The Autumn of Mubarak
AZARVA, JEFFREY
The Autumn of Mubarak The high price of Washington’s going soft on Egypt’s autocrat. BY JEFFREY AZARVA Like most aging autocrats with declining legitimacy, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak seeks to...
...largesse as an entitlement and dismisses Washington’s demarches as “unacceptable interference” in Egyptian affairs...
...But should Mubarak die or become incapacitated in offi ce—and he has hinted at hanging on until the bitter end—Gamal’s perceived weakness might lead the military to thrust him aside...
...Attempting to “topple” the regime...
...Just last year, members of his National Democratic party (NDP) advocated “trampling over” the Camp David Accords in response to Israeli excavations near the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, claiming that “war with Israel is still ongoing...
...administration prepares to enter office, it would do well to send Mubarak and the one-in-three Arabs he rules the message that U.S...
...Once considered a testing ground for the Bush administration’s freedom agenda, Egypt has now abandoned even reform...
...Egypt’s military, from which every post-1952 president has emerged, opposes civilian rule that could encroach on its domain...
...In a bid to defl ect attention from its domestic deficiencies, his regime has often used rhetoric to fan the anti-American and anti-Israeli fl ames...
...In the 1990s, Mubarak reserved the brunt of his repressive energies for Islamist extremists...
...Abroad, Egypt’s infl uence is waning...
...foreign aid...
...But at what price...
...ally and secular dike against the rising tide of extremism...
...Now the sun is setting on his rule, and Mubarak is approaching the end of his high-wire performance...
...The charge...
...For maintaining nominal peace with Israel and strengthening strategic cooperation with the United States, his regime has been rewarded with approximately $2 billion annually, behind only Iraq and Israel as the largest recipient of U.S...
...The accusation would have been comical had such tactics not become commonplace: The clampdown on activists whose weapons are keyboards and digital cameras is par for the course as Cairo retreats from its modest feints toward democratization...
...But even as his father stacks the deck in his favor, Gamal’s ascent is not guaranteed...
...Jeffrey Azarva is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Coupled with an appeal to nationalist sentiments, Mubarak’s repression has stoked tensions that may destabilize the ArabIsraeli arena...
...Yet, for years, Mubarak has walked a tightrope, billing himself as a stalwart U.S...
...Since 2000, Gamal Mubarak, a former banker, has gone from a political neophyte to one of the most powerful offi cials in the NDP...
...This balancing act has paid off...
...When, a month later, Mubarak announced the contested presidential election, there was even talk of an “Arab spring...
...The Bush administration took the bait, and has refrained from playing hardball ever since...
...Much depends on how the 80year-old Mubarak makes his exit...
...Since Mubarak permitted Egypt’s first multi candidate presidential election in September 2005, only to imprison with abandon...
...Now, with that political opposition defanged, he has turned his sights even on anonymous critics who have broken taboos and crossed government red lines...
...Following Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon, Mubarak warned that no map can be imposed on the region, and NDP members of parliament voiced similar protests...
...aid were imprisoned, tortured, or harassed by the regime...
...Determined to pass the baton to his son, Gamal, he has embarked on an unbridled campaign to crush dissent and consolidate autocratic rule...
...Eliminating all opposition to Gamal has not bought the regime security...
...In the Middle East as elsewhere, autocrats like him do not see weakness as an invitation to compromise...
...Should he relinquish power when his current term ends in 2011, observers expect a smooth fi lial inheritance...
...Still, if the Bush administration’s abandonment of its democracy project helps explain Mubarak’s rollback, it does not account for his retreat to something more ominous than the status quo ante...
...It was not always so bad...
...The question of succession does...
...Indeed, as he digs in his heels rather than relax his grip on power, the assumptions that have long held Egypt to be an anchor of peace and stability could prove mistaken...
...But Mubarak’s reelection and the subsequent success of Islamists in parliamentary elections gave his regime a pretext to renege on reform and once again remind Washington of Egypt’s indispensable role in the fi ght against al Qaeda...
...Such bluster is nothing new: Mubarak has long used the ArabIsraeli conflict as a release valve for popular discontent...
...Today, Mubarak brims with confi dence...
...Now assured it will outlive the Bush administration, his regime treats U.S...
...In the event of a contested succession, an Islamist takeover is unlikely, but Egypt’s continuing proWestern orientation cannot be taken for granted...
...At home, economic problems are mounting...
...Examples abound...
...Take recent events: On July 23, Egypt’s independence day, security forces arrested and beat 14 Facebook activists who had congregated on a beach to sing patriotic songs and wave Egyptian flags...
...That in turn would anger even regime opponents, and thus would settle little...
...BY JEFFREY AZARVA Like most aging autocrats with declining legitimacy, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak seeks to perpetuate the prevailing order...
...Later, high-profi le critics who had the temerity to challenge him in elections, speculate about his health, or question the sanctity of U.S...
...aid cannot be taken for granted, either...
...As a new U.S...
...And Mubarak has done little to pull the Arab world’s most populous country out of its paralysis...
...It seems a long time ago that President Bush, in his 2005 State of the Union address, exhorted Egypt “to show the way toward democracy in the Middle East...
...Instead, he is preoccupied with choreographing a succession that has deepened the country’s stagnation...
...Today, the man who has ruled longer than almost any pharaoh is leaving no stone unturned in his quest to secure the longevity of the regime and a seamless transition of power...
Vol. 13 • September 2008 • No. 48
