EGYPTIAN UNREST

Egyptian Unrest: Egyptian President is out

Egyptian Unrest: Egyptian President is out

Introduction

At last, after 29 years in power, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down in the wake of ongoing protests, which have marred the socioeconomic life of the society. Hosni Mubarak rose to power in 1981 after the assassination of then President Anwar Sadat. He assumed his first term in 1982. During the 1991 Gulf war, Egypt was an important member of the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq. The country provided logistic support to the allied forces. As a consequence of this unprecedented support, Egypt won numerous favors from the United States on economic and military fronts, thus improving the Egyptian economy. For most part of the 1990s Egypt remained a staunch supporter of the Middle East peace process, which is meant to solve the long standing Palestine conflict. In this paper, a discussion regarding the reasons for Mubarak's ouster, its consequences, the prevailing situation, and the reactions from the Western media is presented.

Discussion

The whole Arab world is going through a transitional phase. Before going into details about the consequences of Mubarak's forced resignation from presidency, it would be appropriate to highlight the factors that influenced the minds of the common public and enticed them to trigger such an unblieveable political turnaround in the world history (Korotayev, 2011).

It all started in Tunisia on 14th January 2011, when thousands of protestors took to streets in anger and raised their voices against the aristocratic leadership and corrupt policies of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, forcing him to step down and migrate to Saudi Arabia. The Islamic countries of North Africa and the Middle East including, Algeria, Lebanon, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Kuwait are experiencing such riots and protests, which are most likely to continue in the near ...