Egypt is facing a potential political eruption that could rock the entire Mideast and seriously undermine US domination of the strategic region.
This threat comes as tensions in the Mideast are already extremely high. Threats of war involving US, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran are flying fast and furious.
President Husni Mubarak, the US-supported strongman who has ruled Egypt with an iron hand for almost 30 years, is 81 and in frail health. Amazingly, he has no designated successor. No one knows who will take over Egypt when he dies.
For Mubarak, it may be "après moi, le deluge." Dealing with elderly dictators is always an extremely tricky business.
Mubarak, an air force general, was put into power with US help after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat by nationalist soldiers in 1981. Sadat had been a CIA "asset" since 1952.
My sharp-tongued mother interviewed Sadat in the 1950's and described him as a "clown." Sadat was a hero in the US and Israel, but Egyptians hated him and greeted his killing with jubilation.
Egypt, with 82 million people, is the most populous and important Arab nation. Cairo has long been the cultural center of the Arab world. It is also an overcrowded madhouse with eight million people (12 million in the great Cairo area) crammed into an early 20th century colonial city built for 500,000. Cairo's population has tripled since I lived there as a boy in 1957.
About 28% all Arabs are Egyptians. Deduct North Africa, known as the Maghreb - and not traditionally part of the Arab heartland - and Egypt counts for a third of all Arabs. The Nilotic Egyptians are quite different ethnically from the Arabs of Arabia, Syria and Iraq, but they all share a mostly common language, religion, and sense of pan-Arab identity.
http://newageislam.com/egypt--the-next-volcano?/islam-and-the-west/d/2767
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4:50 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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