Egypt: Kifaya?

WaPo's lead editorial today is an unusually sharp attack on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek for his mistreatment of imprisoned political reformer Ayman Nour. The Bush administration wants Nour released, but Mubarek has essentially brushed off the U.S., and has even resumed a campaign of anti-U.S. incitement in the state-run press. Writes the Post, "Mr. Mubarak is no longer testing Mr. Bush; he is spitting in his face."

Nour is the head of the newly legal Party of Tomorrow, a liberal, free-market party that has been noted in Hit&Run here and here. In recent weeks, he has been organizing protests over Mubarek's seeking a fifth term as president under the "emergency" laws that have been in place during his entire rule; the protest byword is "Kifaya!" (Enough!).

As the Post notes, Nour's first protest in December drew 50 people; his most recent effort drew 500. Mubarek, who is expected to try to hand the presidency to his son, wants to put an end to this movement before it gets any larger. Nour has been charged with forging some of the petitions that enabled his party to become legal; a diabetic with a bad heart, he is enduring hours of prison "interrogation."

Actually, Nour is in jail, writes the Post, "because, like Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated last week, he offered a fresh democratic alternative in a Middle East stirred by the votes of Iraqis and Palestinians."

Liberal Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh notes that the crowds in the Kifaya! protests feature not only free-market liberals, but also leftist radicals and Islamists. "Not my cup of tea," he writes. "Nevertheless, something is beginning to happen in Egypt."