But in the case of Egypt and Tunisia, the regimes did not take that opportunity, though Egypt came close in 2005. In fact, Egypt provides an object lesson in what could have been. The story below is one of arrested reform. The regime almost did the right thing, making hesitant but significant changes in the way that politics was practiced. And then Mubarak panicked and pulled back at the end of the year. That sealed his fate and the fate of his regime when in 2011 the Egyptian people—and the people of the region—said they had had enough.
Freedom’s “Indian Summer”
I was sworn in as secretary of state on January 26, 2005. The timing could not have been more fortunate. People seeking freedom seemed to be winning everywhere, and I felt like there was really a strong favorable wind behind them—and us. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and the Tulip Revolution in Tajikistan were in full bloom, with pro-Western governments emerging in all of them. But it was the stunning events in the Middle East that suggested the Freedom Agenda was indeed on the right side of history, even in the world’s most troubled region.
In January 2005, the Iraqis held successful “Purple Finger” parliamentary elections, with large turnouts even in areas threatened by terrorism. The iconic picture of newly freed citizens holding up their hands, their fingers stained with purple ink—the equivalent of a sticker saying “I voted”—swept across the world’s media. The moment was emotional for me and for all of us who had been involved in the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein. President Bush invited representatives of the Purple Finger Revolution to the first lady’s box at the State of the Union address. The sustained, bipartisan standing ovation for these Iraqi patriots was stirring, and for that moment, a sense of pride in what America had done echoed through the chamber.
In Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, the wealthy businessman who was the country’s prime minister, was assassinated in February of the same year. This created a revolutionary moment as more than a million people spilled into the streets of Beirut to demonstrate against the Syrians and Hezbollah, who were suspected of complicity in his death. They demanded the removal of Syrian forces that had occupied the country since the 1970s.
I watched those events on TV in London from my room in the Churchill Hotel. Earlier that morning, the French foreign minister and I had issued a joint statement on the events in Lebanon. Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush didn’t agree about most issues in the Middle East, most especially about Iraq, but regarding Lebanon they had found common purpose. In 2004 they jointly engineered a UN Security Council resolution calling for the withdrawal of Syrian forces.
Watching the television coverage from Beirut, I thought back on the events that secured that international agreement. It was August 2004 and we were in New York for the Republican convention that nominated the president for a second term. I was in my room at the Waldorf Astoria, my attention split between his speech on TV and my telephone calls to our UN ambassador and the French foreign minister. When the president returned to the hotel that night he asked me to come to his suite. “Do we have the votes?” he asked. “I think so, as long as everyone holds firm,” I said. I returned to my room and waited for my appointment to call the foreign minister of the Philippines—at 3 a.m. He promised to “look into it.” The Philippine ambassador would eventually abstain, but we would win the vote, nine in favor and six abstentions. I told the president that the resolution would pass. He smiled and said, “I should call Chirac.”
Now, in March 2005, that resolution gave the force of international law to the Lebanese people’s demand that the Syrians get out. The Saudis, who loved Hariri, leaned heavily on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Amazingly, Damascus relented. Though everyone knew that Assad would leave his secret security network behind, the pictures of Syrian forces humbly and hurriedly leaving Lebanon was exhilarating.
The pro-Western “March 14” movement (named for the day of a massive rally protesting Hariri’s assassination and led by his son, Saad) took power in subsequent elections. Hariri’s longtime friend, technocrat Fouad Siniora, became prime minister. The Lebanese people had won the day.
So I was confident and excited when I headed to Egypt in June of the same year to give my speech on freedom at the American University of Cairo. Egypt was a regional heavyweight, culturally, politically, and historically. I wanted to argue that just as Anwar Sadat had led the region to peace in his landmark opening to Israel, Mubarak could lead the region to democratic reform. I wanted to challenge but not embarrass the Egyptian president.
Before giving the speech, I asked to meet with Mubarak. At least it was morning and he was alert. I had learned to always meet the Egyptian early in the day. He experienced what physicians call “sundowning.” As the day goes on, some older people have more trouble concentrating. That was the case with Mubarak. And I always tried to sit on his right side, as he was nearly deaf in the other ear.
Our ambassador had given the president’s staff a heads-up before I saw him. I foolishly thought that Mubarak might be in a mood to listen given all that was happening in the region, including in Egypt. Before I could say anything beyond “Good morning,” he preempted. “Go ahead and give your speech,” he said.
I persisted, trying to preview the content of my remarks for him. “Mr. President,” I said, “I just don’t want you to be surprised by what I am going to say.”
“Go ahead and give your speech,” he repeated. “The Egyptian people need me. They need a strong hand. Don’t you understand that all that stands between the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt—is me!”
I tried to interject that I was not calling in any way for him to step down, but just to bring change. “Mr. President,” I concluded, “reform before your people are in the streets.” The meeting ended on that note.
Egypt badly needed to change its stagnant politics and its underperforming economy. From the time of Sadat’s assassination and the rise of Mubarak in 1981, three groups fought to define Egypt’s future. Civil society—human rights advocates and intellectuals—tried to carve out a little space within the political sphere. At times they could be relatively influential, mostly by appeal to international opinion and, in the case of the universities, by demonstrations, strikes, and riots. Islamists were also a factor due to their discipline, support among the rural and pious populations, and, at times, their resorting to violence. And finally, there was what some call the “deep state”—embedded constituencies resistant to change that largely helped to prop up the regime. The military, large family businesses, and the governmental apparatus—particularly the security forces—fit that definition.
The country was perpetually in economic difficulty. Bread riots broke out periodically when the government tried to end expensive and crippling food subsidies to the population. The number of people living in poverty increased from fifty-eight million to seventy-eight million between 1990 and 2008.12 The business community consisted in large part of big family conglomerates that were very close to state officials and thus a ready source of corruption. For many years, ordinary Egyptians saw no rise in their real incomes—or worse. Per capita income fell by 8.7 percent between 2005 and 2009.13
Mubarak ruled this complex country for thirty years. He treated his supporters well, particularly in the business community and the security forces. The opposition was kept at bay by constantly raising the specter of an Islamic takeover—a narrative that Egypt would become like Iran.
“You will not see a single veiled woman,” the Egyptian foreign minister, Aboul Gheit, told me as he introduced me to his staff in 2005. “I have a lot of women working for me. They are smart and educated and they would never wear the hijab,” he intoned. On another occasion, the minister arranged a dinner after a conference on Iraq. He had intended to have the Iranian foreign minister sit next to me, hoping to start a dialogue between us. When I arrived, Aboul Gheit explained that the Iranian had left. “He was offended by the violinist,” he said, laughing. Onstage a Ukrainian violinist in a skimpy re
d dress was performing show tunes. “That’s the problem with these people,” he said. “They just can’t have any fun.”
The sarcastic comment masked a more serious point about the political landscape in Egypt. The tensions between secularists and Islamists were unresolved in the country. Most urban dwellers and educated people valued the president’s ability to keep the religious authorities out of their lives. But the Islamists had their own following among some intellectuals and also in the countryside. The most important Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, was founded in 1928 but had been banned for decades after coming into conflict with the state. One of its most prominent members, Sayyid Qutb, was executed in 1966, but his extremist ideology inspired generations of terrorists who followed. Another member, Ayman al-Zawahiri, split from the group in 1979, believing it had become too moderate and too interested in the political process. Zawahiri would later merge his new organization into al-Qaeda and, after the death of Osama bin Laden, become its leader.
Elections in the country were essentially for show—the reaffirmation of Mubarak’s rule. But in the lead-up to the elections of 2000, something began to change. Pockets of opposition to the president were emerging. Mubarak was particularly alarmed by the growing power of the Islamists. He responded by arresting two hundred members of the Muslim Brotherhood and banning them from politics. So adherents ran as independents and won significant representation in that election and in subsequent ones. Despite the formal ban, the group remained tightly organized, providing alms in poorer parts of the country where the government was failing. The Muslim Brotherhood could not operate in the open, but they did so in mosques and madrassas. They were the most structured and effective political opposition, even though technically they had been excluded from politics.
On the other hand, secular pro-democracy forces had trouble finding their footing. In 2001, Ayman Nour, a young legislator, formed the Al Ghad (“Tomorrow”) Party. It was a promising step, supported by university students, human rights activists, and even some members of the business community. Nour was finally able to register his party three years later in 2004. Then he declared his intention to run for the presidency. Within three months, prosecutors had accused him of falsifying signatures and he was arrested.
The president did not see that these secular democrats could have been allies for him in tempering the influence of the Islamists. He saw only adversaries and opposition to his goal of extending his rule. He vacillated between repressing the Muslim Brotherhood and tolerating them. On the other hand, he constantly harassed the liberals, closing their offices and jailing their leaders. It was now largely a matter of holding on to power for the aging president. And anyone who challenged his right to do so was the enemy.
But when in 2004 he made clear his intention to seek a fifth six-year term, and some hinted that his son Gemal might succeed him, the Egyptian people responded. A broad movement of intellectuals and human rights and democracy advocates formed Kefaya (“Enough”). Earlier reform efforts had focused on lifting the state of emergency, reining in police powers, and updating the constitution. This time the movement went right to the heart of the matter—the need to limit executive power and the term of the president. The coalition that included Nour’s party also welcomed moderate Islamists into its ranks. Their platform demanded lifting the state of emergency so that there could be free assembly, removing restrictions on the formation of political parties, and the release of political prisoners.
The unfolding events in Egypt complicated U.S.-Egyptian relations. Mubarak did not trust President Bush and resented the Freedom Agenda. He took the calls for reform in the Middle East as a personal insult. In fact, the Egyptian visited the United States in 2003 and did not return throughout the president’s tenure. Matters reached a crucial point when Nour was jailed on January 28, 2005.
I met with the Egyptian foreign minister in Washington on February 15, 2005. The meeting focused on Lebanon, Sudan, reconstruction in Iraq, and some matters relating to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But everyone knew that tensions between us were high. I was scheduled to go to Cairo the next week for a Group of Eight meeting with the Arab League.
“Did the status and imprisonment of Ayman Nour come up in your conversation?” a journalist asked at the press conference following the meeting.
“Yes, I did raise our concerns, very strong concerns about this case,” I replied.
“Are you going to Cairo?”
“Our delegation has not yet decided, but I’ll get back to you.”
That was a thunderbolt as speculation spread that I had told the Egyptians that I was canceling the trip to protest Nour’s detention. In fact, I hadn’t decided, hoping to use the trip as leverage to get him released. The Egyptians refused to budge on Nour, and on February 22, I told them that I was not coming, making the public announcement on February 25. The Egyptians fumed and vented loudly. As the New York Times reported, they “rejected any foreign interference in Egypt’s internal affairs.” Then the government petulantly announced that it was they who had canceled the trip. That statement was not true.
Mubarak Opens a Path to Change: The Events of 2005
Pressure was building on Mubarak at home and abroad. Television screens across the world were filled with images of Egyptians protesting their government in general and their president in particular. Remarkably, he responded with a plan for change. On February 26, he “requested” that the parliament take up the issue of electoral reform. Though Mubarak’s party dominated the legislature and could protect him, it was still a significant move. The proposed legislation included the direct election of the president by secret ballot; the opportunity for political parties to run candidates; and “more than one candidate for the people to choose from with their own will.” Nour welcomed the announcement from prison. On March 12, Ayman Nour was freed and declared his candidacy for the presidency.
The referendum that established the rules for the elections was a disappointment to the opposition. Strict limitations on who could run, including a requirement that any party would have had to be in existence for five years, stacked the cards in the president’s favor. The balloting was to take place in one day, making it difficult to have enough judges to oversee the polling. Independent candidates had to be supported by 250 members of the People’s Assembly, the Shura Council, or local elected councils—bodies dominated by the president’s party. And during the voting on the referendum on May 25, the government resorted to violence, beating opposition figures and reportedly assaulting women. The actions of the government only served to energize the opposition, however, as protests continued.
The worried leadership again turned to undermining Ayman Nour, who was widely regarded as the most likely threat to Mubarak despite the limiting electoral rules. After my speech in Cairo on June 20, I met with Nour. He was clearly suspicious of American intentions, did not want to be associated with the Freedom Agenda, and at the same time insisted that we help more. This was the dilemma that we faced time and again in the region. No opposition leader wanted to be seen as doing the bidding of the United States. But they needed us to advocate for them and wanted us to punish their governments. It was a delicate line to walk.
Nour’s trial began on June 28, but with the key witness against him recanting his earlier testimony, the government’s case was in tatters. Rather than let Nour be exonerated and stand for the presidency free of the legal issue, the state requested a delay until September 25. The election was to take place on September 7.
With all of the constraints and trickery, it was unlikely that anyone would defeat Mubarak. And to be fair, the president was supported by large parts of the population. But even this limited experience with contested elections was a heady one for the people of Egypt—and the president of twenty-four years seemed ready to embrace the moment.
Omar Suleiman was in town, and he asked to have dinner with Steve Hadley, the national security adviser, and me. It was a quiet July evening at the
Watergate restaurant, and we expected to talk about Hamas, the Israelis, and other matters of that kind. He was, after all, the head of the security services—feared by his adversaries and trusted by Mubarak: the Egyptian president’s right-hand man.
Imagine our surprise when the conversation turned to the elections. “What do presidents do to get reelected?” Suleiman asked. Steve and I looked at each other and at him as he asked about the details of carrying out a free election. “How do security forces keep order but not be seen to interfere in peaceful protests?” he continued. As he kept going, I was stunned by the nature of the questions from this hardened police chief.
Steve and I related various experiences on the Bush campaign. And then Steve said something that seemed to lighten Omar’s mood. “President Bush enjoyed campaigning.” I’m not sure Suleiman could imagine Mubarak “enjoying” the process, but he clearly liked the notion. It was a strange conversation, because Mubarak was going to be elected. His party dominated the rulemaking; he had a huge financial advantage; and there would be no electoral monitors to catalog the inevitable fraud. Even so, Omar seemed genuinely interested in having the president actually win the people’s trust.
During the ensuing monthlong campaign, Mubarak acted as if he actually wanted to convince people that he should be elected. He gave speeches, traveling around the country and laying out a governing agenda for the next six years. And he seemed to enjoy it.
For their part, other candidates made their case with little intimidation. Even the Wafd Party, which adopted as a slogan a single word that meant “We have been suffocated,” did so openly. Ayman Nour traversed Cairo in an open horse-drawn carriage on the first day. He gave remarkable, defiant speeches. “We are a nation of freedom and democracy in our roots. But this nation has been transformed into one person and not a nation, to one person, and not Egypt.”14 The Muslim Brotherhood was oddly passive, urging people to vote but not endorsing a candidate.
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