Egypt’s former dictator Hosni Mubarak has left the Cairo military hospital where he had been held in custody for much of the past six years, and returned to his home in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, his lawyer said.
Mubarak, 88, was acquitted by Egypt’s highest appeals court on 2 March of conspiring to kill protesters in the final verdict in a long-running case that originally resulted in him being sentenced to life in prison in 2012 over the deaths of 239 people in Arab spring protests against his rule. …
He left the Maadi military hospital on Friday morning and returned to his home, where he had breakfast with his family and a number of friends, according to a report in the privately owned newspaper al-Masy al-Youm.
(London Guardian, March 24, 2017)
And so, Egypt’s vicious cycle – from military dictatorship to civil disobedience and Islamic democracy then back to military dictatorship – is now complete. It began only six years ago, but it seems like sixty.
More to the point, though, I warned from the outset that it would thus:
With all due respect to the protesters, the issue is not whether Mubarak will go, for he will. (The man is 82 and already looks half dead for Christ’s sake!) Rather, the issue is who will replace him. And it appears they have not given any thought whatsoever to this very critical question. …
The devil the Egyptians know might prove far preferable to the devil they don’t. Just ask the Iranians who got rid of the Mubarak-like Shah in 1979 only to end up with the Ayatollah Khomeini — whose Islamic revolution they’ve regretted (and have longed to overturn) ever since.
(“Army Pledges No Force Against Protesters,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 1, 2011)
Sadly, my fears for Egypt have now been completely realized. Nothing demonstrates this quite like General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi running a dictatorship that makes Mubarak’s look like a liberal democracy.
As it happened, I chronicled each phase of this vicious cycle in commentaries like “Protesters Return to Tahrir Square,” June 6, 2012, “Egyptians Continue March Back to the Future,” December 20, 2013, “Egypt’s Arab Spring Spawns Brutal Military Dictatorship,” March 25, 2014, and “Egypt Sentences Morsi to Death: Exposes Fecklessness of US Mideast Policy,” May 20, 2015.
But “Dismissal of Mubarak’s Charges Brings Indian Summer for Egypt’s Arab Spring,” December 1, 2014, includes this pithy indictment and summation of the Arab Spring:
These are the same anti-government protesters who took to this same square last year to celebrate al-Sisi’s ouster of Morsi, and who did the same four years ago to call for the ouster of Mubarak.
Even so, the irony seems completely lost on them that, despite all of their revolutionary protests, the dismissal of all charges against Mubarak means that Egypt has ended up right where the Arab Spring was sprung.
But, if they think they can repeat against al-Sisi the miracle in Tahrir Square that led to the ouster of Mubarak, I have two words of admonition for these protesters: Tiananmen Square.
All that’s left for Sisi to vindicate this cycle and validate his rule is for Egypt’s patron, the United States, to bestow its seal of approval. President Trump intends to do just that when Sisi visits the White House next week.
Related commentaries:
Dismissal of Mubarak’s crimes…
Egypt sentences Morsi…