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CAIRO - For three decades, President
Hosni Mubarak has relied heavily on a robust, repressive
security force to ensure his rule. The unapologetic message
he delivered on state television early Saturday gave no sign
that he was shifting course.
He clung instead to the formula that has
sustained him again and again since he inherited power in
1981, after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. The
time-tested Mubarak approach has been to shift blame,
usually toEgypt's shell
of a government, while portraying his heavy-handed regime as
a bulwark against chaos.
But after a day that saw Egypt's riot police
overwhelmed, forcing Mubarak to turn to the armed forces to
try to reimpose order, it was not at all clear that the
former air force officer could withstand a challenge from
unprecedented crowds who have demanded above all else that
he step down.
Until now, Egypt's middle and upper classes
have largely agreed with Mubarak "that the alternative to
the regime was something much more dangerous,'' said Khaled
Fahmy, chair of the history department at the American
University in Cairo.
"But now there's a huge generation, or maybe
two generations, brought up under Mubarak for whom the
language of security has not delivered," Fahmy said.
A privileged and respected elite in Egypt,
the armed forces have always been the backbone of power for
Mubarak, who at 82 is battling an unknown illness but still
cultivates jet-black hair intended to project youthful
vigor. There was no indication that leading officers would
abandon a leader to whom they owe their comfortable salaries
and housing.
But the protesters' cheers that greeted the
military vehicles rolling into Cairo and Alexandria on
Friday clearly suggested a hope from Mubarak's opponents
that the military this time would choose to side with the
people.
"The question mark in my mind is, what are
the generals doing?" said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst
now at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Are they
saying: We want to protect our prerogatives, but we are
prepared to jettison Hosni Mubarak? That we don't know.
That's what happened in Tunisia."
A conservative and cautious leader, Mubarak
has proved a reliable American ally, winning him deference
from successive U.S. presidents who have praised him as a
partner in the quest for a broader peace in the Middle East.
He has charmed generations of U.S. envoys with his
rough-hewn humor and passion for squash, soccer and other
sports.
But he has never appointed a vice president,
reflecting a determination to remain Egypt's unchallenged
leader, and he has never hesitated to use force to beat back
challenges to his rule.
After inheriting power in 1981, Mubarak
initially took steps to appear moderate, including releasing
political prisoners and allowing a modicum of press freedom.
But a wave of Islamist attacks in the 1990s prompted a
fierce response from the security forces, leaving reforms
stalled.
Since then, Mubarak has routinely defied the
international community's call for greater openness. He has
continued to rule under an emergency law that for decades
has curtailed constitutional freedoms, and he has kept in
place a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist
organization that has long been Egypt's most powerful
opposition force.
In 2005, when demonstrators protested during
a constitutional referendum, security forces brutally
suppressed protesters in what became known as "Black
Wednesday."
In June, police kicked a young blogger to
death in an Internet cafe for not turning over his identity
papers.
Estimates of the size of Egypt's domestic
security services, which include the police, riot police and
numerous intelligence services, vary widely from 300,000 to
2 million. The military is estimated to number 340,000.
Beyond that vast security apparatus, Mubarak
has relied for support on a bloated civil service of roughly
5 million workers who depend on him for government jobs. But
his traditional base of laborers, hard-hit by economic
reform, have abandoned him and taken to the streets.
Despite concerns about Mubarak's health, it
had appeared likely until this week that he would seek a
sixth term in presidential elections scheduled for this
fall. For years, many Egyptians have suggested that they
were resigned to the prospect that Mubarak would become
president for life, or that he would somehow pass power to
his son, as other Arab leaders have done.
But this week's shouts from protesters,
chanting, "Gamal, tell your father Egyptians hate you,"
showed how unlikely that scenario now appears. |
