[politics 101] a glance at egypt

Egypt and Saudi are key players in the Middle-East, of that there is no doubt. Mubarak in Egypt is now 80 and can't go on forever, let alone the troubles he is facing.

Egypt is one of few reasonably secular regimes, i.e. ones the west can deal with, in the ME, American trade stands at $US8bn and the regime, as with Anwar Sadat in latter years, has not been violently anti-west. The Egyptians see the U.S. aid, not as aid but as payback for what they themselves have suffered:

Mubarak complains that this aid is not benevolence on behalf of the Americans; it is living up to commitments made to his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, during the era of president Jimmy Carter. When Egypt signed the Camp David Peace Accords in 1978, it got expelled from the Arab League (which it had co-founded during World War II) and was completely isolated within the Arab world.

It then stuck out its neck for the Americans - again - during the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 and after the September 11, 2001, attacks when it shared intelligence on al-Qaeda, and suppressed Egyptian Islamists. And what do they get instead? Israeli espionage on Egyptian territory, where in 2007, a man was accused of stealing documents from the Egyptian Atomic Energy Agency and passing them on to Mossad, the Israeli intelligence.

So American insistence on "human rights" and democracy as tied to an earmarked aid package receives a cool reception in Cairo. Truth is that Egypt has real problems at grass roots level with the huge under 25 male population. Not to put too fine a point on it, radical Islam appeals to youth:

Previously, it was popular only with the urban poor. It has now infiltrated high society and is equally popular with the Egyptian rich. Although outlawed, the Muslim Brotherhood is well-grounded at a grassroot level and is manipulating the increase in the price of bread, which has captured nearly 30 million Egyptians by the throat. To avert a showdown and fearing the wrath both of the Brotherhood and labor unions, the government continues to subsidize food with $13.7 billion.

Greater democracy after all would only empower the Islamists, as it did with Hamas (a branch of the Egyptian Brotherhood)in Palestine. They argue that the money going to Cairo is not spent on strangers, since most of it goes to buying arms and technology from the United States.

So it's a juggling act all round and with Mubarak not so far from departure. A fundamentalist regime in Cairo would be a major turning point in the delicate balance which has so far averted all out conflagration in the region.

This blogger believes there are cogent reasons why the power behind the western regimes, far from being averse to conflagration, is either courting it through its policies or is sadly inept. A closer look at Blackwater's operations certainly raises eyebrows, although perhaps Adriana Huffington is not the most reliable source.