Egypt's Spring Revolution (2011-2013)

[AdamG]

Alarmed by an increasing sense of insecurity, a growing number of Egyptians in northern Sinai are stockpiling and arming themselves with heavy weapons coming in from Libya. The arms are easy to come by since the revolution in Egypt and subsequent rebellion in Libya.

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/13/141303...arm-themselves

Fun fact : going price for a KPV is $15k.

EL ARISH, Egypt — Large caches of weapons from Libya are making their way across the Egyptian border and flooding black markets in Egypt’s already unstable Sinai Peninsula, according to current and former Egyptian military officials and arms traders in the Sinai.

Egyptian security officials have intercepted surface-to-air missiles, most of them shoulder-launched, on the road to Sinai and in the smuggling tunnels connecting Egypt to the Gaza Strip since Moammar Gaddafi fell from power in Libya in August, a military official in Cairo said. Arms traders said the weapons available on Sinai’s clandestine market include rockets and antiaircraft guns.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...ufL_story.html

[Dayuhan]

http://news.yahoo.com/protesters-rej...213902113.html

Egypt's military ruler promised Tuesday to speed up a presidential election to the first half of 2012 and said the armed forces were prepared to hold a referendum on immediately shifting power to civilians — concessions swiftly rejected by tens of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square, who chanted, "Leave! Leave!"

The latest standoff plunged the country deeper into crisis less than a week before parliamentary elections, the first since the ouster nine months ago of longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak.

This was of course inevitable, as various factions jockey for power in the post-Mubarak era. I certainly hope nobody is contemplating intervention, but it will be worth watching how the situation plays out. Transitions out of dictatorship are complicated and very challenging, and we've a fair number to observe these days.

[Bob's World]

I think the Egyptian military liked the status they enjoyed under Mubarak far more than the one they inherited (and that we pushed for in demanding that Mubarak step down).

They don't want to be in charge, but they don't want to end up in a position worse than what they once enjoyed.

As Dayuhan points out, these things are complicated. When dictators fall it is almost always far more the end of the beginning, rather than the beginning of the end.

[Dayuhan]

The danger I see for the US is that if the Muslim Brotherhood gains a substantial slice of the Parliament (they probably will) some elements of the military might wave that as a red flag and try to coax the US into supporting continued military dominance as "the only alternative" to what will be styled as "terrorist rule" or "rule by supporters of and sympathizers with AQ".

I hope we don't fall for it. I'd much rather see the Brothers in Parliament then out on the streets, excluded from power and organizing a rebellion against a tenuous military regime with no shadow of legitimacy.

[Bob's World]

Agreed. Any solution, no matter how bad in our eyes, that the majority of Egyptians want and recognize, is better than any siltation, no matter how great we think it is, if not so viewed by the Egyptian people.

This is a low trust environment, as is often the case. As a transitional mechanism, the people (and the US) trust their military. Clearly for the people this trust is melting as this transition lingers on. The US Constitution was designed to create a mechanism that diverse people could trust in when they had nothing else that they could. So to the quota system in Lebanon that ensures that no single interest group grows too powerful. Egypt needs a new trust mechanism that makes sense to them. Not us. That should be the 50 meter target.

As an aside, the current Egyptian Defense Attache in Washington is an old friend who I worked and lived with for months during the first Gulf War. I will get to see him a gain in a couple weeks for the first time since the end of the ground war, where parted and went our separate ways. I look forward to catching up and discussing such things with him. What I learned then, was that how the US and how Egyptians see things are startlingly different. We need to respect that difference.

[Dayuhan]

Egypt needs a new trust mechanism that makes sense to them. Not us. That should be the 50 meter target.

Agreed... but I'd add that this mechanism will not spring full-blown onto the scene. It will evolve, and the process of its evolution is likely to be messy and frustrating. There may be times when we are tempted to try and manipulate or direct that process. I hope we'll resist that temptation, because if we don't we're likely (IMO as always) to set it back or derail it completely.

[davidbfpo]

One of the best comments I've seen on the developing situation in Egypt as we return here in the UK to 'live' media coverage of Tahrir Square and sometimes tiny film clips from others cities than Cairo - oh yes from Australian Lowy Institute too:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/...or-reflux.aspx

Nor has this aspect, with my emphasis been covered:

Last Friday the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups took to the streets, ostensibly to protest the SCAF's moves to impose a set of supra-constitutional principles that would limit civilian control of the military and enshrine the latter's ability to intervene in politics. But they quickly lost control of the protest to the second and more vehement source of opposition to the SCAF: namely, the amorphous revolutionary youth who were at the forefront of the 25 January uprising and whose patience with the SCAF's transitional rule has been running out quickly ever since.

I noted in the coverage the return of large numbers of riot police and sometimes the front-line part played by the military police - with the same old tactics.