Egypt's Spring Revolution (2011-2013)

[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.

[davidbfpo]

A London-based RUSI analyst adds:

This week, Egypt exploded for one simple reason: its army crossed the line. The Egyptian military, buoyed by its apparent role as saviour of the revolution, judged that it could manipulate the country’s democratic transition to keep its privileges intact. It was wrong...

How about this:

In short, SCAF, led by the increasingly mistrusted Field Marshal Tantawi, wants to create a political model resembling the Turkey of the 1980s or Pakistan of today – an eviscerated democracy with no control over its national security policy, weighed down by a bloated and self-serving military-industrial apparatus.

On the US stance:

Meanwhile, the United States has responded with a staggeringly facile policy. It calls or "restraint on all sides", as if blame for the crisis can be shared around equally.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...evolution.html

[Steve the Planner]

David:

Your last two comments, INMO, accurately reflect the problems and their scope.

The underlying issue is demographic/economic: Huge wells of young people, reasonably well-educated and informationally connected confronting a staid old despot/military structure that just does not function to address the challenges of the masses, or their aspirations (basically, a job, a little bit of freedom, and a some self-worth).

The Arab Spring, as a beginning, is a challenge for large-population Arab countries to find new societal structures for the future. A huge challenge, including to move beyond the many external myths of desert and tribe. Islam flourished in the past as a large, complex, wisdom-right,urban, and international trading empire, so religion is not the limitation.

From here, the endless press coverage of who is in the seat of power this week (or just behind it pulling strings), and whether military or proto-civilian is a diversion.

[davidbfpo]

From The Guardian and with a strong dose of drama in the language used and assessment of it's value:

But although future historians looking back at this period will have ample primary source material available – from a mountain of ballot papers to the hundreds of hours of footage covering rallies in Tahrir Square – their most important asset may prove to be six-and-a-half minutes of jerky video, shot by Bahgat from the heart of the violence.

The film, which consists of a series of clips made over several days at the height of the unrest, directly contradicts many of the claims made by the ministry of interior regarding the type of weaponry deployed by its troops and its insistence that only "reasonable force" has been used to confront protesters.

Better than anything produced by more conventional media outlets, the footage captures the dramatic reality of Cairo's recent clashes. It is also one of the most intense recordings of guerrilla warfare ever produced and has rapidly become a viral sensation, clocking up over 100,000 hits on YouTube.

Link to article:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...square-clashes

The YouTube link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9JmBTotCWQ

There is an assessment of the revolution that will linger IMHO with the 'guardians':

Meanwhile, a police gunman who was caught on camera apparently targeting a protester's eye – prompting cheerful congratulations from his colleagues – has turned himself in after revolutionaries pasted "Wanted" pictures of him across the capital.

[Ken White]

It is also one of the most intense recordings of guerrilla warfare ever produced and has rapidly become a viral sensation, clocking up over 100,000 hits on YouTube.

He and I have wildly different ideas of what might constitute "intense."

Obviously poorly trained and shotgun armed police could never mount much more than reasonable force or a semblance thereof. That lad really needs to get out more...