Best regards.

Thank you for an interesting blog.

When you decide to draw historical lines it is important to get your facts right.
* Mohammed Ali (or Mehmet Ali, he was Turkish speaking of Albanian origin) was never King of Egypt allthough he virtually ruled independent of the Sublime Porte in Istanbul. He was in name a mere Wali, governor, of Egypt, but styled himself as a Khedive, a title Ismail later would succeed in attaining from the Ottoman Sultan.
* And it was Ismail, and to a certain extent his predecessor Said who started to secure loans from European banks. Mohammed Ali took his drew from slaves, peasants (the fellahin), trade and to some extent industry. Said started the borrowing when he decided to build the Suez Canal, while Ismail increased it heavily during the American Civil War which gave Egypt enormeous revenue due to high cotton prices. Ismail drew new loans on the basis on that revenue to finance the Canal, modernisation of the country (for example what is today Downtown Cairo) and personal grandeur. When the revenue from cotton sales plummeted after the Civil War ended Egyptian finances was hit hard and Ismail borrowed even more to pay his existing loans. The borrowing spiral ended with a European commision that was meant to supervise Egypt’s economy to make sure that the country paid its debts. In the long run neither Ismail nor a large bulk of Egyptians would accept this. The whole saga ended with Ismail being deposed by the Ottoman Sultan, in favour of his son Tawfiq, followed by an uprising led by Colonel Ahmad Orabi who defied the European powers. The Orabist (or Egyptian) Army was thoroughly beaten by the British at Tell el-Kabir in 1882 and this paved the way for nearly 75 years of British rule or heavy influence in Egypt.

By the way, you are right that the Egyptians are wary of securing loans. When Egypts first elected Parliament convened in 1923 (24?), they took painstaking measures to balance the books of the government and not depend on foreign borrowing.

The NGO´s should wake to the fact that if they didn´t have sway during Mubarak they won´t have sway now. Not without popular support.

The EU can´t just wave magic sticks and create liberalism where it doesn´t exist or isn´t welcome.

The West is barely trying to keep these new democratic governments from repeating the populist mistakes of the past so that the West itself won´t have to repeat the mistake of having to again support authoritarian regimes because of the failures of democracy.

Regardless of the chicken and egg theoretical debate, now Egyptians have had their revolution…if they can keep it.

Foreign voters always wish domestic Western voters were interested, even obsessed, with what is happening in their countries. No such thing occurs. The West has its own problems. By the time things have gone wrong enough, the Western intervention (if any) will be messy and insufficient.

Even the Western elites long ago gave up on colonialism. People argued that the US would stay in Iraq and rule it forever. Guess what, Americans couldn´t be happier to get out. Now if the non-Westerners could adapt to the end of colonialism too, it would be great, beginning by taking full responsibility for their own governance.

[...]EU-Egypt Taskforce: the perfect misunderstanding « Inside Arab Spring[...]…

This is an interesting way to put things. It was only the western powers whose influence was removed, to be replaced by the influence of the USSR.

That’s a bit of a side-light into the ideological bent of the author. That getting the West out, and the USSR in means that you have regained your independence.

Poles, Czechs and Hungarians might have a different opinion.

It seems to me that this article has only one purpose: to criticise. This would be fine, if the criticism were clear and an alternative were indicated, offered or demanded, but it isn’t.

The West is always blamed for all the problems in the world and asked to both intervene and not intervene. Egyptians have proven they can control their country if they want. Let them take responsibility.