At least thirteen pro-democracy protesters have been killed and hundreds injured in clashes with pro-Mubarak mobs in and around Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. The attacks began on Wednesday when hundreds of Mubarak’s supporters, some of them on horses and camels, charged the pro-democracy protesters in an attempt to take control of the area. The assault escalated in the early hours of Thursday when Mubarak’s mob opened fire on their opponents. Since then, the mob has continued to use violence and various other means to disperse the mass of ordinary Egyptians calling for the regime’s ouster. The Egyptian army – which is widely respected in the country – stood by and watched as most of these events unfolded. It intervened only after the protesters were killed.
The events we are witnessing are not a battle for control of the streets waged by pro-democracy forces on one side and ordinary Egyptians who have spontaneously risen up in defense of their beloved leader on the other. The reality is that an embattled and desperate dictatorship has sent plain clothed members of the security services and paid civilians to terrorize into submission its courageous opponents and create mayhem on the streets. Mubarak may be calculating that only fear of the unknown and a desire for stability will keep him in power.
Although this strategy may have worked in the past, the Egyptian people are unlikely to buy it this time round. The Muslim Brotherhood – Egypt’s largest opposition party – has been playing catch up since the street demonstrations began and now seems content to act as one faction amongst many in the pro-democracy opposition. While a Brotherhood takeover cannot be ruled out with certainty, it seems improbable. In the present circumstances, the Egyptian people are likely to view the choice between secular dictatorship and an Iranian style Islamic revolution as a false dilemma. Millions of ordinary Egyptians have already articulated a third option: the removal of the current regime in its entirety and an orderly transition, led by a neutral caretaker administration, to a genuinely democratic system of governance. “Islamists,” it seems, are not the only agents of social and political transformation in the Arab world. These events have also shown that the question of whether democracy is compatible with “Islam” or the “Arab culture” is at best an irrelevant academic issue. What really matters is that on the ground, democracy is the form of government favored by millions of Arabs of various faiths.
The US, Israel, and various European states have often invoked the good of “regional stability” as a justification for their support of Mubarak’s regime. Thought it may be evil, Mubarak’s dictatorship is much better than the “Islamist” alternative. The latter would likely be more oppressive at home and hostile to US, Israeli, and European interests in the region, especially the peace accord Israel signed with Egypt in 1979.
What are we to make of this position? To begin with, while the policy seemingly creates a geostrategic context in which the US and its allies can freely pursue their interests, it does so on the back of eighty million innocent people for whom “stability” means a life lived under a brutal dictatorship that kidnaps, imprisons, kills, tortures, and humiliates its own people. I very much doubt that three decades of such horrors can be justified by appeal to interests of questionable legitimacy. Realists will no doubt complain, but surely even they must have minimal standards or risk descending into a hellish abyss.
The U.S. position also presents us with the same false dilemma that Mubarak has peddled to his fellow Egyptians over the years. The Obama administration has resisted explicitly calling for Mubarak to leave so the country can begin its transition to meaningful democracy. One concern might be that free and fair elections could lead, as they did in Palestine in 2006, to a government that is critical of US policy in the region and less willing to accommodate its interests and those of its allies. But if the risk of an unfriendly government coming to power through illegitimate means cannot justify support of Mubarak’s regime, fear of the choices that a free people might make definitely will not. And in any case, as the overthrow in Tunisia and demonstrations in Egypt have clearly shown, dictatorial regimes are far from stable. It makes little sense even from a strategic perspective for the US to support governments that might fall at any time and leave in their wake turmoil and uncertainty.
Supporting dictatorships, funding military occupations, and relying on coercion and violence to secure ones interests cannot bring about genuine long-term stability in the Middle East. The democratic uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt suggest that a new approach is badly needed; one that does not ignore moral considerations and takes seriously the idea that doing the right thing in foreign policy is often consistent with America’s interests in the long-term. In the Egyptian context, this means calling for Mubarak to leave for the sake of his country and supporting in a principled and constructive way the transition to democratic governance. Whatever choices the Egyptian people make at the polls should be respected, even if the government they elect is less than optimal from the US point of view. Undermining democratically elected governments – as the US did in Palestine in 2006 – will likely be seen as hypocritical and may lead to unwanted outcomes. A better strategy is to change course and take seriously the rights and aspirations of the region’s peoples.