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.
]]>via IPS News
Amid growing and increasingly harsh criticism of his handling of the economy, talk of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s removal has regained momentum in Iran in recent weeks.
But, according to most observers, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is unlikely to back any move to shorten Ahmadinejad’s term, [...]]]>
via IPS News
Amid growing and increasingly harsh criticism of his handling of the economy, talk of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s removal has regained momentum in Iran in recent weeks.
But, according to most observers, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is unlikely to back any move to shorten Ahmadinejad’s term, which runs out in mid-2013, for fear that impeaching him will only wreak greater havoc on a political environment that is already highly polarised and contentious.
Over 100 members of the parliament, or Majlis, have signed on to a demand that the president be summoned to answer questions about the recent drastic devaluation of the currency. Runaway inflation, combined with rising unemployment, has rattled many MPs concerned with the devaluation’s impact both on the price of key imports and the cost of operating factories and agricultural enterprises.
If the president either refuses to appear or fails to explain his policies to parliament’s satisfaction, the issue may eventually be referred to the judiciary, which, would, in turn, clear the way to his removal before the presidential election scheduled to take place next June.
But even the MPs who have called for Ahmadinejad to testify are not optimistic that such a scenario is realistic. “Neither MPs have hope that such questioning will lead anywhere, nor the representatives of the government are trying to stop the process,” according to Etemaad Daily.
Calls for Ahamdinejad’s removal are not new. In mid-summer there were reports that two former members of Ahmadinejad’s cabinet – former foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and former interior minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi – had written a letter to Khamenei calling for the president’s removal.
Khamenei, however, has proved reluctant to criticise the president or acknowledge the severe economic woes the country faces. In the two weeks of intense volatility in the currency market, he even denied during a provincial visit the existence of an economic crisis.
He acknowledged that problems such as unemployment and inflation exist “like everywhere else”, but insisted that these problems can be overcome. “Nothing exists that the nation and officials cannot solve,” he said.
Khamenei’s positive take on the state of the Iranian economy is received with quite a lot of scepticism among the population. Many people see Khamenei as oblivious to the crushing burden of economic difficulties that increasingly dominate conversations at dinner tables, in cafes, and in the street.
Khamenei’s continued support for Ahmadinejad is also much discussed. Some prominent politicians, such as Deputy Speaker Mohammadreza Bahaonar, have publicly said that the Leader wants the government to finish its legal terms. “The cost of removing the president is more than us doing nothing for another year,” he said recently.
This is not a view shared by Ahmad Tavakoli, another prominent MP from Tehran. “Ahmadinejad’s period is over, and the continuation of his presidency is not positive,” he said this week, suggesting that he disagrees with Khamenei’s decision to tolerate Ahmadinejad until the end of his term.
There are other theories why Khamenei will continue to support Ahmadinejad. According to Ali, a journalist who asked only that his first name be used, Khamenei cannot back down from the support because he is unable to explain the costs his support of Ahmadinejad in the disputed 2009 election have imposed on the people and the country. “Khamenei prefers the current situation to acknowledging that he made a mistake,” Ali insists.
Reza, a 58-year-old political activist, sees fear as the explanation for Khamenei’s support for Ahmadinejad. He believes that Ahmadineajd’s penchant for creating “corruption dossiers” on key political actors “will eventually be directed at Khamenei’s family whose financial record is not without blemish.”
According to Reza, if pushed, “Ahmadinejad will reveal the information he has and this scares the Ayatollah. Through his support Khamenei is in effect paying for Ahamdinejad’s silence.”
In reality, Khamenei faces a complex situation. On the one hand, he must deal with the more public and harsher criticism of Ahmadinejad’s economic policies, and, on the other, the potentially destabilising impact of the president’s removal.
So far, Khamenei’s approach in balancing these two concerns seeks a third path, which, according to one political commentator, is “to take effective control of executive affairs and transform Ahmadinejad into a show president whose time is spent traveling abroad.”
The result can be seen in Khamenei’s conduct in the past few years. Until recently, Khamenei was always considered to be a “sitting Leader” whose annual trips to a designated province or public appearances were mostly limited to official events, such as the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder.
Since the end of the post- 2009 election protests, however, Khamenei has taken many more short trips. Earlier this year, for example, he comforted the family of an assassinated nuclear scientist at their home. He also took a quick trip to East Azerbaijan after the August earthquake while the president was in Saudi Arabia.
More significantly, he has been meeting with economic actors and their representatives in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, eliciting their views and promising redress. One recently elected MP who did not want to be identified told IPS, “I send requests regarding my district’s needs directly to the Leader and not the president.”
A University of Tehran professor says that the roots of Khamenei’s increased activism can be found in Ahmadinejad’s extensive use of executive privilege and extra-legal powers to circumvent and marginalise other branches of the government, particularly the parliament.
According to the professor, however, Khamenei may also be engaged in unconstitutional conduct by interfering in the affairs of the executive branch. “Khamenei is as blameworthy as Ahmadinejad in weakening the rule of law and preventing other institutions from performing their supervisory task in relation to the executive branch,” he says.
Khamenei rejects these criticisms and said in April 2011, after he prevented Ahmadinejad from firing the intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, that “the office of the Leader has no intention of interfering in the decisions and activities of the government, unless it feels that an interest of the state has been ignored.”
These days, however, his words are received with scepticism. Maryam, a retired teacher, sees in Khamenei’s performance a desire to centralise power in his office. “He wants a weak president so that he can be in control and be in charge, and now he is in charge of everything. Why should he change the situation?”
]]>The neoconservative hawk and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, has once again figured it all out. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, and no US president since then, including Ronald Reagan and George [...]]]>
The neoconservative hawk and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, has once again figured it all out. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, and no US president since then, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, has done anything but appease that evil regime for reasons that befuddle us all.
Hence, it is now of paramount importance to halt the current president’s “outreach” to Iran because all previous attempts motivated by Washington’s “excess of decency” have allowed “33 years of Iranian outrages” to go “unavenged” and “undeterred”.
Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, was an avid supporter of the US invasion of Iraq and a fierce critic of the planned 2011 troop withdrawal, arguing that the US should have maintained a “serious tripwire force in Iraq as a hedge against Iran and other bad forces in the region” instead.
Now, again, he is amplifying his call to arms with fear mongering and a line that fellow neoconservative pundit Michael Ledeen has been using for years – Iran and the US are already at war, so the US should start acting like it:
Maybe the president thinks decency obliges him to give diplomacy another chance. But it is from an excess of decency that 33 years of Iranian outrages have gone unavenged, and Iran now proceeds undeterred. Sensible policy on Iran begins not with the question of how to avoid a war—that war was foisted on U.S. in 1979—but how to win it. Anything less invites further terror and dishonors the memory of Iran’s many American victims.
Following this line of reasoning requires diverting the conversation from how best to effectively engage with Iran in order to stop its nuclear program, to how to wage a successful war against an intractable and wicked enemy. Stephens’ conclusion is based on a litany of Iranian offenses (some of which remain questionable, let alone unproven) from the hostage crisis to bombings and kidnappings in Lebanon in the 1980s, the Khobar Tower bombing in Saudi Arabia, “thousands of U.S. troops killed by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan” and the curious case of Mansour Arbabsiar, the Iranian-American who recently pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in collusion with Iranian counterparts. This, according to our militarist pundit, has been the Iranian record against the United States.
And what of the US record against Iran? Why, an “excess of decency” of course! For reasons that Stephens doesn’t have time to get into or simply cannot explain, the US leadership from Reagan to Obama has repeatedly chosen the soft line with Iran. Perhaps the inherently peaceful character of the US has led to its impressive military hardware being reserved for only special occasions, which, in the case of the Middle East, Stephens forgets to mention, has somehow been deployed since the first 1991 Gulf War with no hiatus in between.
With this in mind, there really is no reason to waste time over the nuclear issue. Stephens wants a war to “avenge” the Islamic Republic’s 33-year long record of crimes and does not shy away from declaring his unhappiness regarding the direction of the Iran conversation in the US. The idea that sanctions are working unsettles him because it suggests that there is still time for serious and public diplomatic engagement with Iran to resolve the nuclear issue once and for all. (And no, I am not talking about a Reaganesque mission to secretly dispatch a national security adviser with a cake and bible to Tehran.) Even attempting peaceful conflict resolution is difficult for Stephens to accept because it “dishonors the memory of Iran’s many American victims.” For Stephens and many of his neocon colleagues, the real issue goes beyond the nuclear impasse; what we should really be concerned about is Iran’s history of “dishonoring” America since its Revolution.
Interestingly, this argument echoes talking points made by Iranian neoconservatives (which we often refer to as hardliners). Just read any column by Hossein Shariatmadari, the intractable editor of Kayhan Daily, and you will understand what I mean.
What are the similarities? First there is the victim mentality. Nothing the US or Iran has done can outdo the “bad” things that are done to them. From Shariatmadari’s point of view, the Islamic Republic has always been on the receiving end of Western “savagery” (a term also recently used by Leader Ali Khamenei to describe US conduct vis-à-vis Iran) because of its values, principles, and its daring resistance against US “arrogance.” From Stephens’ point of view, nothing the US has done – like siding with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war and at a minimum engaging in a collusion of silence over Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iran’s military and civilians, or shooting down, even if accidentally, an Iranian civilian airliner and then promoting the naval commander responsible for it – is even worth mentioning. Iranian conduct always occurs in a vacuum and is only worth noting in terms of the harm that is imposed.
From the neoconservative point of view — in the U.S. and Iran — correct values, “decency,” and the desire to be a beacon of goodwill, is the only mark of their respective countries. And the violent and disdainful conduct of the other side is the only conduct that needs to be noted. I am sure that, in the minds of folks like Shariatmadari and Stephens, that is indeed the only conduct noted.
This is why Stephens refers to the “crippling” sanctions that Governor Romney and President Obama referenced in Monday night’s debate as more of a “campaign prop than policy tool.” The notion that “unprecedented” sanctions that target the financial core of another country — not to mention killing nuclear scientists and sabotaging nuclear facilities — could also be considered an act of war is incomprehensible for Stephens.
Beyond feigned or actual feelings of victimhood, there is also a similarity in their avoidance of responsibility for the outcome of their proposed solutions. Neoconservatives in both Iran and the United States have had their chances at influencing their respective countries’ foreign and security policies. George W. Bush’s “muscular foreign policy” promoted by the likes of Stephens brought the US the debacle that has been Iraq — which, if anything, has actually strengthened Iran — and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “aggressive foreign policy,” pushed by folks like Shariatmadari, has brought Iran crippling sanctions.
Do they take responsibility for any of their disasters? Absolutely not! Stephens’ push for another war in the Middle East is clear evidence that he does not see himself or his cohorts as responsible for the fiasco in Iraq. In fact, he has said so plainly. The war was not the “original sin,” he wrote in 2007. In fact, it was no sin at all. Things went wrong because of mistakes that occurred after the neoconservatives lost their influence in the Bush administration when Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State (this being, by the way, the reason Stephens vehemently opposed Rice becoming Romney’s running mate).
A similar argument is now being parlayed by Iranian neoconservatives. Things always begin to go wrong when the Iranian government indicates a willingness to talk with the United States, they say. It exhibits weakness, and it is only through a show of strength and “will”– a favorite mantra of neoconservatives everywhere — that “bullies” like the US can be deterred.
Let me end by pointing out that despite the uncanny similarities of their worldviews, there is at least one critical difference between Iranian and US neoconservatives. This difference does not exist in their self-satisfied and belligerent poses; it relates to the location of their respective countries in the geopolitical and economic order.
It is the United States and its allies that are trying to strangle Iran economically, not the other way around. And of course it is the United States that will be engaging in yet another version of “shock and awe” if folks like Bret Stephens have their way, not the other way around.
]]>