Opening Thoughts: Egypt 2011

During the last few days, numerous friends have asked me to analyze the situation in Egypt and its ramifications.  It's nice to know that so many remember that, in addition to my 13 year career in the energy industry, I am indeed educated in Middle Eastern affairs, with a masters degree in the field from Johns Hopkins University.  Especially gratifying since I'm still paying off that freakin student loan! 

For many who follow the Middle East and know its history, the recent events in Egypt and elsewhere are truly thrilling - both in a good way and a bad way.  Good in the sense that there is hope for people living under autocratic rule to - very occasionally -- rise up and assert their desire to be free.  Bad in the sense that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and history is full of examples of noble acts that spawned unintended, harmful consequences.  The stakes that ride on Middle East stability are as high as stakes can be.

First some perspective - the events in Egypt are unprecedented since the military regime seized control in 1952.  There is something inspiring about watching the Egyptian masses - at least the middle class ones - moving to toss out an octogenarian dictator who became leader during the first Reagan Administration, and whose regime took power one year before President Eisenhower took office.  

Today Egypt and the Middle East are in completely uncharted territory; the outcome for Egypt and region is unknown and will remain so for a long time to come.  Apart from the very important human dimension, the outcome has enormous repercussions for Middle Eastern stability, which of course strongly influences the price of oil, which in turn affects the global economy and our way of life.  Thus the events set in motion in Tunis and Cairo can and will affect Middle America - even if you never get off your couch. 

The most direct issue is what happens to Egypt - leader of the Arab world, 80 million strong.  As for the short term course of events, I think it will be difficult for President Mubarak to remain in power because I don’t think the army will crush the demonstrators.  This is the subject of this first post.

"A Middle Eastern dictator's army that hesitates to crush an uprising?" you ask.  "Are you totally ignorant of history?"  Yes, there are so many apparent analogs in modern Arab history that at first glance seem instructive:  Didn't the late Syrian President Hafez al Assad lay waste to the entire city of Hama to crush an uprising in 1982?  Didn't Saddam massacre both Shia and Kurds to put down an insurrection after the 1991 Desert Storm?  Didn't even the pro-Western King Hussein wipe out his opponents during Black September of 1970? 

On close inspection, none of these other actions (massacres) really match the situation in Egypt today.  First of all a technical point - each one of those insurgencies took place in certain cities, mostly on the periphery of the subject nation.  Thus the regimes in those other cases were dealing with geographically limited insurgencies, making their containment far more feasible.  In Egypt it is everywhere through and through, especially in the capital Cairo.   But the far more important difference is in the nature of the relationship between the population rising up and the military being ordered to oppose it. 

At Hama, al-Assad was being challenged by the Muslim Brotherhood, which considered his own Alawite sect to be apostates and sought to eliminate his ruling Baath Party.  The Kurds and Shia that rose up against Saddam in 1991 had every intention of seceding from Baghdad's rule, thus splitting Iraq apart, separating Saddam's khams (tribal group) from Iraq's oil wealth and possibly threatening Baghdad as well.  Saddam was a master at playing the 3 main ethnic/religious groups against one another, and his Sunni beneficiaries in the military and security services appreciated the mortal danger facing them should the insurgencies have prevailed.  And in Black September, the Jordanian military put down an insurgency undertaken by the PLO - Palestinians from the west side of the Jordan River that were attempting to bring down the Kingdom of Jordan. 

In all these other cases, the protagonists were from specific sects, nationalities or ethnic groups, while the armed forces were dominated by the regime’s own ethnic group.  Those regimes and the military commanders saw the insurgents as aiming to kill them and their families - i.e. it was personal. 

Obviously these precedents don't match the situation in Egypt, where the demonstrators are not from a different nationality, sect or ethnic group.  In fact, they're exactly the same as the rank and file conscripts in the army, which Mubarak sent into the city streets on Friday.  While high ranking officers possibly stand to lose benefits, graft and other perks of the job, that will not likely be enough to convince thousands of ground troops to open fire on their own civilian brothers and sisters - provided that the demonstrators remain peaceful and don't attack the troops.  This is not to say that certain military units might not splinter and follow commanders in some cases that sing from a different sheet.  Just saying that it appears unlikely that Mubarak would be obeyed throughout the chain of command if he ordered a Hama-type operation.