Tunesia, Egyt and now Yemen: a domino effect in the Middle East?

Community Amid Egypt's Chaos

United against their president, demonstrators in Tahrir Square have managed to bridge the country's political divides.

by Gregg Carlstrom

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/02/07-12

Yes. Ican.

So far unfortunately, it looks like there is just some kind of half token measure and the Egypt government is just going to wait this out. After all, what else can the protesters do without with real help from the military or US pressure on the military to oust Mubarak right away rather than later.

However, if in the end, they really do get free elections at some point before September, then it would not have been all in vain, would it? I mean I just dont' see how everything can go back to business as usual now that the can of worms has been out in the open.

I agree that there's a stand-off of sorts. I don't think the folks in the square believe they will not ultimately prevail, with or without the help of the US. They don't yet have what they want, but they aren't giving up yet.

I don't blame them in the least for not trusting Sulieman. This was the most read article on Al Jazeera yesterday. No telling, of course, who the readers were but it's pretty scary stuff.

10:58pm Mortada El-Shabrawi, a professor at Cairo University, tells Al Jazeera that professors will be marching today in support of the protests. They will march from their union in Doki, Giza, to Tahrir Square after noon prayers.

2:05pm Al Jazeera reporter in Tahrir Square says that crowds are pouring in from all sides and is one of the bigger crowds that have gathered in the past weeks.

1:55pm Young protesters occupying an apartment building near the site of fierce battles between pro- and anti-government crowds discuss their motivations, the events of the past two weeks, and the diverse make-up of Egypt's democracy movement. Click here to watch.

1:05pm Foreign reporters in Egypt without local credentials were not permitted by the military to enter Tahrir Square today. New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has just issued a statement accusing the military of detaining journalists and confiscating their equipment.

They say that since January 30, there have been at least 140 direct attacks on journalists trying to cover the ongoing unrest in Egypt.
11:55pm Mubarak has formed a panel to oversee constitutional amendments, vice president Omar Suleiman said on state television today:

President Mubarak today signed a decree for the formation of the constitutional commission which will oversee constitutional amendments, and required legislative amendments.

embedded links available here

From the Guardian:

8:41am: Blogger and activist Omar Robert Hamilton says there is a sense of "semi permanence" about the protest camp in Tahrir Square.

A revolutionary, organic, engaged, democaratic space has emerged in Tahrir Square. Numbers swell and fall throughout the day, people come and go, but intense and sophisticated political engagement remains a fixture. From debates about the relative merits of parliamentary vs presidential systems, to proposals about consititutional reforms, to suggested programmes of poltical transition, there is only one thing on everyone's mind. Some debates are held around the numerous microphones, with crowds cheering or booing the speaker's proposals. Some are held in small circles on the ground that attract passers by eager to listen or voice an opinion, all are open to everyone to participate.

And as the square takes on a feeling of semi-permanence, representatives from all the other protest movements in Egypt have arrived. Young men and women from Alexandria and Suez, from Mansoura and all across the country are settling down in Tahrir to contribute towards the building of a new democracy. In Alexandria, a chant doing the rounds is The Mandate is with Tahrir.

The question on everyone's lips is how will a unified mandate emerge? Right now, no one knows for sure. But we do know two things. That whatever happens, for the first time in decades, there is a space in Egypt that is home to total freedom of thought and expression and political creativity. And that whatever mandate - or mandates - present themselves from the square, if they are not completely satisfying to the protestors, they won't be going anywhere. A new society has taken root in Tahrir, and it wont be driven out until the people have won their freedom.

or as he's more commonly known, the cut and paste kid

10:35am:"There are thousands pouring into the square. In the background you can hear the chants of 'welcome'," Chris McGreal reports from Tahrir Square.

There is a man here dressed as a referee waving a red card with Mubarak's name on it. There's a lot of determination that he has to go, despite the political negotiations.

The army has a much lower profile today than in the past. It has been possible for foreign reporters to get into the square, simply because the army has withdrawn from checking the people entering the square. It is much more relaxed.

Concessions offered today will be seen as further evidence of the weakness of the regime, Chris adds.

They have sense of the regime on the retreat. They feel they have won. They will be frustrated that their central demand that Mubarak go, and larger subsidiary demands such as the parliament be dismissed, are not being addressed.

A number of people have spoken about this square now as liberated territory, the first part of a new Egypt. Their attitude is that Mubarak no longer rules in this part of Cairo and this will simply spread beyond further and further.

9:51 am:More concessions. Suleiman emerged from a meeting with Mubarak this morning claiming the regime has a plan and a timetable for the peaceful transfer of power. He also claimed the government will not pursue protesters who have been demanding Mubarak step down now.

Reuters reports:

"The president welcomed the national consensus, confirming that we are putting our feet on the right path to getting out of the current crisis," Suleiman said after a briefing with the president on the national dialogue meeting.

"A clear road map has been put in place with a set timetable to realise the peaceful and organised transfer of power," he said in comments broadcast on state television.

AP reports that Mubarak has set up a committee to discuss and recommend constitutional changes that will relax eligibility rules for who can run for president and limit the number of presidential terms.


Vice-president Omar Suleiman said that Mubarak also decreed the creation of a separate committee to monitor the implementation of all proposed reforms.

The moves are the first concrete steps taken by the longtime authoritarian ruler to implement reforms promised during two weeks of mass protests. So far government concessions have fallen short of the demands of protester demands that Mubarak immediately step down.

Mubarak also ordered a probe into clashes last week between the protesters and supporters of the president.

9:41 am:"I fear the revolution has failed and I think the Obama administration is complicit," says New American Foundation fellow Robert Wright reflecting an emerging view among pundits about the Egyptian uprising and the US role in it. "I think they [the administration] chickened out. Removing Mubarak, which they were flirting with, was proving difficult. I think they were scared about what rapid change can bring."

Link

Well, I'm doing quite a bit of cutting and pasting myself on this thread.

12:49pm: Al Jazeera reports that 20 lawyers have lodged a petition alleging that Mubarak and his family have stolen state funds. Such a lawsuit is unprecedented and, like many of the events since the protests began, would have been unthinkable 15 days ago. The regime's response to the petition should be interesting.

I'm streaming http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/ and the commentators are saying huge crowds of "new protesters, people who have been sitting on the couch for two weeks" are now participating.

1:49pm: The numbers in the square now runs in to the hundreds of thousands in one of the biggest turnouts to date, and they are still streaming in. Chris McGreal reports from Cairo.

There are long lines snaking along roads leading to the square.

I'd also just take issue with the statement that protesters say they were inspired to turn out by release of Wael Ghonim. Undoubtedly some were, but Tuesday is one of the two days a week when mass protests are scheduled and also a lot of the people I spoke to said they were there because they wanted to show the regime that they were not going to
compromise in the negotiations - that Mubarak has to go. They planned to turn out anyway, Ghonim aside.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim Yusri, one of the lawyers behind the petition alleging that Mubarak and his family have stolen state funds, told al-Jazeera that under the constitution the president has immunity but "this is a new era, this is a revolution". Yusri claimed the petition has the support of 40 prominent names. As evidence for the allegations, one of the sources he cited was the Guardian (Philip Inman reported last week that some estimates put Mubarak's family wealth at as much as $70bn (£43.5bn)). Yusri said:

Mr Mubarak and his family has ther right to speak and to explain either if they have gathered this fortune or [if] it's only rumours. We need verification...

We have asked the prosecutor general to verify....if the information is true and if it's true they must be prosecuted...and the fortune retaken by the people.

2:24pm: Jack Shenker has a new update from an "exhilarating" Tahrir Square.

There is more energy and optimism in Tahrir today than almost anything I've seen before - an aimless wander through the packed crowds is a dizzying, exhilarating experience, revealing a hundreds of little micro-dramas playing out all over the square.

It's so difficult to convey the atmosphere of this place through words or images; Tahrir may have dropped down the international media agenda somewhat in recent days, but honestly if you go down there and just stare around you - at the picnicking families, the raucous flag-wavers, the volunteer tea suppliers, the cheery human security cordons, the slumbering bodies curled up in the metal treads of the army's tanks, the pro-change graffiti that adorns every placard, every tent, every wall space in vision - it's impossible not to feel as moved as we all did in the very first days of this ongoing revolution.

As the streets appear safer and security more guaranteed, the numbers of those joining queues to enter Tahrir is growing, not falling - dozens told me today they were here for the first time. Politicking at the top may give the impression that the uprising has lost momentum, but clearly for many in Egypt it's only just getting started

I had the impression that you had earlier recommended some forms of intervention in Egypt, either to prevent massacres in the current situation, or, earlier, to use aid in ways to reach "ordinary people" - instead of the military aid the U.S. has provided in accordance with the Egypt Israel peace treaty. Would your comments above apply to these types of intervention as well ?

I agree intervention whether peaceful or involving conflict is both risky and often unsuccessful. Even if the main objectives are good and at least partly achieved, there is often harm and destruction attendant to the process. I think most people would regard the U.S. /European intervention in Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s to be a good and largely beneficial thing in that it ended the systematic massacres and ethnic cleansing going on there. Despite this benefit, bombs were dropped and people were killed. I don't know your standards here: perhaps you believe this one was bad too.

Even ostensably peaceful social and economic assistance has unanticipated or undesirable effects. The wrong people are rewarded; beneficial economic, social and political structures can he harmed in unanticipated ways. The presumanly virtuous peacekeeping efforts of the all-so-righteous UN have been found also to involve numerous rapes and thefts of property at the hands of the UN soldiers.

Most of the billions donated to Haiti by the U.S. the UN and other substantial national donors was either wasted or ended up in the hands of criminals or exploiters of its unfortunate people. Were these interventions justified by the results they achieved? Certainly the present situation of that country does not suggest that any detectable progress has been made.

In Vietnam we fought a war to defend an allied country facing an organized insurgency and an armed attack by another (North Vietnam), and lost that war, mostly on domestic political grounds. The winner, the Communist government of the now combined country, wasted a generation of its unfortunate people in socialist slavery, but is now making modest economic progress, though moving slowly with respect to human rights and freedom. Overall, in terms of both economic performance and the freedoms of its citizens, it is certainly no better than the Mubarak government of Egypt, which you so obviously detest.

All of these events raise questions about the morality and political justification for these and other interventions. Certainly there may be some basis for them based on considerations of self protection if that indeed is a significant factor, truely involved. Beyond that it is a very mixed picture of cost (both direct and indirect) and benefit. It isn't at all clear what standard you are applying in the moral judgements you appear to be so freely making. (John Lennon's moral standards in "Imagine" weren't very clear either.)

Almost 70 years ago the U.S. fought a war in the western and south Pacific region against Japan following their attack on our territory. The need for the South Pacific campaign was the result of Great Britain's unwise decision during WWI to use Japan to seize and control (and retain as it turned out) former German island colonies in the region (something to which the United States objected to at the time), as well as Japan's spectacularly successful aggression against China and the colonial posessions of France, Great Britain, Holland and the U.S. in the region. Was the U.S. intervention in the South Pacific campaign justified? (We could have, with more economy, merely focused on retaking Guam and the Phillipines and then going after Japan.) The fact is that our motives were to help avoid the complete collapse of the British Empire and protect Australia. Still, a lot of local innocents died in these campaigns, Were they in your view justified?

4:30pm GMT+2: Thousands of people continue to flock to Tahrir Square, Al Jazeera correspondent said that people from all over Egypt have joined the protests. Professors, students and doctors has been joining as well.

3:01pm GMT: A whole range of workers seem to be walking out of their jobs in solidarity with the protesters. We've already mentioned Cairo University staff and journalists but Ahram online reports that over 6,000 Suez Canal Company workers from the cities of Suez, Port Said, and Ismailia began an open-ended sit in today over poor wages and working conditions . And thousands of Telecom Egypt staff at various branches are protesting and threatening a sit-in if their demands are not met. They want a 10% pay rise and the managing director to be sacked.

3:15pm GMT: Harriet Sherwood has sent an update from Gaza about Hamas's response to the unrest in Egypt.

This morning I spoke to Salah Bardawil, a senior Hamas politician, in Gaza City about the Islamist organisation's response to the unrest in Egypt. He was very cautious, saying the protests were a "natural response to pressure from a cruel regime" but Hamas did not involve itself in internal issues in any Arab country.

"Emotionally we hope that the regime does not stay as it was before," he said, adding that Hamas wished to see a thriving democracy in Egypt. "We would like Egypt to be maybe like Turkey. We want a democratic country that allows everyone to express themselves."

Asked if Hamas allowed free expression in Gaza, he said: "Culturally Gaza is very open. We don't impose the hijab on women, we have good relations with Christians and leftist parties, and everyone is allowed to express himself freely. Of course there have to be security and political restrictions."

He did not anticipate similar protests in Gaza. "We have a regime controlling all of us - Israel is our common enemy."

Bardawi said Hamas was connected "culturally" with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but not officially. "We believe that the Muslim Brotherhood have not had fair circumstances in which to express themselves. We hope the outcome [of the uprising] could include all parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood."

Protests could spread across the Arab world, he said. "If small Tunisia inspired big Egypt, what will happen if big Egypt succeeds? It will be like an earthquake that affects all countries around it."

I understand what you are saying and somewhat surprisingly the protest appears to be gearing up again after seeming to wind down the last couple of days. However, if in the end, Mubarak and the government just hold on making these kind of meaningless concessions and ride this out; without the military backing them, what can the protesters do? Do you think the businesses joining will have more of an impact for pressure for Mubarak to step down from the military?

Also, no matter what happens I just don't see how things can back to business as usual now that the spot light is on them to change. The protesters are not going to forget and go back to normal life. Or is everybody more or less saying that when the spotlight gets off, these talks of reform will just drift away if Mubarak does not step down now while the iron is hot so to speak?

As for as Suleiman, after reading part of that (will read the later) I can't believe that the US and Mubarak thought the protesters would think that he would be any better than Mubarak. Worse in fact.

and possibly spreading into Iran.

4:30pm GMT: Iran's opposition movement has been regalvanised by the protests in Egypt, the Guardian's Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes:

Iran's opposition has called for renewed street protests next week on the back of the wave of demonstrations that have swept across the Middle East.

Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the leaders of the green movement in Iran have issued a call for what they have described as "a solidarity move to support the protests in two Muslim countries of Egypt and Tunisia" on Monday.

The green movement staged a series of mass demonstrations for several weeks in 2009, following a disputed presidential election that gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office. Tehran and other major cities saw the biggest popular uprising in the history of the Islamic Republic....

On his official website, Mousavi has likened the protests in Egypt and Tunisia to those in Iran in 2009. "Undoubtedly, the starting point of what we are witnessing in the streets of Tunis, Sana'a, Cairo, Alexandria and Suez should be seen in the Iranian protests," he said.

"The Middle East is on the threshold of great events these days that could affect the fate of the region and the world."...

It is unlikely that Ahmadinejad's government will give permission for the opposition protest, but the leaders of the green movement are using the request to reach out to the public. Iran's constitution allows for peaceful demonstrations.

The call has been welcomed by Iran's huge online community, which has alrewady started to promote it via social networking websites and in blogs. Flyers and posters are being designed by anonymous supporters of the green movement who have distributed them among internet users.