The Power and the Money

The internets are freedom-neutral

Not unexpectedly, the protests over the recent Mexican election (which will go nowhere) have led to bloviations about Twitter and Facebook and the blogosphere yadda yadda. My skepticism about the political effect of the Internet is well-known. Here I pointed out that the Egyptian government readily shut it down during the rebellion. Here I mentioned that revolutionary activity spread further and just as fast in the mid-nineteenth century. And here I presented evidence that most revolutionary mobilization in Egypt took place via ... printed leaflets.

So I was gratified when Mex Files (which you should all read regularly) published photographic evidence that angry young Mexicans agree with me.

“If I had known that you would be a cowardly Mexican, then I would’ve stuck to taking care of my cows. I didn’t have the Internet or Facebook, and I made a revolution. You, you’re too lazy to march for your rights. But hey, ‘Viva México,’ right?”

Right. I actually don’t think the recent Mexican election was fraudulent, and I still say right. The internet has made political mobilization easier — but only for those who were going to mobilize without it.

Another Libya post

 Various people have noticed that this Libya thing has been dragging on for a while now, and various explanations are being trotted out. But not by me! I was against intervention in the first place, but now that it’s happened I think it’s going reasonably well.  

What’s “reasonably well”? Isn’t Qaddafi still in power? Well, yes he is. But he’s also continuing to lose ground on every front. I already wrote about the “correlation of forces” notion; nothing has changed in the three weeks or so since then. If I stare very closely, it does look like the speed of disintegration may be slowing, which would be bad — but he’s still not winning any battles, morale in Tripoli is still low, and defections are continuing. A while back, I predicted that he’d be gone “by August, give or take a month” — in other words, between July 1 and September 30. I’ll stand pat on that.

Meanwhile, four quick thoughts.

(1) Most of the action seems to be taking place in the western mountains and around Misrata. The eastern front, out by Benghazi, has been relatively quiet. That seems a bit odd, given that Benghazi is the rebel capital and, presumably, the largest concentration of forces are located there. Thinking out loud: if the war ends after a string of victories in the west and central fronts, without anything much having happened in the east, you’d expect that to affect the postwar balance of forces in the country.

(2) France has resorted not just to arming the rebels, but arming them via large, random weapon dumps out of planes. This suggests some things, both bad and good. Bad: the French aren’t coordinating with Tunisia or the various rebel groups in the west. Good: the French chain of command (including, but not limited to, President Sarkozy) is getting anxious. Libya is a much bigger deal in France than in the U.S., and Sarkozy has an election coming up next year. (An election he’s currently favored to lose in a landslide, I should add. But ten months is a long time.) I don’t see Sarko caring to start his campaign without having resolved Libya — somehow. So while I’m ready to be wrong about September 30, I will be astonished if Qaddafi is still clinging to power by next February — the point at which the French presidential campaign really takes off.

(3) The fact that the Libyan rebels are willing to tolerate and work together with large numbers of armed Berbers strikes me as cause for cautious optimism. (Qaddafi spent 40 years demonizing the Berbers as dim, treacherous primitives who are Not Really Libyan.) Of course, the Berbers seem to be doing more than their share of the fighting. 

(4) Two big question marks: Egypt and Tunisia. Egypt is a poor country, and its military is no great shakes, but they’re so big that even a very modest intervention could have disproportionate effect. Tunisia is much smaller — but even Tunisia has half again the population of Libya, and they’re right next to the most intense theater of fighting. I have the strong impression that both countries are being very very cautious and moderate in their responses because they’re both internally unstable at the moment, having just come through their own revolutions. Still, it’s interesting that nobody in either country cares to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.

Let’s see how it looks in August.

Around the Arab revolutions

 Usually an “around the Revolution” entry on this blog refers to left-wing Bolivarian governments on this continent. Here, though, it refers to Libya, Bahrain, Egypt, and Yemen. It will be brief: these are just observations; I have a bad head cold and a boatload of work. (See Laffer blogging.)

In Libya, it is surprising how quickly government forces withdrew from the east in the face of Allied airstrikes. The rebels still seem like a mob, by all accounts. The rapid withdrawal seems like a sign that discipline inside government forces is cracking, but that does not necessarily mean that the regime is about to fall. Gaddafi has a lot of support in Sirte; if his army holds together enough to crack Misurata (which will not be easy with Allied planes overhead) and hold Sirte, then he will probably hold on for a while. On the other hand, my prediction that oil would soon start flowing again seems to have been correct. The rebels now control export facilities with a capacity of 827,000 bpd, and it appears as though Qatar is willing to help with marketing. Oil markets reacted as you would expect. Ironically, it looks as though Chinese and Indian oil companies may in fact help, by being willing to purchase rebel oil without fear of what might happen to their interests in Gaddafi-held territory. That is the exact opposite of what observers expected when the violence first erupted.

I would very much like to go to Benghazi to see how Agoco is faring.

In Bahrain, 11 members of Wifaq have resigned from parliament, which is not a good sign. The party seemed to be willing to compromise in its conditions for talks with the government: all they want now is the release of 250 detainees. the idea of Kuwaiti-brokered talks now seems off the table. Reports are vague about the presence of GCC troops. There are reports that the Saudis are running checkpoints, but those should be taken with a grain of salt. Saudi troops wear the old U.S. three-color DCU pattern (on the right below), whereas Bahraini defense forces wear British-style camoflague patterns (on the left). Unless you are familiar with the uniforms, it is not easy to tell them apart.

The unrest is not good for the economy. The Grand Prix has been cancelled, as have other events. The 2008 race contributed $600 million to the economy, or 2.9% of GDP. Combine that with the proliferation of cancelled events and collapse of tourism, and Bahrain has a problem. The central bank has leaned on local banks to go easy on businesses affected by the slowdown. (It also insists that the financial industry is stable, but it would.) More importantly, on March 10 the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) announced a $10 billion fund for housing and infrastructure. Bahrain intends to use the money to build 50,000 new homes at a cost of $5.3 billion over the next five years.

The goal is, of course, political. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, there are currently 46,000 people on the waiting list for government-subsidized housing. One grievance is that newly-naturalized Sunnis from places like Syria and Pakistan are alleged to get priority; true or not, the government hopes that speeding up the pace of modern housing construction will ease the political conflict. (The government is almost certainly wrong, of course.)

In addition to the housing program, the government is planning a 1% levy on salaries to fund an unemployment insurance scheme, plus a tax on employers for each expat they employ, to finance training for locals. In 2009, the government gave expats the freedom to change jobs, with the aim of raising the cost of employing them versus native Bahrainis.

Unsurprisingly, the political effect of the change was the reverse, adding to Shia grievances. For what it is worth, the markets have perceived a big increase in the risk of Bahraini sovereign debt, but they have perceived that for most of the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt and Morocco. The interior minister, Rashid bin Abdullah bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, has said that his ministry will “speed up plans” to hire 20,000 new employees, and the King has ordered various ministries to increase employment.

For what it is worth, I do not think that the initiatives are going to work. Bahrain needs to address Shia political grievances. My colleague, Victor Menaldo, has a paper showing that Arab monarchies have been surprisingly resilient to political shocks: very worth reading. It’s implication is that Bahrain will make it through, but it isn’t clear that Bahrain fits the model.

So what about Egypt? Well, here I am going to turn the floor over to Victor (and his colleague, Mike Albertus) once more, from their op-ed in USA Today: “Research that we’ve conducted on the relationship between revolutions and democracy demonstrates that less than a majority of revolutions end in democracy. Surprisingly, however, we also find that the democracies that tend to survive the test of time are those born in revolution.”

Finally, Yemen. All I have to say here are that the reports are terrifying. Abandoned ammunition dumps is not a good sign.

Egypt and airstrikes in Libya

 The problem is that the Egyptian air force is probably not up to the mission. Here are some (decade-old) quotes from U.S. officers on the quality of Egyptian air force training:

• “They know where to turn, and where to pretend to fire munitions, and who is going to win.”
• “They fly our planes and use our tactics, but you would never know it.”
• “Egyptian exercises are totally canned: they aren’t for training, they’re for show.”

In addition, the experience with Egyptian forces in Gulf War 1 was not very good. Egyptian maintenance was terrible: depot-level maintenance still needs to be performed in the United States. Worse yet, there occasions of Egyptian units effectively fabricating engagements when they in fact met no resistance. Finally, compartmentalization in the Egyptian military was awful; rarely was there any one single officer with full operational knowledge.

It is possible that things have improved, but it isn’t how I would bet. From a 2004 report: “More generally, the Egyptian air force cannot compete with the Israeli air force in overall battle management, the exploitation of modern sensors and targeting systems, electronic warfare, beyond-visual-range warfare, and in using precision strike and attack munitions. It also focuses more on numbers than sustainability, and has limited ability to sustain high sortie rates.” Admittedly, Libya is not Israel, but the chances are very high that Egyptians strikes would not be effective. Moreover, the Egyptian military has developed a commercial empire, with an entrenched officer class: historically, these are not things that are conducive to military effectiveness.

In short, if the U.N. is going to use airpower to stop the Libyan advance on the rebels, that airpower has to come from Western armed forces.

Bahrain riots

 As I’m sure that many of you already know, Bahrain is the first Gulf state to experience anti-government demonstrations. The police reaction was swift, if not quite ferocious. If all goes as planned, we will soon have some backgrounders on Bahrain ready to go in a day or two, but right now I just want to point out some context: angry demonstrations in Bahrain are nothing new.

Google “Bahrain riots,” and the first entry is this from 2007: “Riots reinforce Bahrain ruler’s fears.” The second entry is also from 2007:  “Bahrain Riots Continue For Fifth Day.” After that you get a story from 2009: “Bahrain: Riots erupt after arrest of Shiites.” Fourth is a story from last August: “Arrest of Shiite activists sparks riots ahead of Bahrain election.” Then a story from 1956: “11 People Die in Bahrain Riots Over British Rule.”

When I was last there, burning tires were a common sight at night in certain neighborhoods that my hosts would have been horrified to know that I visited. I will be returning in May, and my wife will be joining me.

In short, keep the news in perspective. Events in Egypt have been dramatic, and events in Bahrain for that reason may turn dramatic ... but so far, nothing out of the ordinary for that country.

Saudi and America part ways over Egypt

 Well, yesterday some news broke that was so predictable that I am embarrassed at not predicting it. It turns out that the Saudi government is unhappy with the U.S. decision to use our aid as a lever to prevent the Egyptian army from shooting protestors. It is even less happy that we might now use same to convince the Egyptian army to pack Mubarak off into (not very) early retirement. Dissatisfied with the way that we are running things, the Saudis threatened to replace our support dollar-for-dollar.

Saudi Arabia has deep links with the United States. The above picture was taken in an Aramco compound in the country; it is no coincidence that it bears a frightening resemblance to the view from my brother’s backyard in Coral Springs, Florida. The nationalization of Aramco was uncontentious, favorable to the companies, and served American goals. Only twice have Saudi and American interests substantially diverged: briefly in 1973 when the Saudis embargoed oil shipments, a stand they rapidly reversed; and substantively in the past two decades with Saudi financing for Islamic radical movements. And to be fair, the Saudis have been increasingly helpful in combatting terrorist finance, although their best is not always that good. “We are trying, but if money wants to go it will go,” said Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in May 2009.

The break over Egypt, though, portends a deeper split. The U.S. has decided that it really does not get much from keeping Mubarak in power. The alternative is not really that scary, and might even be better. Riyadh has decided something different. Now, I do not think that Riyadh is going to get what it wants here, but if you want to look for signs of the American empire cracking at the seams, this is a pretty good one.

A second takeaway is that Saudi Arabia doesn’t really care about Islamic extremism. Of course, we knew that already.

How much has the U.S. given to Mubarak over the years?

 So asks my old high school buddy, Omar Wasow. Below, in millions of constant 2009 dollars, is the answer.

The U.S. strategy in Egypt, then, is obvious. It is hard to force a government to resign, no matter how much money we give it. That is why the U.S. didn’t bother to threaten the Micheletti coup government in Honduras. The general lesson should be obvious. (“Stop receiving our money or we’ll stop giving you money!”) But it is not as hard to change the behavior of actors within the government. In that vein, the Obama Administration informed the Egyptian military that they will lose the gravy train and go down with the rest of the ship if they fire on the protesters.

There are rumors that we are now taking a harder line with Mubarak. That would also make sense, but it is not something a weak and weakening imperial government wants to try with an autonomous satrapy unless it was sure that the satrap had lost support of key actors within his or her own government. (Personally, I would be reluctant to do it: people often dig in their heels when they feel like they are being threatented.) Not that I’m suggesting that the United States is an empire, let alone a weak and weakening one, or that Mubarak is an American satrap ...

Guest post #4: Egypt, where do we go from here?

 The longer the crisis goes on, the worse I think the final outcome will be. I suspect that the opposition coalition is frailer than it appears, and any real obstacles on the path to victory may cause key members to pull out and sulk. The Muslim Brotherhood has been playing itself brilliantly so far, denying Mubarak the chance to call it an “Islamist street fight” by refusing to take credit at the same time it used its networks to bring people into the streets and supported Western-friendly El Baradei as the face of the future. Unfortunately, El Baradei lacks the fire in his belly tneeded o lead the diverse rabble that makes up the opposition, let alone head a transitional government.

Suleiman’s offer might have worked earlier in the week, but he is loathed by the opposition, and his resignation has become of their central demands. By insisting that they’ll only negotiate with the Army, the opposition may have boxed themselves in, but Mubarak’s slow reaction time of Mubarak may give them an opening.

The Army’s declaration should help the opposition maximize its crowds tomorrow, and may force Mubarak to leave, or Mubarak may be too stubborn to move from Sharm-el-Shaykh until he’s removed by the military, either politely by the general staff or in a bloody firefight.

It’s anyone’s game at this point. Steven Cook at the Council of Foreign Relations thinks that the succession is already underway, and that President Suleiman is not far off. I cannot say with certainty that Mubarak won’t survive the week, or the month, but with Egyptian civil society on one side and the Army openly opposed to the use of force, Mubarak’s retreat to Sharm-el-Shaykh seems to suggest that the game is up. The Saudi government has apparently expressed no interest in hosting Mubarak, but that rumor is unsubstantiated.

If Suleiman were to succeed, it would have to happen before the end of this week. Otherwise the lack of cash will become crippling. If an economic crisis comes, it seems unlikely that Suleiman could stay in power without a spectacularly bloody crackdown. Otherwise he’ll have to give in and play a role that would allow the opposition to win and take power in the September elections.

What about elsewhere? Anti-government protests have popped up from Algiers to Amman to Sana’a and Khartoum. North Africa is too far out of my usual remit for me to make sensible comments about Algeria. The Jordanian royal family is still off limits and will likely weather this storm, even if their Prime Minister falls — this threat is much smaller than Black September. Khartoum just lost half the country. I’m not sure what the dynamics are there, and there is a good chance that the demonstrations may just be sympathy pangs following on the referendum. I’m surprised that nothing is moving yet in Kuwait and Bahrain, especially, but give it time. President Assad of Syria has used the moment to round up Kurdish and Druze dissidents in Aleppo. Syria is the likeliest to come through this without real trouble.

Yemen, though, that’s the place to worry about. The country is desperately poor and fractious; given its mix of tribal civil war, Al-Qaeda, southern secessionists and nothing resembling a modern civil society, the protests could fracture the country and bring down President Saleh. In Yemen, that would mean an all-out civil war …  which would suck in the Saudis, and quite possibly the United States in one way or another.

Egypt used to lead the Arab world, and so, we may end up with a variant of “Egypt sneezes, the whole Arab world catches cold.”

OK, this has been over 3,000 words. Any questions, comments, or brickbats?

Guest post #3: Egypt, day five, events to date

 Early Friday morning, the government shut down the internet, mobile phones, and arrested activists and party leaders from the opposition. The Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups were able to reroute information via a photocopied pamphlet distributed at universities and mosques, producing large demonstrations across the country that haven’t stopped since.

That night, Mubarak sacked his government and replaced it with a new one made up of the military and intelligence services. Though expectations were wide on Friday that the speaker of Parliament would depose Mubarak and install a national unity government, the new government has allowed Mubarak to cling to power. At first, the Army reluctantly repelled attempts to break into the Ministry of the Interior. When the Army withdrew, snipers placed on the roof kept the crowd at bay.

That night, the Obama Administration appears to have informed the Egyptian military that a Tiananmen Square solution would cost the military its generous American subsidy. 

By late Saturday, the police and the army withdrew from Midan Tahrir (Liberation Square) which has been continuously occupied by protesters. In most cities, mobs set the headquarters of the NDP on fire, along with most police stations. That forced the police to withdraw entirely from the cities or join the protesters.

After nightfall, the government cut water and power to large parts of Cairo in order to make it easier for the Ministry of the Interior to send agents out to induce looting, anarchy, and fear. The idea was that the fear of chaos would defuse the protests. Instead, it prompted most neighborhoods to set up barricades barricades and impromptu civil defense units. That same loss of water and power also gave cover to the Muslim Brotherhood to launch a mass prison break of writers, activists, party leaders, and dissidents — as well as ordinary prisoners. If there was one key misstep, it was the power outage. The prison break would appear to be the turning point.

On Sunday, the Muslim Brotherhood corralled the diverse opposition parties into a single committee to back Mohammed El Baradei in negotiation with the Army. This set off a cascade: the Judges Association threw in with the revolt, the Wafd Party leadership called for free elections, tank battalions in Alexandria switched over to the protesters and joined a procession to the coastal Corniche. By late night, the theologians, judges, and professors of Al-Azhar marched to Tahrir Square. There they issued statements legitimizing the protests under Islamic law and condemning any attempt at bloodshed in their suppression. At this point you had the entirety of Egyptian civil society on the side of the opposition.

On Monday, Egyptian actors, athletes, and musicians joined the rest of the protesters at Tahrir Square. The crowd topped out at 50,000 as the Army erected barricades. The transitional committee called for a general strike and million person marches in Alexandria and Cairo, as the last internet service provider was shut down. (Google is offering Egyptians a “speak-to-twitter” phone service. We’ll see if that works. It probably does not matter.) The big problem is that food, fuel, and cash are getting tight for most people in a country with no working ATMs and shuttered banks. The creeping sense of crisis should come to a head by the end of the week.

Throughout the day, Army trucks were sent out to feed the poor and the protesters. That led to the day’s major development, when the Army issued the following statement: “The presence of the Army in the streets is for your sake and to ensure your safety and wellbeing. The armed forces will not resort to use of force against our great people.” The Army went on to say that it believed in the people’s right to free assembly (which is in fact illegal under the Emergency Law) and believed their grievances were real.

Late in the day, Vice-President Suleiman spoke on national television to inform the nation that President Mubarak had authorized him to talk to the opposition about constitutional reform and offer new elections in the districts that demonstrated egregious ballot stuffing — which, in reality, is all of them. 

The wealthiest members of the Egyptian elite continued to flee the country for the Gulf or London. Among the governments offering to rescue their citizens from Egypt, Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki offered his citizens flights home to Iraq, which he promised was less dangerous than the streets of Cairo. He is wrong, at least so far.

Guest post #2: Egypt, day five, players and parties

 Here is a description of the most-relevant people, organizations, and political parties.

People:

President Hosni Mubarak: Veteran Commander of the Air Force and Vice President to Anwar Sadat, he came to power in 1981. Since 1981, Mubarak has used “Emergency Laws” to attack opposition parties and groups. He’s famous across the Arab world as a “water buffalo” for his stolid stubbornness. To his detriment, he is notoriously slow in a crisis. For example, in both the Achille Lauro debacle and the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, he waited for weeks to make a choice. But once he makes a choice, his reputation is one of stubbornness. This characteristic has produced problems: the all-out war against the Islamists in the 1990s may have expelled radicals from the Brotherhood and from Egypt, but it also sent Islamic Jihad and others off to Afghanistan to become Al-Qaeda. He is married to Suzanne, and has two sons, Gamal and Alaa.

Gamal Mubarak: banker, corrupt, sleazy, it was widely expected that he would succeed to the presidency. He and Alaa are widely reported to be in London. If so, they are only joining much of Egypt’s wealthy, who are fleeing the unrest.

Vice President Omar Suleiman: Long-time éminence grise to Mubarak, he was in charge of Egypt’s general intelligence. He’s saved Mubarak’s life a number of times, and is quite loyal to him personally. His name has been circulated in prior months as a presidential candidate and probable stalking horse for Gamal’s candidacy. He’s responsible for the Egyptian end of the Bush Administration’s torture regime, and is widely reputed to enjoy his grim work. In a region known for torture, he’s refined it to an art — think Beria. On Friday the 28th, he became the first vice president Mubarak has ever appointed, and he is first in the line of succession should Mubarak be incapacitated, flee, or be otherwise removed from office. This move brought one of three possible coup-organizers into the government, though Suleiman retains private channels to the Minister of Defense and the Army.

Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik: Former Commander of the Air Force and Civil Aviation Minister, he replaced a technocratic-reformer named Nazif. Know as “the Iron Fist,” he’s bad business, but he’s also a respected war veteran. This move would appear to be a consolidation of support from the Air Force, given the Army’s uncertain loyalties.

Ayman Nour: Leader of the liberal secular El-Ghad Party, which is semi-legal. He founded El-Ghad in 2005 before being stripped of immunity and imprisoned for running against Hosni Mubarak. Spent 3 years in prison and released in February 2009. His son was arrested late Thursday. Ayman Nour was struck in the head late Friday. He has joined both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Association for Change in the National Unity Front. As of Monday night, he has called for a “people’s parliament” in order to write a new constitution. El Baradei is supportive.

Mohammed El Baradei: Former director of the IAEA and 2005 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, he returned to Egypt in 2010 to announce his candidacy for the Presidency and launch the umbrella “Association for Change.” So far, he’s something of an empty suit in Egyptian politics, as he spent his life abroad. From Friday through late Saturday, he was the only opposition leader under house arrest. On Sunday, he reached an agreement with Ayman Nour and the Muslim Brotherhood to form a National Unity Front and begin negotiations with the Army — not the government.

Bureaucracies:

The Armed Forces: the regime has given the generals major economic concessions as a way to keep them from joining the protestors. Mubarak sent the General Staff to Washington for their annual review a few days earlier than usual; this appears to have been a mistake. The army has a fancy American kit, but it’s mostly made up of green conscripts. (Egypt drafts approximately a sixth of every male annual age cohort into the armed services; another chunk is drafted into the national police. The wealthy and educated easily avoid service.) To date, the Army has never attacked the Egyptian people. They receive $1.3 billion of foreign aid from the United States every year, they buy American kit, and their officers attend American war colleges. With 450,000 men under arms, they’re the tenth largest military in the world, and participate in annual war games with the U.S. and its allies called “Bright Star.”

The Ministry of the Interior and Police: These guys cover both political and regular crimes. The Ministry’s Bastille-like HQ is a target for the protestors. Attempts to break into their HQ Sunday were repelled, but several political prisons throughout Egypt are in the hands of the prisoners. Dismissing the Interior Minister is a long-standing Mubarak ritual to demonstrate that he can hear “the voices of the People.” The old incumbent Adly was hated, but replacing him with the equally repugnant “Master of the Prisons” is not going to win the regime any friends in the crowds.

The Association of Judges: the semi-independent judiciary branch also oversees elections. Mubarak has made them his enemy over the last decade by increasingly obvious ballot-stuffing and attempts to break their power.

Parties:

National Democratic Party: Ruling Party. They've been in power since 1981. Arab Nationalist with socialist tinge, but really corrupt. For a breakdown of its members and leadership, go here.

The Muslim Brotherhood: the second oldest party in Egypt. Originally nationalist and anti-colonial, they're the oldest native democratic institution in the country. The last decade has seen their base of support radically expand among the middle class, especially lawyers, engineers, and teachers. They're semi-banned by the government, but they have the deepest logistical network of anyone in the country in the opposition. The leadership has three factions: Conservative, Islamist, and Reformist. The former two are older. The Conservative faction won party by-elections in 2009, and while the Islamist faction retains ties to Hamas and other branches of the Muslim Brotherhood around the Middle East. The mostly middle class Reform faction is technocratic and social democratic. Many U.S. analysts think that the presence of the Islamist wing makes the Brotherhood tied to Al-Qaeda, and threats of an imminent Islamic Revolution — they’re wrong.

Wafd: Oldest political party in Egypt, originally agrarian-populist-nationalist, currently a foil and a puppet for the ruling NDP. Calls from Wafd Party leaders for immediate elections and change are a clear sign of the poor state of the NDP.

El Ghad: semi-legal liberal party led by Ayman Nour. Broke off from in 2005. It draws support from a rather thin bit of the middle class

Kefeya: a catch-all umbrella group that includes both Marxists and Islamicists. Popular from 2004-2006, it expected to launch a Color Revolution in Egypt with the help of the Bush Administration. Due to its political diversity, it’s retreated into a debating society and hasn’t been able to mobilize.

The Association for Change: Mohammed El Baradei's umbrella group. The weakest and newest political party.
 
The April 6th Youth Movement: Founded in 2008 and made up of college students, this group is modeled on Otpor in Serbia. They claim to have politicized over 100,000 young people and are quite brazen in their confrontations with the regime. They helped distribute the photos of Khaled Said, who was murdered by the police in Alexandria. International pressure forced the government to consent to a trial for police misconduct.

Guest post #1: Egypt, day five, backgrounder

My name is Luke Schleusener. I’m a graduate student at the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. I’ve got six years of Arabic, Classical and Dialects. I attended AUC for four months in 2006. I’ve written about new media and the public sphere in Bahrain.

First, let’s settle something. Between 8-10% of Egypt’s population is on twitter or has regular internet access. This is not a twitter revolution. The spread of internet and mobile phones in tandem with the rise of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya meant that the regime lost both framing and hegemony, and the secret police never had enough resources to monitor every conversation. It’s not the organizing factor that makes the internet so powerful. Other, freer societies (say the Philippines in 1986, even under Marcos) did not need new technology to accomplish this.

Background

Egypt is a generic military dictatorship with nationalist-ethnic pretensions. The governing National Democratic Party of Hosni Mubarak has its roots in socialist Arab Nationalism, but central planning, socialism, and Arab political unity have fallen by the wayside in the interest of octogenarian crony capitalism.

Two thirds of the population is under 30, and about a third of the population is unemployed, but actual figures plus underemployment make things much grimmer. The NDP historically promised free college education and jobs for every graduate, but along with most other public goods in the semi-socialist paradise, the Mubarak government has gone out of its way to defund schooling to prevent the advent of a middle class to overthrow it. Instead, it has impoverished school teachers, professors, and civil servants. Recent college graduates tend to turn to the Muslim Brotherhood for hope, health care, and food. Cairo’s taxi fleet is made up of moonlighting civil servants trying to make enough to buy bread. Less than five percent of the population controls 90% of the wealth. The last five years have been increasingly tumultuous as food and fuel prices skyrocketed, neoliberal economic policies exacerbated unemployment. Economic growth has produced winners, but that has escalated class divisions: over the past year, new gated communities have displaced slums across Cairo.

Tensions have run high since the 2006 elections, when Mubarak refused to seat the Muslim Brotherhood in parliament and then tossed secular liberal Ayman Nour into prison. More recently, many expected Mubarak engineer his son Gamal’s succession in the upcoming presidential election in September. The military has been tepid, at best, about that idea.

Recent events in Tunisia encouraged the populace, but the situation was dire before that.

This is your father’s revolution

 There seems to be some evidence that the Egyptian protests have been organized the old-fashioned way.

Thursday, January 27: Anonymous leaflets circulating in Cairo also provide practical and tactical advice for mass demonstrations, confronting riot police, and besieging and taking control of government offices. Signed “long live Egypt”, the slickly produced 26-page document calls on demonstrators to begin with peaceful protests, carrying roses but no banners, and march on official buildings while persuading policemen and soldiers to join their ranks.

The leaflet asks recipients to redistribute it by email and photocopy, but not to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter, which are being monitored by the security forces.

Charlie Stross suggested recently: “If I was in charge of organizing communications within a mass insurgency today, I would have an iron rule for comsec: With the exception of tools for real-time communication in the field during tactical engagements, no communication technology invented after 1945 may be used. Yes, microdots. Yes, dead letter drops. Yes, invisible ink made at the kitchen sink out of household ingredients. Yes, human couriers. Make the f--kers work to intercept our communications and hunt us down.”

It is still unclear to me that the internet had much effect on organizing the Egyptian revolt. It is fairly clear that it made it easier for the Iranian government to suppress the demonstrations in 2009. Malcolm Gladwell still stands.

Now, as far as validating a pet theory, conscription may be playing a key role in why the Egyptian army has not acted against the rioters ... or it may not. Thoughts?

Things happened before the Internet, really

 Enough, already! Now Steven Walt has joined the ranks of the people stunned by the effect of the internets. “A combination of modern mass media (Al Jazeera, the Internet, email, Twitter, etc.) has clearly played a major role in driving the pace of events.” I could handle this kind of thing from 20-somethings who don’t remember when you had to wait for a letter to arrive in the mail. But Steven Walt?

I am at a loss as to why people keep coming back to the Internets. Here is a chronology of recent events:

Dec. 17 - Mohamed Bouazizi sets fire to himself in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia.
Jan. 04 - Bouazizi dies of his burns. 
Jan. 14 - After days of riots, President Ben Ali flees to Saudi Arabia.
Jan. 22 - Protests in Algeria.
Jan. 23 - Protests in Yemen.
Jan. 25 - Protests in Cairo.

And here is an even more impressive and more rapid chain of events:

Feb. 22 - French government bans protest meetings. Riots break out.
Feb. 23 - Prime Minister Guizot resigns.
Feb. 26 - King flees to Britain.
Feb. 27 - Protest marches in Germany. Governments give into demands.
Mar. 13 - Riots flare in Vienna. Metternich resigns.
Mar. 15 - Mass demonstrations in Budapest.
Mar. 18 - Demonstrations in Berlin.
Mar. 20 - Uprising in Poland.
Mar. 31 - Constitution drafted for Germany.
Apr. 08 - Revolt in Moldava.

The difference? The first group happened in 2010-11, and the second in 1848. But somehow that has gone right into the memory hole. I am flabbergasted that the Brazilian, Philippine, and Chinese events of my living memory seem to have been forgotten. I am surprised that nobody seems to mention 1968. But I really stunned that 1848 has been lost in the frenzy to declare how super marvelicious the internet is for freedom.

I am making a strong argument here: if the internet had been magically shut down on December 17th, events would have proceeded in much the same way. News travels and people organize in ways that do not involve modern electronic communication.

And that is why Egypt’s internet shutdown is not having much effect. Except in surprising the more breathless techno-evangelists.

The internet is a series of tubes ... actual physical real-world tubes

 I hate internet triumphalism. The new communications technology of the last two decades is clearly changing society. Those changes are probably for the better. But the recent political upheaval has led to triumphalism of the worst sort, with all sorts of blather about Twitter revolutions and the like. It really drives me crazy, as if people have suddenly forgotten that spontaneous mass political mobilizations happened all the time back in the day. If the events in the links are too obscure, well, they are other, more famous ones. In short, there is no reason to believe that social networking or cell phones played any sort of irreplaceable role in the current unrest besetting Egypt and Yemen.

Moreover, the internet actually requires real-world infrastructure. Which governments can shut down. Through the expedient of making a phone call. The Egyptian government appears to have made just such a call. From the link:

We have examined the takedown event more closely, looking at the sequence in which Egyptian service providers removed themselves from the Internet. The following plot shows the number of available networks for each of the significant providers, between 22:00 and 23:00 UTC last night (midnight to 1am Cairo time). Our new observation is that this was not an instantaneous event on the front end; each service provider approached the task of shutting down its part of the Egyptian Internet separately.

 
Telecom Egypt (AS8452), the national incumbent, starts at 22:12:43.
Raya joins in a minute later, at 22:13:26.
Link Egypt (AS24863) begins 4 minutes later, at 22:17:10.
Etisalat Misr (AS32992) goes two minutes later, at 22:19:02
Internet Egypt (AS5536) goes six minutes later, at 22:25:10.

First impressions: this sequencing looks like people getting phone calls, one at a time, telling them to take themselves off the air. Not an automated system that takes all providers down at once; instead, the incumbent leads and other providers follow meekly one by one until Egypt is silenced.

The Egyptian government may fall. Or it may not. But it won’t be because of the Internet.