SCARCELY half a year after taking up residence in the White House, Barack Obama made his first trip to the Muslim world. He chose the largest Arab nation, Egypt – his country’s staunchest Arab ally (and second-largest aid recipient) in the region. In a highly celebrated speech in Cairo, the new US leader pitched a message of hope to the Egyptian people and a challenge directly to President Hosni Mubarak, his associates and underlings in clear terms: “You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion.”

The messages coming out of Washington in the past couple of weeks have been much less clear. In fact, what has emanated is indecision and confusion about how to respond to the remarkable manifestations of people power all over Egypt. It’s a condition which affects the countries that the rest of the world lumps together under the catch-all description, “the West”.

A century ago, the dominant powers in the region were Britain and France. They held sway in a swath of territory from Turkey through Syria, Palestine and Egypt right through to the Atlantic Ocean. As they gradually relinquished direct control and “independence” took root, they cynically supported all kinds of unsavoury leaders whom they could rely on to keep their own people in line and make things easy for them.

In the case of Egypt, the end came for the British when a group of army officers launched a coup in 1952. It finally gained a firm foothold in 1956 when its leading light, Gamal Abdel Nasser, took charge and nationalised the Suez Canal from British and French control. The ensuing international incident split the western powers – Britain and France on one side, the US on the other. They threw the whole mess into the lap of the fledgling United Nations, and a Canadian foreign-service officer, Lester Pearson, came up with a solution which saved everybody’s face. He successfully proposed the creation of a peace-keeping mission with soldiers contributed by member countries and operating under the aegis of the UN.

Nasser, second president of the new Egyptian republic, became the darling of Arab nationalism and the developing countries for breaking out of the mould of deference to the colonial powers. Because he had snatched control of the canal from their grasp, Britain and its friends cut off economic aid. So he turned to the new emerging world power, the Soviet Union, which gladly provided generous military aid and agreed to finance the building of the Aswan High Dam.

When a heart attack felled Nasser in 1970, he was succeeded by Anwar el-Sadat, a fellow-plotter from the revolt of the colonels. Sadat tilted Egypt back towards the West and breached the unanimous opposition among the Arab states towards Israel. He went to Jerusalem, addressed the Knesset, travelled to Camp David in the United States where he and the hawkish Israeli leader, Menachim Begin, worked out the agreements which ended the official animosity between the two states. He influenced King Hussein of Jordan to do the same, but was unable to move Israel’s other major adversary, Syria.

Sadat may have secured peace with Israel, but it opened a war on himself by Islamist forces in Egypt. Some of them were trusted army officers and they assassinated Sadat as he reviewed a military parade in Cairo in 1981. His vice-president was Hosni Mubarak, an air force officer who had also been vice minister of defence. Mubarak effects a disciplined military carriage and his emotionless, big-eyed stare earned him the nickname “cow-eyes” among his compatriots. He had displayed no ambition to become president, but when he found himself in the office he set about accumulating and consolidating power in his hands.

He has done so effectively for almost three decades now, underpinned by the extremely effective security machinery he has built up. The black-shirted police mercilessly put down any displays of dissent or opposition, using terror, intimidation, harsh treatment and outright torture. The military apparatus has quite a different relationship with the population, as has been so patently obvious during the events taking place even as we speak. The police bashed heads, deployed US-supplied tear gas and sprayed demonstrators with water cannons.

The hostility of the crowds eventually drove the police away: some shed their uniforms and weapons and took off. In contrast, the army drove in tanks and armoured cars and placed them in formations intended to separate the pro- and anti-Mubarak demonstrators. They left the anti-Mubarak slogans demonstrators daubed on the army vehicles and allowed people to swarm all over the huge machines whose huge main guns still carried the covering bags intended to keep dirt out of the barrels. Their friendly behaviour towards the crowd is in marked contrast to the police, and it soon became clear why when the high command announced that the Egyptian army would not fire on its fellow citizens.

This policy is already coming under strain as forces supporting Mubarak attack the demonstrators who want him to go right now. It is clear that while there are those – particularly among the bourgeoisie and business class – who have genuine affection and respect for Mubarak, the violence in many places is the work of agents provocateurs intent on bolstering the official line that the anti-Mubarak protesters are mere troublemakers working at the behest and support of outside (meaning: “Western”) forces.

After Israel, Egypt is the biggest US client state in the region, absorbing some US$60 billion in the 30 years of Mubarak’s rule. The lion’s share goes to the military, which sports F-16 jet fighters, Hellfire missiles and M1 Abrams tanks, a version of which has been built in an Egyptian factory since 1992. Mubarak had not undertaken any ambitious economic policies and has allowed vital state institutions like education to become rundown. Even poor families are obliged to rely on private lessons to make sure their children get some form of decent education, and teachers rely on them to augment their meagre earnings.

His policy of infitah, or economic liberalisation, relies mainly on the Draconian advice of bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Infitah has succeeded mainly in encouraging enormous growth in consumption rather than production and private economic activity, and the country has to rely on such things as fees from the Suez Canal, remittances from Egyptian workers in other oil-rich Arab countries, its own oil production and foreign aid, mostly from the United States. The average Egyptian has to struggle every day to keep body and soul together while the economic pincers inexorably tighten their grip.

What we are witnessing in Egypt and other Arab countries is the disintegration of the old order of control by the US and its western friends. Obama has been remarkably imept in his reaction to the events of the past couple of weeks and his Western friends haven’t performed very well either. They all bray loudly about encouraging democracy and the voice of the people, but they are deathly afraid of hearing what that voice actually says.

The big bogeyman everybody always raises is Islamic radicalism. But that’s the one factor that seems to be missing from the demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere. Sure, there is a religious element, but that’s to be expected in Muslim societies. The overwhelming message is the same as you would hear from poor, oppressed, depressed and totally exasperated people in Latin America, Africa and Asia: “The old order has to end … we want our share of the economic, social and human-rights pie – Now!”

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca