The question of Western interference has been a major topic throughout the revolution in Egypt. It was an important element of Mubarak's media war on his opponents to portray the protests as nothing more than a movement stirred by outside forces. Also the USA's wavering response might was at least partially due to the intention to avoid giving way to the reproach of neocolonial interference. And even now after the revolution in some Egyptians' accounts, the question in how far any outside power had its hands in the events figures prominently.
In the end it might also be matter of national pride to constate, that Egyptian's had done all this by themselves and fully on their own account. A girl of my age recently even pointed out to me, that other than many people thought the Egyptians were not following the Tunisian role model in their uprising but rather the Egyptian revolution had started with the death of Khaled Said and the facebook groups founded in memory of him. Thus -according to her - the flame of the Egyptian uprising had been burning (or simmering) long before events in Tunisia unfolded in such a dramatic way late last year. Alhamdullilah the Egyptians could still claim to be the innovators of the new Arab Self-Consciousness.
Another kind of outside interference than the one referred to above has been obvious in the Egyptian revolution: many Egyptians decried the use of US made teargas canisters by the regime's police forces. Having been a long standing ally of the US, Egypt's stock in teargas canisters wasn't small in scale and the made ample use of it on Friday 28th January and the follwoing days, literally showering protesters with them. An Egyptian friend had safed one of the empty canister's to bring it home as a memory of his fight with the teargas.
It might be hard to imagine, yet for many Egyptian youths who participated in the first week of the protests and survived the heavy-handed police reaction, teargas has become a symbol. Being showered with teargas for hours (or days) was not only burning in their eyes at their moment, but it was also burnt into their memories...(Might well even have been traumatic in the psychological sense, while of course the borders and definitions are fluent and contested here)...When we walked home after the celebrations the night Mubarak left that Egyptian friend of mine said, when we were just crossing the last bridge to our home, already in a calmer area and mood: „I feel the streets still smell of it...“ The day before he had shown me the imprint „made in the US“ on his teargas souvenir....
While Egyptians have been pointing to this issue before, the military links and arms supply of Great Britain to Bahrain are now also debated in Britain itself, at least as reported by the Guardian:
"Among the military academy's alumni is Bahrain's king, Sheikh Hamad bin Essa Al Khalifa, who is also the patron"
And while pro-democracy protesters across the Middle East continue to prevail in the face of brutal government crackdowns such as seenn in the last two days in Lybia or Bahrain, European weapon manufacturers and potential autocratic buyers meet at IDEX, the International Defense Exhibition and Conference held in Abu Dhabi this weekend. The Guardian has more on the topic of British weapon supply to Bahrain, in an article by Peter Beaumont's and Robert Booth':
"MoD to review arms export licences after Bahrain clears protesters with UK-made crowd-controls weapons such as teargas and stun grenades.“
If you wanna see how many arms producers and related companies from your country attend the IDEX to push their trade with Middle Eastern regimes, check out the exhibitor list from IDEX
http://www.idexuae.ae/page.cfm/action=ExhibList/ListID=1/t=m/goSection=4
http://www.idexuae.ae/page.cfm/action=ExhibList/ListID=1/t=m/goSection=4
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