by Mitchell Plitnick
The fighting in Gaza will continue for some time, as a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt fell apart. Despite the bellicose language Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has employed over the past week, it was Hamas and not Israel that rejected the proposal. This was, to be [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The fighting in Gaza will continue for some time, as a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt fell apart. Despite the bellicose language Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has employed over the past week, it was Hamas and not Israel that rejected the proposal. This was, to be sure, the direct result of that proposal not meeting any of Hamas’ demands for a ceasefire and, because as one Israeli official put it, “…we discovered we’d made a cease-fire agreement with ourselves.” The dynamics of this turn of events are important and tell us much about how the ground has changed in the region. We first must ask why Hamas rejected the Egyptian proposal. They have been rather clear about their reasons:
- Hamas felt, quite correctly, that Egypt had essentially negotiated this deal with Israel, then presented it as a fait accompli to Hamas. In fact, they said they first heard about it through social media.
- Hamas has declared that they intend to come out of this round of fighting with some gains. In particular, they want to end the siege that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007, the release of all the prisoners who had been re-arrested recently after being freed in exchange for Hamas freeing Gilad Shalit in 2011, and the negotiation of a long term truce, as was agreed in 2012, but never acted upon. The terms of the proposal offered no such relief, or any real change to the status quo.
- Many among Hamas and other groups believe this proposal was deliberately put forth by Egypt as one Israel would accept and Hamas would reject, in order to legitimize further attacks on Gaza. The way things have unfolded, they may be correct.
Those reasons may show a certain rationality in Hamas’ refusal to accept a ceasefire. Wisdom and real concern for the innocents suffering under Israel’s bombings are far less apparent, however. In fact, Hamas’ refusal to accept the ceasefire completes the process of wiping from the memory of much of the world the fact that Israel initiated this round of fighting.
Rarely has Netanyahu been more accurate than earlier yesterday, when he said “[If Hamas] doesn’t accept the ceasefire proposal…Israel will have all the international legitimacy to broaden its military activity in order to achieve the necessary quiet.” Indeed, Hamas’ decision does exactly that. There will still be expressions of concern from various quarters, but for the most part, pressure on Israel to stop its onslaught from the US, EU, UN and even many Arab states will diminish essentially to zero. It is hard to imagine that the refusal is going to lead to a better deal. The only thing that might, and only might, do that is a massive uptick in civilian deaths from where the number is at now. Hardly something anyone would wish for. So, while Hamas may have had very good reason to reject this deal, it does not seem that rejection is a better option.
Indeed, one may argue that accepting the ceasefire deal with certain reservations may have put Hamas in a better position. At least the massive uptick in death and destruction in Gaza would have been stemmed, even if temporarily.
Egypt’s New Position
Hamas has issued a statement rejecting further Egyptian efforts to mediate a ceasefire. They will now accept only Turkey or Qatar in that role. Those are, not coincidentally, the only two significant states who support the political goals of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the new Egyptian regime joins Saudi Arabia and many of the Gulf States in despising.
Egypt has now demonstrated that not only has its position on Hamas hardened since the ouster of the Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi, it is even more antagonistic to Hamas than former President Hosni Mubarak. Given this, it is likely that the role Mubarak frequently played as a broker between Israel and Hamas is not one that the current General/President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi can assume, and this was a failed attempt to show that he could.
This will please Netanyahu, who is surely seeing the new Egyptian regime as much more to his liking than anything that ever came before it. But it is going to complicate matters for the United States, all the more so as Israel is not likely to accept Turkey or Qatar as an intermediary. Without Egypt as a broker, the US is going to have a much harder time stabilizing these periodic escalations between Israel and Hamas. This, again, may suit Netanyahu, who believes US President Barack Obama is much too quick to try to end conflicts. But it also makes Israeli decisions as to when to back off more complicated, as the US will not be able to give Israel a way out that shields its leadership at least a little from the political fallout of ending these operations while Hamas is still in control of the Strip.
Hamas’ weakened position
Hamas is facing serious isolation. Egypt was surely never very sympathetic to Hamas, even when Morsi was in office. It is now even more firmly in the US-Israeli camp. Hamas’ support for Syrian rebels and the slow thaw of relations between the United States and Iran has (to Netanyahu’s chagrin) cooled the Hamas-Iran relationship, and Qatar has had to back away to some degree from its support of the Brotherhood and its affiliates like Hamas due to pressure from other Gulf states. This is why, despite the forecasts by many that this latest round will end with the status quo more or less maintained, Netanyahu, and probably also Mahmoud Abbas, believes a severe blow can now be struck against Hamas.
Netanyahu believes, not without reason, that this can be done without resorting to the kind of all-out assault, and even re-occupation, which is being pushed by his right flank in Israel. Consider the Islamist group’s current position. It was already struggling to pay workers in Gaza and had been arguing with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah about who bears the responsibility. Egypt’s harder line has been stifling the “tunnel economy,” which was the only method for bringing many goods and supplies into Gaza that Israel would not permit to pass through its blockade. Hamas seemed to have nothing but rhetoric to offer to deal with the situation, and it was losing standing among the Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Islamic Jihad and other, more radical Palestinian factions, which Hamas was generally preventing from taking violent actions against Israel from Gaza, were accusing Hamas of abandoning its revolutionary ideals. Add to this the loss of much of its support from the rest of the Arab and Muslim world, in the wake of the decline of the Brotherhood throughout the region, and it’s not hard to see why Netanyahu believes that, even if the outcome of the current fighting is merely an agreement to go back to the way things were, he will still come out a big winner.
He may be right. But it is more likely that Israel’s continued attacks will cause the various factions to rally together, as they have in the past, strengthening Hamas’ position. It is also more likely to exacerbate the already dire predicament Abbas is in, as he has cracked down in the West Bank to prevent anti-Israel protests during the fighting, sacrificing what little respect and confidence the Palestinians had left in the PA President.
To Cease or not to Cease
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other factions fighting in Gaza can certainly make the case that they have successfully stood firm under Israel’s attacks while demonstrating that they can shoot their missiles throughout Israel. The rockets being used in many cases were actually made in Gaza, along with what they have been able to smuggle in from outside. The fact that the locally made rockets include some of the medium range ones that have been penetrating farther into Israel than ever before is one reason Hamas is perhaps in less of a rush than one might think to stop the fighting.
The calculus, though, is cold and fails on a number of levels. The most obvious failure is the suffering of the people of Gaza. Over 190 Gazans have been killed, the vast majority civilians. These deaths do raise a great deal of anger among Palestinians against Israel, but to what end? There does not seem to be any victory, or even small gains, on the horizon for which these people are dying. When the fighting dies down, Israel will be the same villain in Gaza it always was, but people are surely going to wonder why the fighting went on for as long as it did with no gains in sight. And that is really the nub of it — there seems to be no hope for Hamas to achieve any of its goals, such as lifting the maritime blockade on Gaza or easing the border crossings. If they are hoping that other forces — such as those in Lebanon, which have lobbed a few projectiles across the border and to which Israel has responded quite forcefully — will be opening another flank against Israel, they are not paying attention to events in Syria and Iraq, which are occupying the efforts of Hezbollah and other parties that might be willing to engage Israel.
There simply isn’t an endgame that represents progress for Hamas. In 2012, when then-Egyptian President Morsi brokered an agreement, Hamas could claim a few minor concessions from Israel (which never really materialized once there was no pressure on Israel to follow through with them). There will be nothing of that sort here, but Hamas seems to be desperately clinging to the hope that it can extract something to base a claim of victory on.
That’s a terrible gamble. It is much more likely that the refusal to agree to a ceasefire is giving Netanyahu exactly what he wants: the chance to deliver a blow to a weakened Hamas regime in Gaza. Hamas has given Netanyahu the means to do this without having to overcome the global opposition that was apparent at the beginning of the current fighting. Their refusal is understandable. Israel has repeatedly failed to live up to prior agreements, and this entire thing does look very much like a setup cooked up by Egypt and Israel.
Still, it seems like the rejection of the ceasefire plays into Netanyahu’s hands even more than going along with it would have. Hamas was faced with two bad options. Some may say they chose the lesser of two evils, but they seem to have opted for the path of salvaging some pride while losing more innocent lives and gaining nothing.
Photo: A school in Gaza after an Israeli bomb attack.
]]>by Emile Nakhleh
Does repression force Islamic parties to moderate? This is the key question Shadi Hamid raises in his seminal book on political Islam, governance, and Islamist “illiberal” democratic ideology.
Temptations of Power: Islamists & Illiberal Democracy In a New Middle East is a first-rate, thorough, yet controversial study of what drives [...]]]>
by Emile Nakhleh
Does repression force Islamic parties to moderate? This is the key question Shadi Hamid raises in his seminal book on political Islam, governance, and Islamist “illiberal” democratic ideology.
Temptations of Power: Islamists & Illiberal Democracy In a New Middle East is a first-rate, thorough, yet controversial study of what drives political Islam as well as the complex relationship between political Islam and repressive regimes. The focus is on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Tunisia’s Ennahda, and Jordan’s Islamic Action Front.
The book is a welcome primer on contemporary political Islam and should be a required reading for students, academics, policymakers, policy and intelligence analysts, and anyone interested in the contemporary Middle East and the rise of Islamic political parties and movements. The author focuses on mainstream Sunni Islamist movements, the largest and most established of which is the Muslim Brotherhood, traces Islamists’ brush with political power, and examines at length their performance once in power, as in Egypt and Tunisia.
Shadi Hamid, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution, has spent several years interviewing Islamic activists and political party leaders in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. He started writing the book before the eruption of the Arab revolutions in 2011 and interviewed numerous senior leaders and thinkers of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, including the deposed Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi. The author’s deep expertise in political Islam’s ideologies, politics, governing style, and tactics is clearly visible in this highly welcome book.
Key Arguments
The author advances several hypotheses, which should keep scholars of political Islam occupied for years to come. Perhaps his most controversial thesis is that regime repression has pushed Islamists “along a more moderate path.” He examines “two distinct phases in the Islamist narrative—one defined by the experience of repression and the other by the democratic openings made possible by the Arab revolutions.”
Islamists’ electoral strategies were carefully developed in order not to arouse the suspicions of the regime, the ruling party, or other non-Islamist parties. By running a limited number of candidates in any particular election, Islamists emphasized their motto of “participation not domination.”
While Islamists opted for elections and political participation in Egypt and Jordan, according to Hamid, they were far from being liberal democrats. The Muslim Brotherhood, for example, views itself not as a traditional political party but as a religious, social, and educational movement or organization.
Despite their active participation in electoral politics, “the goal of Islamist groups is the ‘Islamization’ of society, [which] goes well beyond the political realm.” The author expertly discusses the stages of Islamization, which the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups have pursued to Islamize the individual, the family, and the society at large. Once in power, Islamists have pursued a form of “illiberal democracy” by infringing on the liberties of others. In essence, moderation in the past four decades has not made Islamists liberal democrats.
Islamists have been more comfortable in opposition than in power. Rachid Ghannouchi, head of the Tunisian Enmahda, according to the author, warned Islamists that they would be “loved by the people before they get to power and then hated afterward.”
The book’s central argument, which is perhaps the most controversial as well, is that regime tolerance of the opposition, including allowing more political freedoms, did not necessarily lead to moderating policies promoted by Islamists. On the contrary, the author asserts, “increasing levels of repression, rather than resulting in radicalization, can have amoderating effect on Islamist groups, pushing them to reconsider and redefine their policy priorities.”
Islam, Politics, and Ideology
As governing parties, Islamists have sought popular support for their policies by moving to the center. The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) preached that “freedom and Islamization were not opposed but rather went hand in hand.” In the hundreds of hours of interviews, which the author conducted with MB activists and leaders, he sought to understand how and why Islamists adopted more moderate ideologies when they actually gained state power.
He challenges the prevailing view in academic literature, which states that Islamists moderate in response to “political participation and inclusion.” He tosses out the accepted “inclusion-moderation” hypothesis and the so-called “pothole theory of democracy” which maintain that when in power Islamists tend to focus on bread-and-butter issues and less on ideology. Hamid strongly argues that engaging Islamists, either on the part of the ruling regime or by outside actors, does not automatically push them to moderate.
This is a radical challenge not only to academic theorizing about Islamists’ political strategies but also to Western governments’ policies of Muslim world engagement, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Policy makers in Western countries have urged authoritarian regimes in the Arab Muslim world to open up their political systems and allow mainstream Islamists to contest the political space. Regimes are told that as Islamists experience more freedom and less repression, they would move away from radicalization and extremism and move toward the moderate center.
By contrast, the author argues that, when faced with extreme repression and the threat of eradication by the regime, Islamists tend to moderate. Despite continued regime repression and the massive arrests and convictions of MB leaders, the Muslim Brotherhood’s commitment to democratic politics has remained unshakeable. The MB followed a similar policy during Mubarak’s repressive regime. In the 1980s and 1990s, the MB formed political alliances with other parties in order to elect some of their members to the national legislature—first, with the Wafd Party and then with the Labor Socialist Party. Later on, MB parliamentary candidates ran for elections as independents.
Despite Egypt’s “turn to repression” in the 1990s, the MB continued to participate in parliamentary elections and to reach out to the West with their message of moderation, pragmatism, pluralism, and inclusion. In response to regime accusations in the 1990s depicting the Islamists as “regressive and close-minded,” the MB submitted more detailed statements to the public and to the outside world emphasizing their commitment to pragmatism and inclusion. The MB’s 1994 statement included sophisticated analysis of their commitment to pluralism, inclusion, women’s rights, and minority (read Christian) rights.
The last chapter “The Past and Future of Political Islam,” offers a brilliant analysis of the political ideology of political Islam, the recent experiences of political Islamists, and the lessons the region and the international community should take from these experiences. Although the MB committed huge political and ideological errors in its first year in office under Mohamed Morsi, it would be naïve and shortsighted to see the experience as a failure of political Islam itself. Although Morsi’s failure resulted from policies of a specific Islamist party in a particular country under unique circumstances, it could offer instructive lessons to other Islamist political parties that aspire to govern.
Concluding Comment
Sophisticated as this book is, the author did not establish a convincing causal relationship between repression and moderation and whether Islamists’ moderation was a response to regime repression or a strategy for survival.
For example, why was the MB “forced” to moderate, as Hamid puts it? If MB Islamists were “forced to moderate by their circumstance,” did those circumstances include regime repression, popular calls for democracy, the fear of liquidation by the regime, or a desire to win elections? Did the Islamists’ moderation reflect liberal tendencies or an innate desire to survive under repression? Were the frequent compromises the MB in Egypt and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan made in response to regime repression a sign of moderation or a strategy for survival? Was the shift the Muslim Brotherhood made toward political participation in the mid-1990s tactical or strategic? These critical questions are too often left begging.
Hamid does an excellent job, on the other hand, in discussing the role of foreign actors, especially the United States, in the MB’s evolving stance on democratic politics.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The comedy of errors that is US involvement in Egypt is reaching new heights. The Obama administration continues to be torn by conflicting preferences and concerns. This week its blunders reached new heights after it blessed the trip of Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to Egypt. The [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The comedy of errors that is US involvement in Egypt is reaching new heights. The Obama administration continues to be torn by conflicting preferences and concerns. This week its blunders reached new heights after it blessed the trip of Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to Egypt. The ensuing farce was inevitable.
The GOP Senators are somewhat less obstructionist than others in their party; they have not always opposed Barack Obama’s policies simply because they were his policies. While many of the current Republican crew are virtually absolute in opposing anything Obama does, McCain, in particular, has only done that most of the time. But they are certainly not Obama’s allies, and, while the administration made it clear that the duo were not their representatives in Egypt, it was almost certain they would only complicate matters. So, they did.
By hypocritically (even if accurately) labelling the military’s ouster of President Mohammed Morsi a coup, McCain and Graham further aggravated the box of Obama’s indecision. If anyone believes the good Senators are sincere in their call for the interim government to engage with the Muslim Brotherhood, they need only recall McCain’s description of them in 2011: “I think they are a radical group that first of all supports Sharia law; that in itself is anti-democratic — at least as far as women are concerned. They have been involved with other terrorist organizations and I believe that they should be specifically excluded from any transition government.” Does anyone seriously believe his views have changed so much in two years?
Moreover, while Graham and McCain made it clear they consider Morsi’s ouster a coup, they also support continuing aid to Egypt, which would be forbidden under US law if there was indeed a military coup.
But McCain and Graham are only one side of the coin. On the other is US Secretary of State John Kerry and his ill-advised statement that the military acted to “restore Egyptian democracy” when they ejected a duly elected president. In other words, we had the administration’s lead diplomat angering the Muslim Brotherhood with his statement, and GOP senators infuriating the military and its current government with their own. A nice double whammy.
As I pointed out last week, this sort of snafu is the result of indecisiveness on Obama’s part regarding how to respond to the events in Egypt. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) represents the old Egypt, the one the US had a very cozy relationship with, and their announced agenda in the wake of deposing Morsi was for a new transition to a civilian government. But despite that, SCAF still ousted a democratically elected president in a military coup. The Muslim Brotherhood was one of a number of so-called moderate Islamist governments coming to power in the region in recent years, and might have represented a worrying trend for the Western interests of a potential region-wide alliance of states including Tunisia, Turkey and possibly others as change continues in the Arab world. The Brotherhood shot themselves in the foot by trying to impose their will on Egypt and attempting to re-establish a nearly dictatorial presidency and failing to take significant action on the economy. It seems, from current polls, that the Brotherhood has a lot less support in Egypt than they once did. But they were ousted in a coup, and while their protests are not winning over hearts and minds, neither is the harsh crackdown by the government.
What the US is seeing now is the potential for the Brotherhood to rebound from this major setback by taking up their familiar position of a besieged minority. Indeed, one of the greatest obstacles to reconciliation in Egypt is the Brotherhood’s willingness to embrace that familiar role again, and the government’s apparent willingness to use excessive force, which will enable the Brotherhood to regain some of the sympathy it has lost, if not now, at least in the long-term.
The military and Brotherhood seem both to be pursuing their agendas while remaining completely deaf to the interests and legitimacy of the other side. Indeed, while the Brotherhood is casting the military as just the latest in a long line of military usurpers in Egypt, the SCAF is portraying its adversary’s actions as a part of a “war on terror”, with the Brotherhood in the role of al-Qaeda. That will resonate in the West, which has a tendency to view all Islamists with the same lens. But such abject demonization is likely to have lasting and divisive effects, not only in Egypt, but throughout an Arab world already seething with conflict.
The words of McCain and Graham have perhaps chilled some of the US’ cozy relationship with the SCAF, but the SCAF leadership is well aware of the fact that the Senators do not speak for the Obama administration. In the end, their work will make Obama’s job a bit harder, mostly because they made the entire United States look foolish and poorly organized.
Kerry’s words, however, will prove to be a much greater impediment to US diplomacy in Egypt. By legitimizing the coup, Kerry may well have eliminated any chance for US mediation toward the goal of a truly inclusive government — the only alternative to anti-democratic rule by iron-fist or more spiralling chaos in Egypt. With the Brotherhood’s supporters continuing their protests, while apparently engendering only minority support among the Egyptian populace for such actions, and the military government continuing — and perhaps soon escalating — its crackdown on the Islamist forces it has recently characterized as terrorist elements, true mediation is needed now more than ever. But the waters are now so poisoned that the US and EU may be unable to help even with pure motives.
Considered together, the words of Kerry, Graham and McCain reflect the confusion of US policy in Egypt. It is an absence of policy, caused by a conflict between a desire to see the Middle East move toward moderate Islamist politics on the one hand and the understanding that a return to dictatorship, and the accompanying crackdowns on Islamists, is not going to bring the stability that, above all else, the West most desires. Those conflicting impulses have paralyzed US policymaking and brought about the comedy of errors we are now witnessing.
Ironically, the Brotherhood and related parties throughout the region were already marginalizing themselves and screwing up their chances at power. All the US and the Egyptian military had to do was let them hoist themselves on their own petard. Even now, freeing Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders in Egypt and allowing the people to vote again can well be expected to produce a very different result than it did in 2011. The deafness of all sides to the other — and the refusal to allow political processes to take their own course — has narrowed the options on all sides, leaving few good ones for anyone, especially the United States.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
It’s time to ask some tough questions about US policy regarding Egypt. The most pressing being what that policy is, exactly?
I agreed with the easily assailable decision by the Obama administration to refrain from labelling the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup. It still [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
It’s time to ask some tough questions about US policy regarding Egypt. The most pressing being what that policy is, exactly?
I agreed with the easily assailable decision by the Obama administration to refrain from labelling the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup. It still is my belief that doing so might be consistent with US law, but would not be helpful to Egypt. Instead of taking funding away from the military which, since it now directly controls the Egyptian till, would simply divert the lost funds from other places (causing even more distress to an already reeling Egyptian economy) it would be better to use the aid as leverage to push the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) toward an inclusive political process that would include drafting a broadly acceptable constitution and, with all due speed, re-installing a duly elected civilian government.
Yet, despite rhetoric supporting just such an outcome, the United States has done nothing to push for such an Egyptian future. The withholding of four F-16 fighter planes means nothing; the SCAF knows they will get the planes in due course and they have no immediate need for them. Mealy-mouthed statements from US officials calling for “all sides” to show restraint are boilerplate and meaningless, all the more so in the wake of the massive violence last weekend, where scores of Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were slaughtered.
What is the US’ desired outcome? Surely, the Obama administration is not comfortable with the level of violence we are currently seeing in Egypt. And equally surely, however much SCAF might be the familiar partner — the one we know and who can be counted on to cooperate with US policy initiatives — the administration must realize that a renewal of the sort of military dictatorship embodied by Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak cannot be re-installed permanently in Egypt anymore.
But it is also clear that the United States was not at all comfortable with the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt, or the rise, swept in by the Arab Awakening, of the moderate, anti-Salafist version of political Islam the Brotherhood represented. (Before there is any confusion, I do not believe the West did anything to hasten the downfall of Morsi in Egypt, nor to create the agitation against similar regimes in Tunisia and Turkey. But neither do I believe that Morsi’s failure elicited anything but satisfaction in Washington.)
The question of the US response to the coup in Egypt is not simply about Egypt. It is about the region more broadly. It is about Tunisia, the Gaza Strip, Syria and Turkey. The desire to pivot away from the Middle East, as well as Obama’s disdain for Bush-style “democracy promotion”, meant the US wouldn’t do much about the spread of political Islam. But when Morsi and, now, the Tunisian Ennahda Party, stumbled badly, they certainly didn’t mind.
The Turkish AKP seemed, at first, to have integrated some liberal values, including neo-liberal economics, with Islamist politics, but that too has frayed in 2013. US discomfort with Turkey was certainly sharpened by Turkish support for the Hamas government in Gaza. But it struck harder as Morsi’s Egypt and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s became closer and, using the historic prestige both countries have in the Muslim world, staked out regional leadership roles. There was every possibility that similar Islamist governments could emerge in Jordan and Syria, along with Libya. In time, the Gulf States could also see similar uprisings (as Bahrain already has) that, if successful, might give rise to Islamist governments. The possibility of that sort of regional unity must have given pause to policymakers in Washington, Jerusalem, London, Paris and even Moscow.
So it is not surprising that the US is lobbing rhetoric, rather than substantive pressure, as SCAF seeks to hammer the Brotherhood back into submission; back into an outlaw role. The declaration by SCAF Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that the crackdown on the Brotherhood was part of a renewed “war on terror” was hardly lost on Western observers. Nor was the accompanying action against Hamas in Gaza, which is of a piece with the domestic battle against the Brotherhood. The US may feel that the SCAF is going too far with its tactics and risking long term instability, but they cannot object to the goal of neutralizing the Brotherhood and similar organizations in the region as a political force.
This is all a serious mis-read of the realities in the Middle East. Morsi brought the strife upon himself, with his bungling governance, his transparent attempt at a power grab and ignoring his campaign promises to create an inclusive government an restrain his own party’s Islamist leanings. The June 30 protest was a very real statement of dissatisfaction.
But since June 30, history has been re-written in Egypt. The Brotherhood was somehow cast as having been an illegitimate ruling party all along. Their electoral victory was supposedly a reflection of the fact that they were the only group that was organized and thus took advantage of hastily scheduled elections. This, of course, completely ignores the fact that the Brotherhood was not the only Islamist party to garner significant support. In fact, 368 of the 508 parliamentary seats went to Islamist parties. Only 115 were garnered by the liberals, centrists and leftists combined. The Egyptian people, having been burned by half a century of secular(ish) dictatorship, wanted to try something new. When that didn’t work, they protested and moved in a different direction. It’s called democracy.
And while June 30 certainly represented widespread dissatisfaction with the Morsi government, the numbers quoted have been called into serious doubt, and it is not at all clear that those demonstrating also supported a coup. What is clear is that the Brotherhood still has significant support in Egypt, along with major opposition. Driving them underground and labelling them terrorists is unlikely to produce a stable Egypt. A better tactic would have been to allow popular disenchantment with the Brotherhood to continue to grow and express itself in the ballot box.
In the last analysis, the US is largely standing by and watching rather than using the leverage it has with the SCAF to push for an inclusive political transition. The hope is surely that a stable Egypt will emerge after a death blow has been dealt to political Islam, not only in Egypt but throughout the region. That hope seems a bit too ambitious. The words of Professor Fawaz Gerges seem to encapsulate the larger view well:
The military’s removal of Morsi undermines Egypt’s fragile democratic experiment because there is a real danger that once again the Islamists will be suppressed and excluded from the political space. The writing is already on the wall with the arrest of Morsi and the targeting of scores of Brotherhood leaders. This does not bode well for the democratic transition because there will be no institutionalization of democracy without the Brotherhood, the biggest and oldest mainstream religiously based Islamist movement in the Middle East… As the central Islamist organization established in 1928, the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood’s first experience in power will likely taint the standing and image of its branches and junior ideological partners in Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and even Tunisia and Morocco. Hamas is already reeling from the violent storm in Cairo and the Muslim Brothers in Jordan are feeling the political heat and pressure at home. The Syrian Islamists are disoriented and fear that the tide has turned against them. The liberal-leaning opposition in Tunisia is energized and plans to go on the offensive against Ennahda. Even the mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gulen Movement in Turkey are watching unfolding developments in neighboring Egypt with anxiety and disquiet. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to pen the obituary of the Islamist movement.
The US is allowing stability to be sacrificed in the hope that political Islam will be dealt a death blow. It is possible, of course, that its ability to affect SCAF’s behavior is limited, but this seems unlikely. SCAF is dependent on its good relations with the US and Europe; it won’t simply ignore significant pressure from Washington. More likely, that pressure is as absent in private as it obviously is in public. The US will probably pay a long-term price for such a short-sighted strategy. Par for the course in the Middle East. One can only hope that the recent efforts by the European Union, including a visit to Morsi by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, bodes some sort of change in Western policy with Egypt.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
When is a coup not a coup? When calling it that carries repercussions that make a bad situation worse.
US President Barack Obama is struggling with recent events in Egypt. Once again he’s presented with a situation in the Middle East where he has few good options but is [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
When is a coup not a coup? When calling it that carries repercussions that make a bad situation worse.
US President Barack Obama is struggling with recent events in Egypt. Once again he’s presented with a situation in the Middle East where he has few good options but is still facing expectations based on a long history of US influence over events — an influence that is no longer situated in reality.
In contrast to the revolution that deposed Hosni Mubarak two years ago, the ouster of Mohammed Morsi raises some profound questions, not only for foreign powers, but for Egyptians themselves. There is no doubt that Morsi brought a lot of this on himself. He neglected the major issue for almost all Egyptians, the economy; he shamelessly tried to grab dictatorial powers; he did not follow through on his campaign promises to include the widest spectrum of Egyptians in his government; and, when confronted with all of this, he remained obstinate.
All of that led to the June 30 demonstrations, organized by young Egyptians of the grassroots Tamarod (Rebel) movement, which included both the liberal and Salafist camps. That is a wide spectrum of Egyptians demanding Morsi to resign. The military — the power that controlled Egypt until Mubarak’s fall — stepped in very quickly and gave Morsi two days to respond before removing him from the presidency. It is not unreasonable to say that the military action was hasty. It certainly was likely, from the onset, to split Egypt between Mulsim Brotherhood supporters (even if they agreed that Morsi had bungled the job and needed to go, an opinion that was far from rare among those who opposed the military action) and those supporting the military’s action.
The military removed a sitting and democratically elected president; that’s a coup, and everyone knows it. Whether or not it should be officially dubbed as such, with all the accompanying policy ramifications, is a different matter. For the radical neoconservative, Elliott Abrams, US aid to Egypt should be cut off, as US law demands when a coup occurs. In this, Abrams stands against the desires of the Israeli government as well as the Obama administration. But he does not stand alone.
Democratic Senator Carl Levin and Republican Senator John McCain are also calling for the suspension of aid to Egypt. The concern, which they share with Abrams, is that the Egyptian military needs a stern warning in order to move with all deliberate speed toward restoring a civilian government. Elections are the key.
By contrast, many other members of Congress from both parties are supporting Obama in his determination not to cut funds for Egypt. The reasoning here is that the Egyptian economy is already reeling badly and cutting off US aid would not only exacerbate that situation, it also removes what leverage we might have in pushing the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) toward relinquishing power.
Both bits of thinking are misguided. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have already moved to bolster their position in Egypt by pledging $8 billion to help Egypt weather its economic crisis. The gift is being given for reasons beyond promoting Egyptian stability. The Saudi/UAE rivalry with Qatar took a strong pro-Saudi turn with the deposition of Morsi. Qatar had backed him, as they had backed the Muslim Brotherhood and the rise of that brand of Islamism throughout the region. But even before this, the succession of power in Qatar was already leading to Qatari adventurism’s end in the region. The Saudi/UAE support is meant to push that process along and cement Egypt against a Brotherhood revival.
This is surely met with approval in virtually all corners of Washington and Jerusalem, and, it should be added, within significant segments of Egypt. The SCAF wants the Brotherhood marginalized, as does the United States. But with the SCAF bringing this about in such a direct and draconian manner – mass arrests, heavy-handed use of force and shutting down media outlets deemed pro-Brotherhood — there is a real risk of undermining fragile hopes for stability in Egypt.
Obama is right in resisting calls to label the coup a coup. Yes, it’s playing fast and loose with both the truth and with US law, but no good is going to come out of alienating the SCAF and cooling our relationship with it. The plan the SCAF has in place is actually a pretty good one, if it plays out as written. The Western myopia that defines democracy through the ballot box will not serve well in Egypt. Before new elections, a constitution must be at least provisionally in place, lest we witness a repeat of June 30. It was this lack of structure that allowed Morsi to abuse his power and gave the Egyptian people no recourse to address that abuse but to march for his ouster.
But for even a constitutional structure to bring stability to Egypt, it will need to be as inclusive a process as possible, and that means finding a way to include the Muslim Brotherhood. Right now, the SCAF seems intent on marginalizing and radicalizing them. No doubt, the Saudis and other Gulf states are not unhappy with that state of affairs. Israel, too, is probably content with seeing the SCAF undermine not only the Brotherhood in Egypt, but pushing back the regional aspirations of the other Brotherhood branches and similar Islamist parties (not least the one in Turkey, the ruling AKP, whose own increasing lean toward Islamism could be discouraged by these events).
Less value is being placed on finding a way to reset the Egyptian revolution while not radicalizing the Brotherhood. It’s a complicated issue. The Brotherhood’s own behavior, even before June 30, indicates the comfort level they have with their familiar position of a besieged and persecuted opposition, a role they are quickly assuming once again. Right now, they’re assuming that role in isolation, but if Egypt’s economy continues to flounder, if the SCAF continues its heavy-handed approach and, most especially, if whatever government finally takes hold is deemed as inadequate as Morsi’s, they could find themselves in a popular position once again, as in 2011.
The US, and the Europeans, are in a position to influence some method of including the Brotherhood in Egypt’s future government. Indeed, the US seems to have already begun trying, though the approach was ham-handed and the Brotherhood interpreted the effort, not surprisingly, as an attempt to get them to legitimize the coup.
It is not the time for the US to try to bully Egypt or to taint whatever good relationships it has, and it still has a good one with the SCAF. But the US must recognize that a lot of its friends are holdovers from the Mubarak regime and that too much interference is very likely to backfire. A gentle and understated hand is necessary to help convince the SCAF and the currently forming technocratic government to work hard to include the Brotherhood as partners while still bringing in a government that will be very different from the one that was just toppled. That needs to be the key feature of the constitutional process. It is possible that this is what the Obama administration intends and, if so, they must stand fast against foolhardy voices like those of Levin, McCain and especially Abrams.
Photo Credit: Hossam el-Hamalawy
]]>by Daniel Luban
Charles Krauthammer, July 1, denouncing the Obama administration for refusing to speak out against Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi:
“Obama the bystander again. Here are the Egyptians in the millions, out on the street, trying to bring down an Islamist government — increasingly dictatorial, increasingly intolerant, arresting journalists and [...]]]>
by Daniel Luban
Charles Krauthammer, July 1, denouncing the Obama administration for refusing to speak out against Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi:
“Obama the bystander again. Here are the Egyptians in the millions, out on the street, trying to bring down an Islamist government — increasingly dictatorial, increasingly intolerant, arresting journalists and judgues, trying to Islamicize the military — and the people are saying, ‘No,’ and what does the president of the United States do? He takes a position of studied neutrality; he says he’s not supporting either side.”
Krauthammer compared the Egyptian situation to that of Iran during the abortive Green Revolution of 2009, during which “the same thing happened . . . they were shouting ‘Obama, Obama, are you with us or against us? And he took a position that was essentially support of the regime . . . . That was a shameful episode.”
We might note that Krauthammer’s remarks came immediately after the Egyptian military had given Morsi a 48-hour deadline to resolve the situation — a time when any public support of the protesters by Obama would clearly (and fairly) have been interpreted as support for a potential coup.
Fast forward one week, one coup and one massacre later.
Charles Krauthammer, July 8, praising the Obama administration for refusing to take a stance on events in Egypt:
“I don’t think I’ve ever said this, but I think Carney actually got it exactly right today,” Charles Krauthammer remarked on Special Report Monday evening when asked about the Obama administration’s decision to postpone an official response to the ousting of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian army last week.
Krauthammer explained that the U.S. is “not in a position to decide” which side to take in the upheaval and agreed that the White House should “wait and see” how the situation develops.
Photo Credit: Jonathan Rashad
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