THE DOMINO THEORY
More often than not Western analysts routinely draw their perceptions from the gossip on the cocktail circuit, mostly conforming to that reported by Embassy staffers. From time to time someone will give views contrary to that which are fashionable, these are soon drowned out by contemptuous skepticism. Only when the streets come afire are the right inferences drawn, sometime it is too late. The Tunisian Army did not intervene to save Ben Ali when his security apparatus failing to quell the street protests and his mafia-like family were driven out of power, the analysts still failed to see the lurking danger in other Arab capitals. The images from Cairo’s Tahrir Square said it all (and quite graphically), with civilians clambering onto tanks and armoured carriers it was all over bar the shouting. It is intellectual bankruptcy if anyone seems to think that Mubarak’s Intelligence Chief, Omar Suleiman, the man responsible for most of Mubarak’s excesses, has the answers to Egypt’s craving for democracy.
Brig (later Lt Gen) Ali Kuli Khan Khattak, then Pakistan’s Defence Attaché in Egypt, was standing only a few feet away when the assassin’s bullet struck Anwar Sadat. Mubarak wielded absolute power as the “Pharaoh of Egypt” for 30 years in 1981. Ruling Egypt since with an iron hand, Hosni Mubarak beggared Egypt while becoming rich himself, he and his family are reportedly worth US$40 billion (and some change). Poor countries can hardly afford rich leaders but the same story is repeated in other family run Arab “democracies”, a figleaf meant to hide brutal and corrupt dictatorships. The demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt did not materialize out of thin air because of any single source of disaffection, it was a mass outpouring of pent-up rage accumulated over the years. These spontaneous uprisings mainly comprise common citizens that have been made “beggar and/or thieves” by the greed, nepotism, corruption and sheer callousness of their leaders. During the Annual Summit 2011 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) it was pathetic seeing those who used to fall over themselves to flaunt their close affiliation to the “royal” families of Mubarak, Ben Ali, King Abdullah, etc seek now to distance themselves by publicly disparaging their conduct and behaviour, talk about rats deserting a sinking ship!
