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

A stunning victory today for all who believe that power resides with people and not with the elite few.

Live:

http://www.youtube.com/user/AlJazeeraEnglish

They are showing the biggest party I've ever seen. People are going nuts.

Cycloptichorn

From the Guardian blog:

4:50pmWael Ghonim, Google's head of marketing in the Middle East, annointed by some as the voice of the revolution after his emotional speech on his release from prison, tweeted simply: "Welcome back Egypt".

4.46pm: Reaction has started to come in from the US and the EU.

The White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said:

The president was informed of president Mubarak's decision to step down during a meeting in the Oval Office. He then watched TV coverage of the scene in Cairo for several minutes in the outer Oval (office).

The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said:

The EU respects president Mubarak's decision today. By standing down, he has listened to the voices of the Egyptian people and has opened the way to faster and deeper reforms. It is important now that the dialogue is accelerated leading to a broad-based government which will respect the aspirations of, and deliver stability for, the Egyptian people. The future of Egypt rightly remains in the hands of the Egyptian people. The EU stands ready to help in any way it can.

4.43pm: Tariq Ali has written a piece for Comment is free. He says:

A joyous night in Cairo. What bliss to be alive, to be an Egyptian and an Arab. In Tahrir Square they're chanting, "Egypt is free" and "We won!"

The removal of Mubarak alone (and getting the bulk of his $40bn loot back for the national treasury), without any other reforms, would itself be experienced in the region and in Egypt as a huge political triumph. It will set new forces into motion. A nation that has witnessed miracles of mass mobilisations and a huge rise in popular political consciousness will not be easy to crush, as Tunisia demonstrates.

4.42pm: Barack Obama, who appeared humiliated last night when Mubarak gave that infamously equivocal statement, is to speak at the White House at 6.30pm GMT.

so when does the army ask everyone to go home, and what is the result

inquiring minds want to know

4:54pm GMT: Mubarak picked an auspicious date to resign. On this day 32 years ago the Iranian revolution took place when the Shah's forces were overwhelmed. And 21 years ago today Nelson Mandela was freed by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

12:15pm EST: Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned satellite channel, reports: "the higher military council will sack the cabinet, suspend both houses of parliament and rule with the head of the supreme constitutional court."

The Qatari government said it regarded Egypt's transfer of power to a military council on Friday as a positive step. "This is a positive, important step towards the Egyptian people's aspirations of achieving democracy and reform and a life of dignity," the statement from the Emir's royal council said.

Bahrain's foreign minister Khalid al Khalifa: Egypt takes the Arab world into a new era ... Let's make it a better one

No, I didn't. Egypt is not China. The military said from the beginning they will protect their own people.

I'm happy for them if they are happy, but now what happens? Who runs the country? Do they actually have a real chance of forming a functional democracy before another dictator takes over? Is democracy what those cheering people even really want?

There's another statement expected soon from the military but the expected answer is here. http://able2know.org/topic/167119-81#post-4506420

5:46pm GMT:Our political correspondent Allegra Stratton says the UK has already been considering the prospect of an asylum application from Mubarak:

The UK's national security council (NSC) has considered what happens if Hosni, his wife Suzanne or or their son Gamal Mubarak, indeed any of the president's family, would like asylum in the UK. Remember Gamal has a five-storey house in Knightsbridge.

A government source says that the Foreign Office is aware that the UK's government's new position on the middle east – hands off, welcoming of change – would be troubled if the UK were to also grant any asylum requests to Mubaraks or indeed other deposed Arab leaders.

The text from the NSC meeting, held last week, says: "The NSC is working on predicting where and when events might occur next. There is a low risk that former heads of state and members of regimes might seek refuge here. Many have the documentation and money to get here, and some will have links to the UK. Each request will be considered, in consultation between the Home Office and Foreign Office, on a case by case basis."

So, cautious language, but the source says they are thinking about what their position will be as and when any request comes through. There will be a question mark over exactly what the FCO and Home office could do given Suzanne was born in Wales and is thought to have British citizenship.

5.49pm GMT: The Nobel peace prize winner and Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed El Baradei has been talking to Al Jazeera in the last half and hour.

"This is the emancipation of Egypt. This is the liberation of the Egyptian people," he said in a phone interview with the broadcaster's English-language news channel. "It's a dream come true," said El Baradei, who added that it was the Egyptian people who had been able to restore their "humanity and independence.

Asked what happens next, he replied: "What I have been talking about and proposing is a transition period of one year. We would have a provisional council, a transition government, preferably a provisional council including a person from the army and civilians, but the main idea would be that the army and the people would work together for a year up to the point where we could have a free and fair election."

Asked if those who have been protesting in Tahrir Square and elsewhere could wait that long, he replied: "The people of Egypt have been suppressed for 30 years. They are prepared to wait for a year if they are going in the right direction. As long as the people in power have credibility I think that the Egyptian people are ready to wait."

"My role is to help as much as I can as an Egyptian. My dream has come true. This is a dream that I have been waiting to see for the last 30 years."

The country had been "going down the drain" in recent weeks and the focus now needed to be on getting Egypt back to being "a stable country, a democratic country."
"I think that unity is crucial at this stage. We are all on the same page. We need need a democratic country but we need social justice."

El Baradei sidestepped the question of whether it was now also time to hold those who may have committed crimes in the past to account.
"I think right now people's focus is on the future. We have a lot of daunting tasks ahead of us."

He said his message to the Egyptian people was: "You have gained your liberty, you have gained the right to catch up with the rest of the world. Make the best use of it you can and God bless you."

5.48pm GMT: There has s been a jubilant response in Lebanon and Tunisia, the Associated Press reports:

Moments after Egypt's vice president Omar Suleiman made the announcement of Mubarak's resignation, fireworks lit up the sky over Beirut. Celebratory gunfire rang out in the Shiite-dominated areas in south Lebanon and in southern Beirut.

On Al-Manar TV, the station run by the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah faction, Egyptian anchor Amr Nassef, who was once imprisoned in Egypt for alleged ties to Islamists, cried emotionally on the air and said: "Allahu Akbar (God is great), the Pharaoh is dead. Am I dreaming? I'm afraid to be dreaming."

In Tunisia, where a successful uprising expelled a longtime leader only weeks earlier, cries of joy and the thundering honking of horns greeted the announcement. "God delivered our Egyptian brothers from this dictator," said Yacoub Youssef, one of those celebrating in the capital of Tunis.

5.47pm GMT: Amr Mousa, an Egyptian, and the secretary general of the Arab League, who has previously hinted that might stand for presidency, has given his reaction:

I look forward to the future to build a ntional consensus in the coming period. There is a big chance now and a window has opened after this white revolution and after the president's concession.

Asked if he was interested in being president, he said: "This is not the time to talk about that ... As an Egyptian citizen, I am proud to serve my country with all the others at this stage, to build a consensus of opinion."

Mubarak and Suleiman apparently went against the military last night when they gave their speeches.

12:44 P.M. EST: |Mubarak Speech Was Not Cleared by Military, Report Says

Ahram Online, the English-language arm of the state newspaper Al Ahram, reported on Friday that a former senior Egyptian intelligence official told the newspaper that "both of last night's addresses by Mubarak and Suleiman were in defiance of the armed forces."

As we wait got the military authorities to issue a new statement, here is the Egyptian newspaper's fascinating report in full:

Maj. Gen. Safwat El-Zayat, a former senior official of Egypt's General Intelligence and member of the Egyptian Council of Foreign Affairs, asserted, in an interview with Ahram Online, that the address delivered by President Mubarak last night was formulated against the wishes of the armed forces, and away from their oversight. He claimed that Vice Preisdent Omar Suleiman's address, which came on the heels of Mubarak's address, was equally in defiance of the armed forces and away from its oversight.

Attributing this information to his own sources within the Egyptian military, Maj. Gen. El-Zayat said there was now a deep cleavage between the armed forces, represented in its Supreme Council, and the Presidential authority, represented in both President Mubarak and his Vice President, Omar Suleiman.

According to El-Zayat, communiqué #2 issued this morning by the Supreme Armed Forces Council was not, as many people in Egypt and elsewhere understood it, an affirmation of the addresses of Mubarak and Suleiman, but rather an attempt to avoid an open conflict, while at the same time underlining that the army will act as guarantor for the transition to full democracy. He adivced that people should listen carefully to the anticipated communique #3.

Those are the short term claims. I guess I'm more curious about what Egypt is likely to be like a year from now. Obviously nobody has a crystal ball, but is there a particular scenario which has a high probability?

Let's hope it turns out that way. Similar things were said by those who applauded Robspierre, Lenin, and Khomenni.

Ian Black, the Guardian's Middle East editor has been analysing what comes next.

On the army:

Rule by the military can only be temporary. Mubarak's exit, the dissolution of what is seen as an illegitimate parliament, constitutional reforms and abolition of the emergency laws are all non-negotiable. If those reforms are achieved then Egypt will have witnessed a real revolution – beyond the removal of a stubborn 82-year-old president long past his sell-by date.

It seems clear from the events of recent days – especially the confusion and contradictory messages on Thursday — that the army is divided. If it moves solely to protect its own privileged position, and that of the big businessmen who have done so well out of their links with the regime – then the system will not open up, at least not without large-scale repression and bloodshed.


On the implications for the wider Middle East:

Egypt's extraordinary change matters first for Egypt's 82m people. But what happens in the Arab world's most populous country matters for many millions of other Arabs, who also suffer from unemployment, inequality, corruption and unresponsive, unaccountable governments – and share the language in which it is being covered in media such as al-Jazeera and social networking sites that official censors cannot easily block.

Other authoritarian regimes, shocked first by the uprising in Tunisia and now in Egypt, have been trying to pre-empt trouble by promises of reform, sacking ministers, maintaining subsidies or raising wages to buy off critics and defuse tensions. The symptoms are visible from Yemen to Jordan, from Algeria to Syria.

On the implications for the US:


Egypt remains a vital asset in allowing US military overflights, as the guardian of the strategically vital Suez canal, and a loyal ally in the regional confrontation with Iran. Mubarak has played a key role in supporting the western-backed Palestinian Authority and containing the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, not least because of its affinity with the banned Muslim Brotherhood – whose likely future role in a freer Egyptian political system is a key and much-discussed issue both at home and abroad.

The events of the last 18 days have forced Obama to shift away from stability to embracing if not promoting democracy – to the evident discomfort of other conservative Arab friends, especially the Saudis. Jordan and Yemen share those concerns – fearing that unconditional US support for them may now also wane.

What else could they have said? They have seemingly made one of their own people dictator. Perhaps it is a first step towards the EU. Our New Mexico. Perhaps.

Lending his supposed 70 billion to the Government interest free should go a fair way to cutting our deficit. Painlessly.

I presume the Egyptian constitution is suspended and a blank sheet of A4 awaits.

I think the hope is that modern media and technology have gotten us to a point where it's more difficult for things to slide out of control in isolation than it used to be.

That plus a hefty dose of active interference by us and the EU may get the job done.

One thing which is interesting in this case is that there doesn't seem to be an opposition party or charismatic leader in the way that we've sometimes seen in the past during these things.

Cycloptichorn

spendi, If you had kept up with the news about where most of the high command of Egypt's military were trained, and their continued communication with US forces, you would know they meant only one thing; support the people.

How can you conclude otherwise from this scenario?