Mubarak’s death elicits mixed emotions
CAIRO — In his heart, Zeyad Salim remains convinced that Hosni Mubarak’s ignominious ouster in 2011 was richly deserved. Still, the street vendor also wishes that the longtime autocrat had never been removed. Like many Egyptians on Tuesday, Mr. Salim had mixed emotions about Mr. Mubarak’s death.
“I know that people revolted against him for all the right reasons,” the 24year-old said. “But after living under our current conditions now, I think people have more appreciation for him.
“If Mubarak was a thief, then what do you call the ones who came after him?”
Across Egypt, emotions ran the gamut in the wake of the death of 91-year-old
Mr. Mubarak in a Cairo hospital after surgery. There was relief and muted glee that the man who had repressed the Arab world’s most populous nation for three decades and was ousted in 2011 during the massive Arab Spring uprisings that gripped the region, was dead.
There was also sadness and grief. Some Egyptians called him a father figure and a war hero for his role in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Others were indifferent to his death, for Mr. Mubarak had been ailing and sidelined for years.
What they collectively evinced, however, was that they viewed his passing through the prism of today’s Egypt — and that has improved the former autocrat’s image even among some of his staunchest detractors.
Today, Egyptians are living under another authoritarian leader, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, whose rule is widely considered more repressive than Mr. Mubarak’s. And most Egyptians are worse off than they were under the erratic Mubarak-led economy.
“Mubarak will be remembered by Egyptians in probably a very polarizing fashion,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “For his fans, he was a war hero, but the regime Mubarak built meant repression and economic dysfunctionality. And that all led to the 2011 revolutionary uprising, which ultimately led to his ouster.
“That’s Mubarak’s legacy: the uprising, and the factors that led to it. The uprising is over, but the factors remain and have intensified.”
On Tuesday, Egypt’s military, which deposed Mr. Mubarak in 2011 in the wake of the populist revolt, referred to the former air force officer as a war hero in a tweet. A military funeral is scheduled for Wednesday after noon prayers at elMosheer Tantawi mosque, one of Cairo’s most wellknown mosques. Mr. Sissi, a former military general himself, announced three days of mourning for Mr. Mubarak.
Even as the military planned a send-off, state-run and pro-Sissi government media noted that Mr. Mubarak’s regime was marked by corruption, wasteful spending, failed infrastructure projects, and Mubarak-influenced manipulation of the constitution and elections in his favor.