Years from now, when the insiders start publishing their memoirs, we may subdivide the past 15 years into the Safwat Sherif era, the Mohammed Abu Ghazala epoch, the Zakariya Azmi years, the ascendancy of Farid Khamis. But for now, we're living in the Age of Mubarak. The accomplishments of the past 15 years are real enough.
Privatization is well underway.
Egypt looks good on paper. The vast majority of Egyptians will tell you that they must work longer and harder for less purchasing power than ever before. The hopes that Sadat offered the Egyptians of the 1970s mean little to most. The Gulf labor market is dead, the benefits of American foreign aid are not widely seen or appreciated, and Egyptian diplomats freely admit that the vision of a free Middle East market is dying with the peace process. Tourism has proven to be fickle - entrepreneurs have made fortunes, but employees have seen their job security shrink with every bomb blast.