Discovering MENA and other thoughts

"The #MubarakTrial is a wake-up call for all revolutionary factions in Egypt" Saturday November 28th was a bleak day for Egypt. What had already been called the "Trial of the century" winded up with celebrations inside the Cairo Criminal Court and tears of impotence throughout the whole country. Mubarak was brought to the defendants' cage on a gurney and, as always, wore dark glasses and a navy blue cardigan. He looked both impassible and more distant than ever. The judge was unambiguous and tried to appear neutral when declaring: “it is not suitable for a former President to be taken to a Criminal Court.” And just like that, the dictator who ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years and whose ouster sparked chants of joy and idealistic dreams - both inside and outside the country - was cleared of all charges linked to the killing of protesters back in 2011.

Back in Egypt (finally!!), I was dying to comment on the situation with my friends, particularly with the "journalist sect". I was specially curious about how they assess the polarization that nowadays stands out as the biggest issue the country is facing, and whether a solution might eventually be found in that respect. I was surprised to listen to so many references to the "Third Square", an entity weary of divisiveness and exclusion, tired of politicians clinging to power, fed up with their brethren's swearing allegiance to either one or the other faction and dismissing any kind of concession. To sum up, a group of people who feel their dreams have been once and again betrayed by power-hungry figures vying for a higher rank but muttering at the same time empty words about freedom and the true will of Egyptians. A movement against both religious fascism and military rule. The first few ones who were brave enough to shout out loud they do not trust eithe...

I promised myself (and some friends) I would not comment on the situation. As always, much more prepared people on the ground were going to take charge of dissecting what just happened and what could happen in Egypt. But I casually found the perfect title for the post and decided to write a short post, mainly highlighting what I´ve been reading these last hours. Many people are still wonder whether we can label the events of July 3rd. The main labels, representing the two mainstreams of the opinionionators call for using the words revolution or coup, others in the middle believe it is possible to mix both notions, thus giving birth to strange expressions such as "coupolution" and "coup-ception". Arabic speakers, on their part, tend to use the word "inqilabution" (inqilab is the Arabic word for coup). Then comes the difficult choice of a suitable epithet: military coup? popular coup? military revolution? These digressions even sparked the creation of th...

I came across an enlightening article about how we, Orientalist Westerners, see the Syrian revolution. The whole text is worth reading, but one reference to a FB post struck me: “Dear friends everywhere, We, Syrians, or a vast majority of us, do not accept using the term ‘civil war’ when talking about our revolution. We hope that you can take serious note of that. It is a popular revolution against a mass-murdering dictatorship. Calling it a civil war is unacceptable to us. Thanks.”

Obsessing over the Syrian conflict, as I usually tend to do, I figured it might be useful to compile the main reasons why the already all-out war is at a standstill or, in other words, how come is Assad's regime so resilient?  Sectarianism, along other minor factors, is the reason why the civil war in Syria merely started as an uprising (although mainly spearheaded by Sunni leaders) eager to bring down Assad's authoritarian regime, but has progressively taken on religious and ethnic characteristics. Assad's father was able, at the expense of thousands of people dead and millions of ravaged families, to quell the Muslim Brotherhood rebellion three decades ago. This time, the dissent, rage and hatred were deeper and more disseminated and above all were fanned by the optimist winds of the Arab Spring,  The composition of the army and the higher echelons of the regime, built up across sectarian lines since Hafed Al-Assad and his Baathist allies seized power fi...

This is the best article I found so far about how Egypt is faring and how Egyptians are feeling nowadays, written by a brilliant analyst, Bassem Sabry. The best part? The encouraging conclusion. You can make it, Egypt, you know you can!! "Of course, it is not all bad. In fact, I began the year with an article explaining why I still see an incredible amount of hope in Egypt, and why I feel the historic momentum is still largely on the right side. There is a resilient private media, an increasingly aware and sophisticated society, more people getting deeply involved in politics, impossible courage and determination, a strong movement to grow civil society despite the hurdles, an opposition that is finally working together, an explosion of creativity and free expression and a growing realization by everyone that vacuous slogans and mere political positioning will not guarantee you political power. Democracy, in many ways, is still showing signs of forcing itself — apparent...