The US faces an intensely uncertain future in Egypt, a stalwart ally for decades in the volatile Middle East, where key tenets of US foreign policy are now thrown into doubt.
Behind US President Barack Obama’s praise for Egypt’s protesters and the outcome they achieved lie major unanswered questions about what will come next now that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been overthrown after 30 years of authoritarian rule.
For many people in Egypt, those were years of oppression, corruption and poverty; but for the US, Mubarak was an anchor of stability at the helm of the world’s largest Arab nation, enforcing a peace treaty with Israel and protecting vital US interests, including passage for oil through the Suez Canal.
PHOTO: AFP
For now, the military is in charge, but whether, when or how a transition will be made to the kind of democratic society that meets the protesters’ demands remains unknown. Speaking at the White House on Friday, Obama acknowledged difficult days ahead and unanswered questions, but expressed confidence that the answers will be found.
Most tellingly, as the US warily eyes the days ahead, Obama singled out the Egyptian military for praise in the restraint it showed through more than two weeks of largely peaceful protests.
However, the president also emphasized the military’s role as a “caretaker” leading up to elections set for September and said it must now “ensure a transition that is credible in the eyes of the Egyptian people.”
This meant lifting Egypt’s hated 30-year-old “emergency” police powers laws, protecting the rights of citizens, revising the country’s law and Constitution “to make this change irreversible and laying out a clear path to elections that are fair and free,” he said.
However, just as the US had limited influence during the uprising that seemed to spring almost out of nowhere to overtake Egypt, it has limited influence over what happens next. The US provides about US$1.5 billion a year in aid to Egypt, the vast majority of it to the military, and has a good relationship with the Egyptian military, which often sends officers there for training, but that doesn’t guarantee a commanding US role.
“Do we have leverage or influence?” asked Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to six US secretaries of state. “Well, did we have leverage and influence over the past few weeks? That’s highly arguable.”
Miller, now at the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank, said it would take weeks or months to sort things out. In the end, he said: “I think Egypt will be a far less forgiving place for American interests as democracy takes root — if in fact it does.”
Asked about the uncertainty ahead, especially with respect to the role of the military, US presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs could only answer: “I don’t think we have to fear democracy.”
Beyond the question of who will end up in control in Egypt and whether the US will still be able to count the country as a firm and stable ally, there are concerns over whether the unrest that brought down Mubarak will spread to other nations in the Middle East, including oil-rich autocratic neighbors.
That prospect looms even as the US handling of the Egypt situation has angered some leaders in the region who thought Washington was too quick to abandon Mubarak — although Obama and his administration studiously avoided ever calling outright for the president’s ouster.
On Friday, after Mubarak’s resignation was announced, Obama was able to give fuller expression to his views.
“By stepping down, President Mubarak responded to the Egyptian people’s hunger for change,” Obama said, in words reminiscent of his own presidential campaign.
Of the protesters, the president said: “This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied.”
He compared them to the Germans who tore down the Berlin Wall and to independence leader Mohandas Gandhi’s nonviolent ranks in India.
Mubarak’s resignation came less than 24 hours after he surprised the White House and many others by delivering a defiant speech on Thursday in which he refused to step down, confounding widespread expectations that he would do so. Obama learned of his resignation on Friday morning when an aide brought him a note during a meeting in the Oval Office.
Then he spent a few moments, along with the rest of the world, watching the joyous celebrations in Cairo on TV.
“Egyptians have inspired us and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence,” Obama said. “For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.”
The protests arose in a country with enormous social problems, with vast differences between the haves and the have-nots. It is a country where more than 50 percent of the adult population is illiterate and about 40 percent live below or close to the poverty line. The rising cost of food was one of the leading factors underpinning the protests. Some of the impoverished Egyptians are beneficiaries of US food aid and officials said on Friday that US aid to Egypt was not expected to be affected by Mubarak’s departure.
It was not clear what role Islamic militant groups such as the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood might play in the new government that emerges. It is also of critical importance whether the new government will continue to honor the landmark 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
The top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, is scheduled to be in Israel today and tomorrow, with developments in Egypt expected to be at the top of the agenda. The meeting was previously arranged. Mullen is also visiting Jordan, another Middle East ally that faces the prospect of civil unrest.
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