When I was living in Cairo, the transition to winter was sometimes smooth. The beastly oven of summer changed slowly into a bearable fall of cool-warm. The fall moved from the cool-warm to a few weeks of cold, or at least what was cold to Egypt. These were smooth changes. It [...]]]>
When I was living in Cairo, the transition to winter was sometimes smooth. The beastly oven of summer changed slowly into a bearable fall of cool-warm. The fall moved from the cool-warm to a few weeks of cold, or at least what was cold to Egypt. These were smooth changes. It seemed so normal. We even delighted in the cold evenings when we could wear sweaters while sailing on the Nile. It felt like a novelty the first time; then it was comfortable to change with the changes and dig out our sweaters in late November.
The recent cold winds to hit Cairo and Egypt came as a shock to some. These cold winds came from the decrees of President Mohamed Morsi. He was supposed to be the protector and developer of democracy according to many. He has turned out — for many — to be quite different. He essentially grabbed the powers of the judicial, executive and the legislative branches of the baby democracy that is developing in Egypt. He stole the candy from the baby, according to many in Egypt.
Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood supporters cheered in delight. Just about everyone else felt the cold winds. They also felt that their revolution was falling prey to a manipulative, dangerous and very clever man. The person who the Brotherhood really wanted at first had the last name of Al-Shater, “the clever one”. The real clever one turns out to be the person that many called “the spare tire” — the American-educated “former” leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi Isa El-Ayat. The last part of his name might give some in the west pause, if they are thinking.
Egypt for now is looking more like Iran in 1979 than ever before.
The liberals and intellectuals were the original igniters and leaders of the Egyptian revolution; the Muslim Brotherhood took it from them. There were discussions about inclusivity, but as the Copts, liberals, Wafd and others left, the Constitutional and other committees made no effort to reincorporate them. There was a collective crocodile sigh and the leadership went on with the committees.
The press, other media, academics, government officials and more are being packed by members of, or loyalists to, the Muslim Brotherhood. Discussions about applying a somewhat strict version of Sharia in Egypt get more heated by the day, while the opposition apparently continues to be sidelined from the game. The extremist Salafis seem to have more voice in the new Egypt than the academics or even the experienced umdas (village leaders) in some areas.
Sectarian tensions are mounting. The recently elevate Pope of the Copts has stated publicly that he rejects the mounting power of the extremists and wants his flock to be considered full members of Egyptian society. Given that the Copts make up around 8-10 percent of the country, that makes sense.
A working democracy requires inclusivity. It needs a sort of equality supported not just voting, but other civil and social rights too. It took the United States over a century to move toward greater voting and other rights for minorities. These were hard fought battles that started with the bloodiest war in American history, the Civil War, and went on into the 1960s with the various civil rights and voting acts. This process is ongoing.
Democracy is a fragile thing; extremism is its worst enemy. Al Ahram provides a translation of President Morsi’s recent decrees here:
“We have decided the following:
Article I
Reopen the investigations and prosecutions in the cases of the murder, the attempted murder and the wounding of protesters as well as the crimes of terror committed against the revolutionaries by anyone who held a political or executive position under the former regime, according to the Law of the Protection of the Revolution and other laws.
Article II:
Previous constitutional declarations, laws, and decrees made by the president since he took office on 30 June 2012, until the constitution is approved and a new People’s Assembly [lower house of parliament] is elected, are final and binding and cannot be appealed by any way or to any entity. Nor shall they be suspended or canceled and all lawsuits related to them and brought before any judicial body against these decisions are annulled.
Article III:
The prosecutor-general is to be appointed from among the members of the judiciary by the President of the Republic for a period of four years commencing from the date of office and is subject to the general conditions of being appointed as a judge and should not be under the age of 40. This provision applies to the one currently holding the position with immediate effect.
Article IV:
The text of the article on the formation of the Constituent Assembly in the 30 March 2011 Constitutional Declaration that reads, “it shall prepare a draft of a new constitution in a period of six months from the date it was formed” is to be amended to “it shall prepare the draft of a new constitution for the country no later than eight months from the date of its formation.”
Article V:
No judicial body can dissolve the Shura Council [upper house of parliament] or the Constituent Assembly.
Article VI:
The President may take the necessary actions and measures to protect the country and the goals of the revolution.
Article VII:
This Constitutional Declaration is valid from the date of its publication in the official gazette.” (Emphasis supplied)
The paragraphs in bold and italics are the ones that are really worrying and angering so many in Egypt. They are also the ones that have sparked violence on the streets of Cairo and in many other places in Egypt. They have spurred a call for the impeachment of the President. They have instigated a strike by the judges in the country that will further paralyze a legal system that has been in various forms of paralysis for decades. That strike is also due to the firing of the chief prosecutor, who was apparently replaced by a judge with Muslim Brotherhood sympathies.
The Egyptian stock market tumbled yesterday and had to be shut down. It had a relatively feeble increase today. The cold winds seem to be keeping investors away. The sense of risk is still there. If more negative events take place, the market could fall again.
Demonstrations and counter demonstrations are being called. There will likely be more violence, more worry and anxiety amongst Egyptians and more hardening of opinions across the ever-widening political divide in this great country gone astray.
The fact that top judges have said they are planning to meet with President Morsi is a hopeful sign. Of course, after all the hard feelings, I am not sure what could come from that. The journalists union may call a strike; there were fist fights and loud yelling matches in the journalists’ union building yesterday. The organization that represents a lot of the fellahin or peasant farmers in Egypt stated its anger at Morsi’s decrees by saying the servitude of the peasants was over. The younger people are still fired up. The ULTRAs, the soccer fans for Ahly, Zamalek and others who were a major part of the disturbances and demonstrations since the early days of the revolution are also out in the streets again and looking for a fight.
The Muslim Brotherhood has called for a pro-Morsi demonstration. The anti-Morsi groups have called for other demonstrations. The offices of the Muslim Brotherhood have been attacked in many areas, including in Damanhour in Behaira Province, where one really would not expect such violence. A 15-year-old boy died in that attack.
Those thinking about investing in Egypt will likely shy away even more. Tourism will be shattered if this does not settle down soon. The winter season is the most important for tourism in Egypt. The IMF loan and some of the foreign aid packages for Egypt could also be in jeopardy. Capital flight is likely to increase. Unemployment and inflation are likely to get worse. The sense of hope in the county will likely be worsened. This is most important for the youth in the country. They have mostly very hard, impoverished and frustrating lives. They are also the demographic that could drive the country into another revolution for the poor, the unemployed and the hungry.
A cold wind indeed has come to Egypt.
One can hope that the cold winds will subside and warm a bit before the politics of Egypt freezes over into immovable camps. One can hope that there will be true dialogue and a moving forward for the country in many ways.
The revolution was the greatest event to take place in a very long time for most Egyptians. Many died and even more were injured. A post-revolution Egypt needs to be for all Egyptians, as many in the opposition have stated.
The Muslim Brotherhood should be listening and listening hard to what is going on. Winning a hair-thin election is not a mandate. There are many people in Egypt — all over Egypt — who do not like and do not trust the Muslim Brotherhood. Their time in power could be very short if they do not respond to the calls for equity, inclusiveness and great open-mindedness. Many also see the Morshid, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Badei, as the man behind many of the decisions made by President Morsi. This is proving to be very dangerous for the stability of Egypt.
Egypt is a complex country facing a very challenging future. If it cannot move towards democracy and prosperity in a more stable and efficient way, great trouble lies ahead. The cold winds of November 2012 could be warm in comparison to what’s waiting.
Sawt means voice and vote in Arabic. If positions in Egypt harden and more and more people are left behind or shoved aside, the voices of even the so-far-silent could get much louder.
- Paul Sullivan is an internationally recognized expert on security issues including energy security, water security and food security in the Middle East and North Africa. He is an economist by training and a multidisciplinary public intellectual by choice. He is an Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University.
]]>The economy is clearly the most important problem facing Egypt today. Unemployment and underemployment are vast. Tourism has been shattered by recent events and may take a long time to get back on track. Foreign investments have dropped and have even turned to a net outflow from the country rather than [...]]]>
The economy is clearly the most important problem facing Egypt today. Unemployment and underemployment are vast. Tourism has been shattered by recent events and may take a long time to get back on track. Foreign investments have dropped and have even turned to a net outflow from the country rather than a net inflow into the country. Many domestic investors have also become quite wary and are considering leaving Egypt. This is especially true of some of the major Coptic Egyptian and conservative Muslim investors who are anxious about what the future may hold with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. The liberal and “secular” investors are about as wary and anxious as some of the Copts. There are some younger investors who see this as an opportunity. Some of the Muslim Brotherhood people are considerable business people and view the anxiety of some as an opportunity.
Even so, foreign exchange reserves are hemorrhaging from the treasury. Most of the government run factories and firms are in dire need of reform, refitting or even shutting down. The economy in general is in need of great reform toward more international competitiveness. If this is not done, Egypt will be in even worse shape in the future. The privatization and structural adjustment programs of the 1990s are looked down upon by many in Egypt due to the massive corruption that was brought along with these programs. However, the last thing Egypt needs now is to go back to the time of Nasser, nationalizations, 95 percent tax rates and the destruction of the business and landowning classes.
Egypt has to find its way to a more prosperous future and the United States and others could be of some help if they become more practical partners for this change. The focus should be on jobs, investment, education, technological change, and the practicalities of getting things done – not on the misty and often unproductive goals of “good governance”. This term has a bad reputation amongst many Egyptians I met during my recent 6 week trip because, they say, the US talked about helping with good governance and really did nothing as Hosni Mubarak and company robbed and oppressed the country. Many Egyptians are also quite suspicious of non-governmental organization (NGOs) in general and governance NGOs in particular.
The US will need to try to develop some sort of relations with the new leadership of the country. In the past, there was little real contact at the strategic or any other level with the Brotherhood. Now the president of Egypt is from the Muslim Brotherhood, even if he said that he quit after he was elected. The new parliament and some of the new cabinet members – and even some of the future military leaders – could be Muslim Brotherhood or at least sensitive to the Brotherhood’s ideas and goals. Improving relations with the Brotherhood should be seen as a practical calculation, not as an acceptance of their principals. Egypt is an important country. We need to keep our relations going. President Mohamed Morsi is an example of the changes that are occurring in Egypt.
Building relations with the Salafists is another story altogether. I would be very careful with this. Their views of the US are dangerous, radical and extremist. Building relations with them should be geared more toward keeping potential enemies close to understand them better. I see very little hope in any real improvement in our relations with the Salafists.
The liberals, “secularists”, Nasserists and many others think we dropped them. Many also blame us for bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power. Why, they ask, did we not help them more during the most difficult times? This is a tough question that our diplomats and others need to work on to develop future relations with these groups. They are splintered and weak compared to the much better organized Brotherhood, Salafis and others. However, they will be involved with Egyptian politics for some time and should not be discounted as potential future leaders.
The Egyptian revolution and the political churn from it are far from over.
The US has had very good relations with the Egyptian military. Friendships and long term understandings have been developed. The strongest relations we have with Egypt are still with the military even after the changes that lead to the retiring of many senior officers. The military needs to be handled in a more nuanced manner now given the power of the Brotherhood overall. However, the tensions and chess game between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military are not over. Those who think that President Mohamed Morsi checkmated the military with the recent retirements are clearly and plainly wrong. There will be a lot more to this story.
The most important relation that the US needs to develop in Egypt is with ordinary Egyptian people. Our diplomats, business people, professors and others need to reach out more to the regular folks. We need to understand them better and they could understand us a lot better. The farmers in the countryside, the tea people in Cairo and Alexandria, and the TukTuk drivers from all over are Egypt’s backbone.
Regular Egyptians could become very important arbiters for the future of Egypt, especially if a potential “Revolution of the Hungry and Poor” breaks out. If the economy is not fixed quickly, there is a good chance for this. There is another important reason to reach out more to the regular folks: they are mostly decent, good people. The US could help them and help itself at the same time by building more small clinics in the poor areas, building school houses, helping with infrastructure repairs, giving scholarships to poor Egyptians to US schools and colleges, developing cultural exchanges and more. We cannot distance ourselves from average Egyptians anymore.
Egypt is likely going to take on new roles for regional and global issues. Egypt’s relations with Israel are likely to change. This will depend on how the politics of the revolution and bread work out. Egypt’s relations with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Sudan, and many other places and groups that the US considers problematic could also change. We need to understand these changes as they happen and respond in more nuanced and strategic ways than how I think we will.
Egypt will also likely reach out more to China, India, Russia, Brazil, the Gulf Cooperation Council and others to diversify its support. It will likely rely much less on the US than at any time since Anwar Sadat if the Muslim Brotherhood acquires even greater power. President Morsi’s visits to China, Saudi Arabia and more are not just to get frequent flier points and to meet and greet. Morsi’s trips are mostly about diversifying Egypt’s international relations and its sources of economic and political support. The Chinese seem quite happy to oblige and I expect that the Chinese military’s relations with the Egyptian military will also change.
We need to be very careful as changes in the international relations of Egypt develop.
Egypt is an important country in overall US-Islamic and US-Arab relations. We need to move with great care and consideration of not just the first, but also the second, third and fourth order effects of any new moves Egypt makes – and what moves we might make in response. The building of Sunni-Shia tensions may also work into this situation.
Egypt is a relatively poor country with big ambitions. Maybe it is time for the US to rethink its posture towards Egypt as well. Many Egyptians in leadership and others I have met during the 20 years I have been associated with the country have told me about the condescension they have sometimes felt from visiting Americans. The perception becomes the reality no matter what may actually be occurring. Building relations is complex. Rebuilding them during a time of great political and revolutionary flux is even more complex and fraught with risks. We need to send the best, brightest and most intelligent people to represent us.
It is hard to tell where Egypt’s new path is going. What US relations with Egypt will be like in the years to come is anyone’s guess. There will be lots of internal changes in Egypt. There will be many changes across the region as the inherent instabilities and tensions work themselves out or get worse while US politics also evolve.
Fluid and complex situations require nuanced strategic thinking. This is an area where Americans can stand to improve with respect to the Middle East. It is time to develop these skills and understanding in our people or pay the much heavier prices that could be coming our way if we don’t.
]]>- In referring to those feared possible Iranian nuclear weapons, Cohen raises another common specter—of an Iranian nuke touching off a spurt of proliferation throughout the Middle East. And like others who raise it, he never considers why the sizable Israeli nuclear arsenal, which has existed since the 1970s and involves at least as much antagonism and unresolved issues as anything having to do with Iran, should not have already touched off such a spurt. Speaking of Israel, Cohen goes on to note that while “few in the West take Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s threats to exterminate Israel seriously,” the “Israelis have some experience with the irrational and its consequences” and do not dismiss such threats. Cohen doesn’t say explicitly what the implication of this observation ought to be for U.S. policy. That the United States should fall in line with the posture of a state whose own view of Iran is in large part driven by emotion and—dare one use the word?—irrational fears? It shouldn’t, but unfortunately to a large extent that is what is happening.
Pillar also points out the absurd method Cohen uses to tie the alleged Iranian nuclear “threat” with the curious “Iranian plot”:
- Cohen concludes his column by circling back to that weird alleged assassination plot. It would be an “incalculable mistake,” he says, for the United States to see the plot as “the reckless act of some runaway intelligence chief.” He invokes no less an authority than the traitor in a John le Carre novel, who observes that intelligence agencies are “the only real measure of a nation’s political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.” That’s right, says Cohen, and so the assassination plot “offers an insight into the entire Iranian regime. It’s too reckless to be allowed a nuclear arsenal.” How’s that for the conclusion of a compelling piece of analysis? The caper involving the used car salesman and the DEA agent shows that Iran cannot be permitted to have a nuclear weapon; a fictional character in a novel says so.
Read more.
]]>But there was a noticeable difference in the tone of this conversation versus those in the run-up [...]]]>
But there was a noticeable difference in the tone of this conversation versus those in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq: Whereas establishment figures tended to capitulate to the hawks in 2003, on “This Week,” both liberal pundits at the round table pushed back against an attack on Iran.
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, in his usual bellicose form, predicted Israelis and Palestinians need to have a “civil war” to get to peace (echoes of his prescriptions for Islam at large) and that the U.S. has at its disposal
an Arab world that’s obsessed with Iran, OK? And so you have a natural Sunni-Israel alliance building. So all I’m saying is, let is [sic] breathe. Don’t be smarter than the story. I make no predictions, but we could be surprised.
The notion of a growing Arab hostility toward Iran — largely based on “out of context” comments of one U.A.E. minister and other unnamed Arab officials — was thoroughly debunked last month by Amjad Atallah at Foreign Policy‘s Mid East Channel blog last month, where he enumerated the ways that such an assertion oversimplifies factors like the difference between autocratic Arab regimes and their leaders.
After Amanpour raised Iran again, this time as the focus of discussion rather than a tangential matter in Arab-Israeli peace, liberal New York Times pundit Paul Krugman broke into the crosstalk and said a U.S. attack on Iran is not a popular notion:
[...T]his is not 2003. People in this country, people are — you know, the public no longer believes that drop a few bombs, shock and awe, and we can remake the world in — in our image. So I think there’s — people are just not willing to cede this.
Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will, who’s recently been in Jerusalem spending time with and channeling Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu, disagreed with Krugman and stated, contra assessments of almost any serious Iran analyst, that “regime change, I think, is coming to Iran.” But he acknowledged that this may not come before Iran’s nuclear maturity and that, as a result, “the Israelis are not going to wait on regime change to save them from a nuclear weapon.” Asked by Amanpour to expand on the Israeli perspective, Will went on to say:
I think they’re prepared to cut the administration some slack and move as far as they can in this way on the assumption that, A, that these sanctions, which are more severe than they had thought they would get, are going to work and, if not, that they would have a partner in attacking Iran. But they will attack Iran, if that is the option.
Mary Jordan, a Washington Post editor, broke in and again brought up Krugman’s point that a U.S. or U.S.-supported attack on Iran is not likely to be politically popular:
…America is very war-weary. You know, a servicemen and women have served now, Americans, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people are really tired. There is fatigue of war.
If Sunday talk shows, as they are thought to do, indicate the zeitgeist underlying U.S. politics, there is a very important distinction to be drawn between the liberal reaction to the drumbeat for war with Iraq and that for the U.S. to attack Iran: It seems that some liberals, if not all, have learned from the 2003 invasion of Iraq and are ready to speak out about the political infeasibility of an attack, if not the potentially disastrous strategic fallout.
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