Impasse

The uprising in Egypt is by no means over. It is international coverage, trapped in its 24-hour news cycle, which seems to have waned. The networks cannot continue to show the same crowds, sitting and praying and waiting for the tyrant to leave. They are sitting and waiting for something to give, for a dramatic breakthrough to happen.

The crowds are getting larger in the public squares designated by the revolutionaries, keeping alive the social networking activity that is the real backbone of this uprising. In the first days of the protests, the crowds were composed mainly of young people. Now they have been reinforced by their parents.

According to the latest reports, the trade unions have joined the action. Several industrial sectors were shut down by striking workers. More and more bureaucrats and people manning the state’s propaganda machine have defected to the crowds. The cracks in the Mubarak regime are beginning to show.

One analyst put it well: an unstoppable force has met an immovable object.

The unstoppable force is the consensus of the Egyptian people that the time has come for tyranny to end and democracy to begin. The hundreds of thousands who occupy the public squares of this ancient nation vowed never to leave before the tyrant does.

The immovable object is Hosni Mubarak. He has condemned the protests as the handiwork of foreign agents using paid mobs. He tries to convince all who would bother listen that either he stays or chaos will rule.

In an effort to take the wind out of the uprising, the Mubarak regime shut down internet services. They sent thugs in to attack the peaceful protesters, resulting in many deaths and injuries. The secret police tried kidnapping the perceived leaders of the protest. The banking system was shut down for days, as individuals and enterprises ran out of cash. The stock exchange has not opened, in the vain hope that a crash in equities be averted.

The Egyptian economy ground to a halt. Tourists evaporated. Ordinary Egyptians who earn a day’s wage for a day’s work are hit most badly. Soon food might be a problem as the distribution system was paralyzed. In a few days, enterprises will be unable to pay their workers, raising the specter of hunger for poor families.

Mubarak, for three decades, imagined himself a modern pharaoh, standing well above the ordinary miseries of ordinary citizens. By allowing his country’s economy to melt down rather than yield power, he more closely resembles that insane Roman emperor who, when rejected by his people, set Rome ablaze. For good measure, he fiddled while his city burned.

There are more complex factors influencing the apparent impasse between an uprising that would not die and a regime that would not yield.

On the part of the protesters, there is no clear leadership structure. The uprising is largely spontaneous, orchestrated principally by young Egyptians using social networking technologies. When Mubarak dispatched his freshly appointed vice-president to try and negotiate with the protesters, the man could only think of contacting the fragmented and largely irrelevant political parties.

Vice-president Suleiman is, in addition, severely handicapped. He used to head the dreaded secret police apparatus of the Mubarak regime. He is hated by the crowds manning the barricades.

When the Americans captured Al Qaeda militants shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, the captives were handed over to Suleiman to be tortured in Egypt’s notorious police dungeons. One of those severely tortured by Suleiman’s men, in order to avoid further pain, wove a bizarre story about the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq amassing weapons of mass destruction. That piece of fiction, composed in the torture chambers, became the basis for Washington’s decision to invade Iraq and initiate a war they could not now end.

Many of the angriest Al Qaeda militants still at large are alumni of Suleiman’s torture chambers. The experience drove them to adopt the insane tactics of international terror.

There are also other powers interested in keeping the Mubarak regime in place. The most important of these are the rulers of Saudi Arabia who fear the uprising could become a regional contagion.

When the Obama administration began exerting pressure on Mubarak to go, the Saudis signaled their displeasure. Washington, too, is seriously handicapped in its attempt to influence the course of events in Egypt. Mubarak has been a close and loyal ally of the US. For decades, Washington looked the other way while the Mubarak regime oppressed its own people.

Neither are the Israelis too eager to see Mubarak go. The tyrant has, ironically, been Israel’s closest friend in the region. Any more volatility in the neighborhood will erode Israel’s sense of security.

Nor are the Algerians, the Yemenis, the Jordanians and the Syrians interested in seeing Mubarak booted out. There are similar protest actions in their streets these days. The triumph of the uprising in Egypt will surely inspire others in the Arab world.

All the powers in the region fear Mubarak being booted out, not so much because they love the man but because democracy could become an epidemic that overturns the medieval political arrangements that still prevail in that part of the world. It is the disposition of the regional powers that help make Mubarak appear like an immovable object.

But what about the unstoppable force of the uprising?

By all indications, that force grows by the day as the regime’s capacity for repression is exhausted. The powerful military organization is, two weeks into the uprising, literally sitting on the fence. The tanks are on the streets although they have stood there mainly to keep the opposing sides apart.

Since the uprising shows no sign of exhaustion, it should not surprise us when, sometime soon, the tank crews cease sitting inside their machines and turn their turrets on a hated tyrant.˜