Egypt's recent massive protests seem to be comprised of young men frustrated by joblessness. Historically, the combination of high unemployment and a heavy handed government leads to uprising almost without fail. The remaining question is whether the government has the ability to suppress the dissent.
Egypt is the world's most populous Arab nation and the average age is astonishingly low at 25. The stagnant economy has left many educated young people underemployed, if able to find work at all. Corruption has permeated the smallest aspects of life, ensuring that the languishing underemployed suffer the indignity of watching others get what they do not deserve. Aside from the intelligentsia, close to a fifth of Egypt's population lives below the poverty line, meaning they bring in less than $2 a day. While the graft and stunted economy have produced a general malaise, a few years ago a rockslide killed dozens of people in a slum outside Cairo. That tragedy roused anger at the shoddy construction and negligence of the government. The pervasive, underlying frustration with lack of job opportunities, and speculation about a Mubarak-less Egypt as he progresses in age, were tinder. The ouster of Tunisia's autocrat proved to be the light that has sparked the protests.
What happens next depends on the military. In the past, the police force has been more than willing to brutalize any dissenters, while garnering a reputation for skimming some of the informal economy to supplement their wages. As it currently stands, the police seem incapable of keeping a lid on the protests. The initial tactic of the riot police was to confront protesters with bamboo batons. When it was clear that the protesters outnumbered the police, the police turned to water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets; even this was not enough to quell the unrest. So far, the military has not gotten involved. Mubarak served in the Egyptian Air Force his entire career until President Anwar Sadat appointed him Vice President. He assumed the office of the presidency after Anwar Sadat's assassination. Eager to hold onto his role as president, he adopted a policy of shepherding officers from domestic affairs, establishing a patronage system that gives officers lucrative cuts of corporate profits under the military's purview, and forcing military officers to retire when their stature grew to a level of a viable candidate for the presidency. The significance of this is that there are angry, unemployed young people and angry, unemployed older military officers. The collaboration between the two would certainly precipitate Mubarak's exit.
Right now, the military could enter the situation in several capacities. Although unlikely, an officer (or cadre thereof) could enter the fray with political ambitions. There is historical precedence for this; Egypt has only had four presidents since the expulsion of the monarchy in 1952, but all of them have been former military men. The next option is that the military refuses to fight the protesters, similarly to Tunisian forces. The last possibility is that the military puts down the revolt similarly to what happened in Iran in 2009. The Egyptian military appears to include many disgruntled officers and grunts that more closely identify with the protesters than with the ruling elite. The military has a strong nationalistic bent. Because the protests do not seem to have a visible presence from the Muslim Brotherhood, a traditional enemy, this outcome seems unlikely.
