Source: Charlie Rose Show
CHARLIE ROSE, HOST: Welcome to our program. Tonight, more from and about Egypt. We begin our program with a conversation by phone with David Kirkpatrick of the "New York Times." (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID KIRKPATRICK, "THE NEW YORK TIMES" (via telephone): When the people in the crowd aren`t afraid anymore, when they all believe together that the dictator doesn`t have any power over them anymore, then the dictator really doesn`t seem to have any power over them anymore. And I felt like that`s what was happening here in Egypt.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: And we continue by looking at the implications of the events in Egypt with Marwan Muasher and Robert Satloff.
MARWAN MUASHER, FORMER DEPUTE PRIME MINISTER OF JORDAN: Addressing the issues cannot be done through economic measures alone, cannot be done through increasing prices, salaries --reducing prices alone. It also needs to be coupled with a reform process that people would feel is going to result in a gradual manner in widening the decision-making circle in their countries, in a feeling that they are fairly and more equitably represented in the running of their own affairs.
This might take place over time, but unless it does, I`m not sure that the crisis is going to be contained to one or two countries.
ROBERT SATLOFF, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: The king has done what Jordanian monarchs have done for the last 90 years, which is change their prime ministers to change the political --to turn a new political leaf and hopefully thereby diffuse some of the opposition.
I`m not sure if he`s gone far enough. I`m not sure if this is the right person, if the mission matches the man in terms of the new prime minister. But in general I don`t see that turmoil is leading at all to crisis yet in Jordan.
CHARLIE ROSE: Tumultuous events in Egypt and what you need to know about heart surgery with Barbara Walters when we continue.
CHARLIE ROSE: Today marked another historic moment in the Arab world. After 30 years of rule and only eight days of protests, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak went on national television, and tonight he said he would not run for reelection.
HOSNI MUBARAK (via translator): And I tell you in absolute veracity, regardless of the current circumstances, that I did not intend to run for the coming presidency. I have exhausted my life serving Egypt and its people. However, I am totally keen on ending my career for the sake of the nation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: The Egyptian president also said that he would complete the remainder of his term. Presidential elections are slated for September. The question now is, will the Egyptian people accept this? Hours after President Mubarak spoke, President Obama had this to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What I indicated tonight to President Mubarak is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now. Furthermore, the process must include a broad spectrum of Egyptian voices and opposition parties. It should lead to elections that are free and fair.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: Joining me on the phone from Cairo is David Kirkpatrick. He is a Cairo bureau chief of the "New York Times" and I`m very pleased to have him with us on this day.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Good to be here.
CHARLIE ROSE: tell me about this day.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: It`s really been a day like nothing I`ve ever experienced before in my life. I have to start the story a little bit earlier. Yesterday --yesterday we weren`t sure whether today was going to be a celebration or a bloodbath. It looked like the Mubarak government was moving back into Cairo and the other big cities their security police, which is a special kind of paramilitary force mainly to control the people, not to fight crime.
And that they`d been pulled out of the city and the military had taken over, but now they were coming back. And so we didn`t know whether they were getting ready to really crack heads or what. And in response to that, or concurrent with that, the protestors called what they were billing as a sort of march of the millions today. So they were going to turn out in force and the police were going to be there ready to stop them, possibly with the army at their backs, because there were already tanks all over town.
And then last night an extraordinary thing happened. The military came out and said they respect the people`s right to peaceful expression, the people`s demands are legitimate, and they are not going to use force against the people. And a moment later or an hour later the --President Mubarak`s handpicked vice president comes out and says "I`m going to start negotiating with the opposition."
And that was in --I have to start the story there, because that sort of explains why what was going to be a big day today got even bigger. The president, he blinked, in a sense. He blinked. And the announcement the army gave people not only an authorization but a kind of invitation to come out.
So when the people started pouring through the streets of Cairo at around 8:30, 9:00 a.m. this morning-¬which by Cairo standards, by the way, is the crack of dawn --it was unbelievable. It was a trickle, then a stream, then dozens of streams, then an ocean of people and it kept going and going and going. It filled the square and clogged all the arteries around town. People were standing on overpasses.
And I have to say, I was standing there, and I thought you know, is this hundreds, thousands, ten thousands? It feels like 85 million people, because there are 85 million people in Egypt and there were people there from every walk of life --Islamists with long beards and women with head scarves but also women in Prada glasses and men in suits and men in kind of traditional Arab robes. And it was just young and old and women with babies. It was an amazing thing.
And for the Egyptians, you know, people are accustomed to living in a country where any kind of assembly was completely out of the question, where these kind of black clouds of security police will come up to you if you`re gathering with five of your friends and ask "What are you doing?" It was unbelievable. I saw grown men in tears and people saying "I never this would happen in Egypt." It was really a sight to behold.
CHARLIE ROSE: And they came expecting what?
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Well, they came, I think, expecting to enjoy a demonstration of their own freedom and power. And that they got.
The people there --I was in Tunisia where they recently had an uprising, an overthrow of another Arab dictator and I was blown away the day it happened by the feeling in the crowd the Friday morning before President Ben Ali left Tunisia that they were already celebrating. That they had already won.
When the people in the crowd aren`t afraid anymore, when they all believe together the dictator doesn`t have any power over them anymore, then the dictator doesn`t seem to have any power over them anymore. And I felt ha like that`s what was happening here in Egypt. People in the crowd this morning were already celebrating. It was as though Mubarak was already gone.
They were saying things like "How can he be so dumb? Doesn`t he have a television? Can`t he see no one wants him around here anymore?" And they were laughing and celebrating. It was like a carnival. And I thought, my gosh, can he really last?
So tonight when he comes on television and he doesn`t say "I`m talking to you from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia," he doesn`t say "I`m leaving office." He says "I never wanted to run for another term, and so I`m not going to run for another term. We`ll have elections in September and they`ll be open elections." It`s a little bit of a letdown. I think it`s a little bit of a letdown because it means the confrontation isn`t over and it`s likely to continue because the people in the street are already outraged.
The chants outside in Tahrir Square, in Liberation Square, have moved from "The people want the government to fall down" to "The people want the president to fall down." So I think this is kind of a --it may be --it`s not an end, more of a halfway point.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is it their decision or is it the army`s decision to say to Mubarak "It`s too late for what you offer. The only alternative for you today is to leave Egypt now"?
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: The protestors, the people in the streets and the leaders of the opposition movement --both Islamist and secular --have made it clear they don`t even want to negotiate about the formation of a new government while he`s still in power.
We`re used to, in the United States, having a president who slides into a slot in a government that was there before him and there after him. But that`s not how it works there. This government is Hosni Mubarak. So to say, you know, that we`re going to negotiate about change but I`m still going to be president is hard for people to swallow because this has been a one man, one party state for so long. So -¬
CHARLIE ROSE: And he said no to that for so long.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: And he said no to that for so long. He said no to changing that. And so they don`t have a lot of trust. I mean, elections here are kind of an eye-rolling thing. They have them every once in a while. For years there were really just referendums. In the parliamentary election last fall fraud was unbelievably rampant. They really made no effort whatsoever to hide what they were doing.
And so now to come around and say all right, let`s have good faith negotiations, we`ll have free and fair elections with national monitors, it`s no surprise that people don`t really buy that.
So, but anyway, you asked is it the place of the people or the place of the army. I think the question is going to be, you know --the question are, what next? Do the people buy this? No, they don`t. Do the people continue to protest? Probably. Then the army faces another tough call about which side it takes.
CHARLIE ROSE: So then the question is, is there someone who can say "I represent the people in the streets" or "the three of us represent the people in the streets. If this happens, I promise you, the demonstrations will have achieved their goals and we will look forward only to participating in the formation of the future of Egypt"?
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Well, another interesting thing about what`s been happening here in Egypt is unusual role of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize winning atomic energy watchdog from the U.N. He, having finished his career as an international diplomat, a bureaucrat, he waded into Egyptian politics with his Nobel Prize in hand.
And he`s done --he`s done some interesting things. You know, he`s not a wildly popular figure here in the sense that people really want to rally behind him and march under his banner. A lot of people think he`s kind of a foreigner because he hasn`t spent much time in Egypt.
But what he has done is he`s gotten all of the opposition groups to work as --to talk to each other which they hadn`t
done before. So you see a partnership between the little liberal parties and the liberal intellectuals on the one hand and the big giant Muslim Brotherhood on the other.
And the other thing he`s done is he`s presented a unified face both to the Egyptian government and to the west. The opposition here have all sort of coalesced behind him as their point man to talk to the government. And he`s not an easy point man to dismiss or besmirch or in the case of Egypt even jail because he is, after
all, a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
And to the west it`s very hard to say, you know, this guy is actually just an Islamic radical and a dangerous terrorist in sheep`s clothing because, again, he`s a Nobel Peace Prize winner. And so that changes the way things are going to unfold a little bit.
CHARLIE ROSE: So you`ll be looking to see what happens at the break of as you say, 8:30 or 9:00?
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Yes. I mean, I think we`ll --I don`t know what the response is going to be from the protestors. I don`t think they`ve really planned out their next week. I think they`re going to continue to protest.
The tough part is, how do they do it? How do you keep the pressure on? After you`ve brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets, do you do it again? I don`t know.
And then I should tell you, and it`s a great annoyance to me personally, the Egyptian government has kept the Internet shut off here for a week, which, I think their design is to make it difficult for young people to organize online and turn out in large numbers. It also makes it very hard for me to file my stories.
And I think in addition to that, it is not an open invitation to foreign investment and companies who want to do business here. So I`m really kind of surprised that they`ve kept that Internet blackout on for as long as they have.
CHARLIE ROSE: It`s great to have you here, David, and spectacular reporting, and I thank you, and I hope you can come back and talk about this again.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Thank you. It was a pleasure.
CHARLIE ROSE: We`ll be right back. Stay with us.
CHARLIE ROSE: We continue our coverage today of the events in Cairo and the implications for the region. Joining me now from Washington are two people with deep understanding of the Middle East, especially Jordan. Marwan Muasher served as Jordan`s deputy prime minister and foreign minister. He`s now a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And Robert Satloff, he is the executive director of Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He knows Jordan well and has written two books about the country. I`m pleased to have them both with me on this day of change.
We begin with their impressions about the events in Egypt. Marwan, tell me what did it say to you when you watched these events unfolding today on your television coming from Cairo?
MARWAN MUASHER: Well, it`s truly unprecedented in decades for in the Arab world for so many people to go down to the street and demand the leader`s resignation. We`ve seen it in Lebanon maybe in 2005 under different circumstances.
What is more remarkable also today is the president`s announcing that he wants to run for re --he won`t run for reelection which I think is maybe a little too little too late at this point.
CHARLIE ROSE: And so therefore what happens?
MARWAN MUASHER: It depends. I think at some point the army, his advisors will have to probably talk to him and convince him to step down. I don`t think that --you know, if this was done a week ago maybe President Mubarak would have led a transition team, a transition period towards a different set of leaders coming in and a presidential election in which people will be free to stand without the support of the ruling party.
Now I`m afraid it`s probably too late, and at some point I would imagine the people around him will have to
convince him that it`s time to step down.
CHARLIE ROSE: And you think he`ll be allowed to stay in Egypt?
MARWAN MUASHER: I think so. These things can be arranged. They have been arranged in the past. President Mubarak served this country for a long time and I don`t think that, you know, it is beyond arranging for him to stay on Egyptian soil.
CHARLIE ROSE: Robert Satloff, what did you see today when you watched this and thought about how the Middle East is changing before your very eyes?
ROBERT SATLOFF: Yes, I think you just underscored the dominant reality, that we are seeing a profound and fundamental change. I mean, whatever it turns out from what`s going on in Egypt, it is a different country, it`s a different pillar for Arab politics, It`s a different pillar for America`s role in the region and our influence.
I agree with Marwan. I think it`s highly unlike they President Mubarak will get his wish for another eight months as president. And he has just put his closest advisors, the people he just elevated to vice president and prime minister, he`s put them in the hot seat.
The army is a respected institution, respected on the streets of Egypt because it hasn`t turned on the people. But now the army has to decide whether they go with Mubarak for this eight months or whether they side with the people.
I think the next several days, maybe even just several hours, will be quite pivotal to see whether or not the army holds with Mubarak or goes its own way to maintain its own credibility and its own legitimacy.
CHARLIE ROSE: I would assume that`s an easier choice than we might imagine, wouldn`t you, a sense that history is speaking to them?
ROBERT SATLOFF: That`s how I think you and I and Marwan might see it. It might look a little bit different in the presidential palace. It`s never so easy to say to your commander, to your president after all these years that the time is now to go.
But I would imagine that Mubarak has just put them on the spot and when forced to make that decision -¬and I think very soon he`ll be forced to do this --I think it is more likely than not that they will choose to ask Mubarak to retire.
CHARLIE ROSE: It seems to me that you have forces of power who can influence Mubarak, but I`m not sure they can influence the street.
MARWAN MUASHER: Well, the issue with these uprisings, if you want, both in Tunisia and in Egypt is that those who are carrying them out are leaderless. You don`t even know who you want to talk to in order to negotiate some form of an agreement.
I think that at this stage the people around Mubarak have no choice, as you said, but to ask the president to step aside and see how they can, you know, agree on a transition period which has now --and an orderly transition period which has now become a bit more difficult with President Mubarak`s announcement today.
CHARLIE ROSE: So what happens, say, to one of the organizing forces here, the Muslim Brotherhood? What role do
they play? What opportunity does it present?
MARWAN MUASHER: The argument in the Arab world has always been that you need to keep the systems closed because opening them up would bring the Islamists in. You have seen two examples in Tunisia and Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood actually did not play a large role in these uprisings.
That does not mean that they`re not a force and that does not mean that they will not, of course, attempt,
and justifiably, to be part of whatever arrangements are done in the future.
But I think that this argument that --this scare tactic that governments have used for a long time that you need to keep the systems closed in order for the Islamists not to come in has only produced vacuums for other sort of movements. And we are now finding movements in Tunisia and in Egypt with no leaders basically because governments have not created or not allowed the political space for such leaders to emerge.
ROBERT SATLOFF: Charlie, I just find it impossible to imagine that the people around Mubarak will want any time soon to see a transition to a Muslim Brotherhood-led influenced, controlled government. For them, the word "transition" means transition from Mubarak to something else but within the current regime, not a transition to an opposition regime. For other people, transition means transition from the current regime to an opposition regime. And I think there`s a difference in definition of what "transition" means is where we`re going to have a serious agreement in the coming weeks.
CHARLIE ROSE: Will the Muslim Brotherhood be like Hezbollah in Lebanon or unlike Hezbollah in Lebanon?
ROBERT SATLOFF: Look, my view is it`s impossible to know yet. I think the accurate description of the Muslim Brotherhood is that they will expand to exert as much influence as the system allows. So in the Egyptian system they have been suppressed considerably, they were cut off from using any military force from any violence. And so the regime did a very good job of chomping that wing off. And so they`ve been active in the social welfare network. It`s not because, in my view, they have chosen to renounce violence. It`s because the regime did it for them.
Now will they become much more assertive if the space permits it? We don`t know. I think the chances if you look around in other countries, I think the chances are actually reasonably high. This doesn`t mean we don`t support political change in Egypt. It does mean, however, I think we have to be quite wary about the role that certain groups can play in this change.
MARWAN MUASHER: I`m going to have maybe a slightly different point of view if you allow me, Charlie. The Muslim Brotherhood and Brotherhood and Hezbollah are two different cases. Hezbollah is armed in Lebanon. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is not. Hezbollah has a charismatic leader. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt does not. Hezbollah is trying to force its view through arms in Lebanon whereas in Egypt I do not think that the Muslim Brotherhood today is in any way or form able or, frankly, willing to assume a leadership position in the new regime.
I agree with Rob that we don`t know what form that new regime would take, but I would be very surprised if the Muslim Brotherhood at least in the short term would take a leadership position there.
CHARLIE ROSE: All right, let me move to Jordan. So how do you assess, Robert, beginning with you, what King Abdullah has done so far?
ROBERT SATLOFF: So far I look at the situation in Jordan and I see a domino that is not falling. I think there is some anticipation that as you move from Tunisia to Egypt and the events in Yemen and you saw riots in Jordan that we would see the same level of spontaneous combustion in Jordan as we saw elsewhere.
I don`t see that happening. I see the protestors in Jordan principally economic focused. You don`t see calls on the king himself, attacks on the monarchy itself. You see them targeting the prime minister, you see them targeting the government on economic complaints. It`s very serious. But you don`t see at all this fundamental attack on the elements of the regime.
And the king has done what Jordanian monarchs have done for the last 90 years, which is change their prime ministers to change the political --to turn a new political leaf and hopefully thereby diffuse some of the opposition.
I`m not sure if he`s gone far enough. I`m not sure if this is the right person, if the mission matches the man in terms of the new prime minister. But in general I don`t see that turmoil is leading at all to crisis yet in Jordan.
MARWAN MUASHER: I agree the turmoil is certainly not directed at the king. It is directed at the government. But I want to disagree that this is only about the economy. I think there are underlying political themes involved. People are not happy about corruption, not just in Jordan but elsewhere in the Arab world. People are not happy about weak parliaments where they feel they are not fairly represented. I mean, all these are political issues, not just economic ones.
I think the king --we need to see now that the king has dismissed the government. I think people are looking not just for a change in personalities but a change in program.
Will the new government, as the king has asked it to do, indeed adopt an accelerated pace of political reform in the country or not? This is a demand that the king has given to the government, not economic issues but political ones. The king has done so in the last ten years multiple times. And, frankly, as he said in his designation letter, successive governments have not really done what he has asked them to do in terms of an accelerated pace of reform.
This particular prime minister is not known particularly as a reformer so we will have to wait and see what kind of team he assembled with him, but more importantly what kind of program is he going not just to promise but to actually instrument on the ground.
CHARLIE ROSE: So this reform that swept from Tunisia to Egypt does not extend in terms of people in the streets demanding a change in regime, does not take place in Jordan?
MARWAN MUASHER: No. Certainly they`re not demanding a change of regime. I think they`re demanding a change of pace in terms of accelerating political reform, accelerating the fight against corruption and in creating stronger parliaments.
Remember, we just had an election in Jordan where parliament just gave --a weak rubber stamp parliament, basically --gave the government a vote of confidence of 111 people out of 120 deputies and thereby immediately losing the trust of all Jordanian people.
Today Jordanians do not trust just the government that has just been dismissed but also the parliament in Jordan. There is a fundamentally flawed system that produces parliaments that are service oriented instead of parliaments that can really exercise their legislative authority and their oversight authority over the executive.
And in my view, not just in Jordan, in Egypt and elsewhere people are also asking for stronger parliament that are able to evolve into a system of checks and balances where no --where the executive does not have too much of a dominant role in running the affairs of the state.
ROBERT SATLOFF: Charlie, I would add a fundamental difference between Tunisia and Egypt on the other hand and Jordan on the other, really two fundamental differences. One is demographic and the other is political system.
Tunisia and Egypt are both homogenous societies in terms of ethnicity. In Jordan there`s a constitutional division between those of Trans-Jordanian origin and those of Palestinian origin. It has blurred somewhat over the years to the benefit of the country, but it remains deeply embedded in the national psyche.
And so what the king did today was he appointed the loyalist, a former head of military intelligence, a former general, who himself is an east bank tribal official. And he represents the loyalist element in the Jordanian hierarchy. That in and itself sends a powerful message to both the opposition, or people who will critique the king, and people who will support the king.
Secondly it`s a monarchy as opposed to the republics. And as much as we may, you know, feel distant from monarchies, the monarchies never promised democracy. The republics promised democracy and didn`t deliver. The monarchies promised participation, consultation, representation, but they never promised democracy. And so the bar is lower and it`s easier to reach.
CHARLIE ROSE: So you would say the same thing for Saudi Arabia you`re saying for Jordan?
ROBERT SATLOFF: The Saudi situation is more like the Jordanian than it is Tunisian and Egyptian. It`s not the same, but it is definitely more like the Jordanian than the others.
CHARLIE ROSE: So is there another place that`s likely to experience this contagion?
ROBERT SATLOFF: I think we`re seeing Yemen, we`re seeing Algeria. These are the two that I would focus on as being potential.
CHARLIE ROSE: Assess what the likelihood is of either of those. Marwan? Go ahead, Rob. You go first.
ROBERT SATLOFF: Well, we`re seeing significant protests in Yemen. So far the president has been able to weather this. And Yemen is such a failed state with huge tribal politics and it`s really just a city state of Sana`a these days that he may be able to survive, but it`s very powerful there.
Algeria is a wild card. And then the other place is Sudan. Surprisingly everyone thought south Sudan would go south after the referendum. In fact, we`re seeing huge protests against the regime in north Sudan, in the republic of Sudan. And that would be a major change as well.
MARWAN MUASHER: Charlie, in my view, as I said, whereas these riots, these uprisings might have emerged because of economic conditions, there is an underlying theme of frustration with a low quality of government that cuts across, you know, the Arab world. People just want better government. They don`t feel the government has delivered. They want better government.
You look at Tunisia, this was not supposed to happen in Tunisia. Tunisia was a country that was doing well economically it had a tight security system, it had a mild opposition compared to other countries, and yet it did. So I`m not sure that you can say that any country is immune from something like this taking place.
Each country has different circumstances, but the one common thread that joins all of them is this frustration with a low quality of government that people are no longer, you know, able or --are no longer putting up with particularly in a global financial crisis. This to me is the core of the problem.
And therefore addressing the issues cannot be done through economic measures alone, cannot be done through increasing prices, salaries --reducing prices alone. It also needs to be coupled with a reform process that people would feel is going to result in a gradual manner in widening the decision-making circle in their countries in a feeling that they are fairly and more equitably represented in the running of their own affairs. This might take place over time, but unless it does, I`m not sure that the crisis is going to be contained to one or two countries.
CHARLIE ROSE: All right, let me go to the United States. How does this change America`s role in the Middle East?
ROBERT SATLOFF: Well, I think we have to focus country by country. But what we did fail to do in Egypt is to pursue the democratization political reform path that began to pick up steam in the mid-2000s through 2006.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, Marwan, speak to that issue of the failure of American policies, and then the opportunities now or the differences of American options.
MARWAN MUASHER: Charlie, you had two recent models of how U.S. administrations have dealt with the reform issue in the Arab world. You had the Bush administration model prior to 2005 in which the Arab world looked at this as reform trying to be imposed by the outside through brute force, if you want. And that doesn`t work.
But you also had the Obama administration model of not doing anything at all in the last --in the last two years.
There is a way to support reform but not impose it. And I totally agree Rob. Reform issues should be high on the list of issues prior to issues that the U.S. has in --when it deals with countries of the region. That doesn`t mean that you impose it, but it does mean that you make these countries understand that this is something that the U.S. cares deeply about. If it is done in a consistent level and if it is done at all levels, from the president to the ambassador, then I think that you can do it in a collaborative way.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is the United States today less influential in the Middle East than it was a month ago?
MARWAN MUASHER: You know, you cannot be behind the curve and then hope that in a week or so you get ahead and regain your credibility in one week. This is a long-term process. I`m not sure there`s anything the United States can do today on the Egyptian scene. I mean it has been behind the curb on Egypt, and we are now seeing what the results are.
But I think that the United States still has a chance to do it right with the rest of the region so that we do not have another Egyptian situation, so that we don`t get to the point where you are --the options are either a regime which has lost its popularity or a vacuum of other leaderships that are ready to come in.
We do not need to be in that position, and there are ways to do it by supporting your allies but by also making it clear that they need to embark on a gradual but serious reform process.
CHARLIE ROSE: On that I have to say thank you very much. Thank you very much, Marwan, thank you very much, Rob.