02-01-2011, 10:05 PM
[url="http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_11000024.aspx"] link[/url]
Quote:Comment: This is the most significant development in the past week. It constitutes a pre-emptive attack against Mubarak's new, kinder-gentler government. The message is a warning against the scheduled crackdown because the Army will not back it. It effectively neuters the regime's ability to suppress the protests; encourages the protestors and guarantees that Mubarak cannot remain in office. He has lost the support of the Army. The balance of the guns now favors the opposition.
The over-reaction threat fizzled. The government is now making more concessions and trying to find people who will serve in the cabinet. The Mubarak regime is winding down, trying to find a line it can hold long enough for it to it move national treasure out of the country as fast as time permits.
Readers are witnessing a set of stalling tactics by a dying regime.
The Army/armed forces now appear to be dominant, not the civilian politicians. No one seems to be in charge of anything. The government selected by Mubarak only makes sense as a stalling action that enables Mubarak and his cronies to wind up last minute affairs. These men could never be the agents of reforms they fought viciously during the past three decades.
Every leader of Egypt since the overthrow of the monarchy by Colonel Nasser in 1952 has been a military officer. Readers should expect a military officer to emerge as the power behind the presidency. The key point is that an Army-backed government is likely for now, and will perpetuate the status quo as long as it can.
On 1 February, during this Watch, a million-person demonstration has begun to assemble in Tahrir Square in Cairo. The Army has promised not to interfere. This might determine whether the son-of-Mubarak government lasts, an Army-baked interim government restores some stability of whether a genuine revolution takes place in the second phase of unrest.
Ripple Effects
Syria: President Bashar al Asad said he will push for more political reforms, adding that Arab leaders need to accommodate their people's rising political and economic aspirations. He said he will push toward initiating municipal elections, empowering nongovernmental organizations and establishing new media laws.
Asad said that Syria needs time to build institutions and improve education before opening politically, or the demands for political reform could prove counterproductive and too much for Arab societies. He said if Arab leaders did not see the need for reform before Tunisia and Egypt, it is too late for reform now.
Comment: Asad was careful to avoid the issue of voting rights. That is because he heads a minority government of pro-Iranian Arab Alawites, a sect of Shi'ism that has ruled Syria's Sunni Arab majority populace with brutality for decades. The regime has leveled whole towns who opposed the Alawites.
[color="#FF0000"]A revolution in Syria would be welcomed throughout the Sunni Arab street, but not by the Persians in Tehran[/color].