Monday 26 December 2011

Tahrir Today: Cairo Revisited


The day before, there had been thousands of people demonstrating against the brutal stripping and beating of women protesters at the hands of the Military Police.  But on Saturday, when I went to Tahrir Square for the first time since March of this year, it was quiet and somewhat bedraggled: tattered flag banners ringed the remnants of a tent city served by makeshift stands selling tea or roast corn on the cob. Of the people lounging around, not all looked like young protesters; there were some older men in farmer garb and some who looked like homeless vagrants. There wasn't a policeman in sight, but car traffic circled around the square unimpeded under the direction of Tahrir civilian volunteers.
Earlier that week clashes had resulted in several deaths and scores of injured demonstrators calling for an end to the military power grab and an immediate transition to civilian rule. It must be a bitter irony to the young liberals who spilled their blood for that cause that those who stood to gain most by their sacrifice- the Islamist parties- had been conspicuously absent from the struggle. A transition to civilian rule would inevitably mean handing over power to a parliament dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood who, together with the Salafis as a junior partner, have won the first two rounds of elections by a landslide.
There is that sense in Egypt today, of a revolution hijacked, gone awry. Some people shake their heads, speak of a lost generation, of emigration, if not for them, then for their children. Things will get worse before they get better, they say.
The anxiety over the economic crisis is the most acute and pervasive. A stark case in point is the Mena House Oberoi, the landmark hotel where world leaders once held meetings against the stupendous backdrop of the Giza pyramids. I had lunch there today, and it was sadly empty of guests: the vast expanse of hotel reception rooms and restaurants with their gorgeous Mamluke-style wood paneling and coffered ceilings, the pools, the annexes under construction, all empty but for a handful of tourists. Seeing me look around nostalgically at the familiar landmarks of one of the fabled hotels of my youth, the eager-to-please staff offered to show me the Churchill suite; they hope against hope for better days. But we all know that with some Salafi spokesmen spewing the most ignorant and prejudiced propositions imaginable on the media, the tourists were keeping away in droves.
A final incident comes to mind. On the way to the hotel via the Pyramids Road, traffic was so bad that we decided to try an alternate route on the way back- the 6th October Axis bypass. In the middle of the fast-moving traffic on the busy highway, an accident occurred. The engine of the car involved was spewing smoke, and the man in the car looked in imminent danger of the engine blowing up. While we were trying to figure out how to call the police,  we saw a man on a passing bus leap off and rush to the aid of the trapped motorist, smashing the window to open the jammed car door. Hard on his heels came two other rescuers. All three of the Good Samaritans sported the typical Islamist beard.






Tuesday 20 December 2011

State of Things interview from Cairo

http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/update-from-cairo/view
When host Frank Stasio last spoke with Chapel Hill-based novelist Samia Serageldin, she was just back from her native Egypt. She talked about the hope and enthusiasm sweeping through Egypt as the demonstrations in Tahrir Square brought down Hosni Mubarak's government. Serageldin has since returned to Cairo and she joins the program again today to look back on the Arab Spring and look forward to the final round of Egyptian elections.Update from Cairo

Interview from Cairo today

My interview with Frank Stasio of NPR's The State of Things is today at noon U.S. East Coast time. He will be asking about the state of Egypt today. In the week since I've been to Cairo, unsettling events have cascaded one after the other.

Friday 9 December 2011

The Liberal's Dilemma: Egypt's Elections




Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt for thirty years under emergency powers with the justification of ‘après moi le deluge’, an argument that played better in the West than at home. He presented his military-backed regime as the sole bulwark against the flood waters of fundamentalist Islam. Never mind that, in effect, he was making the prophecy come true: by ruthlessly repressing legitimate opposition and emasculating secular parties, he left the field clear to the underground opposition of the Muslim Brotherhood; by supporting the unbridled greed of a narrow elite while ignoring the misery of the majority of the population, he left the door wide open for the Brotherhood to fill the tremendous gap in social services. For years, the Brotherhood accumulated good will, trust, and name recognition. When the revolution broke out on January 25th, the Islamists initially held back, letting the young progressives fight the good fight, perhaps as much out of calculation as prudence: their presence in the field in the early days would have allowed Mubarak to damn the uprising as ‘radical Islamist.’
And when the revolution succeeded, the Muslim Brotherhood were ready, the only organized party in a field of fragmented, chaotic, leaderless, secular start-up movements. This came as no surprise, but the unexpected took the form of the seemingly sudden emergence of a hitherto obscure sect who called themselves the Salafis, asserting a fundamentalist approach at odds with the Brotherhood’s moderate stance.
At the polls, the first-time voter- and all Egyptians are first-time voters, after sixty years of single-party rule and single-candidate presidential ‘referendums’- the first time voter was faced with a bewildering choice of deliberate complications: independent lists, proportional representation lists, a plethora of unfamiliar parties and candidates, an electoral sheet that would have baffled a nuclear scientist- in a county where thirty percent of the electorate is functionally illiterate. The election sheets actually featured dozens of random icons like a basketball or sunglasses to identify the parties for those who could not read the names. Not only is there no literacy test for eligibility to vote, there is a Nasser-era mandate that requires 50% of the seats in Parliament to be held by ‘peasants and workers.’ Is it any wonder that the hordes of the illiterate, downtrodden and newly enfranchised citizens wielded their vote in favor of the familiar name of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate?
So now the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is makes its power grab with the stern threat of their version of Mubarak’s conundrum: It’s the Military or the Islamists. The new constitution, according to the SCAF, will reserve supra-constitutional powers to the military and remove them from civilian scrutiny or control. No longer behind the scenes, the military will directly appoint the Prime Minister.
So what is the torn Egyptian liberal progressive to do? Uphold the principal of democracy even if it means letting the revolution he bled and died for be co-opted by an overwhelming Islamist majority government? Or endorse the military power grab as a secular counterbalance? Either way, his revolution has been hijacked: his choice is between the junta or the mullah.
There are two potential scenarios: an Islamic-leaning party wins in parliament, but proves to be a moderate and even competent custodian of the country’s economic and social good, as in Turkey and in Indonesia after Suharto’s fall. In the other scenario, Western powers intervene to nullify election results favorable to an Islamic party, as in Algeria, leading to a decade of unspeakably bloody civil war.
The Egyptian liberal prays for the first scenario, but knows that he must avoid the second at all costs.


Thursday 1 December 2011

Reading at Quail Ridge this evening!

Looking forward to reading from '27 Views of Chapel Hill' this evening at Quail Ridge in Raleigh at 7:30!