Mubarak Resigns!

Al-Jazeera's live coverage here.

I've been following the Egyptian revolution for the last 2-to-3 weeks now, particularly enjoying the coverage by The Independent and Al-Jazeera English. My interest in the revolution has only in small part been due to being a journalism student and a follower of news. It's really as an Arab that I find myself invested in the outcome of the Egyptian people's fight, and wondering how far the fires will spread. More specifically, I wonder whether it will spread to my little backwater of Bahrain, though analysts have little belief revolution will reach the richer oil states. But who knows? The victory of the Egyptian people will only help to fan the flames, and perhaps the recent crackdown and infringements of human rights will cause the people to stir.

Egypt is many things: one of the USA's ally in the Middle East, Israel's friendliest neighbour, and a centre of Middle Eastern culture. Both the Fatimid Caliphate in the 10th-12th centuries AD, and the Mamluke Sultanate in the 13tt-16th centuries held Cairo as their capital. Egypt was one of if not the very first Middle Eastern country to be touched by the Industrial Revolution, and in the 50s gave rise to Arab nationalism during the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Cairo is also home to one of the oldest film industries in the world and was the birthplace of the Arabian renaissance of the 19th and 20th centuries.

So with Egypt's revolution a success - its civil and largely bloodless revolution a success - it can only be good news for the rest of the Middle East. What is reason to rejoice for the people is reason to be concerned for the regimes. Saudi Arabia is reportedly furious with the outcome of events, and the US's decision to ask Mubarak to leave will no doubt hurt its position with all their Middle Eastern allies, including perhaps Israel, who must be uneasy of the potential for an anti-Israeli political party coming to power.

Another point of interest is today's 'siege' on the state broadcaster's building, which is accused of being pro-Mubarak and not reporting truthfully on the protests. It leaves me wondering as to the potential of a truly free press opening in Egypt in the future.

On a slightly different note, The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan is a book I've been reading over the past two months. The book is (or was, as I've bought more since) the latest in a series of history texts I've read on the subject in an effort to educate myself on my own cultural and historical background, and the first I would consider a worthwhile read. The writer is a lecturer of Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford and the book, being published in 2009, is perhaps one of the best and most recent published on the modern history of the region. What struck true to me then and amuses me now is the pessimistic outlook of the book:

...journalist and author Samir Kassir [an anti-Syrian Lebanese assassinated in 2005]... had published a remakable essay exploring what he termed the "Arab malaise" of the twenty-first century. It reflected the disenchantment of Arab citizens with their corrupt and authoritarian governments. "It's not pleasant being Arab these days," he observed. "Feelings of persecution for some, self hatred for others; a deep disquiet pervades the Arab world." 

[...]

Kassir, himself a secular nationalist, held the modernizing reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries... as an era "when Arabs could look to the future with optimism." This is clearly no longer the case. The Arab world views the future with growing pessimism, and the secular vision no longer inspires the majority of the population. In any free and fair election in the Arab world today, I believe the Islamists would win hands down.

Roughly a month ago today, this would still have been a truthful statement. How quickly things change. The people of the Middle East have been filled with the optimistic spirit of change, the Egyptian revolution calls for true democracy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Islamist group, are both more moderate and less influential, with little public support should they enter future elections.

To quote one Al-Jazeera reporter: "I've seen people give birth; I've seen people get married; I've seen people graduate. I've never seen people as happy as they are here."