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Article 1.
NYT
Pay Attention
Thomas L. Friedman

May 28, 2011—Cairo -- I had some time to kill at the Cairo airport
the other day so I rummaged through the “Egyptian Treasures” shop.
I didn’t care much for the King Tut paper weights and ashtrays but
was intrigued by a stuffed camel, which, if you squeezed its hump,
emitted a camel honk. When I turned it over to see where it was
manufactured, it read: “Made in China.” Now that they have decided
to put former President Hosni Mubarak on trial, I hope Egyptians add
to his indictment that he presided for 30 years over a country where
nearly half the population lives on $2 day and 20 percent are
unemployed while it is importing low-wage manufactured goods — a
stuffed camel, no less — from China.
That’s an embarrassment for Mubarak and America, which has
donated some $30 billion in aid to modernize Egypt’s economy over
the last 30 years — and President Obama just promised a couple
billion more. Egypt’s economy has nose-dived since the uprising, and
the new government really does need the money to stay afloat. But I
only hope that Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
understand that right now — right this second — Egypt needs
something more from Washington than money: quiet, behind-the-
scenes engagement with Egypt’s ruling generals over how to
complete the transition to democracy here.
Here’s why. After the ouster of Mubarak in February, his presidential
powers were shifted to a military council, led by the defense minister.
It’s an odd situation, or as the Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany,
author of “The Yacoubian Building,” put it to me: “We have had a
revolution here that succeeded — but is not in power. So the goals of

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