Mubarak's resignation a triumph for 'people power'

CAIRO -- "Leave!" the protesters chanted for 18 days. And on Friday, he left.

Bowing to a popular rebellion that showed no signs of letting up, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Friday ceded authority to the military and headed to a Red Sea resort town in a stunning finish to his three decades of authoritarian rule.

The abrupt and ignominious end to the Mubarak era lifted millions of Egyptians into a dizzying celebration of people power.

Cheering, flag-waving masses surged into the streets of Cairo and nationwide to celebrate the toppling of one of the Arab world's longest-serving leaders _ as well as the emergence of a young Egyptian generation that defied a powerful ruling elite and marshaled technology to orchestrate a revolution.

A somber Vice President Omar Suleiman, the former intelligence chief, announced Mubarak's departure in a brief statement on state television. In seconds, the long-repressed Egyptians became an inspiration for other Arabs living under autocratic regimes.

"Mubarak is gone tonight, and we have hope for our future," said Malek Adly, 30, a human rights lawyer who was celebrating among thousands in downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square.

If it leads to the establishment of democracy in Egypt, the popular revolution of the past 18 days, along with the upheaval in Tunisia that preceded it, could mark a turning point in the history of the Middle East and beyond, showing that a mostly peaceful uprising can oust an entrenched regime which relied on police state tactics, sham elections and crony capitalism for its power.

The events in the Arab world's most populous country, like the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe, showed that once the popular will breaches the facade of power in autocratic regimes, they topple quickly. Of paramount concern is what comes next, both for Egypt and its neighbors as well as its allies in the West.

The U.S. finds itself in a tricky position, for Mubarak had been its closest Arab ally, and his government the recipient of billions of dollars in aid. Perhaps fearful of a less-friendly alternative, the White House initially withheld support for the uprising. After weeks of mixed messages, President Barack Obama on Friday hailed the Egyptians' demand for "nothing less than genuine democracy."

"By stepping down, President Mubarak responded to the Egyptian peoples' hunger for change," Obama said. "But this is not the end of Egypt's transition. I am sure that there will be difficult days ahead, and many questions remain unanswered. But I am confident that the people of Egypt can find those answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the spirit of unity that defined these last few weeks."

Egypt is now in the hands of the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces, an elite cabal of current and former commanders including: Suleiman, Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq, Defense Minister Mohammed Hussein Tantawi and Sami Anan, the armed forces chief of staff. Among those figures, only Anan was on the council before the upheaval. Mubarak appointed the others Jan. 29 and it's unclear whether they would continue to serve.

Other members of the council are the chiefs of staff for the air force, the navy and air defense.

"The view of the military is that Egypt exists on a knife's edge, that it's under constant security threat, that things could go wrong at any moment, and so it requires steady leadership that only the military can provide," said Tarek Masoud, an Egypt expert and assistant professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "I worry they'd be reluctant to hand over power to a civilian authority."

Most opposition groups had hoped for a civilian-led interim government that represented the wide range of ideologies in the revolutionary movement. The army model can work, opposition members said, so long as the pro-democracy activists stay united and use pressure to remind the generals they are not the new order, but only custodians of the transitional period.

Prior to Mubarak's resignation Friday, tens of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square chanted, "Civilian, not military!"

(Jonathan S. Landay and Roy Gutman contributed to this article from Washington. McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent Miret el Naggar contributed from Cairo.)