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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (70701)	1/31/2011 6:51:12 PM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 218621

either that, or the army bigwigs would fall in the mean time, per strafor, watch n brief Dispatch: Regime Change in Egypt and a Radicalizing Region January 31, 2011 \| 2059 GMT Click on image below to watch video: Analyst Kamran Bokhari explores the potential behavior of a post-Mubarak Egypt and the fears that a radical Cairo could align with Iran and Islamist movements in the region. RELATED SPECIAL TOPIC PAGE The Egypt Unrest: Full Coverage Editor’s Note:Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. The instability in Egypt comes at a time when the region is already in the throws of shifts. But contrary to popular fears, the region is not necessarily headed toward an Iranian led radicalization. Instead a new and still emerging complex situation is something that the United States and the region and the rest of the world will have to deal with. Egypt is in a situation of flux, and it is really too early to say what will be the outcome of all the unrest and instability. There are all sorts of options. One option, one likelihood, is that the current regime rejiggers itself, reinvents itself, sends Mubarak a continuation of the old order. Another option is that there are elections and some form of coalition government emerges, and that’s where it gets tricky because the Muslim brotherhood, the country’s largest and oldest Islamist movement, is the single largest organized political force. In any such scenario the brotherhood is expected to play a large part and that raises a whole lot of fears in the region around the world of what will be the outlook, the policy outlook of Cairo in that situation. So it’s not really clear as to where we are going right now but the big question is what happens to the region. We have an assertive Iran given the rise of a Shiite government in Iraq. Turkey is rising. There are all sorts of concerns about whether Turkey is headed toward alignment with the Islamic world as opposed to the West. And in the midst of all of this when you have Egypt also flaring up, it’s only natural for people to say what is happening here, are we looking at a scenario of Islamic radicalization of the region. The reality is that there are too many complexities for that to happen. A: Iranian rise is still very much in play. It is not consolidated; it’s not necessarily going to happen. There the entire US-Iranian struggle that’s taking place. And number two: Turkey is a rising power and Turkey checks the power of Iran. And if you throw Egypt into that mix, it is not necessarily that Egypt will align with Iran or Egypt will lead a new radical wave. There is the huge difference between a Shiite Iran and Sunni Egypt and all of this assumes that Egypt will at some point become a radical regime, a radical state. And by that we mean that a state is at least not aligned with U.S. foreign policy in the region, and not necessarily at peace with Israel. We’re not saying that Egypt is about to tear up the peace treaty that it signed with Israel in 1978, but what we’re really looking at it is Egypt asserting itself both vis-a-vie the United States and Israel. And that does change a whole lot of dynamics. But that is very different from saying that there is some sort of a regional trend monolithic trend in the region that the United States and the rest of the international community has to worry abou

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (70701)	1/31/2011 6:53:22 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218621

a bit more watch n brief, per same strafor Egypt's Government To Negotiate with Opposition January 31, 2011 \| 1932 GMT KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images Egyptian secular opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei addresses demonstrators in Tahrir Square, Cairo, on Jan. 30 RELATED SPECIAL TOPIC PAGE The Egypt Unrest: Full Coverage Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman said Jan. 31 that President Hosni Mubarak had ordered him to hold talks with “all political powers” in Egypt. Suleiman also said new elections would be held in districts in which constitutional appeal courts found “violations” had taken place during the November 2010 parliamentary elections. This would mark the first time Mubarak’s government has offered to negotiate with the opposition and is thus a significant development in the ongoing crisis. These talks likely are only happening at the strong insistence of the Egyptian military, which is increasingly in charge of the political affairs of the country. The Mubarak regime has made a few attempts to placate protesters, most notably by reshuffling the Cabinet. However, in the military’s view, these sorts of gestures will not be enough to facilitate an orderly transition of power, and the military has thus pushed the government to speak with those who claim to speak for the demonstrators. This is more problematic than it seems, however, because the protesters have as yet been unable to coalesce under one opposition group. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is the single-largest opposition group, but there is no one group or person that appears to be the vanguard of the unrest. The only person that comes close to that role is Mohamed ElBaradei, the former U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency head turned secular democratic opposition leader. While ElBaradei lacks significant grassroots influence, many both inside and out of the country see him as the informal face of the opposition. Though the MB has rejected the formation of the new Cabinet, it appears to have agreed to ElBaradei being the point person to negotiate on behalf of the opposition, though there is discord within the MB on that as well. It is still unclear why Mubarak has offered talks in the first place. It is important to note that the opposition, in addition to demanding Mubarak’s resignation and the creation of a neutral interim government before commencing talks, has said it wants to negotiate directly with the Egyptian military. In offering talks, Mubarak could be attempting to prevent this. Indeed, if the offer for talks is sincere, Suleiman’s negotiating experience makes him an obvious choice to represent the regime, having served as a key mediator between Hamas and Fatah and between those two groups and Israel. However, a second possibility is that Mubarak is attempting to divide and discredit the already-disunited opposition. The pragmatists in the opposition may seek to capitalize on the offer while others, insistent on a neutral caretaker government, refuse, demanding talks with the military. This opens the opposition up to charges that it refused an offer for negotiations, making it appear to be an obstacle in the process. Regardless of motive, the government’s move to reach out to the opposition may temporarily calm things down. But without a unified opposition, chances are good that no resolution is forthcoming — which could further anger the protesters and lead to more chaos