Edwin Black: Egypt Protests -- Mideast House of Cards Brought Down In Days by Twitter and the Arab Street
[Edwin Black is the author of "IBM and the Holocaust" and "Banking on Baghdad." This article is based on his just-released books," The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance During the Holocaust" and "British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement."]
Egypt is burning. Its military just imposed a national curfew. The phone networks and Internet arteries have been shut down to preserve order. Rubber bullets and tear gas canisters are flying to dissuade protesters. Yet, a defiant populous is still running through the streets of Cairo, ignoring the order to stay indoors.
Important installations are now burning in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez. Egyptians everywhere are openly calling for the immediate ouster of its iron-fisted president, Hosni Mubarak, vituperation that just days ago was unthinkable. Now the West is suddenly confronted with yet another shock in the Middle East. To understand this shock, one must understand an entrenched concept in the Middle East known as “the Arab Street.”
While the world creates an information highway and bridges throughout the world, the term Arab Street is one which is too often forgotten—but not for long. The Arab Street is a dusty, unimproved and irrepressible thoroughfare of fury whose frequent itinerary has been known and feared for generations in the Middle East.
Quite simply, the Arab Street refers to the unexpected potential for popular upheaval at any time in any Arab locale. With no democratic venues to express popular wrath, this wrath pours onto the street and acts out en masse against the established order.
Historically speaking, Arab countries were created not by centuries of popular geopolitical evolution, as they were in the West, but by the artificial establishment of nation states according to an agenda driven by the West after WWI. That agenda was always one of commercial exploitation or the lust for petroleum. In the case of Iraq and Iran, it has been the lust for petroleum. In the case of Egypt, since 1869, it has been dependence on the gateway to a commercial artery of indispensable value, the Suez Canal.
The billions that flow into the western-backed and westernized regimes that govern Arab countries have never been shared with the majority of the populous. The overwhelming majority of people remain uneducated, unemployed, disenfranchised, and politically subordinated. In other words, they exist as a giant, detached, roiling, suspicious underclass ready to ignite at a moment's notice....
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Egypt is burning. Its military just imposed a national curfew. The phone networks and Internet arteries have been shut down to preserve order. Rubber bullets and tear gas canisters are flying to dissuade protesters. Yet, a defiant populous is still running through the streets of Cairo, ignoring the order to stay indoors.
Important installations are now burning in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez. Egyptians everywhere are openly calling for the immediate ouster of its iron-fisted president, Hosni Mubarak, vituperation that just days ago was unthinkable. Now the West is suddenly confronted with yet another shock in the Middle East. To understand this shock, one must understand an entrenched concept in the Middle East known as “the Arab Street.”
While the world creates an information highway and bridges throughout the world, the term Arab Street is one which is too often forgotten—but not for long. The Arab Street is a dusty, unimproved and irrepressible thoroughfare of fury whose frequent itinerary has been known and feared for generations in the Middle East.
Quite simply, the Arab Street refers to the unexpected potential for popular upheaval at any time in any Arab locale. With no democratic venues to express popular wrath, this wrath pours onto the street and acts out en masse against the established order.
Historically speaking, Arab countries were created not by centuries of popular geopolitical evolution, as they were in the West, but by the artificial establishment of nation states according to an agenda driven by the West after WWI. That agenda was always one of commercial exploitation or the lust for petroleum. In the case of Iraq and Iran, it has been the lust for petroleum. In the case of Egypt, since 1869, it has been dependence on the gateway to a commercial artery of indispensable value, the Suez Canal.
The billions that flow into the western-backed and westernized regimes that govern Arab countries have never been shared with the majority of the populous. The overwhelming majority of people remain uneducated, unemployed, disenfranchised, and politically subordinated. In other words, they exist as a giant, detached, roiling, suspicious underclass ready to ignite at a moment's notice....