radical Islam in Afghanistan to evict the Soviets eventually
boomeranged on the twin towers in New York on 9/11. A key detail in the narrative is missed out. The military
in Algeria, with support from the US and Europe, set aside the election of 1991 in which the Islamic Salvation
Front swept to victory with a two-thirds majority. This sent shockwaves across Arab populations.
Brazen western insensitivity to peoples’ will in West Asia is part of the reason for acute anti-Americanism in the
region. Lip service to electoral democracy but an acceptance only of pro-West outcomes! Hamas’ electoral
victory is a case in point. Let us wait for the outcome in Lebanon.
When Arab regimes are seen to be obsequiously supportive of such gross injustice, popular anger against these
dictatorships is immeasurably higher. Anger that simmers below the surface for long years begins to look like a
condition of normalcy. Quite as imperceptible are demographic changes leading to phenomena encapsulated in
catchphrases like “youth bulge”.
This means that more than half the population in the Arab world is
The interests of oil and Israeli under 25! More than 80 percent of those in the shrunken job market
security have conditioned have university degrees or diplomas. Add to this the rising prices,
western strategy in the Arab growing unemployment and ageing dictatorships becoming ever more
world brutal and you have a recipe for all that is happening in Tunisia, Egypt,
Yemen and to a more manageable extent, in Jordan.
If God came riding a thunderbolt and all the ills listed above were
miraculously removed, there will still remain one that will rile Arab populations until a solution is found: the
Israeli-Palestinian issue, the mindless building of settlements by Israel.
Will Mubarak be able to ride over this crisis? Will the army step in to save an ailing, 82-year-old dictator? I
doubt it. In some obscure resort, Americans, Israelis, Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians (minus Mubarak) must
be deliberating the transition, looking over their shoulders, making sure that no paper or computer trail is left
behind for an outfit smarter than WikiLeaks.

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Egypt’s hope revolution: Will it change the Arab world?

Nasser died in September 1970 and Anwar Sadat succeeded him in

In a bipolar world, non-alignment, which Nehru and Nasser had

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