February 3 update

Articl= 2. https://mail.google.com/mail/=0/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#b
SADA - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace http://carnegieendowment.org/
Egypt's Hard Economic Choices

Mohammed Samhouri http://carnegieendowment.org/=013/01/31/egypt-s-hard-economic-choices/f7ib

Articl= 4. https://mail.google.com/mail/=0/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#d

Salon

Can Elliott Abra=s be stopped? http://www.salon.com/20=3/02/02/can_elliott_abrams_be_stopped/
Jordan Michael Smith http://www.salon.com/writer/j=rdan_michael_smith/

Articl= 6. https://mail.google.com/mail/=/0/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#f

The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs

An Interview with James A. Baker, =ormer Secretary of State

Forum Staff http://www.fletcherforum.org/=uthor/forum-staff/

Ar=icle 1.

The Economist

Egypt: to the=barricades, again

1

EFTA_R1_01438652
EFTA02401793

Feb 2nd 2013 -- WIT= angry crowds across the nation baying against him, Egypt's president wa=ged his finger at the people in a late-night televised speech. He declared=a curfew for some cities, he called for support for the police, he deployed the army to the streets. Seemingly as =n afterthought, he added a conciliatory call for dialogue with his politic=l opponents.

As on January 28th =011, so on January 27th 2013. As with President Hosni Mubarak, so with Pre=ident Muhammad Morsi. And in both cases to little effect. After both telev=sed addresses vast throngs gleefully defied the curfew, freshly deployed soldiers ignored the revellers and the=head of the army warned of a collapsing state, prompting rumours of an imm=nent coup. Opposition leaders demanded a government of national unity. Ord=nary citizens braced for the unknown.

The drama that has =een unfolding since January 25th, the anniversary of the beginning of the =prising which toppled Mr Mubarak two years ago, would have looked peculiar=y familiar even without the eerily precise coincidence of the dates. Some are tempted to see the similarities=carried through to the outcome, hoping that Mr Morsi, a stalwart of the Mu=lim Brotherhood and Egypt's first freely elected president, will soon fa=l too. "It is amazing how history accelerates," was the catty remark of a prominent defector from the Brot=erhood. "Morsi has got to the point Mubarak reached after 30 years in ju=t six months."

Forbidding ways of =ustom

But though the situ=tion may seem similar, the country itself has changed a great deal since w=at was at the time seen as a revolution (many shy from the term today). Eg=pt's economy has foundered dangerously in the absence of firm government policy. Politics has polarised between a= ostensibly empowered Islamist camp and a disgruntled, alienated or outrig=t hostile minority that includes much of the educated, urban elite. Amid t=is mess, fearful for the future and dispirited by haggling politicians, most Egyptians have little appetit= for another big upheaval. The army, which stepped in to shunt Mr Mubarak =side and then lingered too long, is reluctant to dirty its hands again.

The young hotheads =t the heart of today's protests might like nothing more than to see Mr M=rsi forced into an ignominious, Mubarak-like exit. But the broader demand =s for him to change, not to go—to act more like a leader for all Egyptians and less like a front man for the Mus=im Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has shed much of the appeal that won it va=ious recent elections and tentatively protected it against doubts, not lea=t among foreign powers, about Islamist rule. At home its cult of secrecy, hazy pan-Islamic agenda and sense that =t rules by entitlement now provoke suspicion and resentment even among man= fellow Islamists.

Whatever its specif=c focus, the mounting unrest presents an increasingly dangerous challenge =o Egypt's battered and creaking state. There would have been protests to=mark the anniversary anyway, but the sentencing to death of 21 football fans from Port Said on January 26th wou=d them up to a new level of intensity. Football fans have been among the m=st eager activists; the judgment on the fans from Port Said, who were held=responsible for the deaths of 72 people at a game in Cairo last year, sent a crowd swarming to the prison w=ere they were kept. Panicked police opened fire, killing 30 people. They f=red again at the mass funeral of those victims, killing yet more. The mix =f seemingly twisted justice—the people of Port Said think their fans are being scapegoated—brutally unac=ountable police and haughty disdain for working-class provincials revived =recisely the rage that fuelled revolution two years ago.

Rioters have disrup=ed trains and traffic. Arsonists have attacked buildings used by the gover=ment and the Brotherhood. Three big cities on the Suez Canal, Egypt's pr=me strategic asset, are in a state of defiant, if largely peaceful, insurrection. Radical Islamists and seculari=ts accuse each other of forming armed militias, an ominous development.

The country is send=ng Mr Morsi a loud message about the need for political inclusiveness. The=question is whether Mr Morsi and the Brothers are listening.