Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s calculating autocrat, dies at 91
CAIRO — Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a cautious head of state who for decades kept a cold peace with Israel and crushed political dissent at home until a 2011 protest movement overwhelmed his security forces and drove him from power in the early days of the Arab Spring, died on Tuesday, according to Egypt state TV. He was 91.
His health sharply deteriorated after he was handed a life sentence in 2012 for failing to stop police from killing hundreds of people in the uprising that ended his rule. He was acquitted five years later, but by then Mubarak was a diminished, almost spectral figure, waving from the window of a military hospital along the Nile or lying on a stretcher, his gaunt face hidden by sunglasses.
Modern Egypt’s longest-serving leader, Mubarak was pragmatic but rarely imaginative as he struggled to outflank growing resentment at home and preserve the country’s slipping stature in a volatile region. He often seemed more intent on consolidating power than on advancing a political ideology, revealing an authoritarian streak that drew reproach from Washington, his biggest ally.
Pent-up public anger over years of repression became his undoing in January 2011 when protests swept across Cairo and other cities. Organized by youth movements, the 18 days of demonstrations engulfed Egyptians from all social and economic classes. Mubarak resorted to a desperate mix of concessions and coercion until the army, fearful of wider unrest and an economy in turmoil, forced him to step down.
It was a humiliating defeat for a calculating autocrat who for years entrusted Egypt’s fate only to himself. The cinematiclike toppling of Mubarak’s government and his subsequent appearance — with his sons Gamal and Alaa — in a defendants cage in a Cairo courtroom became a rallying cry for change throughout North Africa and the Middle East and an inspiration for a new generation of Arabs demanding better lives. Those protests, however, led to war in Syria and Yemen, factional fighting in Libya and a military crackdown in Egypt that toppled Mubarak’s successor, Mohamed Morsi, and his Muslim Brotherhood.
During a presidency that spanned nearly 30 years, Mubarak survived assassination attempts and lived in the shadow of his more flamboyant predecessors.
With his air force background, Mubarak straddled Egypt’s rigid military elite and an emerging corporate culture, emphasizing the need for foreign investment and national development, yet doing little to curtail the cronyism and inefficiency that led to a state increasingly unable to meet the needs of its 81 million people, be they students, bakers, fishermen or weavers.