Egypt: Seeking a Way Out

A friend asked me recently what Egyptian liberals were thinking these days, and I replied ruefully that I imagined it felt like scrambling back into the frying pan to get out of the fire. That is, if post-Mubarak military rule was the frying pan, then Muslim Brotherhood rule was the fire. He also asked if, given the roiling polarization in Egyptian society between secularists and Islamists, and the stalemate between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and the military, civil war loomed on the horizon. The state has a monopoly on force of arms in Egypt, unlike in Syria or Iraq, and the Muslim Brotherhood has no militias at its command- yet- so civil war in the classic sense is not imminent, but if the situation continues to deteriorate and foreign powers intervene to arm factions, it will be a very real threat.

So is there any way to pull back from the brink, to diffuse the crisis without more bloodshed? 

For the past month, there have been hundreds of thousands of Morsi diehards camped out in front of a mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City neighborhood. All efforts to dislodge them have failed so far, in spite of clashes with the authorities that have led to a hundred killings. They are digging in, literally digging up sidewalk bricks to build a wall around the perimeter of the mosque. The unsanitary ad hoc tent-living conditions have become a serious health hazard, not to mention the traffic impasse and total disruption of the lives of the hapless, infuriated residents of the neighborhood, who are hardly mollified by some protesters’ offers of flowers and apologies.

The military authorities have warned that they will ‘soon’ move to dislodge the encampments. It is a necessary step, most Egyptians believe, to clear, not just the Morsi supporter mosque sit-in, but also Tahrir and all the other offshoot sit-ins as well. The right to free speech and assembly, even in a democracy, means the right to march and demonstrate, with the prerequisite permit, and police protection- after which everyone goes home. It does not mean the right to take over every public space and turn it into a permanent, lawless, tent city cum soup kitchen cum street fair populated as much by the homeless, the hungry, or the jobless as by committed activists. Egyptians want, need, and deserve a return to civility, to patrolled city streets, to functional city squares, and to law and order.

On the other hand, it would be a serious mistake for General El-Sissi and the military to interpret the massive turnout in their favor as a mandate to massacre. Moral issues aside, there is more appetite on the Muslim Brotherhood side to create martyrs than there is on the military’s, and for good reason. The Muslim Brethren are a minority, unquestionably, but their support runs deep. For every Morsi supporter camped out in front of the mosque, for every card-carrying Muslim Brotherhood member, there are multiple sympathizers in the society at large, and that is true across the socio-economic divide. I can think of one example of twin sisters, thirty-something young women whose father, on their eighteenth birthday, bought each a matching Mercedes sports car to drive to college. One marched in support of the Military takeover, and one supported the Muslim Brotherhood. Families are divided on the issue, brother against sister, and husband against wife.

The hope, therefore, is to diffuse the crisis through negotiation, and not by forcible eviction of the encampment. There are signs of political will on the part of Western powers to find a peaceful solution. The European Union has sent its Foreign Policy chief, Catherine Ashton, to Egypt to try to broker a deal, officially at the behest of the stakeholders. On the Egyptian government side, she will find competent, experienced interlocutors in Vice-President Mohamed Baradei, former chief of the U.N. Nuclear Agency, and Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmi, former ambassador to Washington. On the MB side, president Morsi is held incommunicado and other leaders are under arrest, but there are other prominent heads of the movement to negotiate through. Intriguingly, a group of younger cadres who call themselves the “Brethren Without Violence” have dissented from the MB leadership and may lead the way out of the mosque encampment.

For its part, the Obama seems to grasp the wider implications of the crisis for the stability of the region and has charged Foreign Secretary Kerry to broker talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders with a view to re-launching the peace process. It truly is the eleventh hour, but the hope seems to be that Israel might recognize the urgency for stability in an increasingly unstable region, and that the Abbas administration in the Palestinian Territories might recognize an opportunity when its rival, Hamas in Gaza, is weakened by the loss of the Morsi administration’s support.

For the U.S., Israel and the world, not only Egypt but also Gaza and Syria are in play. The Brotherhood were to all evidence supporting Islamist radicals in an increasingly lawless Sinai, as well as supporting Hamas in Gaza and the Islamist insurgency in Syria against Bashar Assad. Egyptian volunteers were allegedly travelling to Syria for jihad, and might come back radicalized and pose a threat to their own society and beyond.

Pursuing a peaceful solution to the impasse in Egypt that allows the MB to save face is worth every iota of patience and self-control the military can muster and the civilian authorities can urge. The alternative is a bloodbath and the creation of martyrs that will serve as a radicalizing myth to inspire generations of terrorists, and cleave a fractured society irreparably in two.

Egypt: Everybody Coups

Everybody coups, let me say upfront, is not my expression but John Oliver’s on The Daily Show last night. But I actually don’t agree with Oliver’s point about the June 30^th popular uprising in Egypt that led to the military intervention that deposed Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi. Oliver seems to be claiming, substantially, that ‘a coup by any other name’ is still a coup, to paraphrase Shakespeare; or more vulgarly, ‘if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it’s a duck.’

But if Oliver insists that it was a military coup that deposed Morsi, then he must accept that Morsi himself, in his short but catastrophic one-year administration, staged repeated unconstitutional coups-by-decree against every legitimate opposition he encountered: he staged a coup against the military, decapitating the entire top tier of generals, including Field Marshall Tantawi; to their credit, the generals went quietly. He attempted to decapitate the entire top tier of judges by decreeing a immediate retirement age of 60; the judges, for their part, dug their heels in, and Morsi backed off. He attempted to decapitate the opposition media by harassing and pursing talk show hosts and closing down media channels. Morsi also staged a coup against the constitution, by declaring himself and his decrees above judicial review while he railroaded overnight a Muslim Brotherhood-cobbled ‘constitution’ against the strident objections of the entire spectrum of the political opposition.

In other words, Morsi acted illegitimately from day one, and was hell-bent on purging all government and non-government entities of political opponents and replacing them with incompetent but sworn Muslim Brotherhood. He ignored the fact that his narrow margin of election at the ballot box came, not only or even mostly from Islamist supporters, but from a wide swathe of the liberal, secular, revolutionary forces that deposed Mubarak in 2011, and that only voted for Morsi in 2012 because they could not stomach voting for his Mubarak-clone opponent in the election.

The irony, today, is that Morsi’s Moslem Brotherhood supporters cling with a death grip to the claim of ‘legitimacy’ as grounds for re-instating the deposed president. The same people who now claim the sanctity of the ballot box forget that they have always claimed, and still claim, that Shari ’a is above democracy, ballot boxes, and man-made laws.

If June 30^th 2013 was a military coup, it was a military coup by popular demand, not all that different from January 2011; after all, it was the generals, in the end, who went to then-president Mubarak on February 11 and told him that it was time to go. So John Oliver is right in a way: everybody coups. But a rose by any other name is not the same. Whether the Obama administration calls it a coup or not makes a great deal of difference legally as far as aid to Egypt is concerned. Most of the 1.3 Billion in aid goes to the Egyptian military, and much of it comes back to the U.S. in the form of arms industry contracts; the aid also guarantees Egypt’s adherence to the peace treaty with Israel. Suffice it to say, it is not in U.S. interests to stop military aid to Egypt.

Not to mention that U.S. foreign policy is unpopular enough in Egypt today without any added grievances. To the bemusement of American media commentators, both the Muslim Brotherhood side and the liberal secular side seem to be critical of U.S. foreign policy at the moment, and each side is accusing the other of being the ‘teacher’s pet.’ The unfortunate fact is that there is a widespread perception, regardless of political bent, that the ‘West’ is carrying through a long-term strategy of destabilizing and fragmenting the Arab Middle East, with Iraq and today Syria as the prime examples. Until that perception is changed, whatever the U.S. does, it will be damned if it does and damned if it does not.

But the West is right to point out that the newly re-enfranchised liberals are displaying heedless triumphalism and attempting to marginalize the Muslim Brotherhood too harshly. Returning to the repressive measures of the past and settling of accounts can only exacerbate the fractures in Egyptian society and lead to more instability. The Brotherhood and their supporters are not going away; the only option- difficult, distasteful, and uncertain as it may be- is to attempt to co-opt and re-engage the more moderate currents among the MB in the democratic process, while containing the more extremist currents. Bassem Youssef, Egypt’s Jon Stewart and the Islamists’ bête noir, made that same point in an article recently.

Hubris brought Mubarak down, and hubris brought Morsi down. That is a lesson that should not be lost on the new liberal/secular administration of Egypt. Or it will be ‘everybody coups,’ again.

A Clash of Two Egypts: Tamarod Tomorrow

Tomorrow, June 30^th, is the fateful day for the showdown between the Islamists, and the rest. The stakes couldn’t be higher: a battle for the very soul of Egypt. Who speaks for Egypt?

The Tamarod, or Rebellion, movement claims to speak for the real Egypt: an Egypt of all Egyptians, regardless of sect; perhaps pious in private but secular in politics; moderate, forward-looking, eager to rejoin world economy and culture. Their critics say they speak only for the Egypt of tourist resorts and gated communities; megamalls and ballet at the Opera House; and Jon Stewart on the Bassem Youssef show. Not so, retort their defenders, they also speak for the millions of Egyptians whose livelihood depends on work in the tourism sector and on the construction sites, for the increasingly desperate man in the street who is suffering most from an economy in free fall. Tamarod is counting on them to flood the streets and the squares tomorrow; twenty million Egyptians are reported to have signed the petition withdrawing confidence from the Morsi administration and demanding that the president and his cabinet step down, paving the way for new elections as soon as possible. 

On the other hand, Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood Party, along with their extremist allies the Salafis, have mobilized massive demonstrations of their own, to bolster their claim to speak for the real Egypt. An Egypt of bearded men and veiled women professing an ideology that rejects the separation of state and religion and demonizes westernization, secularism and all sects and religions other than their own. It is an ideology, their defenders say, they share with millions of like-minded fundamentalists across the Islamic world; and a party, the Muslim Brotherhood, that came to power through relatively legitimate elections and has no intention of ceding that power to pressure from the street.

In other words, what we are witnessing is an immovable object confronting an irresistible force. The resulting confrontation can only be brutal. Already, the day before the scheduled June 30^th protest, thousands upon thousands of demonstrators have flooded public spaces in cities across the country, both in revolt against Morsi and in his support. Clashes between them have already led to several deaths, including the tragic, senseless stabbing of an American college student who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time on a street in Alexandria.   

The two sides of the conflict have this in common: both sides profess not to trust the role of the U.S. Rumors and counter-rumors abound, about American policy directives in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. The Morsi administration does not trust the police, with good reason; it has officially devolved police peace-keeping duties to the armed forces. But what role will the military play? That is the real question. Who speaks for Egypt? Perhaps, in the final analysis, the tank does.

Egypt: The Most Dangerous Moment of a Revolution

The most dangerous moment in a revolution, history teaches us, is not when the new rulers first come to power, but later when they are faced with their first serious opposition. That is when the new ruling forces are likely to turn most violent in repressing dissent, and often give way to more radical, bloodier elements. The French Revolution, the Russian, all followed that seemingly inexorable dynamic, leading to their form of ‘the Terror.’ Right on time, right on target, two and a half years after the January 25^th revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak, Egypt is set to face a major attempt at a countercoup. This time, the revolution will be televised. The Vendee is on!

June 30^th has been announced, for weeks now, as the date when fifteen million Egyptians who have signed the ‘Tamarod’ (Rebellion) petition have vowed to take to the streets to force the ouster of President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party rule. Whenever you talk to anyone living in Egypt today, you get the impression that their lives are on hold as they brace for the fatal day. June 30^th marks a year to the day when Morsi was inaugurated, the first president elected in relatively free elections against actual opposing candidates. His narrow margin of victory in that election is largely attributed to the anathema that prevented the secular/liberal revolutionary forces from voting for Morsi’s opponent, Mubarak loyalist and hardliner General Ahmed Shafiq. 

In an ironic reversal, today that same secular/liberal coalition that had organized the January 25^th uprising, toppled Mubarak, and- holding its nose- voted for Morsi over Shafiq, is preparing to attempt to force the resignation of Morsi and his cohort. The way the secular opposition see it, they are trying to win their revolution back from the Islamist forces that hijacked it. But as Doctor Frankenstein could attest, second thoughts may come too late.

It may or may not be too late already, the opposition forces argue, but it will certainly be too late if they wait until President Morsi comes up for re-election in another three years, and try to oust him at the ballot box. By then, the opposition believes, not only will the power-grabbing, judiciary-gutting Islamist party be too firmly entrenched to dislodge by peaceful means, but the deterioration of the country will be too far advanced to stanch the bleeding and reverse course. The economy is in free fall, and the daily life of the average citizen is plagued by power and water shortages, traffic nightmares and rampant insecurity. The boiling discontent will be harnessed, the organizers of June 30^th hope, to put pressure on President Morsi to resign.  

Beyond that point, the plans are not clear for the post-Morsi transition until a new round of early presidential elections yields a new president. The interim government, according to the opposition, might be a council broadly representing the opposition coalition but also the Islamist elements in the country, a sort of Directoire, headed by the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court. To ensure that this governing council oversees free and fair elections, any member who agrees to serve on the council forfeits his right to run for presidential election, and that includes Nobel Prize winner Mohamed Baradei.

But even the most optimistic are not counting on Morsi resigning in response to street pressure alone, so the intervention of the army and police will be crucial, particularly since the Islamist parties have also vowed their own counter-demonstrations, so violent clashes between opposing street protests are guaranteed. At the moment the roles of the army and police, those two historically quasi-independent forces, are unclear. The minister of the interior, responsible for the police, has made ambiguous pronouncements about who and what the police will protect. The Muslim Brotherhood has vowed to take into its own hands the protection of the president and the party headquarters. The military is known to have serious issues with the Islamists in power, and might intervene, but on the other hand, it might choose to stand on the sidelines.

If June 30^th sounds like January 25 redux, it is because the same scenario seems to be preparing to play out, with changes in some of the principal actors. Except that this time, after the success of the first revolution, the hopes may be higher, but so are the stakes, and, in the current desperate state of national polarization and economic meltdown, the danger is even greater.