The day of the London bombings, another significant tragedy unfolded on the same day in the Arab world. The Zarkawi-led branch of al Qaeda in Iraq announced the execution of Ambassador Ihab Sherif, the senior Egyptian envoy to Iraq, who in their words represented "an infidel regime that has long befriended Christians and Jews."

While similar atrocities have been common in Iraq in the last two years, this was the first time an Egyptian of prominence was struck down. The entire country was stunned.

Egyptians consider themselves an elder Arab brother who has long been sacrificing for the rest of the Arab world, and hence deserves to be treated with affection, gratitude and respect. For their envoy to be slaughtered in such a barbaric fashion by fellow Arab Muslims was unthinkable.

But there was more to the tragedy between Cairo and Baghdad. The Mubarak regime, bowing to popular sentiments, had declared its opposition to the war in Iraq back in 2003. But President Hosni Mubarak has tried to maintain good relations with the U.S. government. After all, he is the second major recipient of its foreign aid, some $2 billion annually.

However, as the Bush administration announced its plans for promoting democracy in the region, Mubarak and other Arab autocrats got increasingly nervous. In response to the U.S. Middle East Partnership Initiative in November 2002 and the Broader Middle East and North African Initiative of the G-8 in 2004, Mubarak summoned his fellow autocrats to stand fast against "foreign intervention" and "externally imposed reform."

Iraq represents a battleground between three visions of the Arab future: autocratic, democratic and theocratic. At times Arab autocrats sided more with the theocrats, whose threat seemed less eminent than that of the democrats, whether home-grown or Western-supported.

One seasoned regional observer even went so far as noting on the second anniversary of the Iraq war that the continued debacle of the U.S. forces was not just attributable to the insurgents, but was also a result of Middle Eastern autocratic regimes joining forces in hopes that the Iraqi democratic experiment would fail spectacularly, thus giving them a new lease on life.

Mubarak took the lead role, having already over-used the bloody civil war in Algeria to scare his fellow Egyptians and Westerners about Islamist political movements. It was not until the Algerian government filed a formal protest against the frequent inflammatory invocation of the country's name three years ago that Mubarak backed off. Now he could substitute Iraq, warning about the disorder that follows rapid attempts to democratize.

The shock and grief of all Egyptians over the slaying of their ambassador in Baghdad swiftly gave way to angry questioning of the regime. Why did they have to learn about posting an ambassador to Iraq only after other Arab satellite channels announced his name and kidnapped status? Why did the Egyptian authorities persist in describing the abduction as a "disappearance" instead of a kidnapping, as other news sources were reporting?

And why did the ambassador move around the city without proper security protection? (He was buying newspapers when he was abducted in a busy Baghdad street.) How come the Mubarak regime suddenly changed its position on the legitimacy of the provisional government in Baghdad, which it had previously tagged as the "client of foreign occupiers"?

The lack of credible answers to these and other related questions can be traced to Mubarak's cynical policy duality. An example: At the highest official level, behind closed doors or following bilateral talks, the regime proudly cites its the close strategic links with the United States. Meanwhile, the state-sponsored media gives the unmistakable impression that the United States is Egypt's enemy No. 2, second only to Israel.

By the same token, the Mubarak-controlled media have portrayed the insurgents in Iraq as "the resistance" and as "freedom fighters." Even when they commit atrocities against Iraqi and Arab civilians they've never been labeled terrorists, and when insurgents are killed they become "martyrs."

This created a major dilemma for the regime when Sherif was executed, requiring a 180-degree turn: Freedom fighters now became terrorists.

Mubarak's thinly veiled dualism was revealed in other ways last week. Egyptian Muslim cleric Sheik Youssef Qaradawy, self-exiled in Qatar, is infamous for his hateful religious edicts (fatwas) against non-Muslims. One of these fatwas legitimated beheading of civilian foreigners in Iraq. Under international pressure to condemn this, the Mubarak regime got its own Sheik el Azhar to issue a counter-edict against these killings.

But now that Mubarak faces a fall election (to his fifth six-year term), and knowing that Qaradawy enjoys some popular support, he decided to invite him back to Egypt. On the day following the London bombings and the Baghdad slaughter he gave Qaradawy a hero's welcome at the Cairo airport.

At a loss to make sense of all of this, and probably without clear instructions, the new editor of Egypt's state-controlled daily newspaper Al Ahram came out with the following: "The United States bears the major responsibility for the slaughter of the Egyptian ambassador in Baghdad, as it has created anarchy and violence that made the heinous act possible."

With opposition demonstrations increasing and only seven weeks to go before the presidential elections, expect more confusion and reversals from the Mubarak camp. It is an increasingly pathetic performance, and the Egyptian people deserve better