Explosive and violent riots have shaken the Middle East to its core, sent a couple of dictators packing, and threaten to topple additional strongmen and monarchs alike. The patterns are the same – high unemployment, particularly among the educated classes with the knowledge and the networking tools to incite, corrupt privilege accorded to the connected few at the expense of the hopeless many, all accelerated by the regional success in Tunisia and Egypt. As the Chinese curse suggests, Middle Eastern prelates are living in “interesting times.” The names roll off the tongue: Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen and Bahrain… and maybe Lebanon, where an election in a violence-plagued country has placed a Hezbollah prime minister at the helm.
American policy-makers fear that this sequential litany of power vacuums will be filled with vitriolic and violent anti-American and anti-Israeli Islamists, resentment reinforced because it was often U.S. military aid that tipped the balance to allow such greed-invested regimes to maintain their repressive control. The U.S. has a long-standing practice, administered by Presidents on both sides of the aisle, of granting aid and support to any regime that advanced U.S. goals, willing to look the other way at the nefarious and corrupt hands reaching into local pockets, executing and imprisoning “dissidents” who resisted. Indeed, the numbers of pro-American charismatic leaders waiting in the wings for “their turn” to replace the regimes that have fallen or that are teetering are particularly small, secular or Muslim.
While anti-Americanism is almost a mandate for any modern Middle Eastern leader-wannabe, the survivalist incumbent power elite (facing anger and scrutiny from the masses), willing to sacrifice a few of their own in a grand gesture seemingly in support of radical change, are also the ones reaching out to American largess for foreign aid grants in exchange for mediating and moderating the degree of change. The most obvious case-in-point is the Egyptian military, the ultimate power that sanctioned populist change, removed the last vestiges of the Mubarak regime, and is administering the arrest and trial of former cabinet members accused of waste and corruption. Yes, the same Egyptian military that controls the Suez Canal, is allowing Iranian military traffic through that canal and that… and here’s the biggie… still has its own corrupt stranglehold on privileged economic benefits that it is most unwilling to relinquish. Their hands are outstretched to the U.S. to continue that military aid package, willing to agree to maintain the existing treaty structure with Israel in exchange for hardware and cash.
Yet even as Mubarak and his cronies are gone, protests and strikes continue to rock Egypt. Didn’t the people get what they wanted? The evil and corrupt leader is gone, his henchmen unseated and elections are looming after things “settle down.” What’s the problem? The notion of a strict Islamic Republic, mirroring the Iranian revolution, strikes fear in the heart of American policy-makers, but the reality of repression represented by Iran seems to have taken that political structure off the table, at least for Egypt and the other threatened powers in the Mediterranean Muslim world. Even the rhetoric of those able to congeal a Muslim radical focus seems strangely at odds with an Islamic Republic a la Iran.
A banished 84-year-old Muslim cleric (pictured above), Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 84, who fled Egypt for Qatar in 1961 after spending significant time in Egyptian prisons, returned home to deliver a much awaited sermon. As a regional televangelist, Qaradawi served as an “intellectual inspiration to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood… His prominence exemplifies the peril and potential for the West as Egypt opens up. While he condemned the 9/11 attacks, he has supported suicide bombers against Israel and attacks on American forces in Iraq.” New York Times, February 18th. But his opening words on February 18th suggested how from Islamic intolerance the possible “next powers” to lead Egypt are likely to be: “Oh Muslims and Copts [referencing the Coptic Christian minority],” he extolled, “I invite you to bow down in prayer together.”
Make no mistake, Qaradawi’s message is and continues to be anti-American, but his sermon “praised Muslims and Christians for standing together in Egypt’s revolution and even lauded the Coptic Christian ‘martyrs’ who once fought the Romans and Byzantines…He urged the military officers governing Egypt to deliver on their promises of turning over power to ‘a civil government’ founded on principles of pluralism, democracy and freedom. And he called on the army to immediately release all political prisoners and rid the cabinet of its dominance by officials of the old Mubarak government.” New York Times. Radical Islam knows that it can no longer sell the repressive Islamic Republic; Iran’s example ended that structure as viable, and even in Afghanistan where the resurgent Taliban is taking over, they are able to do so only with violence and threats… filling a power vacuum created by an horrifically corrupt and very unpopular American-supported regime. The Taliban aren’t “selling” their system of government to the people; they are shoving it down their throats.
The Egyptian Army is still sweating bullets, and while Bahrain and Libya are willing to apply lethal force to repress the populist uprisings, Egyptian military forces are trying to broker a new and vibrant future… well maybe a tad less vibrant if the top military leaders are able to maintain their existing economic privileges. It is a careful balancing act, but as the continued strikes and protests suggest, the people know what is going on… and they may add the Army to the list of political elements that must let go as well. Indeed, as an increasing number of soldiers identify with the populist movement, the Army may face that change from inside as well.
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