Everyone now expects that Mubarak will leave Egypt. If Mubarak's announcement, expected soon, is anything other than a resignation, he will likely be forced out. Hosni Mubarak is the supreme commander of the Egyptian armed forces. The Supreme Council of the Military is meeting without him. The National Democratic Party no longer supports him. The rhetoric of the military is that they intend to side with the “lawful and legitimate” demands of the people.
This is a very dangerous time for the people of Egypt. Below the fold is an in-depth discussion of what lies ahead for Egypt.
Mubarak is being forced to step down by powers that be within the Egyptian government. The Supreme Council of the Military is cited by a number of articles from the AP, European Press, and Al Jazeera. The likelihood is that Omar Suleiman will step up. If this occurs, there is a constitutional mandate for presidential elections to take place within 60 days.
This won't necessarily lead to democracy. The Egyptian Constitution mandates that any candidate for president of Egypt must have the support of at least one third of parliament. The last 'elections' saw the NDP taking an obscene number of seats in parliament. This means that if the Constitution as it stands is followed, only candidates who are members of the ruling National Democratic Party will be valid candidates for the presidency of Egypt.
Attrition
The Empowered class of the Middle East is playing a waiting game. From Jordan to Yemen, to Syria and Lebanon, even into Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, there are incredibly powerful oligarchies or monarchies, some of them religious, some of them not, all of them incredibly oppressive and undemocratic. All of them are trying to hunker down and let the wave of change rush over them. It's likely that the protests in Sudan will fail, as will those that occurred in Saudi Arabia.
Their tactic right now is to wait out the protests. They're hoping that the longer they can drag this out, the harder it will be for the people to sustain protests. This is the rationale behind the tactics being used across the middle east.
The only way for a real democratic process to move forward is for whoever is left in charge after Mubarak to significantly change the government and constitution to allow free and open elections, unfettered by arcane rules that are designed to keep the ruling party in power. This is what the egyptian people are asking for.
Without some kind of transitional government or transitional process, there will not be a democratic change. It's possible that the old regime will try to cling to power after Mubarak. If the revolutionaries can maintain the pressure on the regime after Mubarak, I think we will see a transitional government.
Islamism: Terrifying and Unlikely
The main reason that we won't see an Islamist terrorist state is that the Muslim Brotherhood isn't what we think it is. Essentially, the Muslim Brotherhood is the Egyptian version of the Christian Coalition. They're exactly the same kind of right wing, anti-woman, theocratic jerks that we have in our own country. The Christian Coalition is linked to people who've assassinated abortion doctors and blown up abortion clinics. The Muslim Brotherhood's links to terrorism are even less clear than those of the Christian Coalition. They're bad people, yes, but they're no worse than our own bad people. They have the support of, at most, 20% of Egypt's Muslims.
In the same way that the Christian Coalition only represents a minority of Americans, the Muslim Brotherhood represents a minority of Muslims, and they do not represent the desires of the revolutionaries. Remember that Egypt also has a huge population of Coptic Christians. They are a minority but they are a significant one, and there are other smaller religious minorities such as Baha’i and Judaism. There are ethnic minorities unfriendly to the Muslim Brotherhood as well: the Bedouin and the Nubians are sizable ethnic minorities within Egypt.
In the same way that a democratic America wont guarantee the ascendancy of the Christian Coalition, a democratic Egypt wont guarantee the electoral success of the Muslim brotherhood.
An Anti-Democratic Movement?
The anti-democracy movement, those folks we saw leading horse charges against the revolutionaries, don't support Mubarak. They oppose the protests. NPR had an excellent interview with a number of those who showed up against the protests.
They work in the tourist industry. They have families to feed. They have products that will spoil. They have animals that they are being left to starve, because there are no tourists. So in desperation, they took their starving animals and they charged the square.
They don't care about Mubarak. They're trying not to starve. They blame the revolutionaries for scaring the tourists away. Their reaction is rational, and understandable. Without the swarms of tourists at the pyramids of Giza in what is a major tourist season, there are families who will starve.
Then, there are hired thugs.
Organized Crime: The Greatest Threat to Egyptian Democracy.
There's only one model that we have for what a nation looks like when a powerful regime collapses in the modern world, and that's Eastern Europe and Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union.
There are incredibly powerful people in Egypt who have their own armed security forces. They haven't had to share power since the British Empire was kicked out. They will be required by a new government to give up the power that they and their families have wielded for decades, and sometimes centuries. They can either give up their power as the law requires, or they can hold onto it illegally. The powerful within the Eastern Bloc chose the latter road.
It is a perfect storm: political instability; a secret police force trained in torture and intrigue that finds itself suddenly out of work; a powerful military suddenly unable to pay its bills; and a new regime trying to change the nature of the nation's government. This led to the formation of one of the largest and most brutal criminal organizations on this planet. Human Trafficking, Money Laundering, the Arms Trade, and the Drug Trade all depend on the Criminal Enterprise that grew out of the ashes of the Warsaw Pact.
What we need is massive American and International support for the provisional government that, we pray, will come to power after the revolution. The only thing we can affect from without are the economic conditions which lead to organized crime. If we can prevent the trafficking of food and medical supplies as happened after the fall of the Soviet Union, if we can depend on the Egyptian Military to distribute needed supplies, and keep the military funded, we can badly hurt the growth of criminal enterprise.
We should have supported the revolution on the 24th. If we don't support them now, if we don't keep Egypt economically stable in an uncertain time, we may see the creation of violent groups that are just as dangerous as any terrorist organization. Groups which could very quickly become the backbone of financing and arms procurement for America's enemies across the middle east.
We must act to keep Egypt's economy stable, and we must act now.
Call the capitol switchboard here, to speak to your senators and congressman: (202) 224-3121
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Call, and keep calling.