FINANCIAL TIMES: Appointing a former air force commander – like Mr Mubarak himself – as his new prime minister, and then naming his intelligence chief as his likely successor, is no cure for civic insurrection. The ageing pharaoh might as well try to blot out the sun with his finger. Egypt’s young rebels, who have raised the banner of freedom and insisted on his departure, are not risking their lives in order to see one set of generals replaced by another…
The Mubarak regime is at the centre of a network of regional strongmen the west has backed and bankrolled to secure stability in a neuralgic region, guaranteed oil supplies and the safety of Israel. As waves of democracy have burst over almost every other tyrant-plagued region in the past 30 years, the US and Europe have connived in an Arab exception – and Egypt is its exemplar.
The west has struck a Faustian bargain with Arab rulers, who have blackmailed them into believing that, but for them, the mullahs would be in charge. There is unquestionably a risk. Arab despots have destroyed political and institutional life, leaving their opponents little option but the mosque and the madrassa…. (more)
