Category: Egypt 2011

Jon Alterman has an op-ed in the NYT that has some good sense in it but also some very troubling ideas and policy prescriptions.
Alterman is quite right to note that by far the most important thing that’s happening in Egypt right now is not the confrontations or lack of them in Cairo’s very visible Tahrir Square but the electoral process that is unfolding, with almost painful slowness, all around the country– and the negotiation that will subsequently unfold between the election’s victors and the country’s now-ruling military council, the SCAF.
(The piece doesn’t mention the SCAF’s recent actions against US-funded NGOs in the country. That was probably because it was written a few days ago. But anyway, his basic thesis that it is the election and the subsequent negotiation that are the most important story, still stands.)
He is also right to note that the Islamist parties that between them are now showing a clear lead in the elections are doing so for good reason– because they have built up serious, nationwide political organizations. He writes:

Islamists have grasped that the game has moved beyond protests to the mechanics of elections, and their supporters are motivated, organized and energetic. By contrast, the secular liberal parties are virtually absent from the countryside. Judging from posters, billboards, bumper stickers and banners, the two major Islamist parties have the field almost to themselves.

However, he was unnecessarily patronizing and wrong when he prefaced those remarks by writing ” For Americans, it is hard to imagine that religious parties could win almost 70 percent of the Egyptian vote… ” What? I have been “imagining”, indeed predicting, this for a very long while now. I’m an American; and so are many others– from a broad range of viewpoints, who have “imagined” it.
Why does Alterman need to make it seem as though only he understands what is really going on? (And isn’t he an American, too? Or has he, like Michael Oren, suddenly transformed himself into an Israeli?)
Well, that is a relatively small quibble. The more serious problems occur at the end of his piece, where he writes:

Many in Israel and America, and even some in Egypt, fear that the elections will produce an Islamist-led government that will tear up the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, turn hostile to the United States, openly support Hamas and transform Egypt into a theocracy that oppresses women, Christians and secular Muslims. They see little prospect for more liberal voices to prevail, and view military dictatorship as a preferable outcome.
American interests, however, call for a different outcome, one that finds a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians. We do not want any one side to vanquish or silence the other. And with lopsided early election results, it is especially important that the outcome not drive away Egypt’s educated liberal elite, whose economic connections and know-how will be vital for attracting investment and creating jobs.
Our instinct is to search for the clarity we saw in last winter’s televised celebrations. However, what Egyptians, and Americans, need is something murkier — not a victory, but an accommodation.

Let’s look at that first paragraph there. It is factually accurate that “Many in Israel and America, and even some in Egypt” harbor the fears he describes. Though why he should put the fears of a subset of Israel’s actually tiny– and often paranoid– population before those of Americans and some Egyptians in a piece that purports to speak about American and Egyptian interests, I don’t know… But more importantly here, he lets the substantive scenarios described in those fears stand as quite possible outcomes without making any mention of the assurances that the MB’s Freedom and Justice Party and even the salafist Nur Party have given re not tearing up the peace treaty with Israel; and the assurances the FJP has given re the other “feared” scenarios that he lists.
As someone who claims to be a knowledgeable, evidence-based “realist” rather than an alarmist, wouldn’t that be information Alterman should include in that paragraph, rather than letting those “scare” scenarios simply stand?
Moving on to the last two paras of his piece… I feel pretty sure that Alterman would define “American interests” in a way that is in some portions the same and in some portions different from the way that I would define “the true interests of the American people”. However, let’s assume we’re talking here about roughly the same thing. In my definition the true interests of the American people would require that our government and all its appendages, including its sneakily misnamed, government-funded quangos like NED, etc, stay completely out of Egyptian politics, and take only those actions toward Egypt that are clearly requested by the new government that will emerge from the ongoing electoral process.
Realistically, that government will only emerge and stabilize itself once presidential elections in April, as well as the current lengthy round of parliamentary elections, have been completed. But the parliament that emerges from the current elections will have a leadership that will be in a position to negotiate with and make demands of not only the SCAF, but also the SCAF’s main financial backers, that is, the U.S. government.
So Alterman is arguing for an outcome “that finds a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians. We do not want any one side to vanquish or silence the other.” Say that again, Jon? Um, in democratic theory there’s this thing called civilian control of the military. Surely, anyone who claims to want to see greater democracy in Egypt should aim to have that principle firmly implemented there! It’s not a question of “vanquishing” or “silencing”. It’s a question of who’s in charge.
In the next sentence, he seems to giving another reason why “we” Americans should seek to see the power of Egypt’s elected leaders curtailed: “it is especially important that the outcome not drive away Egypt’s educated liberal elite, whose economic connections and know-how will be vital for attracting investment and creating jobs.” His clear implication here is that an Islamist government (a) would not be able to mobilize any– or sufficient numbers of– “educated” people with “connections and know-how”, and (b) would “drive away” the country’s liberal elite, whose fabulous attributes “will be vital for attracting investment and creating jobs.”
This argument is nonsense on stilts! It is based on incredibly condescending views of observant Muslims and the Islamist parties that grow up in their communities, to the effect that they really do not have sufficient education, know-how, or connections to run a successful modern economy.
Turkey, anyone? (Or come to that, Iran– and the impressive abilities its technicians showed recently when they hijacked the US military’s allegedly “stealth” RQ-170 drone… )
But the argument Alterman is making is also a sly one. By placing his “concern” about Egypt’s “educated liberal elite” right there alongside his argument for the military to still retain a say in national governance, he sis clearly implying that the military can be a guardian for the interests of the liberal elite.
Actually, that too is a pretty stupid argument. True, there are some in the “liberal elite” who strongly indicated in the past that they would be happy to see some form of military guarantee, or counter-balance, to protect them from the programs and policies of the Islamists; but for quite a while now relations between the SCAF and the liberals have been far, far worse than the relations either side has with, say, the MB. But I guess Alterman is adducing this argument here as a way of making the support he is expressing for a continued strong military role in Egypt more appealing to Western liberals…
Anyway, in his’s last paragraph, he states his position clearly: “what Egyptians, and Americans, need is … not a victory, but an accommodation.” That is, he doesn’t want to see a true victory for a democratically elected civilian leadership in Egypt, or for the important democratic principle of civilian control of the military; but he wants to see a continuing strong role for the military in Egypt’s governance.
Describing his own policy preference as a “need” for both Egyptians and Americans” is, of course, colonial, patronizing, and quite unwarranted. Let Egypt’s voters (who include, of course, all the members of the military) define their country’s needs on their own behalf. They don’t need Jon Alterman to do it for them.

Bill the spouse and I had an informative, short conversation today with the longtime MB spokesman Dr. Esam El-Erian, who is also the deputy head of the newly emerging, MB-backed Freedom and Justice Party. (You can find descriptions of interviews I conducted with Dr. El-Erian in early 2007 and early 2009, and a lot of other useful background on the Muslim Brotherhood and other aspects of Egyptian politics, here.)
The Muslim brotherhood were major participants in the democratic uprising that toppled Egypt’s 30-year president, Hosni Mubarak, from power back in February. From 1954 until the end of last February the MB was banned from operating as a political movement. Sometimes its people were “allowed” by Mubarak to run in the notably constrained “elections” he staged– but they had to do so as independents or in the framework of another party. Meanwhile, his regime launched successive waves of arrests, financial expropriation, and other grossly abusive and intimidating acts against the MB. Dr. El-Erian is one of many MB leaders who spent many years in Mubarak’s prisons– that, though the movement definitely renounced the use of violence back in 1982.
The most intriguing points in today’s conversation were:
~ Some of his observations on Egyptian political developments in the run-up to September’s parliamentary elections:

“We’re hoping to go into the elections with a broad coalition of the forces from the revolution… Yesterday we had a good meeting with the leader of the Wafd Party…
“We face a number of very big challenges. The role of the military is a big one, but we are delaying dealing with it because they were our partners in the revolution. Secondly, there’s the role of the police, who were the main supporters of Mubarak for the past ten years. We have to figure out how to establish a new form of policing appropriate to a democracy. The first challenge that we’re able to deal with is to get all the politicians together in a new coalition. It’s true, we will need to discuss this with the military. Currently, they hold the presidential powers, but they’re going to have to step back and allow a new face in… And we need to find a better balance between the presidency and the parliament…
“Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, was the first head of state to come and visit us after the revolution. He told us in a meeting I was in that he thought Egypt could have an even better democracy than the one they have in Turkey– because, he said, at least in Egypt the military was with the popular movement, not against it…
“I have not had much contact with the military leaders here– there was just one meeting I was invited to. But on the ground, out around the country, the brotherhood has good relations with the military. For example, right now, the tawgihi (school-leaving) exams are being held nationwide and with the collapse of much of the police, security would have been a big concern, except that we and other parts of the popular movement cooperated with the military to keep the whole process safe.”

~ A degree of opposition to the policies of the Saudi government that I found surprising:

“Without a change in the policies of Saudi Arabia, these current revolutions won’t succeed… In Egypt, Saudi Arabia is the main force of counter-revolution. They’ve been pushing and pushing to keep Mubarak out of prison. He was a pillar of their policy. But Mubarak will go to prison…”

~ A nuanced form of outreach to Western countries:

“I am asking Europe and America for an apology. For the last 150 years they have blocked any development in this area… We believe that we have a lot to contribute to world civilization in terms of spirituality and values, but we want the help of the west in allowing our democracy to flourish. We want an apology that they supported dictatorship here for so many years, and then when the revolutions challenged the dictators, they tried to find a safe exit for some of the dictators…
“So please don’t intervene in ways that corrupt our new politicians. Westerners corrupted so many of our local NGO’s and even human-rights organizations in the past. (But I want to note that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch did a great job! They are my friends!)”

El-Erian said the Brotherhood, which has long been shunned by many Western countries, has started since the revolution of January-February to have some contacts with European parliamentarians, diplomats, and business executives. But he was eager to strengthen its contacts with Americans, too, and made a special pitch for American tourists to return to Egypt in large numbers.

Many U.S. commentators have tried to “sanitize” the foreign-policy impact of Egypt’s still-ongoing revolution, by claiming that Egypt’s current democrats have no foreign policy goals (unlike all those “uncivilized” Egyptians in the past who had dreams of Arab nationalism and such.)
As’ad Abu Khalil points to this video from Tahrir Square’s million-person gathering in Cairo yesterday, where the slogan repeated over and over was “To Jerusalem we’re going, to be martyrs in our millions”.
Honestly, why not? The Israeli government keeps on talking about how Jerusalem is so “open” to believers of all faiths. So why shouldn’t a million or two Egyptians– Muslims and Christians– simply organize a convoy and drive there to worship at their holy sites?
From the logistical point of view, getting to Rafah/Gaza is the hard part: Four-five hours of driving. Once you get to Rafah, it’s about 30 minutes to drive the length of Gaza and then only about 50 minutes to Jerusalem. Hey, they could take with them some of those many Gaza Palestinians who have never in their life had the chance to leave the long-besieged Gaza Strip, let alone to visit and pray in their national capital in Occupied East Jerusalem.
Oh, you say the Israelis would block this convoy? Where, and using what what means, I wonder? (Maybe that’s what the “martyrs in our millions” refers to.)
On the other hand, 40 years of a completely U.S.-dominated “diplomacy” have done not one thing to bring Palestinian Muslims and Christians the ability to worship at their holy sites in Jerusalem. Indeed, since the conclusion of the Oslo Accord in 1993, the freedom of Palestinian Christians and Muslims to worship in Jerusalem has become far more restricted than it was beforehand.
And U.S. “diplomacy” has brought a whole Calvary of other disasters to Palestine’s Christians and Muslims, too. Including the metastatic growth of those that settler-colonial project that Amb. Susan Rice protected with her veto yesterday.
An American friend has described the chants in Tahrir yesterday as “bellicose”. What is bellicose about saying you’re going to pray at your holy sites in Jerusalem, and you’re prepared a die as a martyr if necessary to get there?
Don’t western Christians have a long history of understanding and respecting the concept of martyrdom, that is, being prepared to die for what you believe in? (As 365 of Egypt’s pro-democracy activists already have.)

I am trying to follow– from the very great distance of central Virginia, USA, what is happening regarding the very necessary and WAYS overdue process of political/constitutional reform and rebuilding that Egypt so desperately needs if the democracy revolution of the past few weeks is to be able to survive and thrive.
Here are some notes I wrote on that to some friends this morning:

This ‘transition’ has barely begun yet; also, the vast bulk of what happens will not be in Tahrir Square or even in Cairo but in the countries’ scores of other large cities, and its towns and villages. (Though Egypt has been a very centralized state for 8,000 years, so Cairo remains crucial.) I’m sure that all around the country, people who’ve worked with or kowtowed to the NDP overlords for so long are now busy repositioning themselves (like the police in Cairo– organizing that ‘protest march’!!!) and there is huge potential for disorder, vengeance-seeking, and other forms of social breakdown such as we saw in Iraq, but luckily without at this point the potential for analogous ethno-sectarian cleavages.
We should not underestimate either on the one hand the huge damage that social breakdown (“fitna”) inflicts, or OTOH the fact that Egyptians are very aware of the risks of it occurring and might overreact by cleaving ‘too’ tightly to the forces that promise stability.
These are all, of course, entirely their choices to make. But the United States government, as the main outside funder of the Egyptian military is uniquely positioned to influence that side.
What is happening– I hope!– at the heart of the regime is a serious negotiation between the army bosses and the combined forces of the opposition over all the terms and modalities of a transition to civilian rule that will, inevitably, be one that is ‘managed’ by the military. I imagine some forces in the army don’t want to run the country directly; other may want to try. But I think it’s important that we and they all remember that they did NOT wade in and shoot the demonstrators on Jan 25, 26, 27, 28, etc; so I hope they recognize the very limited political utility under present circumstances of their military and coercive power?
It’s important, too, to note that the former ruling party, the National Democratic Party, has largely collapsed. It never had anything like the ideological strength and wide network of “true believers” that, for example, the Baath Party used to have in Iraq. It was never more than a cynical patronage machine.
In terms of an ability to ‘manage’ the transition to a post-NDP era at the grassroots level nationwide, I think the Muslim Brotherhood is streets ahead of any of the other components of the opposition in having a nationwide network, a fairly clear social vision (much of which is good, some bad), links to all sectors of society from business owners to professionals to small business owners to fellahin (peasants), and considerable organizational heft. Wael Ghonim, the much-lauded Egyptian-American Facebook exec, seems pretty clueless about politics and most of the other ‘Facebook youth’ also seem to have eschewed politics for so long that they also now seem a little politically clueless?
It is crucial, though, for all the components of the Tahrir Square movemt to stick together and form a joint team to negotiate this out with the generals, if possible. Otherwise, very evidently, the generals will try to pick them off one by one. That was one reason I was so surprised to see Wael and the other youth go in to meet the military on their own on Sunday– UNLESS that was part of a plan that had previously been agreed with the rest of the opposition.

After I wrote those notes, I learned that the MB has agreed to have a representative on the constitutional reform committee that the generals have set up.
Their Ikhwanweb website says this:

A constitutional reform panel has been commissioned by the military council to change the same six articles in the Egyptian Constitution that ex-President Hosni Mubarak’s constitutional reform commission identified.
The abolition of Article 179 which restricts people’s freedoms and rights in the name of security will be considered along with amendments to articles 76, 77, 88, 93, and 189…
On Monday the military appointed panel members selecting former judge Tariq al-Bishry as chairman. Opposition groups are divided however as to whether amendment reforms will be sufficient, and are contemplating whether a new constitution should be created.
Constitutional scholars have advised the military to create an interim constitution and Muslim Brotherhood lawyer Sobhi Saleh has was chosen to be part of the panel.

The liberal daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported some concerns in some quarters about the composition of the panel:

Ousted president Hosni Mubarak had issued a similar decree concerning the same articles before he resigned on 11 February, but his move did not appeal to protesters, who preferred a new Constitution.
The military appointed the panel members on Monday, selecting Tarek al-Beshry, a moderate Islamist and former judge, as chairperson.
The panel includes Sobhy Saleh, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamist opposition group. The selection of Saleh has caused some concern among the country’s Copts and secularists.
Coptic activists also expressed reservations over the choice of al-Beshry, saying that his stance toward Copts is causing them some anxiety over the potential amendments.

What I’m looking for– commenters who can supply this would be most appreciated– is information on two things:

1. Who else is on this panel, representing which trends?
2. Will there in fact be two processes of constitutional revision– an “interim” process to tweak it, addressing only those long-infamous six articles, plus a longer-term project of rewriting the whole thing– or only one (the tweaks)? This is not yet clear.

If I had more time, I’d go into the Arabic sources to find out more.
I’ll just close by noting two final things:
1. Issandr has the text of a well-crafted Transition Plan pulled together on February 12 by the Forum of Independent Human Rights Organizations. It’s here.
2. Remarkably little sign of any public activity in the crucial past few days from the group of so-called “Wise Men”. Their spokesman Amr Hamzawy had a piece in the WaPo on Sunday that was sadly behind the curve. The “Wise Men” group seems to have been pulled together only very hastily and at the last minute. It does include Amr Moussa, who has real political heft credibility in the country, and Naguib Suwairis, the country’s absolutely largest business owner (and fwiw, a Copt). Those individuals and the others identified with the “Wise Men” (sexism alert!) group will doubtless play some part in the ongoing negotiations. But it does not necessarily look as though either they or the “Facebook youth” have the nationwide organizational heft to act as any kind of serious “counter” to the MB (which is what, I believe, the Obama administration is now desperately looking for.)
Ah well, interesting times for Egypt. I wish them all good luck with this process!