The Muslim Brotherhood has its own army of the young that will not easily be defeated. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Baher Kamal
CAIRO, Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

Unconsciously or not, most mainstream media and foreign correspondents here have been echoing Muslim Brotherhood voices by depicting Egypt’s new president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, as the general who led the July 2013 “military coup” against the “legitimately elected” Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi.
In doing so, they omit some key facts:

– that over 30 million Egyptians took to the streets exactly a year ago to press for the “impeachment” of Morsi. Morsi was elected by slightly more than 13 million voters. The Egyptian Constitution clearly states that sovereignty resides in the people.

– that Morsi’s rival in 2012 presidential elections was general Ahmad Shafik, a senior commander in the Egyptian Air Force who later served as Prime Minister from 31 January 2011 to 3 March 2011. Shafik was considered as former President Hosni Mubarak’s strong man.

– that the vast majority of political parties, including the Islamic radical Salafi Party Al Nour, and the former Vice-President responsible for International Relations, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, had held several meetings with the by then Defence Minister Al Sisi to agree on immediate action aimed at the impeachment of Morsi.“Regardless of who has now become the fifth top leader of Egypt in slightly more than three years, Egyptian citizens appear to have little hopes that their harsh daily living conditions will be alleviated”

The call for the impeachment of Morsi was motivated by widespread popular frustration: put simply, 13 million Egyptians elected Morsi in May 2012 as the representative of “charitable men of faith” – the Muslim Brotherhood – who would rescue millions of people from poverty, but who instead transformed his position into a platform for a systematic “Islamisation” of all state institutions while neglecting the pressing needs of the Egyptian population.

Another often neglected fact is that in Egypt there is much more than generals and “troglodytes” – as a number of local political analysts often call the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned for most of the time since it was created in 1928.

Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al Sisi won the three-day presidential elections (May 26-28) with a majority close to 97 percent. His rival, socialist Hamedin Sabbahi, obtained a mere 3 percent of the vote.

However, and regardless of who has now become the fifth top leader of Egypt in slightly more than three years, Egyptian citizens appear to have little hopes that their harsh daily living conditions will be alleviated any time soon, or even in the medium term.

The five men who have led Egypt in the last three years are: Hosni Mubarak who was ousted in February 2011; Field Marshal Mohamed Al-Tantawi, who ruled as chair of the Supreme Military Council between February 2011 and June 2012; Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, who took office in June 2012 and was deposed in July 2013; provisional president Adly Mansour (July 2013-June 2014); and now the elected Al Sisi.

The widespread scepticism among Egyptian citizens is based on their own experience, which shows that none of the previous four mandatories and half a dozen of governments they have had since they launched their massive popular revolution in January 2011 has been able to deal with their urgent needs.

Moreover, the two candidates to Egyptian presidency in May this year delivered big promises that ordinary people doubted they could ever deliver. In this, both of them behaved in a “business as usual” manner, just like in most Western electoral campaigns.

Therefore, and again regardless of who won and now takes office, and independently of the outcome of the summer/autumn parliamentary elections, the daily life of most of Egypt’s 94 million people is anything but easy.

Some facts help put the situation in perspective:

– Nearly 40 percent of Egyptians live in poverty or extreme poverty.

– Unemployment has jumped to over 13 percent, according to official mid -2013 data, with more than 3.2 million Egyptians now out of the job market, compared with 2.5 million in the same period in 2010. Egypt’s economically active population amounts to 23.7 million workers.

– Domestic public debt amount to nearly 200 billion dollars, according to governmental figures for July 2013. Meanwhile, foreign public debt reached around 39 billion dollars last year.

– Egypt’s foreign currency reserves were estimated in mid-2013 at some 19 billion dollars, compared with 33 billion in January 2011, and national currency rates have fallen by about 20 percent, implying a growing devaluation of the national currency – the Egyptian pound.

– Inflation has been steadily increasing by a monthly average close to 1 percent, with an annual rate estimated at more than 11.5 percent.

– The national budget deficit now exceeds 280 billion dollars, compared with 194 billion dollars in 2013.

– Slum inhabitants are estimated at more than six million Egyptians, with garbage collection and drug trafficking among their major sources of income.

– The Sinai peninsula has become a “nerve centre” of terrorism, with militants and mercenaries, both Egyptians and foreigners, reportedly armed with weapons provided by the Hamas Islamic movement in Gaza, Libyan arms traffickers and Turkish organisations, according to the findings of the Egyptian judiciary system. Most terrorist organisations active in both Sinai and other regions are believed to be linked to Al Qaeda.

All this is compounded by a number of features of the daily lives of Egyptians – hundreds of civilians have been victims of terrorist attacks, brutal killings and explosions, university students have been abducted and young women have been raped.

Since its president Morsi was ousted on July 3 last year, the Muslim Brotherhood has launched a systematic series of attacks everywhere in Egypt, according to national security services.

Related terrorist organisations, such as Beit Al Maqdas and Ajnad Misr, have been perpetrating violent, deadly operations against both civilians and military forces.

Meanwhile, former influential figures of Mubarak’s regime (which ruled Egypt from October 1981-to February 2011) have systematically taken their fortunes abroad, and are said to have funded professional criminals to destabilise the country with the hope that major chaos will return them to power.

An estimated total of over 200 billion dollars (equivalent to the national domestic debt) is reported to be lying in bank accounts in “fiscal havens” around the world. Mubarak’s family fortune has been estimated to amount at over 70 billion dollars and Egypt has been trying to recover these funds.

The first wave of massive popular revolution in January 2011, which ousted Mubarak, paved the way for dozens and dozens of opposition newspapers and tens of national and satellite TV networks.

With the exception of just a half a dozen of them, most of them have fallen into gossip-oriented practices, often with improvised commentators, all leading to a deeper, insane public opinion confusion.

Parallel to all these national hurdles, Egypt also faces huge challenges abroad. One of these is the risk that vital water supplies will dramatically decrease due to Ethiopia’s ‘Grand Renaissance’ dam, currently under construction on the Blue Nile. Some Egyptian experts have already started warning against the risk of a “dangerous water hunger” one decade from now.

Another challenge is represented by the unlimited funds reportedly provided by Qatar to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has resulted in the freezing of relations between the two countries.

This also led three Gulf countries – Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates – to withdraw their ambassadors in Qatar on March 5, 2014, due to what they consider as flagrant intrusion in the internal affairs of another Arab state.

To complete the picture, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has found a “safe haven” in Libya, according to both Egyptian and Libyan sources, who say that some of the weapons used by the Muslim Brotherhood for its terrorist attacks come from Libya, where there are up to 25 million weapons, according to authoritative Libyan politicians.

Excerpt:

A solider trying to stop a protest by Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Nov 7 2013 (IPS)

Demonstrations have been at the heart of historic upheavals in Egypt since January 2011. But a newly proposed law that seeks to regulate protests could imperil one of the biggest gains of the Arab Spring revolution here: freedom of expression.

The protest law, approved by the military-backed government Oct. 9 in the backdrop of violent protests, entails fines of up to 42,000 dollars plus imprisonment for offenders. It now awaits the assent of interim President Adly Mansour.

Its supporters say that passing a law to regulate demonstrations was necessary to prevent the country from sliding into daily chaos.“When the demonstrators are Sisi’s supporters, the protests are legal and when they are his opponents, they are a crime."

But human rights groups, Islamist parties and other opponents of the military-backed dispensation call it a huge setback for hard-won public freedoms.

“This law will arouse the anger of many revolutionary and worker groups that make their voices heard through peaceful demonstrations,” said Dr. Khaled Alam El Din, former advisor to Mohammad Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president who was ousted in a military coup Jul. 3.

Morsi’s supporters see the draft law as an attempt by the Commander of the Armed Forces, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, to silence all voices in Egypt that condemn the coup.

“Sisi wants to pass this law to restrict freedom of expression and suppress his opponents,” El Din told IPS. “The Egyptian political elite and private media are completely tight-lipped. No one dare criticise these dictatorial policies.

“Such an oppressive law will eventually explode in the face of all those involved in passing it. If this situation continues, it will be the final nail in the coffin for the 2011 revolution, one of the biggest gains of which was freedom of expression.”

Some point out the irony of such a law in Egypt.

“Have they (those in the government) forgotten that they too came to power through demonstrations?” asked Amr Bakly, a rights activist.

It was mass protests that led to the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for nearly 30 years, in 2011. The coup against Morsi, a face of the Muslim Brotherhood that played a key role in the revolution, also came after widespread demonstrations.

“When the demonstrators are Sisi’s supporters, the protests are legal and when they are his opponents, they are a crime? This is a shame,” Bakly told IPS.

Calling it an “anti-protest law”, 17 national human rights NGOs, in a joint statement, said it is “a permission to kill” demonstrators and opponents of the military regime.

Comprising 21 articles, the proposed law requires Interior Ministry permission five days before any demonstration, and gives senior police officials the right to cancel, postpone or relocate demonstrations as well as to ban sit-ins.

According to it, demonstrators will be prohibited from gathering in certain areas, overshooting the permitted duration of the protest, exposing the public to danger, blocking roads, or causing any disturbance to traffic.

The draft law also makes it mandatory for demonstrators to maintain a minimum distance of 50 metres between the protest site and vital installations.

“(If this becomes law) people can be imprisoned and charged with treason if they take the matter to international courts,” Bakly said.

The draft law faces harsh criticism from some within the government, including Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Bahaa El Din.

Human rights activists see it as a revival of the law which Morsi’s government had tried to bring in unsuccessfully.

“Sisi’s law is worse than Morsi’s, and both were looking to empower themselves. The military seeks to set up a police state whereas the Brotherhood had been seeking a religious dictatorship,” Bakly told IPS.

Some politicians and writers, however, say the protest law will help regulate demonstrations and provide stability and security.

Since the Egyptian army deposed Morsi, thousands of his supporters have protested across the country. Many have been killed and injured. The latest flare-up occurred on Oct. 6 when 60 people were killed in clashes between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and the security forces.

“Opponents of the law want the country to be lost in chaos,” said Soliman Gouda, a well-known columnist. “The state must control outlaws and criminals who are disturbing public life through demonstrations.

“The Brotherhood’s demonstrations have resulted in Egyptians being denied the grace of democracy, especially after pro-Morsi protestors resorted to riots, violence and attacks on public and private enterprise,” Gouda, former editor in chief of Al-Wafd newspaper told IPS.

“Establishing rules for organising demonstrations does not mean restricting freedoms; this interpretation is completely misleading.”

Esraa Abdel Fatah, a popular internet activist, said: “Passing a law to regulate demonstrations is necessary because supporters of the previous government started using weapons and knifes in clashes with peaceful citizens, leaving dozens of people dead.”

Fatah, who was arrested in 2008 for two weeks, told IPS: “The law will not affect public freedoms if it is formulated in accordance with international conventions and under the supervision of a specialised committee of elected parliament members.

“But if it shackles the hands of people and stops them from expressing their opinions, no doubt it will end the process of freedoms in Egypt forever.”

The aftermath of clashes between police and anti-coup demonstrators during the dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya sit-in on Aug. 14 in Cairo. Credit: Amro Diab/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Oct 10 2013 (IPS)

The administration of President Barack Obama announced Wednesday it was freezing hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Egyptian military pending “credible progress” toward a return to democratic rule.

The State Department said Washington was suspending deliveries of big-ticket weaponry, including tanks, warplanes and attack helicopters, that make up much of the 1.3 billion dollars in military aid it provides Egypt annually.

Officials also said Washington would not provide the Egyptian government with 260 million dollars in cash to use as it sees fit, as it has in the past. Instead, it plans to work with the military-backed regime to bolster programmes in health, education, democracy promotion and private-sector development."The military isn't going to change their fundamental strategy over a few tanks and planes."
-- Robert Springborg

But officials who briefed reporters after the announcement insisted that the administration had still not determined whether the Jul. 3 ouster of President Mohammed Morsi constituted a “coup”, which under U.S. law would require the complete cutting of military assistance. They stressed that the latest steps were not intended to be “punitive” or to diminish “Egypt’s ability to be a strong security partner of the United States.”

One official characterised the telephone conversation in which Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel informed the regime’s strongman, Defence Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, of the freeze as “very friendly” and said that the fact that the two men had spoken 20 times over the last several months “underscores the importance of the U.S.-Egypt relationship.”

The State Department said Washington would continue to provide military training in the United States for Egyptian officers and spare parts for major weapons systems already in Cairo’s possession.

In what some critics called a major loophole, the State Department said the United States will also continue providing aid used for border security and counter-terrorism and for “ensur[ing] security in the Sinai,” the scene of growing anti-government violence since the July coup.

Too little, too late

Most Egypt experts here welcomed the State Department’s Wednesday announcement but complained that it may be a case of “too little too late.”

Al-Sisi appeared unaffected by the cuts and, in fact, emboldened by 12 billion dollars in aid from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, as well as a pledge by Saudi King Abdullah to compensate for aid withheld by Washington. By most accounts, the regime’s repression, including arrests of virtually all of the Brotherhood’s national leaders and thousands of its members, has intensified.

On Wednesday, hours before the State Department announcement, the regime officially dissolved the Brotherhood, while the Court of Appeals in Cairo announced that Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, will be tried on Nov. 4 on charges of inciting violence.

“This sort of step should have been taken more forthrightly earlier on,” Emile Nakhleh, a former director of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis office, told IPS in reference to the military cuts. “This is better than nothing at all, but we haven’t really conveyed a clear message.”

Khaled Elgindy, an Egypt expert at the Brookings Institution, complained that Wednesday’s announcement was “sort of a half-measure that doesn’t appear to be part of a broader, overarching American vision for Egypt, or the region.”

“It’s very important to send a message when it comes to democratic and human rights standards, but I don’t think we’ve done that effectively,” he told IPS. “We’ve done it in a way that muddles that message and that makes it possible for any side in Egypt to characterise it in whatever way they want.”

Robert Springborg, an Egypt specialist at the Naval Post-Graduate School, said Wednesday’s announcement should be seen more as a “political and symbolic” gesture than one “where the capacities of the Egyptian military will be really impacted.”

“The military isn’t going to change their fundamental strategy over a few tanks and planes,” he said in a phone interview. “This will have zero impact on what the military and the government do over the next few months.”

“It’s certainly the right thing to do, but it’s overdue,” said Samer Shehata of the University of Oklahoma, who stressed that the administration should have called Morsi’s ouster a coup and suspended military aid from the outset.

“Of course, when you withdraw aid, there’s always a question of whether you give up influence,” Shehata said. “I don’t know the answer, but I do know that the U.S. should not be giving military aid to this regime right now.”

Contributing to repression

“The problem is that the kind of assets we provide for border security and counter-terrorism can be readily put to use in suppressing the opposition in Egypt,” noted Wayne White, a former deputy director of the State Department’s Middle East intelligence office who is currently based at the Middle East Institute.

“The F-16s and tanks [now suspended] are not relevant to the ongoing repression, so this may not do anything to reduce it,” he told IPS.

His concern was echoed by Amnesty International, whose U.S. director, Frank Jannuzi, warned that Washington should “stop providing arms or allowing back-door sales of weapons or equipment that Egypt’s security forces will likely use to violate human rights,” including shotguns, military rifles, machine guns, ammunition, spare parts for Apache attack helicopters, and armoured Caterpillar bulldozers.

Some lawmakers close with the Israeli lobby, which has strongly opposed cuts in military aid to Egypt out of fear they could diminish the Egyptian army’s commitment to uphold the 1979 Camp David peace accords with Israel, urged the administration to reconsider.

“I am disappointed that the Administration is planning to partially suspend military aid to Egypt,” said Eliot Engel, ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a statement issued before the actual announcement. “During this fragile period we should be rebuilding partnerships in Egypt that enhance our bilateral relationship, not undermining them.”

After Morsi’s ouster, the administration urged the new regime to include the Brotherhood in the process to return the country to democratic rule. When those appeals were ignored, it quietly suspended delivery of some F-16s and cancelled the annual “Bright Star” joint manoeuvres that U.S. forces have carried out with Egyptian counterparts for decades.

Obama’s decision to reduce aid followed a review launched in August after several massacres in which more than 1,000 Brotherhood protestors were killed. The president decided to act after violent clashes between Morsi supporters, security forces and anti-Brotherhood mobs killed more than 50 people last weekend, according to officials.

As supporters of the military and followers of ousted elected president Mohamed Morsi clashed in Egypt on Oct. 6, members of the country’s 50-member committee are clashing over the drafting of a consensual constitution. Courtesy: Amro Diab

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Oct 7 2013 (IPS)

Bloody clashes erupted in Cairo on Sunday Oct. 6 between supporters of the military and followers of ousted elected president Mohamed Morsi as the latter protested against the July military coup that deposed their leader. But as clashes occurred on the streets, a clash of ideologies has been occurring on the country’s 50-member committee as it amends Egypt’s constitution.

Sunday’s death toll reached 50 and at least 286 people were injured, according to Dr. Ahmed Ansari, chairman of the ambulance. The Interior Ministry reported arresting 423 protesters supporting the ousted president. This is the highest death toll here since Aug. 14, when the military and police smashed two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo, and hundreds were killed. “The current crisis is political, not constitutional, and the solution would have to be political as well.” -- Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Egypt stands at a critical stage in drafting a consensual constitution that could satisfy the needs of both civil and Islamic groups along with being approved by the military forces.

Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told IPS that because of the unresolved political crisis and the deep polarisation of society, “any political and social environment is significantly unsuitable for the making of a constitution through a democratic, inclusive and representative process.”

He pointed out that ironically, “we’re seeing more similarities than differences between the Brotherhood-led constitutional drafting process and the current one.”

On Jul. 8, five days after the overthrow of Morsi, interim President Adly Mansour issued a decree to form the 50-member committee and tasked it with writing a final draft of Egypt’s amended constitution.

The constitution was first drafted by a committee under Morsi’s government, which mainly consisted of Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic movements.

But louder voices from within the 50-member committee, which excludes the Muslim Bother’s party, have started demanding the drafting of a new constitution.

The only Salafi party on the committee, Al-Nour, is likely to defend the Islamic-flavoured articles in the suspended constitution, especially clauses that protect the Islamic identity of the state.

“What the Islamist-majority constituent assembly sought to do last year was to preserve all existing privileges of the military, while giving some concessions to conservative Islamists and undermining the supreme constitutional court, which had shown hostility to Brotherhood rule,” Bahgat said.

In the current constitution, army representatives have pushed for the approval of an article where the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will be the body responsible for appointing the Defence Minister, provided that this does not affect the powers of the president.

Bahgat said the current process was as exclusionary as last year’s one, “and even more lacking [in] democratic credentials because the current committee was appointed by a president who was in turn appointed by the defence minister.”

“We’re seeing the same dynamic this time where everyone expects the military to get everything they want, while the judiciary will get preferential treatment and most Islamist provisions [will] be undone.”

Bahgat said that the new constitution will not last longer than the 2012 one as Egypt could not have a permanent constitution through a process that excludes the 20 percent of the population who support the ousted president.

“The current crisis is political, not constitutional, and the solution would have to be political as well,” he added.

Ahmed Badie, a spokesperson for the Al-Watan Salafist Party, which was founded in 2013, told IPS “the upcoming constitution will be hostile to Islam and Muslims, because the dominating ideology of the participants is to take revenge [against] Islam.”

“They will manipulate the identity of the state, which would lead to an unlawful constitution,” he said.

Badie believes that Egyptians who voted for the 2012 constitution will reject what he called an “anti-Islam, secular constitution” and that Islamists and the military coup opponents will rally together against this. He added, “[in] the end, legitimacy will remain.”

“What is built on falsehood is false.”

He explained that less than five percent of the clauses in the 2012 constitution that required amendment “but the current committee, which was formed in the dark, wants to blow up our constitution just because it was drafted by the Islamists.”

“How can we compare such a constitution under a military coup to the former one under a democratic regime? This is shameful,” Badie said.

Leftist representative on the 50 member-committee, Hussein Abdel-Razek, told IPS that many things needed to be disposed of from the Brotherhood constitution, which allows for an authoritarian state and gives priority to the interests of the ruling party over the interests of democracy.

“The difference between the two constitutions is clear, they [the Brotherhood] were establishing a religious [constitution], meanwhile we are drafting a constitution for a civil, democratic state based on citizenship and the balance of powers,” Abdel-Razek explained.

Once the constitution has been re-written, Mansour will put the amended version to a national referendum within 30 days of receiving the final draft, which is expected in a month from now. It will be effective upon public approval.

However, this time the process is more open to the public, more transparent and seems to include more rigorous debate. While the 2012 constitution was being drafted most of the agreements were made in closed rooms where the general debate was much less genuine.

Dr Saad al-Din al-Hilali, a jurisprudence professor at al-Azhar al-Sharif, one of the oldest universities in Cairo which was founded in 970, stressed that the constitution of the Muslim Brotherhood contained many clauses that enabled them to remain continuously in power for decades, and assure the supremacy of its members over the rest of the Egyptian people.

He told IPS “the constitution, which is prepared now will find great acceptance, despite the mobilisation of Islamic movements and the Muslim Brotherhood to make citizens reject it in the public referendum.”

“The maturity of Egyptians and the huge rejection of the Brotherhood, which appeared on Jun. 30, will prevent the implementation of their plan, thus the constitution will be approved popularly and legally,” he added.

He said that the constitution committee was not going to reject the Brotherhood constitution completely because it contained some basic clauses that were included in all the previous constitutions, including health and education rights. But, he added, while the Brotherhood constitution completely ignored issues of public freedoms and the principle of citizenship, it would be addressed in the current one.

Striking workers: Egypt’s new military-led government has adopted the same tough line on labour activism and trade unions as its predecessors. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Sep 9 2013 (IPS)

It was the Egyptian state’s brutal restrictions on worker freedoms that transformed Kareem El-Beheiry from a disengaged lay worker into a tenacious labour activist.

In April 2008, El-Beheiry was arrested during mass demonstrations that followed a government crackdown on workers protesting low wages and rising living costs in Mahalla El-Kubra, an industrial city 100 kilometres north of Cairo. The young factory worker had used his mobile phone to capture and share video footage of fierce clashes between security forces and protesters until police swooped in and grabbed him.

Authorities accused El-Beheiry of using his blog on labour rights to instigate the Mahalla uprising, which originated at the textile mill where he worked. Three people were killed and hundreds injured in two days of rioting that engulfed the city after state security forces stormed the factory to prevent thousands of striking workers from gathering there.The Egyptian Centre for Social Rights reported 1,400 collective worker actions in 2011 and nearly 2,000 in 2012. It cited 2,400 social and economic protests during the first quarter of 2013.

El-Beheiry, now 28, recalls how he spent two months in prison, where he was abused, deprived of food, and tortured with electric shocks. Even after his release, he had to fight a legal battle to return to his job – the factory’s manager had sacked him for failing to show up for work during his imprisonment.

Reinstated on a court order, the flagged employee was transferred to the state-owned company’s Cairo office in 2009, where he was fired three months later on spurious charges.

“Every day I commuted to Cairo and signed in, but the management destroyed my attendance record and claimed I never showed up for work,” he says. “I have a court order (for my reinstatement), but the factory manager refuses to honour it.”

El-Beheiry’s ordeal exemplifies the extent to which the authoritarian regime of toppled president Hosni Mubarak was willing to go to isolate and intimidate dissident workers. The state tolerated a degree of political opposition, but when it came to labour issues, any action that threatened to galvanise workers into a cohesive labour movement was swiftly crushed.

Successive governments relied on the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), a colossal state-backed labour organisation with 24 affiliated trade syndicates, to control workers and prevent them from engaging in industrial action. When strikes did break out, the regime smothered them with the riot police and hired thugs – and if that failed, called in the army.

“Mubarak only knew one way to deal with labour disputes: force,” says El-Beheiry.

The former mill worker, now a project manager at an NGO that helps workers unionise, says the 2008 Mahalla revolt was a game changer for Mubarak’s regime. The labour movement that emerged from the city’s grimy factories stirred Egypt’s long-quiescent working class, sparking a wave of wildcat strikes that played a crucial role in persuading the army to remove Mubarak during the 2011 uprising.

But the strike wave did not end with Mubarak’s fall. It smouldered and spread under the 18 months of military rule that followed, and during the year-long rule of president Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Egyptian Centre for Social Rights (ECESR) reported 1,400 collective worker actions in 2011 and nearly 2,000 in 2012. It cited 2,400 social and economic protests during the first quarter of 2013, which coincided with Morsi’s presidency.

Joel Beinin, professor of Middle East history at Stanford University argues that despite small concessions aimed at ending strikes, Morsi largely relied on the same apparatus to quash labour dissent, and proved no more willing than his predecessors to address its underlying causes. At the heart of the underlying causes lie gross inequalities.

The Muslim Brotherhood leadership is “just as committed to the free-market fundamentalism promoted by the international financial institutions as the Mubarak regime was,” he writes. “When workers continued to strike and protest, Morsi’s administration, like the Mubarak regime, often granted their economic demands but ignored their political demands and undermined their organisational autonomy.”

Many of the demands are not new. During the twilight years of Mubarak’s rule, the government’s neo-liberal economic programme heightened unemployment, stripped welfare benefits, and widened the gap between rich and poor. Economic conditions have continued to deteriorate in post-revolution Egypt.

Impoverished workers are protesting for better wages, job security, payment of overdue benefits, and a liveable minimum wage. They have also demanded to exercise the right to freedom of association as guaranteed by international labour treaties to which Egypt is a signatory.

Workers have organised into thousands of independent trade unions since Egypt’s 2011 uprising, but their legitimacy is challenged by Mubarak-era legislation that only recognises ETUF-affiliated syndicates.

Adel Zakaria, editor of Kalam Sinaiyya (Workers’ Talk) magazine says that instead of reforming or dissolving the mammoth state-controlled labour body, Morsi’s administration “tried to co-opt it in order to control its four million members.”

Despite some promising signs, including the appointment of a veteran union organiser as labour minister, rights groups say the new regime is already shaping up to be a lot like its predecessors.

In August, security forces moved in to break up a month-long strike by steel mill workers protesting unpaid wages and bonuses. Days later, riot police forcefully put down a strike at a petroleum company over unpaid bonuses and intolerable working conditions.

Strike leaders have been sacked, and several protesting workers were reportedly referred to prosecutors under laws that criminalise unauthorised collective labour action.

The ruling regime has attempted to paint striking workers as counter-revolutionaries and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a loaded association given the military’s crackdown on the group.

Military leader General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has called on workers to take action against the “instigators” of strikes, and promised to deal firmly with those who disrupt the wheels of production.

“We will help quell this sedition,” he said. “Don’t let anybody interrupt production because this is another means of tearing the country down.”

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Aug 26 2013 (IPS)

Almost 1,000 Egyptians have died, according to official count, since Aug. 14 when Egypt’s armed forces began cracking down on Muslim Brotherhood-led protests against the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. That number well exceeds the 846 people officials say died during the 18 days of protests that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule in January 2011.

Emile Nakhleh. Credit: Security & Defence Agenda/CC by 2.0

The democratically elected Morsi, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood, has not been seen in public since Jul. 3. But Mubarak has been released from prison into house arrest while he faces retrial.

Egyptian media have for the most part adopted the language of the army in framing the unrest – Muslim brotherhood members are alleged “terrorists” who are trying to destroy the country.

While the United States, which the Egyptian media claims conspired with the Brotherhood, has cancelled military exercises with Egypt while calling for both sides to halt violence, it has so far resisted calls to halt military aid to its strategically positioned ally.

Still, the rapid turn of events in Egypt, from a revolution to perhaps a “counterrevolution“, has left U.S. President Barack Obama in a quandary.

In an interview with IPS, Emile Nakhleh, a Middle East expert and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Islamic Strategic Analysis Programme, explained why repression would not prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from continuing to be a rooted cultural and political force. Continued repression could also push the Brotherhood’s younger members to embrace violence as a political tool, he said.

The United States should pursue its own interests in Egypt, which “do not necessarily equate with dictatorial repressive regimes,” Nakhleh told IPS. “In the long run, democratically elected governments will be more stable than these autocratic regimes.”

Read the complete interview on IPS’s foreign policy blog."The United States has got to create a clear balance between national security and our democratic values."

Q: Should U.S. aid to Egypt be stopped?

A: Aid should be cut off. We supported the removal of Mubarak, so we can’t support the resurrection of a military dictatorship. The cut-off by itself is not enough. It should be accompanied by a high-level conversation about Egypt’s future in accordance with the ideas of Egypt’s January 2011 revolution.

In Bahrain, we should make it very clear to [ruling family] Al-Khalifa that repression and exclusion of the Shia majority cannot continue.

Q: How much does the United States need Egypt, and how much does Egypt – especially the Egyptian army – need the United States?

A: Don’t forget that most of Egypt’s military aid is spent in this country for weapons systems. But that’s not the main reason for the aid. U.S. military aid to Egypt has been a tool of American national interests, which are to maintain the peace treaty with Israel, give us priority over the Suez Canal and flights over Egypt, etc, and help us with the war on terror, especially since 9/11.

There’s a side interest, too: Egypt’s role with the Palestinians and Hamas and the push for negotiations. The main interlocutor with Hamas over the years has been Egyptian intelligence folks like Omar Suleiman.

Q: So the United States stops the aid. Then what?

A: It’s a two-way street. Consider our national interest, but it’s also in Egypt’s interest to maintain the peace treaty. Even Morsi wasn’t going to touch it. And when there was terrorism in the Sinai, he worked with the Israelis in fighting it.

President Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009 was important because, at least rhetorically, it reflected the belief that the Islamic world is diverse and there is a distinction between the mainstream majority and the radical minority. We need to engage mainstream Muslims.

He believed in that and has been interested in engaging mainstream parties that have been elected through peaceful and fair processes. That’s why he accepted to work with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party after they were elected freely and fairly.

Q: There was an article in the New York Times on Jul. 10 suggesting that Morsi’s ouster was actually planned early on. What’s your take?

A: Morsi appointed [Abdul Fattah] al-Sisi himself, and al-Sisi turned against him. Elements of the old regime and the so-called Egyptian liberals, who never accepted the election results, plotted from day one to undo Morsi. That’s not to say that Morsi did not make mistakes. He reneged on most of his promises. He promised to include women and Egyptian minorities in the country’s decision-making processes, and he did not.

But the old guard and the military never forgave Morsi for finally removing Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. So even after Morsi’s hard work, he [Morsi] brought in al-Sisi. Al-Sisi pretended that he supported Morsi, but in fact he didn’t. There’s an “unholy alliance” between the military, the old regime and Egypt’s so-called liberals against Morsi. It’s also a fact that the revolution removed Mubarak but it did not dismantle the regime.

So after Morsi came to power, the ministries and their bureaucrats began to torpedo his programme. There were lines in Cairo after the flow of oil was restricted, and somehow they disappeared shortly after Morsi was toppled. Then al-Sisi called on people to come out into the streets to give him a “mandate” to act in the national interest and remove Morsi. In January 2011, people went into the streets to remove Mubarak, and in 2013, by al-Sisi’s request, they removed Morsi.

Very soon they are going to discover that this is a military dictatorship, and they’re going to go into the streets again.

Q: What do Saudi Arabia’s explicit calls to back up the Egyptian military financially in battling the Muslim Brotherhood say about U.S.-Saudi relations?

A: The Saudis are terrified of the Muslim Brotherhood as a reform movement. Now Saudi Arabia is also playing a dangerous game. A coalition of Arab autocrats is trying to stifle democracy because they do not like these revolutionary movements and are terrified of seeing them in their own countries.

That’s why the Saudis sent troops to Bahrain to control the Shia uprising, they said. When no one bought this argument, they said they were battling terrorism. And they say they are trying to kill it in Egypt, which is the main Arab country. If it’s killed there, they will feel more comfortable in their rule.

But this is not about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the Shia in Bahrain. It’s about reform movements and opposition to repressive regimes in those countries.

Q: What options does Obama have at this point?

A: The president had to face a new reality with the Arab Spring. He decided to go with the pro-democracy movements and that’s why he supported removing the dictators in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. He has been a bit silent on Bahrain, even though the American ambassador has spoken out.

I think the United States has got to create a clear balance between national security and our democratic values, and it has to communicate such a balance to the American people and to peoples in the region clearly and unequivocally.

We should still pursue our own interests, but they do not necessarily equate with dictatorial repressive regimes. In the long run, democratically elected governments, no matter how messy, will be more stable than these autocratic regimes.

Excerpt:

A street fight in Cairo over ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Aug 16 2013 (IPS)

As Egypt’s political crisis escalates, supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi accuse the local media – both state-run and private – of ignoring pro-Morsi demonstrations and covering up massive rights abuses.

“Egyptian television is desperately trying to cover up the murder of hundreds of unarmed protesters in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square,” leading Muslim Brotherhood member Qutb al-Arabi told IPS. “It’s even trying to portray slain demonstrators as ‘terrorists’.”

On Wednesday, Aug. 14, security forces in Cairo violently dispersed two six-week-old sit-ins staged by protesters demanding Morsi’s reinstatement. Using live ammunition and teargas, they eventually managed to clear both protest sites."After the coup, the state press immediately stopped publishing anything by Islamist-leaning writers, while all state-run television channels – and most private ones – stopped hosting Islamist-leaning guests." -- leading Muslim Brotherhood member Qutb al-Arabi

As of Thursday night, Aug. 15, Egypt’s health ministry put the number of those killed in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square – the larger of the two pro-Morsi sit-ins – at 288. The pro-Morsi National Alliance for the Defence of Legitimacy, however, puts the number in the thousands.

The veracity of either figure remains impossible to verify at this point.

At least four journalists – including a foreign cameraman for British Sky News – were killed in the violence.

The move ignited nationwide clashes between pro-Morsi demonstrators and security forces, the latter often in plainclothes. A number of police stations throughout the country were ransacked and torched.

The state press, meanwhile, along with most private Egyptian media outlets, praised the security operation against the “terrorists” who had “threatened national security.” Egyptian television showed weapons it claimed had been found at the two protest sites.

“Local media has consistently tried to paint peaceful demonstrators as violent terrorists without producing credible proof of its claims,” said al-Arabi. Reports of alleged weapons found at the two sit-ins, he asserted, had been fabricated by security forces in cooperation with a compliant media.

Since Morsi’s Jul. 3 ouster by the military, nationwide demonstrations demanding his reinstatement have remained largely peaceful in nature, with protesters frequently repeating the chant “Salmiya”, which means “Peaceful”.

Egyptian media has also tried play down the numbers of – or entirely ignore – the ongoing series of demonstrations by the ousted president’s supporters.

“Massive numbers of Egyptians are on the streets nationwide to demand the restoration of democratic legitimacy and to condemn Wednesday’s massacre,” al-Arabi said. “But exact numbers are impossible to gauge because pro-Morsi rallies, especially those outside Cairo, aren’t getting any media coverage.”

Hasan Ali, professor of media at Cairo University, supported al-Arabi’s view.

“Since Morsi’s ouster, the Egyptian media has scrupulously ignored pro-Morsi rallies and marches, regardless of their size, and focused exclusively on anti-Morsi activity,” he told IPS. “In this regard, it has lost any semblance of objectivity or professionalism.”

“Egyptian television is completely ignoring our demonstrations in hope of convincing the public there’s no popular opposition to the military coup,” Mahmoud Sallem, a 30-year-old engineer and pro-Morsi demonstrator told IPS from the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in shortly before its dispersal.

On Aug. 5, authorities banned Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakul Kerman – who had planned a solidarity visit to Rabaa al-Adawayia – from entering Egypt. The following day, she declared: “Only those that support Egypt’s military coup are given a voice in the media.”

According to the Brotherhood’s al-Arabi, who is also a member of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Journalism (responsible for the administration of the state press), said the ongoing news blackout on pro-Morsi activity was part of a larger media campaign against Egypt’s Islamist camp.

“After the coup, the state press immediately stopped publishing anything by Islamist-leaning writers, while all state-run television channels – and most private ones – stopped hosting Islamist-leaning guests,” he said.

Following Morsi’s ouster last month, authorities immediately closed all Islamist television channels, accusing them of “inciting violence”. Security forces also raided Al Jazeera’s Cairo offices, similarly accusing the channel of broadcasting “incitement”.

Prominent private channels known for pursuing a vehemently anti-Islamist line, were left untouched. Based in Egypt’s Media Production City on Cairo’s outskirts, these channels are owned largely by prominent businessmen known to have close associations with the ousted Hosni Mubarak regime.

“These channels, especially ONtv and CBC, are owned by the same forces that led the smear campaign against President Morsi before his ouster,” said al-Arabi. “They also played a central role in mobilising the public for the anti-Morsi rallies on Jun. 30 that preceded the coup.”

Early this month, dozens of pro-Morsi demonstrators were arrested when they attempted to stage a sit-in outside the MPC to demand a “purge” of the media.

Meanwhile, the small handful of non-Egyptian television channels covering the pro-Morsi demonstrations has been subject to frequent harassment and interference.

On Tuesday night, Aug. 13, the Gaza-based Al-Quds television channel reported that its Cairo office had been raided and an employee detained by Egyptian security forces. Al-Quds, one of very few channels covering pro-Morsi demonstrations, is run by Palestinian resistance group Hamas, an ideological offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Last year, Morsi – the Brotherhood’s candidate – became the country’s first-ever freely elected president. On Jul. 3 of this year, he was ousted by Egypt’s powerful military establishment after massive protests against his administration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Morsi’s detractors call his ouster a “second revolution” along the lines of Egypt’s January 2011 uprising that ended the Mubarak regime. Morsi’s supporters call it a “military coup” against Egypt’s elected president; a “counter-revolution” waged by Mubarak’s “deep state.”

Aside from Al-Quds, the few other channels covering pro-Morsi rallies – including Al Jazeera, Jordan-based Al-Yarmouk and London-based Al-Hiwar – have all seen their signals scrambled in recent weeks. The Al Jazeera channels that frequently cover pro-Morsi rallies, especially the network’s 24-hour live Egypt channel, Jazeera Mubasher, all remain subject to frequent interference.

The fight for the airwaves has taken on an international dimension.

Ali pointed to an ongoing “media war” between Al Jazeera, based in Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Qatar, and the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya, based in the staunchly anti-Brotherhood United Arab Emirates (UAE). On Wednesday, the UAE voiced its full support for the “sovereign measures” taken by Egyptian authorities against the pro-Morsi sit-ins.

Despite a government-declared state of emergency, the Brotherhood-led National Alliance for the Defence of Legitimacy has called for more demonstrations on Friday, Aug. 16.

Along with Morsi’s reinstatement, demonstrators demand the restoration of Egypt’s suspended constitution and dissolved Shura Council (upper house of parliament) and the prosecution of those responsible for killing peaceful protesters.

A street fight in Cairo over ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Aug 10 2013 (IPS)

Divisions are opening up within the Egyptian military over the controversial takeover from the ousted government of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, a senior party leader says.

“It is clear that there is disagreement within the armed forces, whose members have begun to realise the mistakes of Gen. Abdelfattah el-Sisi,” Dr Hamza Zoba’a, senior spokesperson for the Alhuria wal Adala (Freedom and Justice) party formed from the Muslim Brotherhood told IPS.

“El-Sisi seems to be losing support of his military partners as a result of his misconduct.”“The spectre of civil war is not far from Egypt."

Zoba’a says the army sits across a red line and should not be dragged into politics. “We do not wish to see a split within the army but we are sure that we will regain our rights.”

Party supporters will press for their rights peacefully, he said. “If the coup leaders want to kill more of us, we will not mind at all.” But while protesting peacefully, Zoba’a said, “the crimes against unarmed protesters who rejected the military coup will not be tolerated.”

Bloody clashes have become a daily scene in Egypt. Alhuria wal Adala members see themselves as victims of political genocide. “We are suffering from persecution now more than the blacks of America in the past,” Zoba’a said.

Alhuria wal Adala have meanwhile backed two political offers made to the military.

The first was launched by former prime minister Hisham Qandil proposing release of Morsi on one side, and an end to demonstrations on the other. The second was a five-step plan presented by Islamist thinker and former presidential candidate Mohamed Selim El-Awa.

The first of these steps would be for Morsi to delegate powers to a new interim cabinet. The cabinet would hold parliamentary elections within the following 60 days, leading to a proper cabinet. The fourth step would be a presidential election and finally then a review of the constitution.

The Brotherhood claims come across a deep political divide. Other leaders deny a split within the army, and see the change as a step towards democracy that would take Egypt past what were emerging as Morsi’s increasingly autocratic ways. “The Egyptian people rescued themselves at the proper time,” Abdel Ghaffar Shukr, head of the Socialist People’s Alliance Party tells IPS.

The solution to the crisis, he says, lies in implementation of the roadmap announced by the army, with a new constitution eliminating the articles that would turn Egypt into a religious state. “The Muslim Brotherhood should recognise the fait accompli. They isolate themselves and refuse to sit at the negotiations table and reconciliation sessions, then complain to the west of persecution.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, Shukr said, was “sacrificing their supporters” in armed clashes to gain the sympathy of the West. Party members are also attacking military installations and cutting off roads, he said.

“The spectre of civil war is not far from Egypt. If the security vacuum in Sinai is not handled wisely and quickly, terrorism hotbeds and Jihadists would move to Cairo, which would lead to infighting and public division.”

Human rights activist Amr Hamzawy says the Muslim Brotherhood failed to bring the transition to democracy in its year in power. It sought to control the state and to dominate political life, he said. “The Muslim Brotherhood group must move completely away from political action.”

The Brotherhood and its allies to the religious right were condemning human rights violations against them, but refusing to apologise for violations from their side. “They must submit the instigators of such violence to trial. It is the only way to make people trust their intentions.”

On the other hand, he said, the liberal parties were now turning a blind eye to human rights abuses against supporters of the ousted president. “Liberals seem tight-lipped in front of the fascist exclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood. The double standards of these political powers are now exposed. Liberals must restore their belief in democracy and cease immediately the absolute support of the army, so long as the Muslim Brotherhood leaders can acknowledge their mistakes.”

The killing of Muslim Brotherhood members has only strengthened their resolve to fight on. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Aug 4 2013 (IPS)

Egypt’s military chief, General Abdel Fatah El-Sissi, who in July announced on state television that the army had ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, has tried to wrap a veneer of democracy around actions that most others have condemned as a coup.

In the weeks since he deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, the 58-year-old head of the armed forces has repeatedly claimed that military intervention was necessary to resolve a debilitating political impasse and “save democracy” in Egypt.

Morsi’s popularity had plummeted in the year since his election, and the Islamist leader had ignored demands for national reconciliation and mass demonstrations calling for early elections, leaving the army with no choice but to remove him by force, the military has said.“They’re clamping down on Islamists, and once they are firmly in power they will go after anyone else who speaks out.”

Since ousting the country’s elected leader on Jul. 3, Egypt’s de facto strongman has suspended the constitution and installed an interim civilian government that has waged a vengeful campaign of reprisals against the former president and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. Dozens of the Islamic group’s leaders have been arrested and face an array of criminal charges that include inciting violence, thuggery, and “insulting the judiciary.”

Morsi has been held virtually incommunicado by the army since he was removed from power. Prosecutors have charged the former president with murder and espionage in relation to a 2011 prison break – charges that some rights researchers say are politically motivated.

“The military is out to discredit and destroy the Muslim Brotherhood using any means necessary,” says rights lawyer Negad El-Borai.

Television channels sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood have been taken off the air. Several foreign media outlets were warned against spreading “misinformation”, and prevented from covering pro-Morsi rallies.

Meanwhile, state-run media, which trumpeted the praises of Hosni Mubarak during his 30-year rule, has flooded newspapers and television channels with patriotic montages and adulation of the armed forces. Many private media outlets have joined the chorus.

Having come to power by undemocratic means, El-Sissi spent much of the last month rallying public support and legitimising the military’s role as the final arbiter of democracy in Egypt.

The general’s staunchest supporters – liberal and secular Egyptians virulently opposed to Brotherhood rule – claim the military “had to destroy democracy in order to save it.”  But critics have censured the army’s foray into civilian politics.

The military’s intervention prevented “any last minute efforts that would save face and pave the way for constructive change, such as holding a referendum over the presidency or the building of a national unity government, leading to early elections,” writes political analyst Marwan Bishara.

With Morsi’s removal, the military promised to end divisive politics and restore stability. Instead, it has thrust Egypt’s largest political group outside the political stream, and dangerously polarised the country.

After three weeks of unrest, El-Sissi called last week for the public to take to the streets as a show of support for his rule, and to give him political cover for a brutal crackdown on his opponents in the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I ask… all honest and trustworthy Egyptians to come out… to give me a mandate so that I can confront violence and potential terrorism,” he said in a nationally televised speech.

Days later, at least 80 of Morsi’s supporters were dead and hundreds more injured after riot police targeted a mass demonstration in Cairo using live ammunition. It was the second bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since Morsi was toppled.

The killings have only hardened the group’s resolve. Brotherhood members insist the protests will continue until the military-backed government is dissolved and Morsi’s democratically elected one is reinstated.

But the military shows no signs of backing down. Rather it is stepping up pressure on Morsi’s supporters, widening its arrests, and positioning for an even tougher crackdown on its opponents, including peaceful protesters.

Analysts say the threat of “terrorism” is being used as a pretext to restore controversial Mubarak-era institutions and practices.

Earlier this week, Egypt’s interior ministry announced that several notorious state security departments dismantled following the country’s 2011 uprising would be reinstated. The interim government has also signalled it could bring back the Emergency Law that was used to stifle political dissent for decades.

While the army enjoys widespread support among those who called for Morsi’s overthrow, many Egyptians bitterly recall the rights abuses and violent repression under 18 months of military rule that followed the overthrow of Mubarak in 2011.

One senior Brotherhood member warned: “They’re clamping down on Islamists, and once they are firmly in power they will go after anyone else who speaks out.”

Despite the death of Muslim Brotherhood members, others from the group say they will continue to hold peaceful protests until Morsi is reinstated as president. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

The ouster of Egypt’s first freely elected president by the military has led some to warn of a possible Algeria-style civil war. Local analysts, however, dismiss the likelihood of the “Algeria scenario” occurring in Egypt.

“For one, Egypt’s Islamist current is much less extremist than Algeria’s was when civil war erupted in that country,” Cairo-based political analyst Tawfiq Ghanem told IPS.

Numerous comparisons have been drawn with Algeria, where in 1992 the army took over after cancelling elections that Islamist parties were poised to win. The move triggered a decade of fierce civil war between various Islamist groups and the army-backed government, in which tens of thousands of people are thought to have been killed."Egypt's Islamist current is much less extremist than Algeria's was when civil war erupted in that country."

Ghanem, however, dismissed the possibility of such a scenario playing out in Egypt. “Egypt’s Islamist current, including both the Muslim Brotherhood and the allied Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya (which formally renounced violence in 1997), are much more moderate in outlook than their Algerian counterparts were,” he said.

“What’s more, Egypt’s main Islamist factions are considerably more disciplined and have more control over their members than Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front had at the time.”

Ghanem also pointed to Egyptians’ “historical antipathy to violence.”

The Algeria conflict brought numerous atrocities, including the gruesome mass murder of civilians in remote areas of the country – acts widely blamed at the time on breakaway militant Islamist factions. While the government had used such incidents to justify its oppressive policies, evidence later emerged suggesting possible government involvement in the crimes.

Ghanem did not rule out the possibility that “third parties” – not excluding foreign intelligence agencies – “might exploit the current tense situation in Egypt to stage terrorist acts in hopes driving the country towards more violence and chaos.”

Egypt’s remote Sinai Peninsula has witnessed almost daily attacks on army and police installations since Morsi’s ouster, in which at least 13 people have been killed (although reports emanating from Sinai remain difficult to confirm).

On Tuesday, Jul. 16, Israel – in line with the terms of the 1978 Camp David peace treaty – granted Egypt permission to deploy two additional infantry battalions to North Sinai with the ostensible aim of “combating terrorism”.

As a massive pro-Morsi sit-in in Cairo enters its third week and with more demonstrations planned for this Friday, the Muslim Brotherhood has reiterated its strategy of pursuing strictly peaceful means of protest.

“We will continue to resist this military coup with peaceful protests. We will not respond to any provocations,” the group said in a statement earlier this week. “We will escalate our resistance through peaceful pressure using all available means.”

Further heightening tensions, Egypt’s nebulous “Black Block” movement – a black-clad anti-Islamist group known for its readiness to adopt violent tactics – declared on Jul. 16 that it would forcibly disperse pro-Morsi rallies if security forces had failed to do so by the last day of Ramadan on Aug. 8.

According to Ghanem, whichever side ends up resorting to violence will lose the battle for public opinion. “Whoever is perceived as the aggressor will lose the sympathy of the Egyptian street – along with their short- to mid-term political future.”

Dozens have already been killed and hundreds injured since the controversial ouster of Mohamed Morsi, elected a year ago in Egypt’s first post-Mubarak presidential poll.

The clashes come amid massive pro-Morsi demonstrations, marches and sit-ins nationwide – some of them reportedly drawing hundreds of thousands – to demand the ousted president’s reinstatement.

The exact size of the rallies remains difficult to gauge due to a general media blackout on most pro-Morsi activity.

Following the army’s “removal” of Morsi, a host of Islamist leaders – especially those from the Muslim Brotherhood, the group from which Morsi hails – were rounded up by the authorities. The ousted president himself remains detained by the army at an undisclosed location.

Morsi’s opponents describe the Jun. 30 protests that led to his ouster as Egypt’s “second revolution,” reflective of the “popular will.” Morsi’s supporters see it as a military coup against a democratically elected president; a “counter-revolution” planned and executed largely by elements still loyal to the Mubarak-era ‘deep state’.

It is the second time since the January 2011 revolution that Egypt’s military has stepped in to reverse an Islamist electoral victory. Shortly before Morsi’s election, Egypt’s then-ruling Supreme Military Council dissolved the lower house of parliament – three-quarters of which was held by Islamist parties – based on a court ruling widely seen as politicised.

“First they dissolved the democratically elected lower house of parliament, then they mounted a military coup that kidnapped the elected president,” the Muslim Brotherhood declared in statement this week, “all without any reference to the people.”

On Jul. 16, Mansour appointed a government of “technocrats” drawn almost entirely from Egypt’s liberal opposition. Islamist parties and groups, meanwhile, led by the Brotherhood, refuse to engage in the army-backed political process, and insist Morsi is Egypt’s legitimate head of state.

For Israel, what must be exercised in the volatile struggle for power and democracy in Egypt are, above everything else, three follow-on principles: stability within its institutions, particularly the armed forces; security in the Sinai Peninsula and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which both border Israel; and peace with Israel itself.

Following the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prudently instructed Israeli officials to lock themselves in silent diplomacy, lest public statements, comments or debates be misinterpreted as meddling in internal Egyptian affairs.

Israeli security officials fear a weakening of Egyptian law and order could upset the relative quiet prevailing both in the Sinai desert and on the Gaza front.

When Morsi won the presidential race a year ago, Israelis assumed Cairo would quickly transform into some Sunni version of Tehran in cahoots with the Islamist resistance movement Hamas in Gaza.

In retrospect, Morsi was good for Israel, even better than Mubarak. He threatened to amend the 1979 peace treaty, but under United States pressure, respected it.

Refusing to have any dealings with Israel, he delegated his security prerogatives to the military establishment – which would eventually depose him.

In the meantime, the military, Israel’s sole contact with Cairo, managed the cold peace status quo between the two countries well. Security cooperation and coordination between the two neighbours was never so tight.

The Egyptian “big brother” presided over Palestinian brothers in Gaza. In some sort of post mortem acknowledgement, Israeli commentators are quick to point out that during Morsi’s one-year tenure, Gaza was quieter than ever.

The numbers speak for themselves. In the first six months following Operation Pillar of Defence (November 2012), only 24 rockets were launched on southern Israel, in sharp contrast with the 171 rockets that rained on Israel during the parallel period after Operation Cast Lead (December 2008-January 2009).

Morsi’s administration wasn’t just instrumental in brokering a ceasefire during Israel’s most recent onslaught on Gaza but also responsible for monitoring its implementation. With prodding from Egypt, Hamas’s own security units reined in cross-border attacks.

When Islamic Jihad guerrillas fired rockets on Israel’s Negev desert only a fortnight ago, Egypt, still under Morsi, effectively prevented a potential escalation.

Precisely because of his Islamic credentials, Morsi did what his anti-Islamic predecessor never dared do in Gaza.

The Egyptian military intensified its campaign against tunnels used by militants to infiltrate activists to Sinai and to smuggle weapons, food and other goods to the Palestinian territory otherwise asphyxiated under the double-barrelled Egyptian-Israeli blockade.

In parallel with the construction of the security wall by Israel, the Egyptian army made sustainable efforts in Sinai at both blocking African migrants and smugglers, and acting against global Jihadist and other Islamist militants.

In the midst of last week’s political climax, it was widely reported in the local media that Israel agreed to allow additional Egyptian forces police the area of northern Sinai which abuts the Gaza Strip.

According to the peace accord, any Egyptian military reinforcement in the demilitarised zone is conditional to Israel’s green light.

During last week’s turmoil, the only gunfire heard by Israeli soldiers patrolling the area adjacent to the Egyptian side of the border was that of celebrations at Morsi’s destitution.

But for the last couple of days, the Sinai has been witnessing a resurgence of incidents. On Friday, two days after Morsi’s removal from power, militants attacked a police station in Rafah as well as army checkpoints protecting the al-Arish airport, both near Gaza, resulting in six Egyptian soldiers killed in the separate incidents.

Consequently, the Rafah border crossing to and from Gaza is closed until further notice. That does not bode well for Hamas’s already embattled status.

On Sunday, for the first time in a year, an explosion hit the pipeline conveying natural gas to Jordan.

At this critical juncture, Israel’s supreme interest boils down to letting the regime – any regime, be it military or civilian, religious or secular – win over the hearts and minds of the Egyptian people so that stability is restored in Egypt, and beyond.

Demonstrators in Tahrir Square celebrating the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Jul 5 2013 (IPS)

In less than three days, Egypt moved from being under the rule of religious Islamists to being in different civilian hands as well as military ones. Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, was overthrown by the army on Wednesday after massive nationwide protests calling for his removal on the first anniversary of his election to power.

The powerful military issued a 48-hour deadline on Monday for Morsi to meet the “people’s demands”, a day after millions of protesters took to the streets across the troubled country calling for him to resign.

The position of the United States towards its allies in Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood) was critical. U.S. President Barack Obama declared that Washington would review the implications for U.S. foreign assistance programmes to Egypt, as an estimated 20 percent of Egypt’s military budget is provided by the United States.

Obama stopped short of calling the events a coup, however, while Egyptians see the change as a public movement that completes the revolution of Jan. 25, 2011, which was supported by the army.

Less than 15 hours after the minister of defence, Field Marshal Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, declared the road map for the transitional period, he announced that Egypt’s constitution had been suspended and gave power to the head of the Supreme Court, Adly Mansour, naming him interim president of the republic for six months, according to the 1971 constitution.

Several changes occurred in different sectors after Morsi’s fall. The stock exchange rose 7.5 percent, progress unseen since 2010. Financial shares did not decrease until the end of the day – also an unprecedented achievement in the history of the Egyptian stock exchange. Mohsen Adel, an economic analyst, told IPS he was expecting a continuous rise in banking sector indicators as well.

On a regional scale, the events of Jul. 3 helped Egypt to maintain its leading role in the Arab world and renew relations with a number of Arab countries.

Qatar, the strongest supporter of former president Morsi, announced on Al Jazeera television that it would support Egypt in its role as the leader of the Arab and Islamic world. The new emir of Qatar, Tamim ben Hamad, sent his congratulations to the new president and the Egyptian people.

Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced they would supply Egypt with funding and oil as the situation progresses. Relations between Egypt and the United Arab Emirates were tense after the UAE arrested a terrorist cell that included elements belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. The UAE government refused to release them, leading Muslim Brotherhood leaders to attack and insult UAE rulers.

On Jun. 17, Esam Al-Eryan, vice president of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, attacked the Emirati government at Al Shura council, asking the Egyptian ambassador to deliver the message, “Emirati people are ignorant with disgraceful behaviour, and the Iranian nuclear power coming to invade you and will turn your people to slaves.”

“The map of Egyptian relations with many neighbouring countries will witness a huge change in the near future,” Emad Gad, the director of al-Ahram Institute for Strategic and Political Studies, told IPS.

Gad asserted that relations with the United States might be tense in the current situation because of the country’s support for Morsi and the Brotherhood. Strategic relations between the two countries are deeply rooted, and if the United States continues pressuring Egypt by threatening to reduce or halt military aid, Egypt’s relations with Russia and China could shift as a result.

Such a change would be a major danger for the United States because Egypt’s source of military arms would shift to Russia, which would threaten both U.S. control over the Egyptian army and U.S. national security.

Egypt’s tensions with Syria will calm down, and Egypt may not make any hostile decisions against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad regime, Gad continued, though the new government would not be involved in supporting the current regime for fear it would undermine the Syrian people or induce the disapproval of the international community.

“Egypt and Russia will witness a new stage of successful cooperation in the near future, and I think there could be cooperation on  different levels between the two countries,” Gad said, due to Russia’s support for the Egyptian revolution since the events of Jun. 30.

“From the beginning of the deep changes in the Middle East we have declared support for lawful aspirations of the Egyptian people for a better life with freedom and democratic renewal. Russia’s position remains invariable and principled,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Egyptians saw the rapid arrest of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood not as a military coup but as precautionary steps to prevent the Brotherhood from directing their angry supporters in the streets towards bloody violence, especially since the country had witnessed acts of sabotage leading to dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries before the ouster of the former president.

In his last speech, Morsi tried to perform as a self-confident legal president, alluding that any move against him would be a coup against legitimacy.

Meanwhile Ahmed Badie, a spokesman for al-Watan Salafist Party, founded in 2013, told IPS, “You cannot shun the [Islamist] project because of the strength of their parties and the [Islamist] powers in the Egyptian street. It will be very hard to keep them away from the political scene for their large numbers and their political contribution.”

Badie believed that the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood was natural given its accumulated mistakes and refusal to listen to suggestions given to them by his party. The failure of the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood does not mean that other Islamist political parties would abandon the target of establishing an Islamic state but demonstrates how difficult such an achievement would be.

The roadmap currently being drawn by Islamist parties will be to ensure the safety of the members of the different parties. This will be trying to ensure that the police will not return to their previous violence or strict practises against Islamists, such as forcing them to shave their beards, Badie said.

He expressed fear that the new regime would forbid Islamists from creating political parties and thus hinder their Islamist project, noting that the arrest of several leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood was evident in trying to give the military coup a public cover.

Mokhtar Nouh, the former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood told IPS, “The [Islamist] project does not fall with groups or individuals; previously under Nasser, it was thought that it fell, but Omar el-Telmessany [the Muslim Brotherhood’s third Supreme Guide] managed to bring it back to the political scene since 1990, even under the exclusion of the Mubarak regime.”

Like Mubarak, like Morsi: the majority of Egyptians disapprove of President Morsi's performance, a new poll shows. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jul 2 2013 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama Monday called for both the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and opposition forces to compromise in the fast-developing political crisis.

Speaking at a press conference in Tanzania Monday, Obama appealed for all parties to “remain peaceful” and “show restraint” – messages that were echoed repeatedly by U.S. officials during the day, particularly after the Egyptian military issued a threat that it was prepared to intervene Wednesday if no settlement emerged by then."I don’t think the Americans have been on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood or the military; whoever can consolidate rule is who they will back." -- Joshua Stacher of Kent State University

“(W)e’re going to continue to work with all parties inside of Egypt to try to channel this through legal, legitimate processes,” Obama said during a joint appearance with Tanzania’s president, Jakay Kikwete.

“But I do think that if the situation is going to resolve itself for the benefit of Egypt over the long term, then all the parties there have to step back from maximalist positions,” he noted. “Democracies don’t work when everybody says it’s the other person’s fault, and I want 100 percent of what I want.”

The speed with which events have taken place appears to surprised officials here. They include the turnout of millions of people in the anti-government protests that took place Sunday across Egypt and the military’s thinly veiled threat Monday to “announce a road map for the future and the steps overseeing its implementation…” in 48 hours if Morsi failed “to meet the demands of the people”.

And while the administration appealed for compromise, it was careful to avoid taking sides at a critical moment in the fate of the Arab world’s most populous and potentially influential nation, according to a number of independent analysts.

“The U.S. needs to avoid any appearance of interfering in Egypt’s domestic politics right now,” said Thomas Caruthers, a democracy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) here. “The opposition, in particular, has been frustrated with the U.S. for months, feeling it’s on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

His assessment was echoed by Paul Pillar, a CIA veteran who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East from 2000 to 2005. “Any U.S. actions that could be perceived as interference in Egyptian politics would only result in antagonising one or another element in Egypt,” he told IPS in email exchange.

“The United States should be prepared to work together, in the interest of good Egyptian-U.S. relations, with whoever is in charge in Cairo whenever the dust settles,” he added.

Thus far, however, it seemed as if Obama’s efforts to appear neutral while appealing for compromise have not borne fruit. Both Morsi and the Brotherhood issued defiant statements Monday, although the president, who was elected one year ago in what were regarded as Egypt’s first free and fair elections, reportedly met with key generals late Monday.

“I think there will be a lot anxiety here about how the next 48 hours unfold,” said Stephen McInerney, the head of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). “People in the administration are very much hoping a coup can be avoided, and I would expect them to be encouraging Morsi to take the steps necessary to avoid one.”

“There could be very serious consequences if there is a military coup since it would be against an elected government, and there’s language in the (foreign aid) bill that bans the provision of assistance – military or economic – to (regimes) in which the military is used to overthrow elected governments,” he told IPS.

Washington currently provides about 1.6 billion dollars in aid to Egypt, 1.3 billion dollars of which goes to the military.

“It wouldn’t be surprising if (a coup) led to large-scale civil violence in Egypt,” McInerney added. “You could even see something like Algeria in the 1990s. The fact that things are happening so quickly limits a lot of options for the administration and may deny it from having the kind of influence it would like.”

Faced with the military’s threat, analysts here said it appeared that Morsi and the Brotherhood faced several choices: to resign or call early elections; negotiate a power-sharing agreement with the mainly secular opposition, specifically the National Salvation Front (NSF), which has been led by the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa; or forcing a showdown – and the attendant risks of violence – with both the military and opposition forces.

But events have been moving so quickly, according to Caruthers, it’s not clear that negotiating an accord with the NSF would be sufficient to calm the situation. “His best bet is to reach out to those people in the (NSF) and try to strike a deal with them, but I don’t know whether they can deliver the street.”

The massive demonstrations on Sunday were organised by Tamarod, a grassroots, civil-society movement of which the NSF was only one – albeit important – part. On Monday, Tamarod issued its own ultimatum calling on Morsi to resign by Tuesday afternoon or face a campaign of “complete civil disobedience”.

Monday’s coup threat by the military has effectively “terminated” Morsi’s presidency, according to Joshua Stacher, an Egypt expert at Kent State University in Ohio. He told IPS that ultimately Washington will choose “whatever political force can exercise authority in the country, maintain the state, and keep U.S. security interests afloat in the region.

“If it’s the military, so be it; if it’s an elected government, so be it – they don’t distinguish. I don’t think the Americans have been on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood or the military; whoever can consolidate rule is who they will back.

“At this point, [Washington’s] motives and ambitions are far too suspect by the population, so distance is probably the best course of action,” he said.

“If anything, they should call for the military to stay out of any transition and ensure that it would be civilian-led,” he told IPS. “Their main interest is calming the popular mobilisation and getting people off the streets. And they prefer the process to be electionised, because the more elections, the better the chances of neutralising popular mobilisation.”

Robert Springborg, an Egypt specialist at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, partially agreed with that analysis.

He complained that what Washington has done since the arrival of the “Arab Spring” was to show, through U.S. backing for both the military and then the Muslim Brotherhood and its failure to support the secularist opposition, that “we are more interested in American security concerns than in democracy in Egypt.”

That policy, he told IPS, has “now run up against the disenchanted Egypt where very significant numbers of people don’t want the Muslim Brotherhood in power.

“We entered the political balance putting our weight on the side of the military and the Brotherhood; we should now remove our weight from that balance and have an outcome that has all three political forces reach an agreement in which the interests of all three are protected through democracy, …and none of the three would be able to dominate the political system.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

As supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi prepare for a face-off on Sunday, a mushrooming problem for Egypt arises from the people not there – the tourists.

“The situation of tourism has become disastrous,” Moataz al-Sayed, head of the tour guides syndicate told IPS. A large number of hotels have closed down, he said. Accidents involving scores of boats have sent worrying signals to tourists and tour operators. In many popular resorts, the occupancy rate in hotels has dropped to less than 6 percent.

The U.S. warning over travel to Egypt only comes on top of the many worrying signals.

No signal is more worrying to tourism than the political one. A glaring example, Sayed said, was the appointment of Adel Mohamed al-Khayat, a former leader of Gamaa Islamiya and now a member of its political arm, as the new governor of Luxor.Among tour guides the unemployment rate has jumped to 90 percent, and the national loss to tourism has crossed 4 billion dollars.

The Islamist group Gamaa Islamiya is held responsible for the Temple of Hatshepsut massacre in 1997 in which 62 tourists were killed. The Gamaa Islamiya is classified by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group.

More than a million workers in tourism have quit, Sayed said. Among tour guides the unemployment rate has jumped to 90 percent, and the national loss to tourism has crossed 4 billion dollars.

In 2010, Egypt received 14.7 million tourists. It was at 18^th position in an index of countries receiving the most international tourists. It has now slipped to 32^nd position.

Sayed said President Mohammed Morsi is eradicating tourism through his policies. The Islamist president has made efforts to welcome tourists from Iran, but the number of those who have come from there is estimated to be less than a thousand.

Some Islamist hardliners argue that drawing economic benefits from tourism is against Islam. Tourism is a significant part of the economy, but the blow to the economy goes beyond tourism.

The economic policies of the ruling regime have pushed foreign investment away, and discouraged growth of local businesses, former minister for the economy Dr. Sultan Abu-Ali told IPS.

The Egyptian pound has lost 14 percent of its value since the 2011 uprising. Acute fuel shortage has led to long queues. Acute shortage of energy and soaring prices have led to massive public discontent with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a three-hour speech on Wednesday, Morsi blamed the opposition for the economic and political problems. His speech came with Egypt anticipating nationwide demonstrations on Jun. 30, with expectations of violent confrontations.

Abu-Ali said the economic situation in Egypt has become “weak, scary and pessimistic.” Continuing violence on the street and political instability have worsened the security situation, and this has hit the national economy.

He said that the growth indicator shows a 2 percent increase, which is weak compared to the population growth rate in the past two years estimated at 2.6 percent. This actually means a drop in growth per capita, he said.

“The deficit in the balance of payments has become unacceptable, in addition to the lack of export growth and radical increase of the domestic debt reaching 14 billion dollars,” Abu Ali said.

Egypt is close to an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a 4.8 billion dollar loan that would help fight the deepening economic crisis, but is still bristling over the conditions.

IMF intervention could help stabilise Egypt’s economy, and unlock up to 15 billion dollars of aid and investment to improve the dismal business climate.

Meanwhile the deficit in the state budget is growing and is expected by the government to reach 220 billion Egyptian pounds (31.4 billion dollars) by the end of the current fiscal year.

The pressure on the local currency continues and threatens the exchange rate of the Egyptian pound against the dollar. This could have huge impact in a country that imports about 60 percent of its needs. The impact of this on inflation is expected to increase further.

Islamist President Mohamed Morsi’s first turbulent year in office will end with two massive rallies in Cairo, both expected to draw hundreds of thousands: one by his mostly Islamist supporters and another by secular opposition forces who demand he step down.

For the last three months, Cairo has been bracing for massive opposition demonstrations to demand the President’s resignation and early elections. Protest calls have been spearheaded by Egypt’s anti-Morsi Tamarrud (‘Rebel’) signature drive, which claims to have gathered 15 million citizens’ endorsements in support of its demands.

Opposition forces demanding Morsi’s ouster under Egypt’s National Salvation Front (NSF) the opposition umbrella group, argue that Morsi has failed during his one year in office to improve the lives of Egyptians or realise popular demands emanating from Egypt’s 2011 revolution.

Endorsed by almost all of Egypt’s non-Islamist political groups – and heavily promoted on much of Egypt’s anti-Islamist privately-owned media – Sunday’s demonstrations are expected to witness a massive turnout."Morsi shouldn't have waited...until people were hitting the streets to demand his departure."

“On Jun. 30 we will converge in the millions on Tahrir Square and the presidential palace in Cairo, where we will remain until Morsi steps down,” Mahmoud Badr, founder and leading member of the ‘Rebel’ campaign told IPS.

Egypt’s first-ever freely elected head of state, however, will not be facing his many opponents alone on Sunday. On Friday (Jun. 28), Morsi’s supporters began to arrive in the thousands in Cairo’s Nasr City district in a show of support for the embattled president and his “democratic legitimacy.”

Morsi narrowly defeated Ahmed Shafiq, ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, in 2012 presidential polls that were widely regarded as free and fair. Morsi’s supporters, led by the Muslim Brotherhood group from whose ranks he hails, say that calls for Morsi’s departure are undemocratic, and accuse Egypt’s secular opposition of failing to respect the results of the ballot box.

Friday’s planned pro-Morsi demonstrations, which have been endorsed by most Islamist parties and groups, will be the second such show of strength within one week. Last Friday (Jun. 21) saw hundreds of thousands converge on the same location both to express support for the president and to “say no to violence.”

With both sides now vowing to stage open-ended sit-ins, the tense standoff has prompted widespread fears of violence between the two rival camps. This week has already seen clashes in several Egyptian provinces – including Daqahliya, Sharqiya and Zagazig – between the president’s supporters and opponents, which have left at least three people dead and scores injured.

On Thursday (Jun. 27) Hasan Shefai, senior advisor to the Grand Sheikh of Egypt’s Al-Azhar (the highest seat of learning in the Sunni-Muslim world), warned of the danger of violent confrontations nationwide.

He went on to urge both of Egypt’s political camps to “show restraint or else risk civil war.”

In a statement issued the same day, Al-Azhar called for the formation of a “national reconciliation council” – consisting of representatives of all political currents – tasked with resolving the political crisis through dialogue.

Earlier in the week, defence minister Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi issued similar calls for reconciliation, warning that Egypt’s armed forces would not allow the country to “fall into a dark tunnel of civil unrest and killing, sectarianism and the collapse of state institutions.”

His comments prompted a flurry of media speculation about the possible return of the military to Egypt’s domestic political arena in the event that Sunday’s planned protests forced Morsi to relinquish authority.

A presidential spokesman, however, quickly dismissed the idea, stressing that the military’s role was merely to protect Egypt’s borders and secure vital state institutions.

“There is a president ruling the country democratically, through democratic elections,” he said. “There is no political role for the army.”

He added: “President Morsi represents the commander-in-chief of the military; anything that happens within the army is coordinated through him.”

Since Tuesday (Jun. 25), military forces have been deploying nationwide in anticipation of the upcoming wave of demonstrations.

Anti-Morsi protesters themselves appear divided on what role the military should play. On Wednesday, one group of anti-Morsi demonstrators in Tahrir Square waved banners bearing pro-army slogans while another chanted in unison, “No to military rule.”

From Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011 until Morsi’s assumption of the presidency a year ago, Egypt’s Supreme Military Council held executive authority. During its one-and-a-half-year stint in power, the military was frequently accused by activists and revolutionary groups of committing gross rights violations.

In a highly anticipated address to the nation on Wednesday night (Jun. 26), Morsi reiterated calls for “national reconciliation,” but otherwise barely mentioned the imminent rallies. In a bid to assuage his critics, he also announced the formation of a committee tasked with hearing opposition proposals for constitutional changes.

Opposition leaders, however, rejected Morsi’s overtures, describing them as “too late.”

“The opposition has been demanding constitutional change since last year,” said the ‘Rebel’ campaign’s Badr. “Morsi shouldn’t have waited to make this concession until people were hitting the streets to demand his departure.”

Badr went on to predict that, like Mubarak in his final days in power, Morsi would deliver “three more speeches” before announcing his decision to step down.

The opposition NSF likewise rejected the president’s proposition. “Morsi’s speech only deepens our resolve to press for early presidential elections in order to achieve the aims of the revolution,” it declared in a statement.

Morsi supporters, calling his democratic legitimacy a “red line”, have vowed to remain in the area indefinitely to protect the nearby presidential palace from anti-Morsi demonstrators on Sunday.

Thousands of opposition protesters, meanwhile, remain arrayed in Tahrir Square and outside the Egyptian Defence Ministry to demand Morsi’s ouster.

“This is a recipe for disaster; neither side is prepared to give way,” 52-year-old government employee Magdi Yusuf – who plans to keep his distance from both demonstrations – told IPS.

Echoing a fear common to most Cairo residents, he added, “Violence appears unavoidable at this point.”

In the coastal city Alexandria, clashes erupted on Friday afternoon between rival demonstrators, some reportedly armed with shotguns.

Supporters of President Morsi stage a rally last November outside Egypt's High Constitutional Court against alleged judicial corruption. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Jun 10 2013 (IPS)

The post-revolution struggle between Egypt’s judiciary and President Mohammed Morsi, the country’s first Islamist head of state, finally seems to be coming to a head over controversial draft legislation regulating judicial authority.

The most contentious article of the draft judicial authority law being debated by the Shura Council (the upper house of Egypt’s parliament, currently endowed with legislative powers) is one reducing the official retirement age for judges from 70 years to 60.

If passed, the law, tabled by the moderate-Islamist Wasat Party and endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood, would effectively force thousands of Egyptian judges into retirement.

Opponents of the draft, which include the majority of judges and much of Egypt’s secular opposition, decry the legislation as a naked power grab by the Brotherhood – the group from which Morsi hails – aimed at stocking Egyptian courts with elements loyal to the group.

Prominent leftist opposition figure Hamdeen Sabbahi, who lost to Morsi in Egypt’s first-ever free presidential election almost one year ago, recently declared that the law’s passage would lead to a “massacre” of the nation’s judges.

“There is a clear intention by the Muslim Brotherhood to dominate Egypt’s judicial institutions, thus making it almost impossible to provide judicial oversight of future elections,” Sabbahi said last month while taking part in a protest outside the Shura Council’s Cairo headquarters."There is a clear intention by the Muslim Brotherhood to dominate Egypt's judicial institutions."
-- Hamdeen Sabbahi

He asserted that parliament’s upper house, which holds legislative power until the election of a new lower house (the date for which remains in legal limbo), “does not have the right to legislate since it was elected by only seven percent of the voting public”.

Gaber Gad Nassar, constitutional law professor at Cairo University, voiced similar sentiments.

“This draft legislation, which would effectively see the forced retirement of some 8,000 serving judges, constitutes an attempt by the Brotherhood and its allies to take over the judiciary,” Nassar told IPS.

He claimed that the Brotherhood intended “to appoint their own judges so they will be able to rig upcoming parliamentary elections in their favour”.

Meanwhile, supporters of the draft legislation – including the presidency, the Muslim Brotherhood and the latter’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) – strenuously deny the allegations, saying the law simply aims to purge the judiciary of elements loyal to the ousted Mubarak regime.

Walid Shirabi, spokesmen for the “Judges for Egypt” movement (comprised of judges and judicial officials who support the Brotherhood and the presidency), described the opposition’s claims that the law had been tailored to fill judicial institutions with pro-Brotherhood judges as “illogical”.

“According to the constitution, Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) is responsible for the appointment of judges [who must then be approved by the president],” Shirabi told IPS. “And the SJC does not contain a single Muslim Brotherhood member.”

The 15-member SJC represents the country’s highest judicial authority.

Shirabi refuted claims that the abrupt retirement of thousands of judges would adversely affect the functioning of Egypt’s judiciary, already bogged down with literally millions of outstanding legal cases across the country’s expansive court system.

“Rather, it will expedite the judiciary’s work by seeing the appointment of fresh cadres of judges,” he said.

Shirabi also challenged claims by judges and opposition figures that the Shura Council lacked legitimate authority to adopt new legislation.

“Egypt’s recently-approved constitution gives the Shura Council the right to legislate until the election of a new lower house,” he said. “Any assertions otherwise are aimed at maintaining the corruption of the Mubarak regime, which raised the judges’ retirement age from 60 to 70 with the express purpose of keeping pro-regime judges in service.”

The post-revolution row between the judiciary and Egypt’s Islamist forces began almost exactly one year ago, when the High Constitutional Court (HCC) declared the law governing Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary polls – held in late 2011 and early 2012 – unconstitutional.

The following day, Egypt’s then-ruling Supreme Military Council ordered the dissolution of the newly-elected People’s Assembly (parliament’s lower house), half the seats of which had been won by the Brotherhood’s FJP while another quarter had gone to other Islamist parties.

Although many of the Brotherhood’s political rivals had applauded the dissolution of the Islamist-dominated parliament, legal experts questioned the legitimacy of the HCC ruling on which the move had been based.

“Only one third of the seats in parliament – those reserved for independents – were constitutionally questionable,” Atef al-Banna, constitutional law professor at Cairo University, told IPS at the time. “But the HCC failed to provide a legal rationale for its call to dissolve the entire assembly.”

Speaking in April, Pakinam al-Sharqawi, Morsi’s aide for political affairs, charged the judiciary with unfairly interfering in Egyptian domestic politics “since the dissolution of the People’s Assembly last year” – a move she described as “dangerous and unprecedented”.

“Never before has a court been allowed to effectively dissolve a sitting parliament that had been democratically elected by 30 million citizens,” she asserted.

The past year has seen several more clashes in the on-going confrontation between judiciary and presidency, including an unsuccessful attempt by the latter to reinstate the dissolved People’s Assembly, a successful attempt to appoint a new prosecutor-general, and an executive decree temporarily shielding presidential decisions from judicial oversight.

In the meantime, Shirabi contends, a number of leading judicial officials have “continued to interfere in other branches of government by overturning executive orders, working for the dissolution of democratically elected bodies, and otherwise hindering the functioning of the state”.

As it now stands, the Brotherhood’s FJP, which enjoys a considerable majority in the Shura Council, appears intent on seeing the draft law passed, while spokesmen for the judiciary demand that any debate of the bill be postponed until the election of a new lower house.

Last week, to the fury of many judges and opposition figures, the FJP-led Shura Council referred the draft law to its legislative affairs committee for discussion. It remains unclear, however, when – or if – the council will put it to a vote.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian Judges Club, an unofficial association of judicial officials known for their antipathy towards Morsi, has threatened to suspend all courtroom activity nationwide in the event that the bill becomes law.

Critics of a proposed law say it could harm women's rights and other groups' ability to operate (file photo). Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, May 27 2013 (IPS)

A controversial bill backed by Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood and submitted to the Islamist-dominated legislature surpasses previous laws used to repress Egyptian civil society, rights watchdogs say.

The legislation would allow the government to intervene in the internal governance and activities of civil society organisations and to control all funding.

If enacted, some critics say, Egypt’s 41,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) would become part of the state apparatus.

“If this bill passes, all of Egypt’s NGOs would essentially work under the government,” Hafez Abu Seada, chairman of the non-profit Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), told IPS. “We would operate not as independents, but as agents for the state.”

State interference in NGO affairs is nothing new, Abu Seada added. The authoritarian regime of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak used broad and repressive legislation to discourage civil society organisations from exposing electoral fraud, rights abuses and torture."If this bill passes, all of Egypt's NGOs would essentially work under the government."
-- Hafez Abu Seada,

In 2002, the government issued Law 84, which has been the target of continual criticism for the control it gives the state over NGO establishment and activity.

The National Salvation Front (NSF), Egypt’s main opposition bloc, has accused the Islamist government of President Mohamed Morsi of attempting to impose even tighter restrictions on civil society in a bid to silence those who would hold it accountable.

The bill “seeks to reproduce a police state by putting into law the role of security bodies in overseeing the work of civil society groups”, the NSF said in a statement. “[Its] main goal is to stop human rights organisations from pursuing officials for human rights abuses under President Morsi and his security apparatuses.”

Mokhtar El-Ashry, head of the legal committee of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, has accused opposition forces of failing to read or understand the NGO draft law. He said the bill aims to facilitate the work of civil society groups and “frees them of restrictions”.

El-Ashry’s argument is a tough sell. Critics say the draft treats NGOs as state institutions and their directors and staff as civil servants. The bill mandates that the Egyptian government intervene in nearly every detail of NGO affairs, from the composition and election of board members to their competencies and the organisation’s choice of affiliation, funding and activities.

“This is completely contrary to what an NGO is supposed to be,” one programme manager of a non-profit organisation that works in the education sector told IPS on condition of anonymity. “If it passes, we might as well ask Mr. Morsi how he would like us to implement his policies.”

More alarming, say rights groups, is that the law stipulates bimonthly administrative and financial inspections of civil society organisations and opens visitor logs and details of private meetings to the scrutiny of security agencies. The groups see this as an imminent threat to the confidentiality of political dissidents, victims of abuse, and whistleblowers.

One bright spot, Abu Seada conceded, is that the bill provides a process for registering NGOs.

Under Mubarak, NGOs faced significant hurdles in registering their organisations, and many operated in Egypt without licenses – a situation the government tolerated, as the threat of closure kept them wary of crossing red lines.

The draft law would establish a nine-member steering committee to approve the registration of civil society groups. The interagency panel is authorised to reject the registration of any NGO it deems inconsistent with the “needs” of Egyptian society – a vague term that critics say could be used, for example, to exclude groups that investigate torture or advocate women’s rights.

The steering committee will have absolute power to approve or reject any foreign or domestic funding for local NGOs.

Closing the spigot of foreign funding is one technique successive governments have used to pressure NGOs that stray into sensitive areas, explained the director of a Cairo-based development organisation, who did not want his name used.

“Charities have local sources of funding, but NGOs that engage in democracy building or human rights must rely almost entirely on foreign funding and without it must scale back their activities or shut down,” the director said.

Nearly all foreign funding has been shut off since 2011, when government officials under the military junta launched a crackdown on civil society organisations.

“Every funding request in the last year and a half has been refused,” says EOHR’s Abu Seada. “We’ve had to reduce our staff from 30 to 12 and close many of our projects. Most of the other NGOs in Egypt are facing similar problems.”

Negad El-Borai, an attorney for democracy and human rights activists, said the draft law’s articles are a minefield of obstacles and pretexts to deny funding.

NGOs that attempt to engage in activities that diverge from state policies or expose government abuses would quickly find themselves bogged down in bureaucracy and court cases, he added.

“They can deny funding or [close] NGOs for any number of reasons,” El-Borai told IPS. “And if it goes to court…we must stop all activities until we get a verdict, and that will take at least one or two years.”

The final draft of the Brotherhood-backed law has been submitted to the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament that currently holds legislative powers. Local and international rights groups fear the Islamist-stacked legislative body will rubber-stamp it into law.

“That would be a disaster [for civil society],” said El-Borai. “We managed to lobby hard for changes, but it is still far short of international standards.”

Egyptians queue for subsidised bread amid steadily rising commodity prices. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, May 10 2013 (IPS)

Regardless of who is responsible for Egypt’s current political impasse – be it the administration of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi or an aggressive secular opposition – local experts are certain of at least one fact: Egypt’s dire economic circumstances will not improve without political stability.

“Egypt’s economic situation is intrinsically tied to the political one,” economic analyst Hamdi Abdel-Azim told IPS. “Economic stability cannot be achieved amid the turbulence and uncertainty, which for months has characterised Egypt’s political scene.”

Upon assuming the presidency last year, Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected head of state, inherited a host of long-term economic challenges from his predecessor, ousted president Hosni Mubarak.

Chronically high rates of poverty and unemployment, deteriorating public services and infrastructure, an ever-widening state budget deficit, high foreign debt and mounting disparities between rich and poor are just a few of the issues that Mubarak’s regime failed to solve after three decades in power.

Abdel-Azim cited “mismanagement and corruption” as part of the reason for these problems. Still, the country’s economic position “has worsened considerably” in the nine months since Morsi, who hails from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, took highest office, he added.

Within this period, according to Abdel-Azim, the Egyptian pound has declined in value against the dollar, while Egypt’s foreign currency reserves have fallen considerably. Domestic debt has also risen to roughly 187 billion U.S. dollars. “Numerous local companies have been forced out of business, swelling the ranks of the unemployed,” the analyst added.

Egypt’s tourism sector, meanwhile, long considered one of the country’s chief sources of foreign currency, continues to reel from the cumulative effects of long-term political instability.

Since May 2011, Egypt has been negotiating a 4.8-billion-dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund. The proposed loan, however, will be contingent upon a raft of difficult economic reforms, including major subsidy reductions and tax increases.

Egypt’s political opposition, led by the National Salvation Front (NSF), an umbrella grouping of various opposition parties and movements, has been quick to blame President Morsi for the country’s ongoing economic woes."Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are responsible for Egypt's deteriorating economy."
--Amr Hamzawy

“Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are responsible for Egypt’s deteriorating economy,” Amr Hamzawy, former MP and a leading NSF member, said in April. “The government is pushing through economic laws without consulting other political forces, while Egypt’s poor are paying the price for the Morsi administration’s failures.”

Some elements of the opposition have limited their demands to a handful of constitutional changes, a cabinet reshuffle and the dismissal of Egypt’s Morsi-appointed prosecutor-general. Others, however, have gone so far as to demand that Morsi step down in advance of snap presidential elections.

Within the last five months, the NSF-led opposition has organised numerous demonstrations and marches, many of which have ended in violence. The Muslim Brotherhood, for its part, blames Egypt’s faltering economy on the opposition’s more extremist elements, whose endless calls for strikes and protests have resulted only in further destabilisation.

“The main reason for worsening economic conditions is the insistence by the opposition – especially the NSF – on inflaming the political situation by encouraging violent demonstrations, thus further destabilising the country,” Murad Ali, spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, told IPS.

“In his trips abroad, President Morsi has tried to attract foreign investment to Egypt in hopes of bolstering the economy and realising longstanding demands for social justice,” Ali added. “But these efforts have largely failed to bear fruit due to perpetual domestic political instability, which has been consistently encouraged by the opposition.”

Local captains of industry, meanwhile, warn that Egypt’s economic prospects will remain dim indeed if the political situation does not settle down.

“Failure to resolve the current political impasse will eventually lead to the destruction of Egypt’s tourism industry,” Ilaham al-Zayat, head of the Union of Egyptian Chambers of Tourism, told IPS. “The steadily declining tourist numbers that Egypt has suffered since the [2011] revolution will eventually drive local tourism companies out of business.”

“Without a degree of long-term political stability,” he added, “tourist numbers will never return to pre-revolution levels.”

Gamal Eddin Bayoumi, secretary-general of the Cairo-based Union of Arab Investors, agreed with al-Zayat’s general assertion.

“Egypt’s economic deterioration cannot be stopped without an end of the current state of political uncertainty,” Bayoumi told IPS. “No investor will put his money in a country perceived to be unstable or which lacks state institutions that can guarantee the future of his investments.”

Abdel-Azim blames the ongoing political crisis on both the presidency and the secular opposition.

“The Morsi administration has taken a number of poor decisions without considering their long-term effects, while the president’s economic advisors have lacked adequate qualifications,” he said. “The opposition, meanwhile, doesn’t want to accept the results of Egypt’s first democratic presidential elections, which brought Morsi to power.”

On May 7, in an effort to placate critics, Morsi replaced nine government ministers, including those responsible for sensitive economic portfolios – finance, investment, planning and international cooperation, petroleum and agriculture. Notably, most new cabinet appointees are either Muslim Brotherhood members or sympathisers.

Opposition spokesmen blasted Tuesday’s cabinet reshuffle. “These changes don’t amount to anything,” Amr Moussa, a leading NSF member and head of the liberal Conference Party, said. “Another cabinet shake-up will be necessary before long.”

Even though the reshuffle included the heads of strategic economy-related ministries, “the changes fail to meet opposition demands for a more inclusive government,” said Abdel-Azim. “This will only make resolution of Egypt’s dire economic problems all the more difficult.”

Demonstrators in Cairo hold up used tear gas shells. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Barbara Slavin
WASHINGTON, Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

It’s no wonder that Egypt has floundered in its efforts to create a more democratic system from the ruins of the Mubarak regime.

A sweeping new history of Middle Eastern political activists shows that the search for justice has deep roots in the region but has often been thwarted by the intervention of foreign powers.

The Arab Spring revolts of 2011 were “both improbable and long in the making,” writes Elizabeth Thompson in her book, “Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East.”

The young people who massed in Tahrir Square and overturned the U.S.-backed Mubarak dictatorship were the heirs of Col. Ahmad Urabi, whose peasant army was crushed in 1882 by British troops. The beneficiaries of 2011 so far, however, are the heirs of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose concept of “justice” appears to restrict the rights of women, religious minorities and secular groups.

On Tuesday, President Mohamed Morsi’s own legal adviser resigned to protest a law that would force the retirement of more than 3,000 judges – Mubarak appointees that have sought to blunt the rising influence of Islamist politicians such as Morsi. The United States, while criticising human rights abuses under the new regime, appears to be placing a higher priority on Egypt maintaining its peace treaty with Israel.

If, as President Barack Obama likes to say – quoting Martin Luther King – “the arc of history bends toward justice” – in the Middle East, that arc has been exceedingly long.

The breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I interrupted movements for constitutional government and tainted liberalism by association with Western colonialism. Military autocrats, nationalists and Islamic groups took their place.

Thompson, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Virginia, structures her book by compiling mini-biographies of strivers for justice beginning with an early Ottoman bureaucrat, Mustafa Ali, who wrote a critique of corruption in Egypt, and ending with Wael Ghonim.

Ghonim, a Google executive, created a Facebook page devoted to a young Egyptian beaten to death in 2010 by police that attracted 300,000 followers – many of whom later gathered in Tahrir Square.

Others profiled in the book include Halide Edib, known as Turkey’s “Joan of Arc,” who first supported, then opposed Kemal Ataturk’s dictatorship; Yusuf Salman Yusuf or “Comrade Fahd,” whose Iraqi Communist Party was the largest and most inclusive political movement in modern Iraqi history; and Ali Shariati, the Iranian Islamic Socialist whose ideals were hijacked by the clerical regime after the 1979 revolution.

At a book launch Tuesday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Thompson was asked by IPS if her book was largely a “history of losers” and whether there was any way to break the dismal cycle of one step forward, two steps back toward effective, representative government in the Middle East.

She compared recent revolts in the region to the 1848 revolutions in Europe that failed at the time but were key precursors of democratic movements to follow.

“You have to think long term,” she said. The optimistic interpretation of the Arab Spring is that it has led to “a fundamental shift in the political culture that will bear fruit decades later.”

She conceded that the current picture in Egypt is not a happy one.

Women, who in 2011 figured prominently in the overthrow of Mubarak, are now afraid to go to Tahrir Square for fear of being molested by thugs. Morsi, the president who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, “is in a defensive posture,” Thompson said, “playing to the Salafist right.” Meanwhile, “the poor and the Copts are losing out.”

However, the Egyptian press has never been so free and Middle Easterners in general are more exposed to information than at any time in their history, she said. “People are not sealed off like they were in Syria in 1989” when state-run media omitted news that the Berlin Wall had fallen, she said.

Still, time and again in the last 150 years, the desire for security and independence from foreign powers has trumped liberal conceptions of human rights.

Thompson’s book contains many tantalising “What ifs” often linked to foreign machinations.

What if France had permitted Syria to retain an independent constitutional monarchy under King Feisal after World War I? French troops instead occupied the country under an internationally blessed mandate that lasted until after World War II.

What if Akram al-Hourani, leader of the Arab Socialist Party in Syria after independence, had not agreed to union with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt in 1958? Nasser proceeded to outlaw Syrian political parties and in 1963, the Baath party staged a coup and installed a regime that is fighting for its existence today.

The book also sheds light on important figures such as the Palestinian Salah Khalaf, Yasser Arafat’s number two who was known as Abu Iyad. Assassinated in 1991 by the rejectionist Abu Nidal faction, Iyad had made the transition from terrorist mastermind to supporter of the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Arafat, who used to rely on Khalaf’s advice, might have steered his movement more wisely in his later years if he had not lost Abu Iyad as well as PLO military commander, Abu Jihad, who was killed by Israelis in 1988.

If, as Thompson concludes, the Arab Spring “has reprised the struggle interrupted by the World Wars and the Cold War,” it is a struggle that is still far from being won.

Egyptian protesters demonstrate against President Morsi and the new draft constitution outside the presidential palace in Cairo. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Apr 13 2013 (IPS)

Women and minorities should be a top priority in U.S. policy toward Egypt and its Muslim Brotherhood government leaders, experts here said on Friday, despite increasingly unfavourable public views towards Egypt.

While Egypt is a critical and longtime U.S. ally, the June 2012 election that resulted in the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory has severely strained those ties. The situation has been further complicated by a massive economic crisis that has roiled Cairo since the uprisings of the Arab Spring two years ago.

Even as Egyptian officials are currently engaged in talks for a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – an institution in which the U.S. has an effective veto – that could be upwards of five billion dollars, conservatives in the U.S. Congress have recently refused to offer their Egyptian counterparts more than token foreign assistance.

“The Egyptians are so firmly a part of the American patronage network that Egypt’s destiny will stay irrevocably linked to the United States, and will thus remain a client state of the U.S.,” Joshua Stacher, a fellow at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“This limits to a great extent where it can turn for money, and I think they are content to remain part of this U.S. constellation. This is really a problem of the IMF serving as an auxiliary of U.S. power rather than an international financial institution that is neutral and providing balance of payment policy suggestions for member countries.”

Still, political disagreements here in Washington over how to engage with Egypt have not yet been cleared up.

“There is a fundamental tension between U.S. values and U.S. interests in our policy toward Egypt, whether it be about cooperation on regional issues, the rights of women, protest laws, freedom of expression or sectarian rhetoric on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Michael Wahid Hanna, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a Washington think tank, said Friday.

“These issues aren’t just about values anymore. An embargo is off the table so it’s not just about affording support to an elected government that is polarising and we see autocratic tendencies coming to the fore that are destabilising. Before we can even talk about values, we must have a stable Egypt – and not just repressive stability.”

Hanna said there is no option of pulling back U.S. support, noting that the situation in Egypt was not like that in Syria. Yet compounding the political calculations, a public poll released last month found that U.S. attitudes toward Egypt have plummeted in recent years.

“Throughout the last two decades, Egypt’s favourability ratings in the U.S. were in the 60 percent range,” James Zogby, Director of Zogby Research Services, a Washington opinion research company, said Friday.

“In 2011 – at the beginning of the demonstrations against [former President Hosni] Mubarak, the numbers dropped down to 40 percent … In 2012, they dropped to just 30 percent. Americans don’t know Egypt, and their previously ‘soft’ associations of the country – like for instance, the pyramids –have now been replaced by its volatility.”

Budget crisis

Intensifying Egypt’s foreign relations issues with the United States, the Morsi government must still devise an economic plan to convince the IMF to hand over a pending 4.8-billion-dollar loan, a figure recent reports suggest could go up. The Egyptian government has said it hopes to reach a final agreement with the IMF within the next two weeks, while the government of Qatar has made repeated emergency cash infusions into Egyptian coffers.

The stakes are high for the Muslim Brotherhood-led administration. Foreign currency reserves are critically low, reportedly now covering less than three months of imports, and the local currency has lost a tenth of its value just since the start of the year.

With an IMF team currently in Cairo, Egyptian officials must convince the Washington-based fund that it will make reforms to boost growth and curb an unaffordable budget deficit. Economists say the situation will eventually require unpopular tax hikes and politically risky cuts to the current system of state subsidies for fuel and bread.

“The subsidies are definitely an important component of the economic problems facing Egypt, and it’s an important issue in a lot of low-income Egyptian households,” Hesham Sallam, co-editor of Jadaliyya, an online political magazine, told IPS.

“Yet the government has not shown publicly any intention of finding a fair way of distributing the costs, of dealing with the deficit, of easing pressure on the underprivileged in an open and fair manner.”

Despite being the world’s largest wheat importer, Egypt has been forced to cut back on these imports. Yet doing so is running down grain reserves and will almost certainly exacerbate its struggle to feed the country’s 84 million people.

Sallam also warns that the IMF negotiations have been notably opaque, leading to rising frustration.

“The terms of the loan do not have much transparency, and those terms are going to be very important in determining the orientation of the Egyptian economy,” he said.

“Social justice has been one of the main slogans of the revolution, but the decisions that will decide the future of the Egyptian economy are mainly taking place behind closed doors, with very little engagement with the Egyptian people or the stakeholders.”

Sphere of influence

The threat of future instability versus the current perception of the Muslim Brotherhood has defined much of the policy debate here in Washington.

Particularly conservative members of Congress have expressed discomfort sending aid to the Muslim Brotherhood government, with some suggesting not only a reduction but an outright discontinuation of U.S. aid to Egypt.

“Congress is trying to score some cheap political points on this, but the Defence Department, State Department and the president understand that disengagement would be against national security interests,” the Wilson Center’s Stacher said.

“They understand that there is a longstanding relationship with Egypt – that it’s not a perfect relationship, but is one that has long been cultivated, and they want to keep the country in the U.S. sphere of influence. So, Congress is going to keep putting up roadblocks and the executive branch – and the Defence Department – is going to find crafty ways to get around them.”

There are also major business interests involved in this situation. Egypt is a massive market, and has traditionally imported a significant amount of military hardware and industrial machinery from the United States.

“Certainly there is a domestic American economic consideration here about changing our relationship with Egypt,” Stacher continues. “If they are going to keep buying tanks, we would rather they buy our tanks.”

Since two-year anniversary of the January 25 Revolution, Egypt has seen numerous clashes between anti-government demonstrators and security forces. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Apr 9 2013 (IPS)

The governing programme of Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood has been disappointing. His commitment to genuine democracy has been faltering, and his efforts at inclusion and political tolerance have been wanting.

Morsi’s actions against the Egyptian comedian Basim Yousif belie his initial statements supporting tolerance, inclusion, and freedom of expression. Humor is the backbone of a mature democracy; muzzling the voices of dissent is an omen of a budding dictatorship.

These actions unfortunately confirm the suspicions of many Arab secularists, liberals, and non-Muslim Brotherhood citizens that once the MB reaches power through elections, they would scuttle democracy and replace it with their version of theocratic rule or divine hukm.

Many had feared that once mainstream Islamic parties are elected through “one man, one vote”, they would transform the process into “one man, one vote, one time” and choke the democratic impulse.

Morsi’s intolerance of secularists, women, Christians, and even liberal judges is generating fears in Egypt and elsewhere that the country has replaced the secular Mubarak dictatorship with a theocratic autocracy. Morsi’s rule does not allow a diversity of views, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s interpretation of the role of religion in the state has emerged as the guiding principle for governing Egypt.

This disturbing phenomenon does not bode well for political Islam, especially as Islamic political parties become majorities in Arab and Muslim governments.

My former government colleagues and I have argued for years that as part of government, Islamic political parties would focus on “bread and butter” issues and relegate their religious ideology to the backburner. We believed their policy concerns would trump their ideology.

As minority government partners in Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Yemen, Malaysia, and Indonesia, Islamic parties focused on legislation that responded to the needs of their constituents, bargained with other parties to pass needed legislation regulating commerce, transportation, power, energy, food prices, and other issues of concern to their citizens.

They generally were not elected or re-elected because of their Islamic credentials and did not use their Islamic ideology to govern. They promoted moderate platforms during their election campaign and generally have governed as responsible factions in their respective parliaments.

As we briefed senior policymakers, we highlighted the difference between mainstream political parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots in Jordan, Palestine, Morocco, and elsewhere, and extremist Islamic groups, which did not believe in man-made democracy and inclusive government.

At the time, all of those parties were in the minority. We also judged that when some of those parties become a majority, they would uphold the same democratic, inclusive tendencies.

The Turkish Justice and Development Party or AKP, which became the first Sunni majority governing party in the region, emerged as the poster child of our briefings. It governed democratically, defended Turkish secularism, and encouraged inclusion in the economic and political life of Turkey. Despite its Islamic roots, AKP supported the democratic notion of separating religion from politics.

Many had hoped the Muslim Brotherhood would bring a similar governing model to Egypt. In fact, that was the promise that President Morsi made upon his election as president. He consolidated his power the first one hundred days, but since then he’s begun to consolidate his control in undemocratic ways based on a constitution that he helped push through hastily and without much public discussion.

How can Morsi recapture democracy and move Egypt in the right direction?

First, rescind the sham constitution and replace it with a constitution that reflects the diverse political ideologies in Egyptian society. Second, include secularists, women, Christians, and non-MB leaders in high positions in government and promote a national programme of tolerance toward these groups and punish those who engage in sectarian and gender hate crimes.

Third, hold open, free elections for the next parliament, with much simpler and straightforward voting procedures and without stacking the decks in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Fourth, create a major fund to support young men and women in start-up initiatives in technology and entrepreneurship to develop businesses and create jobs. The young generation must have tangible incentives to have a stake in society in order to help build a prosperous future.

Fifth, convene a series of high-level meetings of leaders – men and women – from across Egyptian society from the business, banking, and tourism community, the professions, civil society, academia, and the high tech industry, with different political, social, and religious ideologies to discuss the immediate future of Egypt and develop specific strategies of how to get there.

The Muslim Brotherhood has no monopoly on the future vision of Egypt. If Morsi is to be the president of all of Egypt, he must take concrete steps to alleviate his citizens’ concerns about his leadership, create jobs for the youth, and partner with leaders of different ideological stripes to build a more democratic Egypt.

Egypt is endowed with a rich culture and a diverse social fabric and could not possibly prosper under a theocracy. Putting the country on the right path will be Morsi’s greatest legacy.

*Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World.”

Egypt has recently stepped up its support for Syria’s armed insurgency, with President Mohamed Morsi urging disparate anti-Assad factions to “coordinate” with a leading Syrian opposition coalition that has taken Cairo as its headquarters.

“Egypt has recently begun translating words into deeds in terms of its stated support for the Syrian rebels,” Mohamed Saeed Idris, foreign affairs expert at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies told IPS.

Last week Egyptian foreign minister Mohamed Kamel Amr met with recently defected Syrian prime minister Riad Hegab. The two men reportedly discussed “possible means of ending the suffering of the Syrian people and realising their aspirations for freedom, dignity and change in Syria,” according to a foreign ministry spokesman.

One week earlier, at an Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Cairo, President Morsi called on Syria’s various anti-Assad factions to coordinate their activities with the recently-formed National Coalition for Syrian Opposition and Revolutionary Forces – currently based in the Egyptian capital – “in order to present a unified vision for building a democratic Syria.”

Egypt, which has been largely preoccupied with its own domestic political crises since the 2011 revolution that brought down the Mubarak regime, first came out in support for Syria’s armed opposition last summer.

At an August summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran, Morsi irked his Iranian hosts – who have long counted Syria as a regional ally – by declaring that the Assad regime had “lost legitimacy”. Although Morsi ruled out foreign military involvement, he went on to assert that the crisis in Syria could only be resolved through “effective intervention” from outside.

At a November conference in Doha aimed at unifying the Syrian opposition (at which the National Coalition for Syrian Opposition and Revolutionary Forces was born), Egypt went a step further. On the event’s sidelines, the Egyptian foreign minister reportedly told Syrian opposition representatives that Egypt was “prepared to provide all possible assistance” with a view to ensuring “a smooth transfer of power in Syria.”

Shortly afterward, Syria’s newly formed opposition coalition set up its headquarters in Cairo. In a statement, Egypt’s foreign ministry stressed “Egypt’s readiness to offer all means of assistance to the Syrian coalition in the coming period.”

According to Idris, who served as head of Arab affairs in Egypt’s first (since-dissolved) post-revolution parliament, Egypt’s stated position on Syria is now closely aligned to those of the Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar – both of which are close to Washington and staunch opponents of Iran.

“Like the Gulf States, elements of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – from which President Morsi hails – view Tehran with suspicion,” Idris said. “They believe that Iran aims to spread Shiite ideology in Sunni-Muslim Egypt.”

Morsi’s election last summer had been followed by a flurry of conjecture that Egypt-Iran diplomatic relations, suspended since 1979, were on the verge of being restored. Differences over Syria, however, now appear to have put any notion of rapprochement on hold.

“The resumption of ties with Iran depends entirely on Tehran’s position on the Syria crisis and the acceptance of Egyptian – and Arab – public opinion vis-à-vis that rapprochement,” Egypt’s President declared following the OIC summit, which was attended – in a historical visit – by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Idris also attributes Egypt’s current Syria policy to the fact that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood represents the “main component” of the ongoing insurgency there. While the two Islamist movements nominally work independently of one another, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood nevertheless shares close affinity with its Syrian counterpart.

“The two groups don’t have an organisational relationship,” Hamdi Hassan, a leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, told IPS. “But they are closely affiliated ideologically.”

A member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – 27-year-old Mohamed Mehrez – was reportedly killed in Aleppo last week while fighting alongside Syrian rebel forces.

Hassan insists, however, that Morsi’s position on Syria is based entirely on “ethical considerations”. The Assad government, he asserted, “is committing war crimes against the Syrian people; it doesn’t matter whether those suffering are Muslims or Christians.”

Some analysts have suggested that Morsi’s support for Assad’s opponents leaves Egypt within the so-called ‘moderate axis’ of U.S.-friendly Arab states in the region. This grouping has traditionally included Jordan, the Gulf States and – before Hosni Mubarak’s departure two years ago – Egypt.

This ‘moderate axis’ is countered by an Iran-Syria alliance, which has historically opposed U.S. policy in the region. This grouping has traditionally been characterised by its support for armed resistance groups – especially Hamas and Hezbollah – against Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine.

The Brotherhood’s Hassan disputes assertions that, by coming out against the Assad regime, Morsi’s Egypt is choosing to remain within the pro-U.S., anti-Iran regional bloc.

“Just because Egypt’s stance on Syria is in line with the U.S. position doesn’t mean we’re pursuing Mubarak-era (pro-U.S.) policies,” he said. “The Mubarak regime didn’t formulate policy based on ethical considerations; rather, it blindly followed U.S. and Israeli diktats at the expense of Egypt’s own national interests.”

Idris, too, defended Morsi from charges that he – and the Muslim Brotherhood he represents – plans to keep post-revolution Egypt firmly within the U.S. orbit.

“The chaotic domestic circumstances Egypt now faces, economic and political, are hindering the country’s new leadership from taking any steps towards changing Mubarak-era foreign policies,” he said, “especially regarding such major players as the U.S., Israel, the Gulf States and Iran.”

Idris added: “That’s why Egypt is maintaining, for the time being at least, its cold peace with Israel; its longstanding ‘strategic partnership’ with Washington; its strong ties with the Gulf States; and the suspension of its relations with Tehran.”

Since the two-year anniversary of the January 25 Revolution, Egypt has seen numerous clashes between anti-government demonstrators and security forces.Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Feb 17 2013 (IPS)

Since the second anniversary of the uprising that ended the Mubarak regime, Egypt has witnessed a spate of political violence. Egypt’s opposition led by the high-profile National Salvation Front (NSF) blames President Mohamed Morsi for the bloodshed, but many blame the NSF and its leaders.

“The NSF’s slowness in condemning recent violence has made it appear to the public as if it were condoning – even inciting – acts of violence and sabotage,” Amr Hashim Rabie, senior analyst at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies told IPS.

Egypt’s non-Islamist opposition, he added, “may pay the price for this perception in upcoming parliamentary elections.”

The second anniversary of Egypt’s Jan. 25 Revolution and its aftermath have been accompanied by outbreaks of violence across the country. NSF-led rallies and marches have led to numerous clashes between anti-government protesters and police that have so far left more than 50 dead, including security personnel.

Monday Feb. 11, the second anniversary of Mubarak’s ouster, saw renewed skirmishes between aggressive protesters and police outside the presidential palace in Cairo. In what has become a new means of expressing political dissent, anti-government protesters also cut Cairo’s metro line and blocked the capital’s busy 6 October Bridge.

In recent months, the NSF – a loose coalition of opposition parties and groups headed by Amr Moussa, Hamdeen Sabbahi (both of whom lost to Morsi in presidential polls last summer) and Mohamed ElBaradei – has taken the lead in articulating the demands of Egypt’s non-Islamist opposition. These demands include amendment of Egypt’s new constitution, the appointment of a new government, and the dismissal of a Morsi-appointed prosecutor-general.

Opposition spokesmen have been quick to blame President Morsi for the recent bloodshed, along with the Muslim Brotherhood group from which he hails. But according to Rabie, most of the public – weary after months of political turmoil – holds the NSF-led opposition directly responsible for much of the ongoing violence and mayhem.

“Recent opinion polls show that most Egyptians blame the NSF for sowing chaos and inciting bloodshed, damaging property both public and private, and hurting the economy by damaging Egypt’s already-reeling tourism industry,” he said.

Rabie attributed this perception to failures by the NSF to speedily condemn recent acts of violence and sabotage. “The NSF has been woefully slow in distancing itself from violent acts because it hasn’t wanted to alienate the non-peaceful activists who answered its calls for anti-government rallies.”

Conversations with several average Egyptians appeared to support Rabie’s assertions.

“I had been planning to vote against the Brotherhood in upcoming parliamentary polls, but given the opposition’s recent aggressive behaviour, I’m going to give my vote to the Brotherhood candidate,” said Karim, a 39-year-old Cairo physician who preferred not to give his last name.

Ahmed Kamel, spokesman for Amr Moussa (head of the liberal Conference Party and leading NSF member), rejected the notion that the public blamed the NSF for bloodshed.

Describing recent opinion polls to this effect as “unscientific,” Kamel told IPS: “The NSF did not call for or incite any of the recent violence, at the presidential palace or elsewhere. The NSF simply voices the people’s demands.”

But if the NSF wants to speak for people, “it should focus on electoral campaigning with a view to winning a majority in parliament,” said Azab Mustafa, prominent member of both the Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). “Until then, it can’t claim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’.”

Mustafa added: “The NSF should be trying to win over voters instead of calling for endless, potentially-violent demonstrations, which only serve to hurt the economy and give western critics a chance to say Egypt ‘isn’t ready for democracy’.”

Kamel, for his part, responded by saying that the NSF was “more than ready” to contest elections as long as the polling was subject to “complete judicial and international oversight” and the Brotherhood “reveals all the sources of its campaign funding.”

Recent political violence has also featured attacks on Brotherhood/FJP offices and on those of Brotherhood-affiliated government officials, garnering for the group and its party a measure of public sympathy. NSF-led rallies and marches, meanwhile, have frequently targeted the presidential palace, which during one recent demonstration was struck with a petrol bomb.

“Protesters have the right to demonstrate peacefully in public areas,” said the Brotherhood’s Mustafa. “But most of the recent NSF-led marches in Cairo have specifically targeted the presidential palace, which Egyptian security forces are duty-bound to protect, and all these have inevitably ended in violence.”

According to Rabie, the months-long conflict between the NSF-led opposition and the presidency has seen three major battles for public opinion.

The first over Morsi’s controversial November decree overriding the judiciary, and the second over December’s contentious constitutional referendu. These were, said Rabie, “both won by the opposition, with which much of the public sympathised.”

But, he added, the presidency and the Brotherhood appear to have won the third round. “The NSF has succeeded in mobilising mass anti-Morsi rallies and marches, but the Brotherhood has won in terms of broad public sympathy, which could translate into electoral gains.”

According to official statements, parliamentary elections are likely to be held in April or May.

Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary polls in late 2011 were swept by Islamist parties, chief among them the Brotherhood. The assembly was dissolved last summer on orders of the ruling military then, after Egypt’s High Constitutional Court ruled it illegitimate on a technicality.

This time around, Rabie expects Islamist parties to capture a smaller share than they did in 2011, when together they won almost three-quarters of parliament’s lower house. “But due to its superior organisation and electoral experience, especially in the case of the Brotherhood, the Islamist camp will likely maintain a parliamentary majority,” he said.

“And if the NSF-led opposition maintains its current strategy of staging rallies that lead to clashes with police and impeding public transportation,” Rabie added, “it will pay a heavy price at the ballot box.”

Grafitti in Cairo showing police brutality. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Feb 6 2013 (IPS)

Graphic video footage of an Egyptian man being dragged naked across a street and beaten by riot police during a protest in Cairo has sparked outrage in Egypt and heightened calls for police reform, a key demand of the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The video shows Hamada Saber, a 48-year-old painter, lying on the ground with his trousers around his ankles as police in riot gear strike him with batons and punch him in the face. After he stops moving, police officers drag him face down across the asphalt and attempt to bundle him into an armoured vehicle.

The incident has angered opposition and rights groups, which accuse President Mohamed Morsi of relying on the same brutal tactics as his predecessors to crush dissent.

“It’s shocking footage, but not surprising,” says activist Mohamed Fathy. “We have the same police force now as we did under Mubarak. There has been no serious effort to reform it.”

Saber was assaulted on Feb. 1 after clashes between police and anti-Morsi demonstrators near the presidential palace spilled over into the streets where he was shopping with his family. The violence followed a week of civil unrest across Egypt that left nearly 60 people dead and hundreds injured.

Many Egyptians accused the interior ministry of coercing Saber after he insisted in a televised interview from his bed in a police hospital that security forces had rescued him from protesters who had stripped and beaten him. His account contradicted the video evidence, as well as statements by eyewitnesses including members of his own family.

“That a citizen be dragged in a public space is a crime against humanity. That he be forced to amend his testimony before the Public Prosecution is tyranny,” rights lawyer Nasser Amin wrote on his Twitter account.

Saber later recanted his testimony, indicating that it was indeed the police who beat him. His son Ahmed told independent newspaper Al Shorouk that his father phoned him in tears and told him the police had “terrorised him” into giving a false account.

The public outcry over Saber’s ordeal was further heightened by news of the death of a 28-year old activist arrested by police on Jan. 27 during a protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Mohamed El-Guindy’s body showed marks of electrical shocks, strangulation, three broken ribs, a cracked skull and brain haemorrhage, according to a medical report.

Morsi’s government has promised to investigate reports of police torture and abuse. The president announced in a Facebook message that there will be “no return to rights abuses of citizens and their freedoms” of the Mubarak era.

But images of El-Guindy’s battered face and the video footage of police beating Saber have raised doubts, say rights groups.

“The Egyptian police continue to systematically deploy violence and torture, and at times even kill,” the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said in a report published on the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Mubarak.

“There has been no thorough change, or even cosmetic improvement, in the police apparatus, whether related to its administrative structure, decision-making, oversight of police work or the reform and removal of leaders and personnel responsible for torture and killing,” the report said.

EIPR has documented at least a dozen people killed by police and 11 tortured inside police stations in the seven months since Morsi assumed presidency. Security forces are rarely held accountable, the report said.

Only two police officers have been jailed for the deaths of more than 800 protesters killed during the 2011 revolution. Over a hundred officers have been acquitted.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Morsi hails, has tried to distance the president from recent incidents of police abuse and torture. A group spokesman argued this week that Morsi needed more time to purge the police force of a culture that condoned the torture and humiliation of detainees, excessive use of force, and routine bribe-taking.

Yasser Hamza, a member of the Brotherhood’s legal committee, pointed the finger squarely at the interior minister. He said Egypt’s new constitution, hastily cobbled together and passed in a controversial referendum in December, absolves the president of accountability in cases of police abuse.

“Morsi bears no responsibility in cases of torture and killing of demonstrators according to the new constitution,” independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm quoted Hamza as saying.

He elaborated that the constitution stipulates that the cabinet is responsible for domestic matters, while the president only bears responsibility for foreign affairs.

Activists are not buying it. Some have accused Morsi of abandoning plans to reform the police because he needs a blunt instrument to secure his tenuous grip on power.

“The police are only good at one thing, beating and humiliating Egyptians,” says Mohamed Fathy, a member of the April 6 youth movement.

In a televised address last week, Morsi praised security forces for their crackdown on protests in the Suez Canal region that left dozens dead, including bystanders allegedly killed by police snipers. He described the protesters as thugs and Mubarak loyalists intent on toppling his democratically elected government.

He also announced a 30-day state of emergency in the Canal cities, granting security forces there arbitrary powers to detain or arrest civilians, in effect restoring the sweeping powers police enjoyed under Mubarak’s 29-year rule.

“Morsi gave the police a licence to use indiscriminate force against protesters,” says Fathy. “He shouldn’t be surprised that they did.” [END]

Protesters battle police in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on the second anniversary of Egypt’s January 25 revolution. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Jan 29 2013 (IPS)

Concerns are mounting over Egypt’s future after the outbreaks of violence that marked the second anniversary of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution. Massive anti-government rallies led to ongoing clashes between protesters and security forces that have left at least 40 people dead. Cities along Egypt’s Suez Canal faced a government-declared state of emergency.

“The revolutionary fervour that erupted on Friday in ten out of Egypt’s 27 provinces has not been seen since the uprising two years ago,” Ahmed Maher, general coordinator of Egypt’s 6 April youth movement, which participated in the anti-government demonstrations, told IPS.

In the weeks leading up to the anniversary, revolutionary, liberal and leftist parties and groups called on Egyptians to mark the occasion with nationwide protests against President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from which he hails. Hundreds of thousands answered the call on Friday, joining marches and rallies in Cairo, Alexandria and other major urban centres.

Protesters’ demands included the amendment of Egypt’s newly approved constitution, prosecution of anyone implicated in killing protesters, and guarantees that upcoming parliamentary polls – expected in April – would be conducted transparently. Protesters also voiced opposition to the perceived ‘Brotherhoodisation’ of state institutions.

Although protest organisers had called for “peaceful rallies” and “the avoidance of violence,” this was not to be the case.

Saad al-Kitatni, president of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), blamed opposition political forces for the escalating violence. “The political forces that called for these rallies, of which they appear to have lost control, are responsible for the bloodshed,” he declared via Twitter.

Opposition figures, for their part, were quick to blame the crisis on President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. “Morsi, his administration and the FJP are all responsible for the current violence,” said 6 April’s Maher. “By ignoring the demands of the opposition, Morsi is behaving just like Mubarak.”

The Muslim Brotherhood condemned the violence. “Egypt’s January 25 Revolution was peaceful in nature,” the group stated. “But yesterday’s demonstrations included attacks by armies of thugs on police, state institutions and private property.”

The Brotherhood blamed Egypt’s private media, much of which is owned by influential businessmen known for their antipathies towards the Islamist group, for “inciting the public against Egypt’s elected government.” It went on to assert that violence had been planned in advance by “elements seeking to derail the course of the revolution.”

The group also condemned opposition groups for condoning the violence. “It is unacceptable that those demanding ‘justice for the martyrs of the revolution’ engage in actions that lead to more people dying,” the statement read.

The situation became even more explosive on Saturday morning when a court sentenced 21 men from Port Said to death. The men had been charged with responsibility for last February’s Port Said stadium disaster in which scores of Egyptian football fans were killed.

Upon announcement of the sentences, clashes erupted in Port Said between police and families of the condemned men. At least 30 were killed in the ensuing violence, including some security personnel. Soon afterwards, the military began deploying in and around the city of Port Said.

On the same day, the National Salvation Front (NSF) – Egypt’s main opposition umbrella group – upped the ante, threatening to boycott upcoming parliamentary polls if President Morsi failed to meet a shortlist of demands. These include immediate constitutional changes, replacement of the current government with a ‘national salvation’ government, and the dismissal of Morsi-appointed prosecutor-general Talaat Ibrahim.

If these demands weren’t immediately met, the NSF said, it would stage further demonstrations this week to call for the re-activation of Egypt’s previous 1971 constitution (albeit with some modifications), and snap presidential elections.

According to Maher, Morsi’s only way out of the current crisis is to “form a new government drawn from various political forces and constitution-amending committee comprised of scholars; dissolve the Shura Council (the upper house of Egypt’s parliament currently endowed with legislative powers); and accept the resignation of the prosecutor-general.

“If he fails to do this, we will escalate our demands,” he added, in a veiled reference to possible calls for Morsi himself – elected only seven months ago – to step down.

FJP spokesman Murad Ali rejected such ultimatums. “The opposition has the right to demonstrate – peacefully – anywhere it wants to,” he told IPS. “But no political group has the right to demand the democratically elected president’s ouster, while the use violence is of course a red line.” (END)

Egyptian workers have demanded the right to hold peaceful protests. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jan 24 2013 (IPS)

Workers played a pivotal role in the mass uprising that led to former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s downfall. Now, two years on, the same labour movement that helped topple the Arab dictator is locked in a stalemate with the government and employers over long-denied labour rights and untenable working conditions.

In recent months, thousands of disenfranchised workers across Egypt have taken collective action to secure better wages and working conditions, paralysing sectors of an economy still recovering from the 2011 uprising. The country’s new Islamist-led government has promised to resolve labour disputes quickly and equitably, but faces formidable challenges as it grapples with restive workers, unyielding employers, and depleted state coffers.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the conservative Islamic movement that dominated last year’s parliamentary and presidential polls, ran on a platform that emphasised social justice. Yet the once-outlawed group has a poor track record on worker rights, and a history of anti-union activities.

“We had a revolution but the only change is from (Mubarak’s) National Democratic Party to the Muslim Brotherhood,” says labour activist Kareem El-Beheiry. “The Brotherhood has never done anything for the labour movement, and never supported workers or independent unions.”

President Mohamed Morsi, a former Brotherhood leader, has faced a number of tests since taking office last June. There were over 2,000 labour protests in 2012, with the rate of protests more than doubling during the second half of the year, according to a new study by the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR).

“We cannot but notice the clear failure of Morsi’s administration to resolve these protests or even set a clear plan for dealing with their demands. Rather, the administration has continued to adopt the same old policies, which only aggravates the matter,” the ECESR report said.

Labour Minister Khaled El-Azhary, a prominent Brotherhood member, has repeatedly urged striking workers to return to work while the government considers their demands. He says Egypt’s fragile economy cannot afford any more loss of production and must be given a chance to recover from the 2011 revolution.

Egypt is struggling to plug deficits in the state budget and balance of payments as it burns through its last remaining foreign reserves. Tourism, a key foreign revenue earner, plummeted after the uprising and is still off by 20 percent. Foreign investment has retreated, and many projects remain on hold due to ongoing political and economic uncertainty.

While the government has generally tried to avoid confrontations with striking workers, it has taken a tough stand on those who “obstruct the wheels of production.” In the months following Morsi’s appointment, riot police broke up labour protests and arrested local strike organisers, while public sector employees found engaging in collective actions were fired, transferred or referred to disciplinary hearings.

“More than 200 employees and workers were individually sacked during the first three months of Morsi’s term, and more than 100 others were subjected to investigation after they were arrested while peacefully protesting…In addition, many employees and workers were physically assaulted during their sit-ins by thugs hired by (their) employers and businessmen,” the ECESR report said.

Morsi’s government has also borrowed the old regime’s tactic of using state media outlets to smear labour movements and intimidate their leaders, says Hadeer Hassan, a local labour journalist.

“The Muslim Brotherhood views strikes as undermining the economy and Morsi’s rule,” she says. “Rather than addressing workers’ demands, it has tried to turn public opinion against striking workers by using the press to portray them as traitors and thugs.”

And where that fails, she adds, the same “lies and false accusations of worker sabotage” are fed to sympathetic courts.

At least a dozen workers have been convicted under legislation passed by Egypt’s military-run transitional government in March 2011 that criminalises “economically disruptive” strikes. President Morsi has yet to strike down the controversial law or overturn the sentences, though he has the power to do so.

Meanwhile, the government is formulating new legislation that labour activists fear will restrict freedom of association and re-establish the state’s dominance over syndical activities. An early draft of the Trade Union Liberties Law, intended to replace antiquated and restrictive legislation on union organisation, would have enshrined the right to strike and legally recognised the hundreds of independent unions that have sprung up since Mubarak’s fall.

The draft law was scrapped, however, in favour of a new bill drawn up by labour minister Khaled El-Azhary and other prominent Brotherhood figures. Their version proposes stiff penalties for striking workers who disrupt production. It also curtails union pluralism by requiring each enterprise to select just one trade union to represent its workers.

The bill would complement “anti-union” articles in Egypt’s new constitution, which was passed last month in a highly divisive referendum. Article 52 affirms the right of workers to form syndicates, but another article stipulates that each profession can have only one trade union.

The new legal framework threatens to eliminate many of the more than 1,000 independent trade unions that exist alongside their larger and more established state-controlled counterparts.

That’s the point, says Hassan. “The Muslim Brotherhood only wants unions it can control.” [END]

Egyptian protesters post their criticism of the president on a board in Tahrir Square. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jan 19 2013 (IPS)

Egyptians love to have a good laugh. At every opportunity they rattle off jokes and take jabs at themselves, their society, and – where they dare – their ruler.

Former president Hosni Mubarak was a regular target of the country’s satirists and wisecrackers. The egregious corruption, cronyism and social injustice under his three decades of authoritarian rule provided rich fodder for their quips and snarky critiques.

But draconian press laws and a network of strait-laced government informants discouraged Egyptians from overtly expressing their incorrigible political wit. Criticism of Mubarak was something to be shared among trusted friends, sent as an SMS, or masterfully veiled in symbols and allegory.

With the fall of Mubarak and easing of media restrictions Egyptians felt free to express their political views and subversive humour without fear of reprisal. The shifting political landscape and new climate of freedom set the stage for Bassem Youssef, a cardiologist turned comedian who became a household name in early 2011 after posting clips on YouTube lampooning state television’s fumbling take on the revolution.

He now hosts a slicker weekly show, Al Bernameg (The Programme), which is aired on a private satellite channel and is consciously modelled on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the U.S. In it he mocks biased local news coverage and irreverently satirises public figures, taking shots at politicians, Islamists, members of the old regime, and even his own network heads.

But Youssef’s acerbic wit touched a nerve when during a recent episode he spoke sarcastically to a red pillow stamped with the image of Mohamed Morsi, ridiculing the Egyptian president’s purported authoritarian tendencies. The comedy show presenter is now under criminal investigation on charges of “insulting the president” and “undermining his standing.”

While rights lawyers think it is unlikely that Youssef will serve time for his jokes, the case has underlined the limits on free speech that insulate Egypt’s new Islamist president from criticism. In the six months since Morsi took office the country has seen unprecedented use of a Mubarak-era law that mandates custodial sentences for those whose comments are deemed “to affront the president of the republic.”

Heba Morayef, Egypt director of Human Rights Watch, describes the “rise in criminal defamation cases, whether it is on charges of defaming the president or the judiciary” as the “greatest threat to freedom of expression” now facing Egypt. She says the cases are likely to increase “because criminal defamation is now embedded” in the constitution that was passed last month in a highly divisive referendum.

Morsi’s administration has repeatedly denied any intention to censor opinion and insists it had nothing to do with the charges brought against Youssef. The lawsuit was filed by an independent Islamist lawyer with a history of lodging defamation suits against public figures seen to offend Islam. Another individual has filed a separate lawsuit demanding that authorities shut down Al Bernameg and revoke the station’s licence.

Under Egypt’s legal system, anyone can file a lawsuit for libel or slander, even if they are not the target of the alleged offence. It is up to the public prosecutor to decide whether there is enough evidence to refer the case to the courts.

The public prosecutor has been unusually busy since Morsi took office, says Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), a Cairo-based rights group. He is aware of at least 24 individuals formally accused of “insulting the president”, which carries a maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of defamation cases in the six months under Morsi when compared to 30 years under Mubarak,” Eid told IPS.

The barrage of lawsuits has had a chilling effect on journalists, caricaturists, writers and television presenters. It has also made Egyptians wary of what they say online. In September, a court handed down a prison sentence to a citizen for insulting the president in comments posted to his Facebook page.

Earlier this month, the public prosecutor launched an investigation against columnist Gamal Fahmy after the presidency filed a complaint accusing him of insulting the president. Fahmy had accused the president of complicity in the death of journalist Husseini Abu Deif, who he claimed was targeted by armed Morsi supporters during violent clashes last month because he had exposed how the president “abused his power” to have his brother-in-law released from prison.

Fahmy, who served a six-month prison sentence under Mubarak for his critical writings, now faces the prospect of incarceration under Morsi.

Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali has said the president is committed to the principle of freedom of expression. He stressed that the presidency welcomes criticism, but objects to “false news that includes clear accusations against the president.”

ANHRI’s Eid says that rather than reforming Mubarak’s repressive media laws, the Morsi Administration is using them to intimidate and silence its political opponents. Article 179 of the Penal Code criminalises insulting the president without defining what constitutes an insult, permitting broad room for interpretation.

“It is the right of any citizen to criticise the president,” says Eid. “The president is a public servant whose conduct and performance directly affect the lives of millions of Egyptians.”

He adds that granting the president immunity from critical opinions – whether expressed through commentary, caricature or satire – leaves the door wide open for dictatorship.

Protesters gather near Tahrir Square beneath a banner that reads "No entry to the Muslim Brotherhood". Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Nov 28 2012 (IPS)

Brandishing flags and carrying banners denouncing “the new pharaoh”, thousands of protesters thronged to Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Tuesday to voice their opposition to President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to expand his powers.

By dusk, the iconic square had filled with demonstrators. But the protest marches from different neighbourhoods kept coming late into the night, backing up far beyond the square’s perimeter.

Commentators drew comparisons to the mass demonstrations that marked the start of the 18-day uprising that toppled the authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak. But judging by the scale of the turnout, the scene more closely reflected the dictator’s final days.

“The people want to topple the regime,” the crowd chanted, echoing the flagship slogan of the revolution that toppled Mubarak.

Anger against Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been welling since he issued a decree last week granting himself broad new powers. The democratically elected president had already extended his power in August with a decree that sent the military back to its barracks and left him with sole executive and legislative authority. His new declaration carves out judicial powers as well.

The edicts appear to wrap revolutionary demands, such as retrials of police and Mubarak regime officials implicated in the killing of protesters in last year’s uprising, around ominous portents of authoritarian rule. Most significantly, Morsi assumes the authority to take “any measures he sees fit” to protect the revolution, national unity or national security. His blanket clause is backed by a decree that his decisions cannot be appealed or revoked by any authority.

“I’m here tonight to say no to dictatorial rule,” says Hamdi Hassan, who travelled from the Nile delta city of Zagazig to join the protests in Tahrir Square.

The president’s power grab, ostensibly made to cut through the legal deadlock that has stalled Egypt’s democratic transition, has polarised the country dangerously. Clashes have broken out in cities across Egypt, pitting Morsi’s predominantly Islamist supporters against a broad spectrum of mainly liberal and secular political forces. Several people have been killed in the violence, and hundreds injured.

Analysts say Morsi appears to have overestimated his support. But the president has showed no sign of backing down – which threatens to lead the country deeper into turmoil.

His supporters have argued that figures from the old regime and a politicised judiciary are obstructing the path to democracy and can only be purged by extra-legal measures. They remain confident that the Islamist president will use his near-absolute powers wisely and benignly to shepherd the country through the tortuous transition, relinquishing them once a parliament and constitution are in place.

“The presidency reiterates the temporary nature of the said measures, which are not meant to concentrate power but…to devolve it to a democratically elected parliament…as well as preserving the impartiality of the judiciary and to avoid politicising it,” a statement from the president’s office said.

But many of Morsi’s opponents suspect his allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood, of which he was a long-term member, trumps any interest in following the rules of liberal democracy. They argue that the Brotherhood has used every opportunity to aggregate political power and monopolise state institutions, and cannot be trusted.

Youth movements that led the 2011 uprising against Mubarak regard the Muslim Brotherhood with suspicion as the group was late in joining the revolution, yet appears to have hijacked it to consolidate its power base and the political agenda.

A principal fear is that Morsi’s decree, which shields the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly from dissolution, could hand the 84-year-old Islamic group the ultimate prize: a chance to draft a constitution largely of their own design.

Morsi has attempted to portray his administration as inclusive and transparent. But reports that he failed to consult his appointed advisers before issuing his latest shock decree, as well as other important policy issues, have raised concerns about his governance.

Even the president’s justice minister appeared to have been caught off guard – all the more surprising given the declaration’s enormous implications on the judiciary.

A fundamental problem, suggests one analyst, is that Morsi and the Brotherhood view political life and democratic politics through a majoritarian lens. Writing in Foreign Policy’s online edition, Michael Wahid Hanna says the president has repeatedly issued edicts with little or no discernible consultation, and either unaware or wholly dismissive of the opposition they might engender.

“Morsi’s majoritarian mindset is not anti-democratic per se, but depends upon a distinctive conception of winner-takes-all politics and the denigration of political opposition. Winning elections, by this perspective, entitles the victors to govern unchecked by the concerns of the losers,” he writes.

Protester Wael Darwish says this is “an absurd way of thinking” for a president elected into office on a razor-thin margin.

Less than 25 percent of Egyptians voted for Morsi in the first round of the presidential election. The Brotherhood candidate is widely believed to have won the run-off with 51.7 percent of votes because many Egyptians preferred to elect him than face the prospect of Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak’s last prime minister and longtime confidant, becoming head of state.

“I voted for Morsi,” Darwish admits. “Maybe he’s still better than Shafik, but we elected a president, not a dictator.” (END)

After 18 months of talks, on Wednesday Egypt’s government formally requested a 4.8-billion-dollar loan from the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF), hoping to stabilise an economy that has continued to badly stutter in the aftermath of the popular uprising that led to the downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak.

The request, relayed to IMF chief Christine Lagarde by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in a meeting in Cairo on Wednesday, has been met with scepticism from sectors of Egyptian civil society as well as some nationalist politicians.

Many are now expressing anxiety over the negotiations’ lack of transparency and the possibility that the Egyptian government could agree to onerous conditions that may force it to cut back on spending on social welfare and safety nets.

“Many fear that a new era of dependency will start, even after the revolution,” Amr Adly, economic and social justice director with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a Cairo-based watchdog, told IPS.

“The IMF loan won’t be approved without giving concessions that completely contradict the promises of a new development model, and thus undermine the potential for social justice measures after the revolution.” (The IMF did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

Currently, Egypt has some 35 billion dollars in international debt, and talk of a major IMF loan also runs up against ongoing campaigns urging the international community to look into reducing such debt.

“The best way for the international community to support a fresh start for the Egyptian people would be to support an independent commission to determine if much of the debt accrued during the Mubarak era is illegitimate and thus should be cancelled, before any new debt is undertaken,” Deborah James, with the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a think tank here in Washington, told IPS.

This is not to say that the Egyptian economy doesn’t need some significant assistance. Since the beginning of the popular uprising in January 2011, as foreign tourism and investment have plummeted, the country has reeled from a massive crunch on foreign reserves and liquidity as well as a fast-widening budget deficit.

While the IMF has been in talks with the Egyptian government throughout much of that time and billions of dollars in so-called standby credit have been on offer, Fund officials have been wary of going forward until Cairo has been able to show broad political support for taking a loan. With President Morsi’s recent show of power over some of the military’s top brass, many observers feel that the talks could now come to fruition.

Several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States, have decided or are contemplating offering significant bilateral help to Egypt, as well. Qatar alone has pledged two billion dollars.

Outsourcing expertise

The need for economic help notwithstanding, Egyptians are now trying to weigh their country’s financial troubles against the rumours of what the IMF may require of the government.

Adly, for instance, suggests that the IMF is likely to push for the privatisation of public utilities, regressive taxation and less social expenditure. But he also expresses frustration that, to date, much of this is simply speculation.

“There is no transparency in this process – we have no idea about what the IMF and the government are negotiating about,” he says. “The government has said that the IMF is not imposing any conditionalities, but then why are they negotiating at all?”

Part of the issue is that the newly elected president, his Muslim Brotherhood party and its ruling coalition have decades of experience in social and religious issues but lack expertise in monetary and fiscal issues.

As such, many are worried that IMF officials will be able to dictate the terms of the loan to a greater extent than it would if it were dealing with a government with a clear economic vision.

Morsi’s government is clearly aware of its lack of economic expertise, and thus has chosen to keep around some important members of Mubarak’s government, including the governor of the central bank, Farouk Al-Okdah, and others.

“These are the very members of the neoliberal team once in charge under Mubarak,” Adly says. “These bureaucrats and technocrats are quite conservative, and there is the idea that they have been kept in office in order to negotiate with the IMF and the World Bank.”

Plantation mode

On Wednesday, Lagarde said that the IMF is “responding quickly” and sending a technical team in early September. That same day, Prime Minister Hisham Qandi said he would hope for an agreement by the end of the year.

If an agreement happens, Egypt would be the 20th African country to be indebted to the IMF, according to 2011 statistics. If the final agreed amount is anywhere near the request, the Egyptian loan would be by far the largest on the continent.

In lieu of information about current negotiations between Cairo and the Fund, lessons learned from experiences elsewhere are inevitably forming some of today’s analysis.

Rick Rowden, an economics doctoral student at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi and a development consultant, says that many multilateral funders, including the IMF, have for years placed significant emphasis on human development indicators.

In so doing, he tells IPS, they have “wholly neglected the actual need for economic development – shifting from an economy that is overly reliant on agriculture and extractive industries into one that is based more on manufacturing and services”.

Time and again, Rowden says, the IMF and other funders have pushed policies that seem to run counter to the industrial policies that most countries need to create real development: those that build domestic manufacturing. Doing so, he says, make it difficult for countries such as Egypt to “get out of plantation mode”.

Rowden suggests that this can be further exacerbated by a tendency on the part of the IMF not to differentiate between domestic and international private sectors, an “essential first step” in creating effective domestic industrial policies.

“The people of Egypt need to participate and make sure their government takes steps to develop national development strategies, including the adoption of long-term industrial policies to build a domestically owned manufacturing base with a clear plan to diversify the economy, build up the tax base and increase public investment,” he says.

“And none of this will be likely under [IMF] loans and policy advice.”