By Emma Bonino
ROME, Dec 31 2015 (IPS)

The appalling crisis ravaging the Middle East and striking terror around the world is a clear challenge to the West, but responses are uncoordinated. This is due on the one hand to divergent analyses of the situation, and on the other to conflicting interests.

Emma Bonino

The West has historic alliances with the Gulf area, but apparently nothing has been learned from the 3,000 deaths caused by the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Turkey plays by its own rules, while Russia does not hesitate to resort to any means to recover its position on the global stage, and is only now showing concern about the so-called foreign combatants that Turkey is allowing into Syria. In truth, there is very little common ground.

Consequently, all reactions are inadequate, including the bombing of territory occupied by the Islamic State – whether motivated by emotion or based on reason with an eye to the next elections – by countries like France or the United Kingdom, which wants to demonstrate in this way to the rest of Europe that it is an indispensable part of the EU. Bombings take place, only to be followed by public recognition that aerial strikes are insufficient because there are no more targets to be hit from the sky without guidance from troops on the ground.

The fact is that while the impossibility of achieving victory by air attacks alone is repeated like a mantra, the bombings continue. At the same time, every Arab medium complains daily that these are acts of war waged, once again, by the West against the Arab world.

Doubtless for this reason, the British government has not only increased its military budget but also given the BBC more funding for Arabic language services. The battle in hand is above all a cultural one; arguments are needed over the medium and long term, in addition to attempts at overcoming the contradictions.

The first step is to admit that there is no magical solution; only partial and complex solutions exist. The first measure must be to oblige Sunni Muslims, the Gulf monarchies and the Muslim Brotherhood – the sources of funds and material support for Islamic State combatants – to assume responsibility for their roles. Secondly, we in Europe must take serious measures to address our own shortcomings, by reinforcing our security.

EU counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove recently appealed for an agreement to unify the intelligence services of European countries, to no avail. European governments do not want a common intelligence service, they do not want a common defence system, and they do not want a common foreign policy. Some are only willing to commit their air forces to the fray.

In the meantime, we lurch from one emergency to another, managing only to agree on improvised, temporary measures. For instance, now we have forgotten all about the immigrants, as if they had ceased to exist. Vision is lacking, not only for the long term but even for the medium term.

Now European governments are focused on Syria, leaving aside the conflicts in Libya and Yemen, and are not giving needed help to our Mediterranean neighbours threatened by serious crises: Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan. Lately, oil facilities in the Islamic State are being bombed and the tanker trucks used for black market oil exports are being attacked. As is well known, during the first Gulf War bombing of oil wells brought about an ecological disaster and history is repeating itself in the territories occupied by the Islamic State. Meanwhile the attacks on ground transport are blocking supplies of provisions to Syria, where food is already scarce.

For its part, Italy has done well in choosing not to participate in military interventions that risk being counterproductive and that no one believes are effective, as shown by other scenarios from Afghanistan to the Lebanon. But this does not exempt Italy from making greater efforts toward a common European intelligence service and a broader and more efficacious immigration policy.

In a nutshell: the European Union should formulate and apply its own foreign policy in line with its own interests and reality, and dispense with the policies of the United States, Russia, or other powers.

Translated by Valerie Dee

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, Jun. 4, 2009. In his speech, President Obama called for a 'new beginning between the United States and Muslims', declaring that 'this cycle of suspicion and discord must end'. Credit: White House photo

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Jan 6 2015 (IPS)

This year, Arab political Islam will be greatly influenced by U.S. regional policy, as it has been since the Obama administration came into office six years ago. Indeed, as the U.S. standing in the region rose with Obama’s presidency beginning in January 2009, so did the fortunes of Arab political Islam.

But when Arab autocrats perceived U.S. regional policy to have floundered and Washington’s leverage to have diminished, they proceeded to repress domestic Islamic political parties with impunity, American protestations notwithstanding.Coddling autocrats is a short-term strategy that will not succeed in the long run. The longer the cozy relationship lasts, the more Muslims will revert to the earlier belief that America’s war on terrorism is a war on Islam.

This policy linkage, expected to prevail in the coming year, will not bode well for political Islam. Like last year, the U.S. will in 2015 pay more attention to securing Arab autocrats’ support in the fight against Islamic State forces than to the mistreatment of mainstream Islamic political parties and movements, which will have severe consequences in the long run.

Since the middle of 2013, the Obama administration’s focus on the tactical need to woo dictators in the fight against terrorist groups has trumped its commitment to the engagement objective. America’s growing support for Arab dictators meant that Arab political Islam would be sacrificed.

For example, Washington seems oblivious to the thousands of mainstream Islamists and other opposition activists languishing in Egyptian jails.

What is political Islam?

Several assumptions underpin this judgment. First, “political Islam” applies to mainstream Islamic political parties and movements, which have rejected violence and made a strategic shift toward participatory and coalition politics through free elections.

Arab political Islam generally includes the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, al-Nahda in Tunisia, and al-Wefaq in Bahrain.

The term “political Islam” does not include radical and terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or IS), al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Iraq, and Syria, or armed opposition groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya. Nor does it apply to terrorist groups in Africa such as Boko Haram, al-Shabab, and others.

Unfortunately, in the past three years, many policy makers in the West, and curiously in several Arab countries, have equated mainstream political Islam with radical and terrorist groups. This erroneous and self-serving linkage has provided Washington with a fig leaf to justify its cozy relations with Arab autocrats and tolerance of their bloody repression of their citizens.

Repression breeds radicalism

It has also given these autocrats an excuse to suppress their Islamic parties and exclude them from the political process. In a press interview late last month, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi forcefully denounced the Muslim Brotherhood and pledged the movement would not enter the Egyptian parliament.

Egypt’s recent terrorism laws, which Sisi and other Arab autocrats have approved, provide them with a pseudo-legal cover to silence the opposition, including mainstream political Islam.

They have used the expansive and vague definitions of terrorism included in these decrees to incarcerate any person or group that is “harmful to national unity.” Any criticism of the regime or the ruler is now viewed as a “terrorist” act, punishable by lengthy imprisonment.

The Dec. 28 arrest of the Bahraini Sheikh Ali Salman, Secretary General of al-Wefaq, is yet another example of draconian measures against peaceful mainstream opposition leaders and parties in the region. Regime repression of these groups is expected to prevail in 2015.

Second, whereas terrorist organisations are a threat to the region and to Western countries, including mainstream political Islam in the governance of their countries in the long run is good for domestic stability and regional security. It also serves the interests of Western powers in the region.

Recent history tells U.S. that exclusion and repression often lead to radicalisation.  Some youth in these parties have given up on participatory politics in favour of confrontational politics and violence. This phenomenon is expected to increase in 2015, as suppression of political Islam becomes more pervasive and institutionalised.

Third, the serious mistakes the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nahda made in their first time ever as governing parties should not be surprising since they lacked the experience of governance. Such poor performance, however, is not unique to them.  Nor should it be used as an excuse to depose them illegally and to void the democratic process, as the Sisi-led military coup did in Egypt in 2013.

Although Islamic political parties tend to win the first election after the toppling of dictators, the litmus test of their popular support lies in succeeding elections. The recent post-Arab Spring election in Tunisia is a case in point.

When Arab citizens are provided with the opportunity to participate in fair and free elections, they are capable of electing the party that best serves their interests, regardless of whether the party is Islamic or secular.

Had Field Marshall Sisi in 2013 allowed the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohammed Morsi to stay in power until the following election, they would have been voted out, according to public opinion polls at the time.

But Sisi and his military junta were not truly committed to a genuine democratic transition in Egypt. Now, according to Human Rights Watch reports, the current state of human rights in Egypt is much worse than it was under former President Hosni Mubarak.

The U.S. and Political Islam

Upon taking office, President Obama understood that disagreements between the United States and the Muslim world, especially political Islam, were driven by specific policies, not values of good governance. A key factor driving these disagreements was the widely held Muslim perception that America’s war on terror was a war on Islam.

The Obama administration also realised that while a very small percentage of Muslims engaged in violence and terrorism, the United States must find ways to engage the other 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. That drove President Obama early on in his administration to grant media interviews to Arab broadcasters and give his historic Cairo speech in June 2009.

However, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, and as drone strikes caused more civilian casualties in Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, many Muslims became more sceptical of Washington’s commitment to sincere engagement with the Muslim world.

The Arab uprisings beginning in 2011 known as the Arab Spring and the toppling of dictators prompted the United States to support calls for freedom, political reform, dignity, and democracy.

Washington announced it would work with Islamic political parties, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nahda, as long as these parties were committed to peaceful change and to the principles of pluralism, elections, and democracy.

That unprecedented opening boosted the fortunes of Arab political Islam and inclusive politics in the Arab world. American rapprochement with political Islam, however, did not last beyond two years.

The way forward

Much as one might disagree with Islamic political ideology, it’s the height of folly to think that long-term domestic stability and economic security in Egypt, Bahrain, Palestine, or Lebanon could be achieved without including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Wefaq, Hamas, and Hezbollah in governance.

Coddling autocrats is a short-term strategy that will not succeed in the long run. The longer the cozy relationship lasts, the more Muslims will revert to the earlier belief that America’s war on terrorism is a war on Islam.

The Arab countries that witnessed the fall of dictators, especially Egypt, will with Washington’s acquiescence revert back to repression and autocracy, as if the Arab Spring never happened.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

By Johan Galtung
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 28 2014 (IPS)

More senseless bombing of Muslims, more defeats for the United States-West, more ISIS-type movements, more West-Islam polarisation. Any way out?

“ISIS [Islamic State in Iraq-Syria] Appeals to a Longing for the Caliphate”, writes Farhang Jahanpour in an IPS column. For the Ottoman Caliphate with the Sultan as Caliph – the Shadow of God on Earth – after the 1516-17 victories all over until the collapse of both Empire and Caliphate in 1922, at the hands of the allies England-France-Russia.

Johan Galtung

Imagine the collapse of the Vatican, not Catholic Christianity, at the hands of somebody, Protestant or Orthodox Christians, meaning Anglo-Americans or Russians, or Muslims. A centre in this world for the transition to the next, headed by a Pope, an emanation of God in Heaven. Imagine it gone.

And imagine that they who had brought about the collapse had a tendency to bomb, invade,  conquer, dominate Catholic countries, one after the other, like after the two [George] Bush wars in Afghanistan-Iraq, five Obama wars in Pakistan-Yemen-Somalia-Libya-Syria and “special operations”.

Would we not predict a longing for the Vatican, and an extreme hatred of the perpetrators? Fortunately, it did not happen.

But it happened in the Middle East, leaving a trauma fuelled by killing hundreds of thousands. The Sykes-Picot_Agreement between Britain and France of 16 May 1916 led to the collapse, with their four well-known colonies, the less known promise of Istanbul to Russia, and the 1917 Balfour Declaration offering parts of Arab lands as “national home for the Jewish people”. Jahanpour cites Winston Churchill as “selling one piece of real estate, not theirs, to two peoples at the same time”.“Imagine the collapse of the Vatican, not Catholic Christianity, at the hands of somebody, Protestant or Orthodox Christians, meaning Anglo-Americans or Russians, or Muslims. A centre in this world for the transition to the next, headed by a Pope, an emanation of God in Heaven. Imagine it gone”

The Middle East colonies fought the West through military coups for independence; Turkish leader Kemal Atatürk was a model. The second liberation is militant Islam-Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algiers and so on against secular military dictatorships.

The West prefers military order against history.

The longing cannot be stopped. ISIS is only one expression, and exceedingly brutal. But, damage and destruction by U.S. President Barack Obama and allies will be followed by a dozen ISIS from 1.6 billion Muslims in 57 countries.

A little military politicking today, some “training” here, fighting there, bombing all over, are only ripples on a groundswell. This will end with a Sunni caliphate sooner or later. And, the lost caliphate they are longing for had no Israel, only a “national home”. This is behind some of the U.S.-West despair. Any solution?

The way out is cease-fire and negotiation, under United Nations auspices, with full Security Council backing. To gain time, switch to a defensive military strategy, defending Baghdad, the Kurds, the Shia and others in Syria and Iraq.

The historical-cultural-political position of ISIS and its successors is strong.

The West cannot offer withdrawal in return for anything because it has already officially withdrawn. The West, however, can offer reconciliation, both in the sense of clearing the past and opening the future.

Known in the United States as “apologism”, a difficult policy to pursue. But for once the onus of Sykes-Picot is not on the United States, but on Britain and France.

Russia dropped out after the 1917 revolution, but revealed the plot.

Bombing, an atrocity, will lead to more ISIS atrocities. A conciliatory West might change that. An international commission could work on Sykes-Picot and its aftermath, and open the book with compensation on it.

Above all, future cooperation. The West, and here the United States enters, could make Israel return the West Bank, except for small cantons, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital – or else! – sparing the horrible long-lasting Arab-Israeli warfare.

This would be decency, sanity, rationality; the question is whether the West possesses these qualities. The prognosis is dim.

There is the Anglo-American self-image as infallible, a gift to humanity, a little rough at times civilising the die-hards, but not weak.

If not an apology, at least they could wish to undo their own policies in the region since, say, 1967. No sign of that.

So much for the willingness. Does the West have the ability? Does it know how to reconcile?

After Portugal and England conquering the East China-East Africa sea lane around 1500, ultimately establishing themselves in Macao and Hong Kong, after the First and Second Opium wars of 1839-1860 in China, ending with Anglo-French forces burning the Imperial Palace in Beijing, did Britain use the “hand over” of Hong Kong to reflect on the past?

Not a word from Prince Charles.

China could have flattened those two colonies – but did not. Given that Islam has retaliation among its values, the West may be in for a lot.

Le Nouvel Observateur lists “groupes terroristes islamistes” in the world: Iraq-Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, Uzbekistan, Chechenya.

The groups, named, grew out of similar local circumstances. Imagine that they increasingly share that longing for a caliphate; the Ottoman Empire covered much more than the Middle East, way into Africa and Asia. And more groups are coming. Invincible.

Imagine that Turkey itself shares that dream, maybe hoping to play a major role (in the past, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu a superb academic, a specialist on the Empire.)

Could that be the reason for Turkey not really joining, as it seems, this anti-ISIS crusade?

The West should be realistic, not “realist”. Switch to rationality. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Sep 26 2014 (IPS)

President Obama’s speech at the United Nations on Sep. 23 offered a rhetorically eloquent roadmap on how to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

He called on Muslim youth to reject the extremist ideology of ISIL (as ISIS is also known) and al-Qa’ida and work towards a more promising future.  President Obama repeated the mantra, which we heard from President George Bush before him, that “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.”

There is no argument but that the Islamic State must be defeated.  But is the counter-terrorism roadmap, which President Obama set out in his U.N. speech, sufficient to defeat the extremist ideology of ISIS, Boko Haram, or al-Qa’ida?  Despite U.S. and Western efforts to degrade, decapitate, dismember and defeat these deadly and blood-thirsty groups for almost two decades, radical groups continue to sprout in Sunni Muslim societies."As the United States looks beyond today’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, U.S. policymakers should realise that ISIS is more than a bunch of jihadists roaming the desert and terrorising innocent civilians. It is an ideology, a vision, a sophisticated social media operation and an army with functioning command and control"

The President also urged the Arab Muslim world to reject sectarian proxy wars, promote human rights and empower their people, including women, to help move their societies forward. He again stated that the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is unsustainable and urged the international community to strive for the implementation of the two-state solution.

The President did not address Muslim youth in Western societies who could be susceptible to recruitment by ISIS, al-Qa’ida, or other terrorist organisations.

Arab publics will likely see glaring contradictions and inconsistencies in the President’s speech between his captivating rhetoric and actual policies. They most likely would view much of what he said, especially his global counter-terrorism strategy against the Islamic State, as another version of America’s war on Islam.  Arabs will also see much hypocrisy in the President’s speech on the issue of human rights and civil society.

Although fighting a perceived common enemy, it is a sad spectacle to see the United States, a champion of human rights, liberty and justice, cosy up to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain, serial violators of human rights and infamous practitioners of repression. It is even more hypocritical when Arab citizens realise that some of these so-called partners have often spread an ideology not much different from what ISIS preaches.

These three regimes in particular have emasculated their civil society and engaged in illegal imprisonment, sham trials and groundless convictions.  They have banned political parties, both Islamic and secular, silenced civil society institutions and prohibited peaceful protests.

The President praised the role of free press, yet Al-Jazeera journalists are languishing in Egyptian jails without any justification whatsoever. The regime continues to hold thousands of political prisoners without indictments or trials.

In addressing the youth in Muslim countries, the President told them: “Where a genuine civil society is allowed to flourish, then you can dramatically expand the alternatives to terror.”

What implications should Arab Muslim youth draw from the President’s invocation of the virtues of civil society when they see that genuine civil society is not “allowed to flourish” in their societies? Do Arab Muslim youth see real “alternatives to terror” when their regimes deny them the most basic human rights and freedoms?

The Sisi regime in Egypt has illegally destroyed the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have used the spectre of ugly sectarianism to destroy the opposition.  They openly and viciously engage in sectarian conflicts even though the President stated that religious sectarianism underpins regional instability.

In his U.N. speech, Field Marshall Sisi hoped the United States would tolerate his atrocious human rights record in the name of fighting ISIS.

Human Rights Watch and other distinguished experts sent a letter to President Obama asking him to raise the egregious human rights violations in Egypt when he met with Sisi in New York.  He should not give Sisi and other Arab autocrats a pass when it comes to their repression and human rights violations just because they joined the U.S.-engineered “coalition of the willing” against ISIS.

Regardless of how the air campaign against the Islamic State goes, U.S. policymakers will have to begin a serious review of a different Middle East than the one President Barak Obama inherited when he took office.  Many of the articles that have been written about ISIS have warned about the outcome of this war once the dust settles.

Critics correctly wondered whether opinion writers and experts could go beyond “warning” and suggest a course of policy that could be debated and possibly implemented. If the United States “breaks” the Arab world by forming an anti-ISIS ephemeral coalition of Sunni Arab autocrats, Washington will have to “own” what it had broken.

A road map is imperative if a serious conversation is to commence about the future of the Arab Middle East – but not one deeply steeped in counter-terrorism.  The Sunni coalition is a picture-perfect graphic for the evening news, especially in the West, but how should the United States deal with individual Sunni states in the coalition after the bombings stop and ISIS melts into the population?

As the United States looks beyond today’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, U.S. policymakers should realise that ISIS is more than a bunch of jihadists roaming the desert and terrorising innocent civilians.  It is an ideology, a vision, a sophisticated social media operation and an army with functioning command and control.

Above all, ISIS represents a view of Islam that is not dissimilar to other strict Sunni interpretations of the Muslim faith that could be found across many Muslim countries, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. In fact, this narrow-minded, intolerant view of Islam is at the heart of the Wahhabi-Salafi Hanbali doctrine, which Saudi teachers and preachers have spread across the Muslim world for decades.

Nor is this phenomenon unique in the ideological history of Sunni millenarian thinking.  From Ibn Taymiyya in the 13th century to Bin Ladin and Zawahiri in the past two decades, different Sunni groups have emerged on the Islamic landscape preaching ISIS-like ideological variations on the theme of resurrecting the “Caliphate” and re-establishing “Dar al-Islam.”

Although the historical lines separating Muslim regions (“Dar al-Islam” or “Abode of Peace”) from non-Muslim regions (“Dar al-Harb” or “Abode of War”) have almost disappeared in recent decades, ISIS, much like al-Qa’ida, is calling for re-erecting those lines.  Many Salafis in Saudi Arabia are in tune with such thinking.

This is a regressive, backward view, which cannot possibly exist today.  Millions of Muslims have emigrated to non-Muslim societies and integrated into those societies.

If President Obama plans to dedicate the remainder of his term in office to fighting and defeating the Islamic State, he cannot do it by military means alone.  He should:

1.  Tell Al Saud to stop preaching its intolerant doctrine of Islam in Saudi Arabia and revise its textbooks to reflect a new thinking. Saudi and other Muslim scholars should instruct their youth that “jihad” applies to the soul, not to the battlefield.

2.  Tell Sisi to stop his massive human rights violations in Egypt and allow his youth – men and women – the freedom to pursue their economic and political future without state control.  Sisi should also empty his jails of the thousands of political prisoners and invite the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the political process.

3.  Tell Al Khalifa to end its sectarian war in Bahrain against the Shia majority and invite opposition parties – secular and Islamic – including al-Wifaq, to participate in the upcoming elections freely and without harassment.  Opposition parties should also participate in redrawing the electoral districts before the Nov. 22 elections, which King Hamad has just announced.  International observers should be invited to monitor those elections.

4.  Tell the Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel that the situation in Gaza and the Occupied Territories is untenable.  Prime Minister Netanyahu should stop building new settlements and work with the Palestinian National Government for a settlement of the conflict. If President Obama concludes, like many scholars in the region, that the two-state solution is no longer workable, he should communicate his view to Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas and strongly encourage them to explore other modalities for the two peoples to live together between the River and the Sea.

If President Obama does not pursue these tangible policies and use his political capital in this endeavour, his U.N. speech will soon be forgotten.  Decapitating and degrading ISIS is possible, but unless Arab regimes move away from autocracy and invest in their peoples’ future, other terrorist groups will emerge.

Over the years, President Obama has delivered memorable speeches on Muslim world engagement, but unless he pushes for new policies in the region, the Arab Middle East will likely implode. Washington would be left holding the bag.  This is not the legacy the President would want to leave behind.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Sep 24 2014 (IPS)

When, all of a sudden, ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) emerged on the scene and in a matter of days occupied large swathes of mainly Sunni-inhabited parts of Iraq and Syria, including Iraq’s second city Mosul and Tikrit, birthplace of Saddam Hussein, and called itself the Islamic State, many people, not least Western politicians and intelligence services, were taken by surprise.

Farhang Jahanpour

Unlike in the Western world, religion still plays a dominant role in people’s lives in the Middle East region. When talking about Sunni and Shia divisions we should not be thinking of the differences between Catholics and Protestants in the contemporary West, but should throw our mind back to Europe’s wars of religion (1524-1648) that proved to be among the most vicious and deadly wars in history.

Just as the Hundred Years’ War in Europe was not based only on religion, the Sunni-Shia conflicts in the Middle East too have diverse causes, but are often intensified by religious differences. At least, various groups use religion as an excuse and as a rallying call to mobilise their forces against their opponents.

Ever since U.S. encouragement of Saudi and Pakistani authorities to organise and use jihadi fighters following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, to the rise of Al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks on Sep. 11, 2001, followed by the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and military involvement in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, it seems that the United States has had the reverse effect of the Midas touch, in the sense that whichever crisis the United States has touched has turned to dust.“Now, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist organisations, the entire Middle East is on fire. It would be the height of folly to dismiss or underestimate this movement as a local uprising that will disappear by itself, and to ignore its appeal to a large number of marginalised and disillusioned Sunni militants”

Now, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist organisations, the entire Middle East is on fire. It would be the height of folly to dismiss or underestimate this movement as a local uprising that will disappear by itself, and to ignore its appeal to a large number of marginalised and disillusioned Sunni militants.

In view of its ideology, fanaticism, ruthlessness, the territories that it has already occupied, and its regional and perhaps even global ambitions, ISIS can be regarded as the greatest threat since the Second World War and one that could change the map of the Middle East and the post-First World War geography of the entire region, and challenge Western interests in the Persian Gulf and beyond.

When Islam appeared in the deserts of Arabia some 1400 years ago, with an uncompromising message of monotheism and the slogan “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God”, it changed the plight of the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula and formed a religion and a civilisation that even now claims upward of 1.5 billion adherents in all parts of the world, and forms the majority faith in 57 countries that are members of the Islamic Cooperation Organization.

Contrary to many previous prophets who did not see the success of their mission during their own lifetime, in the case of Islam not only did Muhammad manage to unite the Arabs in the name of Islam in the entire Arabian Peninsula, but he even managed to form a state and ruled over the converted Muslims both as their prophet and ruler. The creation of the Islamic umma or community during Muhammad’s lifetime in Medina and later on in the whole of Arabia is a unique occurrence in the history of religion.

Consequently, while most religions look forward to an ideal state or to the “Kingdom of God” as a future aspiration, Muslims look back at the period of Muhammad’s rule in Arabia as the ideal state. Therefore, what a pious Muslim wishes to do is to look back at the life and teachings of the Prophet, and especially his rule in Arabia, and take it as the highest standard of an ideal religious government.

This is why the Salafis, namely those who turn to salaf or the early fathers and ancestors, have always proved so attractive to many fundamentalist Muslims. Being a Salafi is a call to Muslims to reject the modern world and to follow the example of the Prophet and the early caliphs.

When, in 1516-17, the armies of Ottoman Sultan Selim I captured Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Muslim holy places in Arabia, the sultan assumed the title of caliph, and therefore the Ottoman Empire was also regarded a Sunni caliphate.

Although not all Muslims, especially many Arabs, recognise Ottoman rule as a caliphate, the caliphate nevertheless continued in name until the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War when the caliphate was officially abolished in 1922.

The fall of the last powerful Islamic empire was not only traumatic from a political and military point of view but, with the end of the caliphate, the Sunnis lost a unifying religious authority as well.

It is very difficult for many Westerners to understand the feeling of hurt and humiliation that many Sunni Muslims feel as the result of what they have suffered in the past century. To have an idea, they should imagine that a mighty Christian empire that had lasted for many centuries had fallen as the result of Muslim conquest and that, in addition to the loss of the empire, the papacy had also been abolished at the same time.

With the end of the caliphate, Sunni countries were left rudderless, to be divided among various foreign powers which imposed their economic, military and cultural domination, as well as their beliefs and their way of life, on them. The feeling of hurt and humiliation that many Muslims have felt since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the strong longing for its reinstatement, still continues.

To add insult to injury, before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Western powers, especially Great Britain, had promised the Arabs that if they would rise up against the Ottomans, after the war they would be allowed to form an Islamic caliphate in the area comprising all the Arab lands ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

Not only were these promises not fulfilled, but as part of the Sykes-Picot_Agreement on 16 May 1916, Britain and France secretly plotted to divide the Arab lands between them and they even promised Istanbul to Russia. Not only was a unified Arab caliphate not formed, but the Balfour_Declaration generously offered a part of Arab territory that Britain did not possess to the Zionists, to form a “national home for the Jewish people”.

In Winston Churchill’s words, Britain sold one piece of real estate (to which it had no claim in the first place) to two people at the same time.

The age of colonialism came to an end almost uniformly through military coups involving officers who had the ability to fight against foreign occupation. From the campaigns of Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, to the rise of Reza Khan in Iran, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the military coups in Iraq and Syria that later led to the establishment of the Baâthist governments of Hafiz al-Assad in Syria and Abd al-Karim Qasim, Abdul Salam Arif and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and so on, practically all Middle Eastern countries achieved their independence as the result of military coups.

While the new military leaders managed to establish some order through the barrel of the gun, they were completely ignorant of the historical, religious and cultural backgrounds of their nations and totally alien to any concept of democracy and human rights.

In the absence of any civil society, democratic traditions and social freedom, the only path that was open to the masses that wished to mobilise against the rule of their military dictators was to turn to religion and use the mosques as their headquarters.

The rise of religious movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Ennahda Movement in Tunisia, FIS in Algeria and Al-Dawah in Iraq, were seen as a major threat by the military rulers and were ruthlessly suppressed.

The main tragedy of modern Middle Eastern regimes has been that they have been unable not only to involve the Islamist movements in government, but they have even failed to involve them in the society in any meaningful way.

This is why after repeated defeats, divisions and humiliation, there has always been a longing among militant Sunni Muslims, especially Arabs whose countries were artificially divided and dominated by Western colonialism and later by military dictators, for the revival of the caliphate. Even mere utterance of ‘Islamic caliphate’ brings a burst of adrenaline to many secular Sunnis.

The failure of military dictatorships and the marginalisation and even the elimination of religiously-oriented groups have led to the rise of vicious extremism and terrorism. The terrorist group ISIS is making use of this situation and is basing its appeal on the reinstatement of the caliphate. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

Rights groups say the sentences are evidence of the Egyptian regime’s increasingly totalitarian nature. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 23 2014 (IPS)

The administration of President Barack Obama joined international human rights groups around the world in “strongly condemn(ing)” Monday’s conviction and sentencing by an Egyptian court of three Al Jazeera journalists and 15 others for their alleged association with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

The White House, however, did not indicate what actions it was prepared to take, if any, in response to the verdicts, which it said “flouts the most basic standards of media freedom and represents a blow to democratic progress in Egypt.”We all know that the judiciary in Egypt has been the arm of the state for years. I feel embarrassed for our secretary of state to have to sit there and listen while the foreign minister says the judiciary is independent.” -- Emile Nakhleh

In a statement, it appealed instead to the new government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former general, Egypt’s strongman since the military coup that ousted President Mohamed Morsi almost exactly one year ago, to commute the sentences or pardon the defendants, as well as others who have been convicted for political reasons.

“Perhaps most disturbing is that this verdict comes as part of a succession of prosecutions and verdicts that are fundamentally incompatible with the basic precepts of human rights and democratic governance,” according to the White House statement.

“These include the prosecution of peaceful protesters and critics of the government, and a series of summary death sentences in trials that fail to achieve even a semblance of due process.”

Monday’s verdicts, which were also strongly denounced by a number of Western governments and press watchdog groups, immediately followed Sunday’s visit by Secretary of State John Kerry to Cairo where he met with both Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry during which he reportedly appealed for a more conciliatory approach to the Muslim Brotherhood.

On the eve of his arrival, however, an Egyptian court confirmed death sentences against the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Mohamed Badie, and 182 supporters in a mass trial that has also been broadly condemned by rights groups and Western governments.

Kerry’s visit, which was billed as an attempt to rebuild ties after a partial freeze on U.S. military aid following the coup and the subsequent killings of hundreds of Brotherhood protestors in Cairo, marked the highest-level meeting Sisi has held with a U.S. official since his election to the presidency last month.

Officials accompanying Kerry on the trip told reporters before his arrival that Washington had quietly restored all but about 78 million dollars of the 650 million dollars earlier this month. It was the first of two tranches of military aid earmarked for Egypt this year.

Washington has provided Cairo with an average of about 1.3 billion dollars in military aid annually over the past two decades.

Despite the death sentences confirmed Saturday, Kerry told reporters in Cairo after meeting Sisi that he was “absolutely confident” that all of the aid would soon be restored, although the State Department said later Monday it was “constantly reviewing” what aid should be provided.

Analysts here said the timing of Kerry’s announcement – coming so soon after the latest death sentences and on the eve of the reporters’ sentencing — was particularly unfortunate and effectively reduced what leverage Washington enjoys over the new government.

“He should’ve at least waited to make the announcement until the verdict [in the reporters’ trial] came out, because he knew it was scheduled today,” said Emile Nakhleh, a former senior analyst on the Middle East and political Islam for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

“Frankly, it’s pathetic for the United States to be in the position where we see clear violations of human rights and the most elementary principles of judicial practice hiding under the pretence that this is an independent judiciary,” he told IPS.

“We all know that the judiciary in Egypt has been the arm of the state for years. I feel embarrassed for our secretary of state to have to sit there and listen while the foreign minister says the judiciary is independent.”

The three Al-Jazeera journalists, all of whom had previously worked for mainstream international news media, include Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy, Australian Peter Greste; and Egyptian Baher Mohamed.

Detained since a raid on their studio in the Marriott Hotel in Cairo last December and charged with membership in the Brotherhood and fabricating video footage to “give the appearance Egypt is in a civil war,” the three were sentenced to seven years in a maximum-security prison, with an additional three years for Mohamed for possessing a spent shell he kept as a souvenir.

The other defendants, mostly students, were accused of aiding the reporters in allegedly fabricating the footage. While two were acquitted, most were sentenced to seven years in prison; those tried in absentia were sentenced to 10 years.

“The trial was a complete sham,” according to Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“This is a devastating verdict for the men and their families, and a dark day for media freedom in Egypt, when jouirnalists are being locked up and branded criminals or ‘terrorists’ simply for doing their job.”

He was joined by Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, who complained that the prosecution had offered “zero evidence of wrongdoing” and noted that current U.S. law requires that military aid be withheld pending real progress on the human rights situation in Egypt.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also denounced the verdicts as “shocking and an extremely disturbing sign for the future of the Egyptian press,” while Reporters Without Borders in Paris said they offered evidence of the “Egyptian regime’s increasingly totalitarian nature.”

Kerry issued his own condemnation of the verdicts in between urgent meetings with Iraqi political leaders in Baghdad Monday. He called the conviction and sentences “chilling” and “draconian” and “a deeply disturbing setback to Egypt’s transition.”

He said he had phoned Shoukry Monday “to make very clear our deep concerns” and appealed for Sisi’s government “to review all of the political sentences and verdicts pronounced during the last few years and consider all available remedies, including pardons.”

But Nakhleh said Washington’s appeals are unlikely to have the desired effect. “The appeal by the White House for clemency isn’t going to carry any weight with the Sisi government,” he told IPS. “We’ve really lost all credibility.” He called for Congress to re-impose the aid freeze.

Indeed, the powerful chairman Senate Foreign Operations Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, suggested late Monday that he would work for such a freeze in light of the latest verdicts.

“The harsh actions taken today against journalists is the latest descent toward despotism,” he said in a statement. “Through discussions with Secretary Kerry and others over recent weeks, I agreed to the release of the bulk of these funds for sustainment purposes, but further aid should be withheld until they demonstrate a basic commitment to justice and human rights.”

CPJ’s director, Joel Simon, said the Al-Jazeera journalists have become “pawns” in a conflict between the Egypt and Qatar, which supported the Brotherhood and Morsi’s government, in particular. Since Morsi’s ouster, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait have replaced Doha has Cairo’s main financial supporter.

Riyadh has even vowed to provide the government with any military aid withheld by the U.S.

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:

An empty polling station in Garden City, Cairo. Credit: Amanda Mustard

By Annabell Van den Berghe
CAIRO, May 29 2014 (IPS)

With a result already known before the race started, many did not even bother heading to the polling stations and the streets in Cairo were unusually empty during the election process that ended Wednesday, just like the ballot boxes.

Egyptians had been called on to vote for their second president in two years, but the low turnout threatened to undermine the credibility of the popular candidate. former army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who wanted to show the world once and for all that the overthrow of the first freely-elected president, Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, was not a coup by the military but a revolution backed by the Egyptian people.

Sisi himself had aimed for an 80 percent turnout but, after two days, this turnout seemed unachievable. Observers estimated that 20 percent of the electorate had cast votes over two days, while organisers of the campaign of Hamdeen Sabbahi, Sisi’s only opponent, said they had logged a turnout of no more than 15 percent turnout.

In a first attempt to boost these numbers, Egyptian authorities extended the voting on Tuesday by an extra hour. And shortly after that, another effort was made by granting an extension of an extra day on Wednesday.“Real change lies in the hands of the youth. We are the ones fighting for a better Egypt, but we need time. When we reach the age to rule the country, we will do it differently” – 23-year-old law student

The Presidential Election Commission defended this decision stating that it was a response to calls by citizens who were struck by the heat wave in Egypt and therefore could not go to vote. But this latter attempt was seen by many as a fraud.

“This was ridiculous,” said Omar Amin, a 28-year-old architect. “We all knew it is not about who would win these elections, but how many votes there would be. It made no sense to extend the voting by another day, just to reach the numbers they had in mind.” Amin is one of many young people who decided to stay at home instead of casting a ballot.

But the concerns about turnout were already clear long before the heat wave arrived on Tuesday. After the authorities declared the second day of voting a national holiday and several other measures were taken to improve the turnout, the worry was crystal clear. Major shopping centres had to close their doors hours before normal closing time to make sure Egyptians would not use their newly announced holiday for shopping instead of doing their duty as citizens.

Egypt’s highest Islamic state-run authority Al-Azhar preached that failure to vote was “disobeying the nation.” And the head of the Coptic church in Egypt, Pope Tawadros, gave a speech exhorting voters to head to the polls

“It is such a paradox to use religion and religious authorities to move people to voting,” a women in her thirties who did not want to give her name, told IPS. “Those who are fighting the Muslim Brotherhood by calling them terrorists because they used religion as an instrument to gain popularity, are now doing exactly the same thing.”

But not only the churches and mosques tried to convince Egyptians to vote. State television as well as national radio scolded the public for not showing up at the polls. A TV anchor said that those who were not voting “should be shot”, or “at least should shoot themselves.”

But not everybody was convinced by the propaganda of local media loyal to both the interim government and frontrunner Sisi. “I am not voting. Even if I were in Alexandria where I should be voting, I wouldn’t make the effort. I’d rather shoot myself,” Marc Dimitri joked during the elections, referring to the controversial quote of the TV anchor.

Dimitri is a 23-year-old law student from Alexandria, residing in Cairo. He doesn’t believe Egypt’s future lies in the hands of the current politicians. “Whoever will be our president, now or in the coming years, will not be able to make a change,” he believes. “Real change lies in the hands of the youth. We are the ones fighting for a better Egypt, but we need time. When we reach the age to rule the country, we will do it differently.”

Ahmed Mohamed Seif, a 24-year-old colleague of Dimitri agreed. “We have an incredibly strong judiciary system, based on the French system. The problem in Egypt isn’t the skeleton of institutions, it’s the executive part. Egypt is corrupt. That’s what needs to be changed, and only a new generation can do this.”

Young Egyptians seemed to stay far away from the polls. The women lining up at the “females only” polling station in the Garden City district of Cairo were all in their early forties or older. They believed their vote would make a difference. “Sisi will win the elections! Our hero, I love him,” chemistry professor Malak Mehdi shouted. “He understands the Egyptian people, he knows our needs. Sabbahi is nobody, Sisi will assure the stability of Egypt,” she added.

While the female crowd was chanting for Sisi, patriotic songs blared from loudspeakers just outside the polling station. Maya Husein, a 52-year-old woman next in line, chimed in: “Sisi is a strong man with a strong hand, this is what Egypt needs. He freed us from terrorism and will continue protecting us.”

Sisi’s propaganda machine seemed to have worked. The adulation of Sisi over recent months pushed many to vote for him, mostly women who adore him and see him as the saviour of the nation.

But a couple of blocks away, at a local coffee shop, some friends gathered for tea instead of casting votes. Like Dimitri and Seif, they questioned the capability of Sisi to rule their country. “His (Sisi’s) campaign was totally focussed on the war on terror, he didn’t talk about the future. But what is next? What will he do after all Islamists are jailed or killed?” wondered 31-year-old Nader Abdelrahmen.

“A year ago we were told that someone would be held accountable for the hundreds of deaths during the dispersal (of a pro-Morsi sit in at Rabaa in August 2013, ed.). Today we see all Muslim Brotherhood leaders and its members arrested or even sentenced to death – nobody talks about the massacres anymore. And we are the next to come: they have already started threatening us. Is this justice? Is this how he will rule over Egypt?” complains Ammar Abubakr, a prominent 33-year-old graffiti artist and activist.

“I am not boycotting because I agree with the Muslim Brotherhood. I am boycotting because I am against the failure of this system. At this point, there is no suitable option for this generation,” he continued.

Although the Brotherhood called for a boycott of these elections, and most of its supporters stayed away from the ballot boxes, there are apparently many other reasons why the turnout was beneath all expectations – and the extension of the voting did not substantially affect the final results.

Number one in this race for president is he who stayed at home. Sisi ended up right behind, with 90% of the votes out of the roughly 40 percent turnout, which makes him the new leader of Egypt – despite the heat.

Violent demonstrations have followed branding of the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 29 2014 (IPS)

Five days after approving the transfer of 10 Apache helicopters to aid Egypt’s “counter-terrorism” campaign in Sinai, the administration of President Barack Obama denounced as “unconscionable” the latest round of mass death sentences against members of the Muslim Brotherhood handed down by an Egyptian court Monday.

Warning that the decisions “foster the instability, extremism, and radicalization that Egypt’s Interim Government says it seeks to resolve”, the State Department also complained that a ruling by yet another court to ban the April 6 Youth Movement was “troubling.”“This perceived non-action will empower the junta in its bloody crackdown on all kinds of opposition and its continuing massive human rights violations." -- Emile Nakhleh

“Supporters of the movement were at the forefront of the January 25, 2011 revolution that overthrew former president (Hosni) Mubarak, and the Government of Egypt must allow for the peaceful political activist that the group practices if Egypt’s Interim intends to transition to democracy, as it has committed itself to do,” according to a statement issued in the name of the Department’s spokesperson, Jan Psaki.

Human rights groups also harshly criticised the latest court decisions, arguing that the judicial branch of Egypt’s government appears to have lost its independence and become a willing tool of the dominant military whose former chief and defence minister,

Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi is virtually certain to win the presidential election scheduled for May 26-27.

“Egypt’s judiciary risks becoming just another part of the authorities’ repressive machinery, issuing sentences of death and life imprisonment on an industrial scale,” according to Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International in London.

Independent experts here also took exception to Washington’s reaction, suggesting that until the U.S. takes stronger action, notably a cut-off of all military assistance, its verbal condemnations will not be taken seriously.

Washington provides Egypt with about 1.5 billion dollars a year in aid, 1.3 billion dollars of which has been earmarked for the military.

The new rulings came just as Secretary of State John Kerry was scheduled to meet Tuesday with visiting Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy in what was billed as an effort to improve relations that were strained initially by Washington’s partial suspension of military cooperation and aid following last July’s coup against President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a former Brotherhood leader.

“For many Egyptians and other Arabs, including liberals and Islamists, the U.S. reaction is mere words that will have no effect on Egypt’s ruling junta,” according to Emile Nakhleh, a former director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

“This perceived non-action will empower the junta in its bloody crackdown on all kinds of opposition and its continuing massive human rights violations,” he told IPS.

Nakhleh added that the delivery of the Apache helicopters, which was announced last week, as well as all military-to-military and intelligence cooperation with Egypt should be suspended “in reaction to the junta’s egregious human rights violations, sham trials, and summary convictions.”

Monday’s court decisions followed the sentencing last month of 529 people to death for a 2013 attack against a police station in Minya in which one officer was killed.

The same court announced Monday that it was commuting the sentences of 492 of those defendants to life imprisonment but was confirming the death penalty for the remaining 37.

The same court, however, proceeded to sentence another 683 people, including the Brotherhood’s top leader, Mohammed Badie, to death in connection with a separate attack in the same area.

Both incidents took place the same day last August after government forces in Cairo opened fire on demonstrators protesting against Morsi’s ouster, killing many hundreds of his supporters. Both trials took place in a matter of a few hours, and most of the defendants were tried in absentia.

“The only shocking thing about this latest sentencing is that they would do this again following the harsh international reaction to the outlandish verdicts from last month,” said Samer Shehata, an Egypt expert at the University of Oklahoma.

“It shows essentially a disregard not only for due process and Egyptian law, but also for international opinion,” he told IPS.

Since Morsi’s ouster, the military-backed regime has made clear its desire to crush the Brotherhood. In addition to arresting Morsi and charging the group’s leadership with capital offences, security forces have carried out several massacres of demonstrators, killing more than 1,000 people and detaining as many as 23,000 more, many of them in secret prisons where torture is routinely practiced, according to human rights groups.

They have also declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

The regime has also proposed new anti-terrorist legislation that, among other provisions, would make holding a leadership position in the Brotherhood, despite its advocacy of non-violence, a capital crime; expedite procedures for prosecuting defendants accused of terrorism; and significantly broaden the definition of terrorism to include any action that could “obstruct” the work of public officials or various other institutions. It would also criminalise any action that could “harm national unity”.

“By these definitions, anyone who participated in the popular uprisings of 2011 or 2013 could be branded a terrorist,” noted Joe Stork, an Egypt specialist at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Monday’s third court decision – to ban the “pro-democracy” April 6 movement– was based on charges that the group had “tarnished the image” of Egypt and conspired with foreign powers.

Despite the group’s initial support for the military coup, three of its most prominent leaders were sentenced to three years of hard labour last fall for allegedly organising an unauthorised demonstration to protest police repression. Their sentences were upheld by an appeals court earlier this month.

“This reveals the true character of the regime in Egypt,” said Shehata. “It’s not interested in restoring democracy; it is interested in wiping out dissent – initially the Muslim Brotherhood and now liberal democracy activists and NGOs and human rights defenders.”

He expressed frustration with Washington’s reaction, insisting that military aid should be cut off.

“The United States seems not to be genuinely concerned about what is happening,” he complained. “What else would explain the recent Apache helicopters going to Egypt and the photo-op between Nabil Fahmy and Kerry?

“Unfortunately, the administration is behaving as if the Arab uprisings never occurred… and that all we care about is maintaining [the] Camp David [peace treaty between Egypt and Israel], passage through the Suez Canal, and counter-terrorism and forget about democracy and human rights.”

He added that Saudi Arabia, which hosted Obama last month during a key summit last month, and the United Arab Emirates were the main “cheerleaders and check-writers” for the regime and particularly its repression of the Brotherhood.

Along with Kuwait, the two Gulf monarchies have provided billions of dollars in aid. He also noted that Israel and its allies here have also lobbied in favour of continuing U.S. assistance.

CIA veteran analyst Paul Pillar, the government’s top Middle East intelligence officer from 2000 until his retirement in 2005, added that a combination of Israeli preferences and Islamophobia “has produced U.S. policy that has insufficiently recognised the repressive nature of the current Egyptian government.”

“Statements about how troubled we are will have little effect, coming at the same time the United States is partially resuming military aid to Egypt,” he told IPS via email.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

The Bahraini Arabic language newspaper al-Wasat reported on Wednesday Apr. 9 that a Cairo court began to consider a case brought by an Egyptian lawyer against Qatar accusing it of being soft on terrorism.

The “terrorism” charge is of course a euphemism for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have designated a “terrorist” organisation and are vowed to dismantle.It’s becoming very clear that dictatorial policies are producing more instability, less security, and greater appeal to terrorism.

The two new partners and the UAE also loathe Qatar for hosting and funding Al-Jazeera satellite TV. The continued incarceration of the Al-Jazeera journalists and dozens of other journalists on trumped up charges is no coincidence.

The court case is symptomatic of the current Saudi-Egyptian relationship in their counter-revolution against the 2011 pro-democracy upheavals that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his fellow autocrats in Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya.

The pro-autocracy partnership between the Egyptian military junta and the Saudi ruling family goes beyond their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and the perceived threat of terrorism. It emanates from the autocrats’ visceral opposition to democracy and human rights, including minority and women’s rights.

What should be most critical to them as they contemplate the future of their coalition of counter-revolutionaries, however, is the growing Western conviction that dictators can no longer provide stability.

The Egyptian Field Marshall and the Saudi potentate also abhor the key demands of the Arab uprisings and reject their peoples’ calls for freedom, dignity, justice, and genuine economic and political reform.

They are equally terrified of the coming end of the authoritarian paradigm, which could bring about their demise or at least force them to share power with their people. The Saudis and their Gulf Arab allies, especially Bahrain and the UAE, are willing to trample on their people’s rights in order to safeguard family tribal rule.

The Saudi-Egyptian partnership is also directed at the Obama administration primarily because of Washington’s diplomatic engagement with Iran.

According to media and Human Rights Watch reports, at least 15,000 secular and Islamist activists are currently being held in Egyptian prisons, without having been charged or convicted. This number includes hundreds of MB leaders and activists and thousands of its supporters.

Many of them, including teenagers, have also been tortured and abused physically and psychologically. These mass arrests and summary trials and convictions of Islamists and liberals alike belie the Saudi-Egyptian claim that theirs is a campaign against terrorism.

A brief history of Egyptian-Saudi relations

Egyptian-Saudi relations in the past 60 years have been erratic, depending on leadership, ideology, and regional and world events. During the Nasser era in the 1950s and ‘60s, relations were very tense because of Saudi fears of Nasser’s Arab nationalist ideology.

The Saudis saw Nasser a nationalist firebrand arousing Arab masses against colonialism and Arab monarchies. He supported national liberation movements and wars of independence against the French in North Africa and the British in the Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf.

The Saudi monarchy viewed Nasser’s call for Arab unity “from the roaring ocean to the rebellious Gulf” as a threat to their survival and declared a war on “secular” Arab nationalism and “atheist” Communism.

They perceived Nasser’s war in Yemen against the tribal monarchy as an existential threat at their door and began to fund and arm the royalists in Yemen against the Egyptian military campaign.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the two opposite poles of the “Arab cold war” during the 1950s and ‘60s. Nasser represented emerging Arab republicanism while Saudi Arabia epitomised traditional monarchies. Nasser turned to the Soviet Union; Saudi Arabia turned to the United States.

In the late 1960s, Saudi Arabia declared the proselytisation of its brand of Islam as a cardinal principle of its foreign policy for the purpose of fighting Arab nationalism and Communism.

It’s ironic that Saudi Arabia is currently supporting and funding the military junta in Egypt at a time when the military-turned-civilian presidential shoe-in Sisi is resurrecting the Nasserist brand of politics.

In the next three to five years, the most intriguing analytic question will be whether this partnership would endure and how long the post-2011 generation of Arabs would tolerate a coalition of secular autocracy and a religious theocracy.

Saudi Arabia supported Egyptian President Sadat’s war against Israel in 1973 but broke with him later in that decade after he visited Jerusalem and signed a peace treaty with Israel.

By the early 1980s, however, the two countries re-established close relations because of their common interest in supporting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and in pushing for the Saudi-articulated Arab Peace Initiative.

The Saudi King viewed President Hosni Mubarak warmly and was dismayed by his fall. He was particularly incensed by Washington’s seeming precipitous abandonment of Mubarak in January 2011.

The Saudi monarchy applauded General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s removal of President Muhammad Morsi and pumped billions of dollars into the Egyptian treasury. They also indicated they would make up any deficit in case U.S. aid to Egypt is halted.

The Saudis have endorsed Sisi’s decision to run for president of Egypt and adopted similar harsh policies against the Muslim Brotherhood and all political dissent. Several factors seem to push Saudi Arabia closer to Egypt.

The Saudis are concerned about their growing loss of influence and prestige in the region, especially their failure in thwarting the interim nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran. Their policy in Syria is in shambles.

Initially, they encouraged jihadists to go to Syria to fight the Assad regime, but now they cannot control the pro-Al-Qaeda radical Salafi jihadists fighting the Damascus tyrant.

The Saudis also failed in transforming the Gulf Cooperation Council into a more unified structure. Other than Bahrain, almost every other state has balked at the Saudi suggestion, viewing it a power grab.

In an absurd form of retaliation against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from that country. The Saudis are engaged in tribal vendettas against their fellow tribal ruling families, which is out of place in a 21^st century globalised and well-connected world.

The oil wealth and the regime’s inspired religious fatwas by establishment clerics have a diminishing impact on the younger generation connected to the global new social media.

Despite the heavy-handed crackdown, protests, demonstrations, and confrontations with the security forces are a daily occurrence in Egypt. It’s becoming very clear that dictatorial policies are producing more instability, less security, and greater appeal to terrorism.

It won’t be long before Western governments conclude that autocracy is bad for their moral sensibilities, destructive for business, and threatening for their presence in the region. The Saudi-Egyptian coalition of autocrats will soon be in the crosshairs.

In order to endure, such a coalition must be based on respect for their peoples, a genuine commitment to human rights, and a serious effort to address the “deficits” of liberty, education, and women’s rights that have afflicted Arab society for decades.

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

U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel participates in an arrival honours ceremony with then Egyptian defence minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, Egypt, Apr. 24, 2013. Credit: public domain

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Mar 28 2014 (IPS)

The summary mass trial and sentencing of 529 Egyptians to death this week is yet another example of Egypt’s descent into lawlessness and blatant miscarriage of justice.

The rushed decision showed no respect for the most basic standards of due process under the military dictatorship.Sisi, much like Vladimir Putin and his land grab in Ukraine, feels empowered to defy the U.S. because he perceives it as unwilling or unable to confront him.

The Egyptian court spent less than a minute on each of the 529 defendants before sentencing them. Defence lawyers were barred from challenging state “evidence” and defendants were not allowed to speak. Yet, the Sisi government and the pliant Egyptian media did not question the sentences.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement in Secretary of State John Kerry’s name condemning the sentences. Kerry said he is “deeply troubled” and called on the Egyptian interim government to “remedy the situation.”

The decision, according to the statement, “simply defies logic” and fails to satisfy “even the most basic standards of justice.” Amnesty International deemed the death sentences “grotesque.” Most Western countries have expressed “deep concern” over the sham trial and convictions and the hope the decision would be overturned on appeal.

In his heady rush to seek the presidency, however, Field Marshall turned civilian Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is not paying much attention to Washington’s warnings or to international condemnations of the Minya judge who dispensed the ruling.

Sisi sees the Barack Obama administration moving away from values of good governance and the rule of law in Egypt to a myopic doctrine of national interest, which includes coddling Arab dictators and tribal ruling potentates.

Since the Arab upheavals of 2011, President Obama has identified U.S. values of tolerance, justice, fairness, and democracy as a guiding principle of post “Arab Spring” relations with Arab countries. These values, the U.S. president frequently said, “define who we are” as a people and as a nation.

Sisi, on the other hand, much like Vladimir Putin and his land grab in Ukraine, feels empowered to defy the U.S. because he perceives it as unwilling or unable to confront him or to shun him or cut military aid to Egypt. He counts on Washington’s inaction against him despite rising lawlessness by state institutions because of Egypt’s pivotal standing in the region.

By ignoring the Egyptian constitution and its traditional claim of judicial independence, the Egyptian judiciary seemed to kowtow to the military-run interim government.

The mass death sentences coupled with Sisi’s announcement of his candidacy for the presidency seem to bring the coup that toppled President Mohamed Morsi full circle. For Sisi, the January 25 Revolution is history, and the demands for democracy are now subsumed under the rubric of fighting “terrorism”, which he equates with the Muslim Brotherhood.

It’s symbolic that Sisi made the announcement on Egyptian television in military uniform even though he had just resigned as minister of defence and as a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). He told the Egyptian public he would continue the struggle “against terrorism” and would fight to “regain Egypt” and restore its “dignity and stature.”

Sisi must have taken a page from the American Tea Party book about “taking back America” and from Putin about taking back Crimea. As if someone has stolen America from the Tea Party, or Ukraine from Russia, or Egypt from Sisi.

In fact, it was Sisi and the military junta that stole Egypt from the January 25 Revolution in a military coup. It was Sisi’s regime that has put over 15,000 Egyptians – Islamists and secularists – in jail through illegal arrests, sham trials, and without due process for challenging the coup.

Sisi envisions his presidency to rest on a three-legged stool of pliant media, submissive public, and adulation of him as a rising “selfie” star. In the name of “serving the nation,” Egyptians are being brainwashed not to question the personality cult of Sisi’s budding populist dictatorship.

In addition to frightening the public into submission, Sisi has also shuffled SCAF by sidelining potential challengers like General Ahmed Wasfi and promoting supporters like General Sidqi Sobhi. He sees these actions as an insurance policy against a possible coup that could topple him, much like he did against Morsi.

Although much has been written about Egypt in recent days, the death sentences and Sisi’s presidency have created two serious concerns, which Washington and other Western capitals must confront.

First, these actions likely will result in a growing radicalisation of some elements within the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups in Egypt. Radicalisation usually begets violence and terrorism.

It would be a nightmare scenario for any Egyptian government if the new radicals join forces with Salafi jihadists in Sinai. Such coordination, which could create an opening for al-Qa’ida in Egypt, would wreak havoc on the country and on Western interests and personnel there.

Second, continued instability, lawlessness, and repression in Egypt under a Sisi presidency would begin to attract Islamist jihadists from Syria to Egypt.

Unlike their counterparts from Afghanistan, the new jihadists are honed by combat experience and trained in the use of all kinds of weapons. A jihadist base in Egypt would certainly spread to neighbouring countries, including the Gulf tribal monarchies.

To stem this nightmarish tide, the United States and its Western allies must urge Gulf monarchies to start serious dialogue with their peoples toward inclusion and tolerance.

They also must convince Sisi that no stable political system would emerge in Egypt without including secularists and Islamists in the process. An adoring public, a pliant media, a sycophantic government, and an unfettered and corrupt military are a formula for disaster for the Egypt and the region.

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

The killing of Muslim Brotherhood supporters has only strengthened resolve within the party to resist the current regime. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 26 2014 (IPS)

International human rights groups have strongly denounced Monday’s sentencing by an Egyptian court of 529 Islamists to death for a riot in which one policeman was killed.

Egypt specialists here say the sentences, which are widely seen as the latest in a series of steps taken by the authorities to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as other dissident forces opposed to the military-backed government, are certain to fuel increased radicalisation in the Arab world’s most populous nation.“What all this repression creates is a very deep well of anger.” -- Michelle Dunne

“What all this repression creates is a very deep well of anger,” said Michelle Dunne, an Egypt specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-chair of the Working Group on Egypt, a coalition of neo-conservative and liberal internationalist Middle East analysts who have informally advised the administration of President Barack Obama since the dawn of the Arab spring in late 2010.

“Where these kinds of actions are taking Egypt is very worrisome. …We now have an ally that might be headed toward serious and persistent instability,” according to Dunne, who noted that another court sentenced a group of 17 university students for rioting just a few days ago. Although no one was killed or seriously injured in that incident, each of the students received 14 years in prison.

Indeed, while the administration of President Barack Obama, which Monday described the mass death sentences as “defy(ing) logic,” had hoped to fully normalise military ties that were partially suspended after the July coup against President Mohamed Morsi, the latest court actions – along with the designation by the military-backed government of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation – would appear to make that much less likely.

The death sentences, which Amnesty International and the New York Times described as “grotesque” and “preposterous”, respectively, followed a one-day trial before three judges in Minya in which most of the defendants were absent or had no or very limited legal representation. As noted by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the prosecution failed to put forward evidence implicating any individual defendant.

“The Minya court’s sentencing more than 500 people to death for the killing of a police officer highlights the fact that no Egyptian court has even questioned a single police officer for the killing of well over 1,000 largely peaceful protesters since Jul. 3 [when the military ousted Morsi],” said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director.

“This trial is just one of dozens of mass trials taking place every day across Egypt, riddled with serious due process violations and resulting in outrageous sentences that represent serious miscarriages of justice,” she noted.

The defendants were all indicted for alleged participation in a riot in Minya, a Brotherhood stronghold in central Egypt, last August, some six weeks after a military coup against the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. The riot, which followed two massacres of hundreds of peaceful Brotherhood protestors in Cairo, resulted in the destruction of several churches and police stations and the death of one police officer.

Analysts here said the mass sentencing, the largest in modern Egyptian history, may have been motivated by a desire on the specific court’s part to retaliate against Morsi’s efforts to gain greater control over the judiciary or by its acquiescence to instructions by the police or interior ministry to make an example of the case as part of a broader strategy to intimidate the opposition. Both the verdicts and the sentences are subject to appeal.

If, indeed, the intent of the verdicts and other repressive measures is to restore stability to Egypt, the strategy does not appear to be working, according to Dunne, who Monday released a new report documenting both the growing repression and the rise in violence directed against the government.

“Egyptians have suffered through the most intense human rights abuses and terrorism in their recent history in the eight months since the military ousted then president Mohamed Morsi,” according to the report, “Egypt’s Unprecedented Instability by the Numbers.”

Citing statistics by Egyptian rights groups and other sources, the report found that a total of 3,143 people have been killed as a result of political violence between Jul. 3 last year and the end of January. Of the total, at least 2,528 civilians and 60 police were killed in political protests and clashes, and another 281 others are estimated to have been killed in terrorist attacks.

Some 16,400 people have been arrested during political events, while another 2,590 political leaders – the vast majority associated with the Brotherhood – have been rounded up and remain in detention, the report said.

All of these tallies, according to the report, show that current level of repression actually exceeds the scale reached under former President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who tried to crush the Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s by rounding up hundreds of members and executing a dozen of their leaders, and in the aftermath of the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

The report also found, the rate of terrorist incidents – and the deaths they’ve inflicted — in the seven months that followed the Jul. 3 coup have also surpassed the rates reached between 1993 and 1995, when more than 300 people, including police, extremists, civilians and tourists fell victim annually to the war between the security forces and Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (The Islamic Group) of which the current Al Qaeda chief, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, was a top leader.

“(M)ilitants have shown that they are capable of inflicting far more damage should they choose to do so,” according to the Carnegie report, which noted that insurgents have “shown increasing sophistication” in carrying out attacks against police officers, soldiers, and high-level government officials but have not yet shown interest in inflicting mass casualties.

The latest developments appear to have put the Obama administration, which suspended joint exercises with Egypt immediately after the coup and subsequently suspended delivery of some weapons systems, including attack helicopters and tanks, to coax the military into pursuing a less repressive policy toward the Brotherhood, in particular.

Saudi Arabia, with which Obama hopes to patch up relations badly strained by his failure both to support former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the outset of the Arab Spring and to intervene more aggressively on the side of rebels in Syria when he visits Riyadh later this week, has strongly backed the military’s crackdown against the Brotherhood and are expected to press their guest to do likewise.

The Saudis have not only provided billions of dollars in budgetary support for the regime; they have also offered to make up for any weapons withheld by Washington by buying comparable systems from other arms suppliers, including Russia, on Egypt’s behalf.

“The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have a basic disagreement about what’s going on in Egypt,” according to Dunne. “The Saudis would say whatever heavy-handed measures the authorities are taking is necessary to defeat terrorism. Most U.S. officials says these tactics are causing terrorism and potentially driving Egypt toward persistent instability.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all recalled their ambassadors from Qatar on Wednesday, citing Qatar’s alleged support for organisations and individuals that threaten “the security and stability of the Gulf states” and for “hostile media.”

This came right on the heels of a U.A.E. court sentencing Qatari doctor Mahmoud al-Jaidah to seven years in prison on Monday, for the crime of aiding a banned opposition group called al-Islah, which the U.A.E. government alleges has operational ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

This was a coordinated move, led by the Saudis, to punish Qatar for supporting Muslim Brotherhood interests around the Middle East (and also for assuming a more prominent role in pan-Arab politics in general), but beyond that it reflects the Saudis’ deep and ongoing concern about an Iranian resurgence in the Gulf.

The North Dome-South Pars Field, straddling Qatari and Iranian waters. Source: Wikipedia

From the Saudi perspective the Qataris have been punching above their proper weight, and making nice with the wrong people.

Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are clearly the public justification for this row; it is no mystery why Saudi Arabia followed up Wednesday’s diplomatic swipe at Qatar with a decision on Friday to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

The Saudis, while they share certain conservative Islamic principles with the Brotherhood, are more than a bit put off by the group’s opposition to dynastic rule. Despite that feature of Brotherhood’s ideology, though, the very dynastic Qatari monarchy has been a strong supporter of Brotherhood-allied movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa, in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt (especially), and Syria.

Their rationale for doing so has been two-fold: one, they feel that supporting the Brotherhood abroad should insulate them from the Brotherhood at home, and two, Qatar has been predicting that the Brotherhood would be the main beneficiary of the Arab Spring.

Had they been right in their prediction, Qatar’s regional influence would have been significantly increased as a result, but by the looks of things, they were wrong. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is now outlawed in Egypt, its Ennahda Party in Tunisia has voluntarily agreed to give up power, and it has lost most of its influence within the Syrian opposition.

Last November’s reorganisation of Syrian opposition groups from the Qatar-financed Syrian Islamic Liberation Front to the Saudi-backed Islamic Front can be seen as evidence of the Brotherhood’s, and thus Qatar’s, loss of stature.

A related complaint that these countries have with Qatar is with the country’s Al Jazeera television news network (the “hostile media”).

Al Jazeera has continued to provide media access to Muslim Brotherhood figures in Egypt even as that organization was outlawed by the interim Egyptian government, to the extent that several Al Jazeera journalists are currently on trial in Egypt for aiding the Brotherhood.

These countries are also angry about the fact that Al Jazeera continues to give airtime to Brotherhood-affiliated cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi is actually wanted for extradition to Egypt over his comments about the coup that removed the Brotherhood from power there, and he recently lambasted, on Al Jazeera’s airwaves, the U.A.E., for “fighting everything Islamic.”

The reported pressure being placed on Saudi and Emirati journalists working in Qatar to quit their jobs and return home undoubtedly has something to do with the overall irritation with Qatari media.

However, there is another factor at play here: Qatar’s close – too close for Saudi comfort – ties with Iran (the real “organisation” that threatens Gulf – i.e., Saudi – security), which has to do largely with natural gas. Qatar shares its windfall natural gas reserves with Iran, in what’s known as the North Dome/South Pars Field in the Persian Gulf.

The International Energy Agency estimates that it is the largest natural gas field on the planet. Qatar has been extracting gas from its side of the field considerably faster than Iran has been, for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, the North Dome side of the field (the part in Qatari waters) was discovered in the early 1970s, whereas the South Pars side was only discovered about 20 years later, so Qatar had a lot of time to get a head start on developing the field.

For another thing, the North Dome field is pretty much the only game left in Qatar, whose Dukhan oil field is clearly on the decline. Qatar has a huge incentive, then, to develop as much of the North Dome as they can as fast as they can in order to fund their numerous development projects.

There is a potential conflict here, though. Natural gas, like any other gas, tends to flow toward areas of low pressure. So when one end of a gas field is being drained of its gas faster than the other end, some of the gas in the less exploited end may flow to the more exploited end.

This is fine when an entire field is controlled by one country, but in this case, one can easily envision a scenario in which, several years from now, the Iranian government is accusing Qatar of siphoning off its gas.

What this means is that Qatar has a strong incentive to maintain friendly relations with Iran, and on this they have considerable disagreement with their Saudi neighbors.

To Saudi Arabia, Iran is a potential regional rival and must be countered at every turn; their opposition to easing international sanctions against Iran, for example, is not so much about the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon as it is about fear of Iran escaping from the economic cage in which those sanctions have trapped it.

The proxy war taking place between Saudi and Iranian interests in Syria is the most obvious example of the rivalry between the two nations, and the Saudi move against Qatar can be seen as another front in that proxy war.

Qatar, although it has backed the Syrian opposition, sees things differently where Iran is concerned; in January, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad Al-Attiyah publicly called for an “inclusive” approach to Iran, which he argued “has a crucial role” in ending the crisis in Syria.

There is enough historic tension between the Qataris and the Saudis for this kind of disagreement over foreign affairs to provide the basis for a wider fracturing of relations.

For its part, Bahrain has every reason to go along with a Saudi diplomatic move against a suspected regional ally of Iran; after all, it was Saudi intervention that saved Bahrain’s ruling al-Khalifa family from a Shiʿa-led rebellion in 2011, a rebellion that Bahrain accuses Iran of fomenting.

Look, though, at the two GCC members that did not pull their ambassadors from Qatar: Kuwait, where the Brotherhood’s Hadas Party is out of favour, but whose relations with Iran are “excellent”; and Oman, where Sultan Qaboos has been critical of the Brotherhood, but who is close enough to Iran to have served as a go-between for back-channel U.S.-Iran negotiations.

If the issue were really Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and not its relationship with Iran, both of these countries may well have joined the others in recalling their ambassadors.

The one country for which this explanation does not make sense is the U.A.E., whose relations with Iran are improving after the two countries recently reached an accord over the disposition of three disputed Gulf islands. In this case, it may really be that Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and especially the Jaidah case and Qaradawi’s criticisms, motivated their action.

Qatar’s failed bet on the Muslim Brotherhood made this the right time for the Saudis to move against them, but Saudi fears about an Iranian resurgence may well have been the real reason for their action.

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

By Jonathan Rozen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 24 2014 (IPS)

On Dec. 29, 2013, just over a month before the third anniversary of the start of the Egyptian revolution that ended the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, three high-profile journalists for Al Jazeera English were arrested in their hotel suite in Cairo.

Despite international condemnation, the Egyptian government has moved ahead with a trial, now set to resume Mar. 5. Altogether, nine Al Jazeera journalists and 11 others have been charged with conspiring with terrorists, undermining national unity and social peace and broadcasting false information, for their coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood.“They are basically trying to go after high-profile people and use that as a way to intimidate others." -- Joe Stork

A history of control

Media censorship in Egypt is not new, but advocates say the political transitions of the past three years have brought additional challenges for free expression.

“A combination of legal and illegal ways are used by the government to punish, intimidate and threaten independent and critical voices, including journalists,” Sherif Mansour, director of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Division, told IPS.

Source: CPJ

Since 2011, when the political turmoil in Egypt began, advocates say there have not been large differences in media censorship between each of the political transitions. While the targets of silencing efforts have shifted depending on who is in power, the legal apparatus that is used to censor undesirable voices has remained the same.

“The press law or penal code form the Mubarak era has not been replaced,” Soazig Drollet, head of the MENA division at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told IPS.

“All the regimes since the uprising in 2011 have used their power to repress media for their own sake…we saw it with the supreme council of Armed Forces in 2011, we saw it with the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012, and now we see it with [Field Marshall Abdul Fattah al-] Sisi,” she said. “There is the same will to control the media and not respect the principles of pluralism.”

Under the current military government, a combination of legal and extra-legal methods are used to pressure and censor the media. Presently, the primary focus of these efforts has been directed against any discussion of the former ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since their fall from power in 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood has been labelled a terrorist organisation by the current leadership and their existence completely discredited.

“If you support the Muslim Brothers…you are in trouble,” Nader Gohar, chairman of the Cairo News Company (CNC), an Egyptian news station with a main office in Tahrir Square, told IPS.

While the Al Jazeera case represents just a fraction of the journalists imprisoned by the military regime, it also indicates a new logic behind its repressive tactics.

“They are basically trying to go after high-profile people and use that as a way to intimidate others who might have some critical thoughts,” Joe Stork, deputy director for MENA at Human Rights Watch, told IPS. “The Al Jazeera journalists fall into this category.”

Many governments have increasingly used “anti-terror” charges, like the ones against the Al Jazeera journalists, as a justification for censorship, something that has contributed to the degradation of global press freedom, said Joel Simon, executive director of CPJ.

In January 2014, a new provisional constitution was passed in Egypt.

“Parts of the constitution look a little bit better [for media freedom] than the one by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Drollet told IPS. But “if you really look at the text carefully, they say many things that are really concerning…mainly when it comes to this possibility of censorship when there is wartime and a state of emergency.”

But the constitution is not the only factor in assessing the legal apparatus surrounding Egyptian media freedom.

“The problem isn’t so much the constitution, the problem is the actual laws that are used,” said Stork. “We’re talking now not about the constitution, but about the penal code.”

In 2013, for the first time, CPJ ranked Egypt among the top 10 jailers of journalists in the world, while RSF ranked Egypt in the lowest section of its press freedom index, at 158th out of 179 countries.

Self-censorship

For Gohar and the Cairo News Company, the current military regime has not been as bad as the conditions under the Muslim Brotherhood. That is, as long as they avoid covering the Muslim Brothers in a positive light.

“When we started to have the Muslim Brothers’ [government], they were a threat, they have a kind of militia who bothered us,” he said. “They were like a censorship beside the regular government censorship.”

Nevertheless, the current regime has also affected the way the CNC operates. Since the fall of President Mohamed Morsi, the military government and the Ministry of Communication have not permitted the renewal of the CNC’s press certification.

“It’s kind of like a precaution, like, lets wait and see,” said Gohar. “The officials don’t want to give permission, in case we do something wrong.”

Media licences have been heavily restricted for almost three years, since the revolution in 2011, essentially forcing many media outlets to break the law to continue operations.

The authorities want to see what is going to be published, explained Gohar. “If someone is not behaving, they can stop them easily.”

Self-censorship is “always the first consequence when you have a crackdown on news media and journalists,” Delphine Halgand, U.S. director for RSF, told IPS. “Arrests, imprisonment, charges and an increase in prosecution are having a major deterrent effect on journalists.”

A polarised population

The increasingly polarised and politicised population has also had an impact on media freedom in Egypt. Currently, a vast majority strongly supports the military government and al-Sisi, who is expected to win the presidency by a landslide.

For Egyptian journalists, this means that repercussions for criticism of the government will just as likely come from the people as from the government.

“You will be treated like a traitor,” said Gohar. “This is new, that there is harassment from the public toward the media.”

While the United Nations has expressed its concern over the “increasingly severe clampdown and physical attacks” on media in Egypt, human rights organisation say that publicising the lack of media freedom is likely the best way to apply pressure on the Egyptian government to relax censorship and release imprisoned journalists.

“They really have gone too far,” said Drollet, referring to the military government’s policy. “They have lost any credibility. They are not even hiding that they just want to have one kind of media exist in Egypt.”

The hashtag FreeAJStaff (#FreeAJStaff), often accompanied with a picture of the tweet’s author with a piece of tape over their mouth, is just one of these efforts to increase awareness about the situation, specifically pertaining to the Al Jazeera journalists, in Egypt.

“I would say the situation today is worse that it was,” declared Stork, “this is pretty serious.”

“The media should just tell the facts, to say what is going on the ground with factual events, with objectivity and independence,” said Drollet. “How can a democracy emerge and exist in such a situation?”

Violent demonstrations have followed branding of the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Jan 14 2014 (IPS)

As Egyptians head for a referendum Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the fate of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was swept into government in the last election, hangs in the balance.

The ruling military junta has been targeting the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) continuously since it seized power last year. Following a Dec. 23 suicide attack which targeted a police station in the city of Mansoura north of Cairo, in which 16 people were killed and dozens wounded, the Egyptian government formally designated the MB a terrorist organisation.

The government accused it of carrying out the suicide attack even though a Sinai-based militant group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, claimed responsibility.“We should consider this an interim constitution because it was drafted by a non-elected committee."

“The local media are trying now to accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of being behind the terrorist attacks taking place in Egypt recently in order to disrupt the referendum, but I reject this claim unless the authorities provide real evidence to condemn them,” said Bassam al-Zarqa, vice-president of the Salafi al-Nour Party, a strongly Islamist party.

“The map of Islamist groups has not changed,” al-Zarqa, former assistant to ousted President Mohamed Morsi (2012-2013), told IPS. “Those who believe that violence is the only way to change are still involved in terrorist attacks, while other groups believe in democracy and peaceful change. The MB is in the second group, and decided decades ago to renounce violence.”

But, he added, “there is no doubt that the recent terrorist attacks undermine the popularity of the MB and make them lose a large segment of sympathisers.”

Al-Zarqa believes that the electoral process is the only solution to save Egypt from sliding into a police state. He said the key indicator will be the people’s acceptance or refusal of the next president, regardless of his background and whether or not he belongs to the military.

“I have reservations about the ways of selecting the committee that drafted the Constitution, as they dropped the will of 18 million citizens who had voted in favour of the previous Constitution. The ball is now in the court of the Egyptian people to approve or reject this Constitution.”

Amr Moussa, chairman of the 50-member committee responsible for drafting the new constitution for Egypt, has said “this constitution widens the scope of freedoms in a very impressive way, reinforces the principles of gender equality, and grants women greater rights.” He expects the constitution to pass with a 70 percent “yes” vote.

Shortly before designation of the MB as a terrorist organisation, Moussa said, “Now I invite them to participate in the referendum and prove that they are part of this nation and that they want to get out of this chaotic situation.”

Moussa, who came fifth in Egypt’s first post-revolution presidential election in June 2012, said he would not contest the next election, and expressed his support for Egypt’s military chief, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, if he runs.

“The groups which reject the new constitution are extremists and refuse to recognise the June 30 revolution as a popular revolt, and consequently its influence on the political life,” Gabber Nassar, professor of constitutional law at Cairo University, told IPS.

Nassar, who was a member of the Committee of 50, told IPS “the endeavours of the MB and its allies to mobilise against the new constitution will fail, especially since the Egyptians link them with the terrorist attacks that threaten the security of the state.”

Nassar believes that the MB, which is formally boycotting the referendum, will “secretly enjoin their followers to participate and vote against the constitution, because they are used to work in the dark.” He added: “I expect that the final result of the referendum will be overwhelmingly yes.”

There is little to compare between the two constitutions – the one drafted in the days of Morsi and the one drafted by the Committee of 50, Nassar said. The first, he said, was devoted to the dominance of one faction in power, while the second is focusing on liberties and the rights of the marginalised and religious minorities and the underprivileged who were ignored by all previous constitutions.

“We should consider this an interim constitution because it was drafted by a non-elected committee,” Adel Ramadan, legal advisor at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), told IPS.

Ramadan believes that the vote on Jan. 14 and 15 will not be only on the constitution, but on the road map and the legitimacy of the current system – and a rejection of the MB.

A new constitution is poised to cement the Egyptian military's powers. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jan 9 2014 (IPS)

A draft constitution set to go before a public referendum next week gives the military more privileges, enshrining its place as Egypt’s most powerful institution and placing it above the state.

The new text, set to replace the constitution drawn up in 2012 under Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, has stoked fears that Egypt’s military leadership is pushing to consolidate its power and protect its political and economic interests.

“The powers conferred to the army (in the draft constitution) lay the foundation for a military dictatorship,” warns Tharwat Badawi, professor of constitutional law at Cairo University.“The powers conferred to the army lay the foundation for a military dictatorship."

The new charter was drawn up by a 50-member committee appointed by the military-installed government that has ruled since the army ousted Morsi in July 2013.

The document is seen as an improvement over the constitution passed under Morsi’s Islamist majority, which was widely criticised for its emphasis on Islamic law and curbs on personal freedoms. But legal experts have expressed concern over articles that diminish the role of representative government.

“If passed, the elected president and parliament would have no real authority over the military, which would in effect become a state unto itself,” Badawi told IPS.

Under the new constitution, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) holds final authority over the selection of the country’s defence minister. Badawi says the article will strip the elected president of the right to choose a defence minister, putting the military above any effective civilian oversight.

“By this way the military will not be accountable to the head of state, or the people,” says Badawi. “And this is very dangerous.”

Critics say Egypt’s military has repeatedly trampled rights and thwarted democratic change since the popular uprising that toppled the authoritarian regime of former president Hosni Mubarak three years ago. The new charter could serve to further insulate the armed forces from challenges by revolutionary activists and elected officials.

Rights watchdogs were disappointed to discover that an article upholds the widely condemned practice of trying civilians in military courts. At least 12,000 civilians were arrested and tried without due process in military courts in the months following the 2011 uprising.

Ahmed Maher, leader of the April 6 Youth Movement, denounced the article on military trials, calling its inclusion “treason” on the part of the 50-person drafting committee.

“Those who support military trials [of civilians] and forgot what happened in 2011 have sold their conscience and followed personal interests,” he wrote on his Facebook account.

Maher was sentenced last month to three years’ hard labour for organising an unauthorised protest against the committee’s attempt to enshrine military trials of civilians in the constitution. He was among the first to be incarcerated under a new law passed by the military-installed interim government that requires protesters to seek permission to hold public demonstrations.

As a concession to rights campaigners, the draft constitution is more limiting than previous charters on the types of cases for which civilians could find themselves before a military court. But it still allows the military judiciary to preside over disputes between civilians and army personnel in ‘military zones’.

“In Egypt, the military is so deeply entrenched that just about anywhere can be considered a military zone,” says Badawi.

The new charter fails to ensure any level of transparency for the military’s economic activities. According to the text, the budget of the armed forces will not be subject to parliamentary supervision, placing its allocations and expenditures at the sole discretion of the military leadership.

The same clauses shield the Egyptian military’s vast economic empire, estimated to account for between 10 and 40 percent of the economy. Military-owned companies engaged in everything from construction to macaroni production enjoy the benefits of free land, full tax exemption, conscript labour, and no obligation to report their balance sheets.

“Given the degree to which the military has penetrated the state, the state is more or less at its service,” says Robert Springborg, an expert on Egyptian military affairs. “The (armed forces) has access to state resources without any oversight or accountability.”

This appears unlikely to change. Egypt’s army has grown in popularity since removing President Morsi and cracking down on his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood. Analysts say it would be extremely difficult for anyone to challenge the powers granted to the armed forces in the new constitution.

Mohamed Mousa, a prominent member of the Al Dostour (Constitution) Party, says it is unfortunate, but the upcoming referendum is seen more as a vote of support on the July 2013 coup than on the constitution itself.

Egyptians who denounce military rule are still likely to vote in favour of the draft constitution, viewing a nod to pass the new charter as a strike against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We have concerns about the draft constitution, especially on some of the articles addressing military trials of civilians and the powers of the army,” says Mousa. “However, we are trying to deal with it as a package, and find it acceptable overall.”

As more MB leaders are detained and as communications between the leadership and rank and file are interrupted, younger and perhaps more radical members of the MB will hit the streets. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Dec 27 2013 (IPS)

For the first time in its 85-year history, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Wednesday was declared a terrorist organisation. The provisional government’s decision, presumably with the military junta’s approval, came after two deadly bombings in Mansura and Cairo.

The government offered no proof of the MB’s involvement in the bombings; in fact, a radical group by the name of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (Defenders of the Holy Mosque) claimed responsibility for the attacks. The MB denounced all violent acts, especially against security officers.The MB is not just a political organisation, as these hardliners maintain. It’s the most visible and credible face of civic Islam in the country.

The government’s action against the MB will have far-reaching implications, both short-term and long-term, for Egypt and ultimately for the U.S. Declaring the MB a terrorist organisation is a short-term victory for the hard-liners within the junta and the provisional civilian government who have vowed to crush the MB. But it is a Pyrrhic victory because since the 1940s, every Egyptian government that clashed with the MB failed to crush it.

The MB is not just a political organisation, as these hardliners maintain. It is a social, religious, educational, healthcare, and cultural movement. It’s the most visible and credible face of civic Islam in the country. It is also the largest and most-disciplined Islamic political society in the Arab and Sunni Islamic world.

The MB has penetrated Egyptian society, especially in the lower middle class and poorer neighbourhoods, through a myriad of non-governmental organisations. These groups provide food, healthcare, childcare, and education for free or at affordable costs. Furthermore, millions of middle class, professional Egyptians benefit from the medical services of MB-run hospitals and clinics.

When compared with expensive private hospitals or low-quality government hospitals, MB health facilities offer the only appealing alternative available to most Egyptians.

The government’s short-sighted decision branding the MB a terrorist organisation will force all these services to stop, leaving millions of Egyptians without health, education, and welfare services. These abrupt hardships would push people to the streets, creating a new wave of unrest, violence, and instability.

The military junta is blindly lashing out against the MB because it has failed to quell the daily demonstrations against its deepening dictatorship. The recent convictions and imprisonment of three Tahrir Square secular icons is another sign of the military’s visceral and ruthless intolerance of all voices of opposition, secular or Islamist.

The government’s action is not expected to stop public demonstrations against the military despite the rising wave of arrests of MB members and sympathisers. As more MB leaders are detained and as communications between the leadership and rank and file are interrupted, younger and perhaps more radical members of the MB will hit the streets. Egypt will experience a heightened level of chaos and insecurity.

Chances for an inclusive political settlement are rapidly diminishing. The military junta would be foolish to think they could devise a stable political system without including the MB. Political Islam is an organic component of Egyptian politics dating back to 1928 when the MB was founded.

General Sisi might ride the wave of anti-MB hysteria all the way to the presidency, but riding the tiger is a risky proposition, as the modern history of Egypt has shown. He should learn from the military dictators who preceded him as presidents that repressing the MB and jailing and executing its leaders have failed to make it go away. The wave of violence that is expected to follow the junta’s decision would ultimately force the government to reconsider its decision.

Declaring the MB a terrorist organisation will also have serious negative implications for the United States. Hard-line supporters of the military will likely accuse the U.S. of coddling the MB, and MB supporters would turn against the U.S. for its perceived support of the military. U.S. personnel and facilities in Egypt will be targeted by regime thugs and by potential terrorists.

The U.S. State Department’s mild rebuke of the junta’s action – voicing its support for “an inclusive political process” and calling for “dialogue and political participation across the political spectrum” – will fail to satisfy either the military or the MB. Washington should make it clear to the junta that political stability in Egypt cannot be achieved by excluding the MB and its affiliates from the political process.

In fact, Washington has been engaging the MB since the early 1990s when the organisation decided to shun violence and participate in Egyptian politics through elections despite frequent objections from the Mubarak regime. The U.S. should continue to do so regardless of the junta’s ill-advised decision.

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

The northeastern Sinai Peninsula has seen almost daily attacks on security personnel since the Jul. 3 ouster of president Mohamed Morsi. Credit: Adam Morrow/IPS.

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Oct 12 2013 (IPS)

A period of more than three months since former president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster by Egypt’s powerful military establishment have been marked by almost daily attacks on Egyptian security personnel, especially in the restive Sinai Peninsula. The identity of the attackers remains a mystery.

“The armed groups carrying out the Sinai attacks aren’t drawn from local families and tribes,” Sinai-based journalist Hatem al-Bulk told IPS. “Often masked, they strike their targets and vanish into the mountains.”

“The local people,” he added, “have no idea who they are.”

On Oct. 7, three police officers were killed and dozens injured when a car bomb went off near South Sinai’s regional security directorate."Along with militant Islamist groups, there are those who have an interest in maintaining Sinai's longstanding position as a major arms- and drug-smuggling route."

Six soldiers were killed the same day in a drive-by shooting near the Suez Canal, while a major government satellite transmitter was damaged by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) in southern Cairo – the first attack of its kind to be seen in the capital.

The rising tempo of violence comes amid unprecedented polarisation among the Egyptian public over the issue of Morsi’s Jul. 3 ouster. Monday’s string of attacks came one day after more than 50 pro-Morsi demonstrators were killed by security forces in different parts of the country.

After only one year in office, Morsi – Egypt’s first freely elected head of state – was removed from his post and arrested by the military following massive and well-coordinated demonstrations against his presidency. He continues to be held at an undisclosed location by Egypt’s new military-backed rulers.

Morsi’s opponents call his ouster a “second revolution” along the lines of Egypt’s January 2011 uprising, which ended the 30-year-rule of autocratic president Hosni Mubarak. Morsi’s supporters call it a “military coup” against a democratically elected president; a counter-revolution waged by Mubarak’s “deep state”.

The more than three months since Morsi’s removal have witnessed daily demonstrations nationwide, which have remained largely peaceful in nature, demanding the deposed leader’s reinstatement. They have also, however, seen increasingly frequent attacks on security personnel – both police and military – by unknown assailants.

In mid-August, 25 policemen were reportedly killed in a single attack in North Sinai. The incident came five days after hundreds of demonstrators were gunned down when security forces violently dispersed a pro-Morsi sit-in in Cairo.

Until now, the violence in Sinai has been confined to the peninsula’s north-eastern quadrant, near Egypt’s borders with Israel and the Gaza Strip. Monday’s brazen attack on the security directorate was the first such attack in South Sinai.

The violence has prompted Egypt’s military to launch a peninsula-wide operation with the ostensible aim of stamping out “militancy”. Egyptian media, both state-run and private, has heavily promoted the army campaign, portraying it as a U.S.-style “war on terrorism”.

Within recent weeks, the military has demolished numerous homes in north-eastern Sinai, claiming they belonged to militant leaders; almost entirely destroyed the network of tunnels linking Egypt to the besieged Gaza Strip; and killed scores of what it calls “militants and criminal elements.”

Army spokesmen, meanwhile, say that more than 100 security personnel have been killed in the on-going operation.

No groups have claimed responsibility for the attacks, with a few recent exceptions (including the South Sinai attack, which was claimed by an obscure Sinai-based group called ‘Ansar Beit al-Maqdis’).

Egypt’s military-backed authorities say they are the work of “terrorists” with links to the Muslim Brotherhood – the group from which Morsi hails. Since Morsi’s overthrow, hundreds of the Brotherhood’s high- and mid-ranking members have been detained on charges of “inciting violence”.

The Brotherhood, for its part, denies any connection to the violence in Sinai, saying it is committed to peaceful protest with the aim of restoring “constitutional legitimacy”.

Al-Bulk, who is based in the North Sinai city of Al-Arish, says the Sinai-based militants behind the attacks number no more than a couple thousand in total.

“They don’t have a unified leadership,” he said, “nor are they known by a single name.”

According to al-Bulk, Morsi had tried to “come to terms” with some of these groups during his one year in office.

“In return for halting attacks on security personnel and Egypt’s natural gas pipelines, they were given relative freedom of movement,” he said. But he ruled out allegations that the Brotherhood either supported or financed such groups.

Nor does al-Bulk dismiss the possibility that “at least some of these groups are controlled – or at least influenced – by foreign intelligence agencies with interests in Sinai.”

Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is inhabited largely by Bedouin tribes who have traditionally had an uneasy relationship with the central government in Cairo. The last decade of the Mubarak era had been marked by occasional attacks on the peninsula – also by “unidentified elements” – typically followed by the arbitrary arrest of thousands of local men.

Seif Abdel-Fattah, a Cairo University political science professor and former Morsi aide (he resigned from the post last November), pointed to “several parties” with an interest in escalating violence in Sinai.

“Along with militant Islamist groups, there are those who have an interest in maintaining Sinai’s longstanding position as a major arms- and drug-smuggling route,” he told IPS, “not to mention other criminal elements.”

All these groups were prepared to use violence, he added, including attacks on security forces, “when it suits their purpose.”

Abdel-Fattah, too, dismissed the likelihood of direct links between the embattled Muslim Brotherhood and events in Sinai.

“It’s a matter of action, reaction and counter-reaction,” he said. “Every time security forces tighten the noose on these Sinai-based militant groups, they respond by delivering a powerful blow.”

On Wednesday (Oct. 9), a senior army commander – along with three soldiers – was injured in an attack in central Sinai. The same day also saw a handful of attacks elsewhere on the peninsula.

Abdel-Fattah partially attributes Sinai’s ongoing lawlessness to “the regional security vacuum” created by the terms of Egypt’s 1978 Camp David peace agreement with Israel.

Under the treaty’s terms, Egypt can’t make any major military deployments in Sinai without prior Israeli authorisation. Therefore, until the recent military campaign (to which Israel has given its tacit support), the peninsula had remained largely devoid of an effective security presence.

In August, an apparent Israeli drone strike in North Sinai prompted intense speculation about stepped-up Egypt-Israel security coordination.

“Camp David stipulates a degree of [Egypt-Israel] security cooperation in Sinai,” said al-Bulk. “That coordination was maintained under Mubarak, went on under Morsi, and continues now under Egypt’s new military-backed government.”

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.

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

By Emad Mekay
BERKELEY, California, Sep 29 2013 (IPS)

Gory social media images that fueled the global Jihadist influx into Syria 18 months ago are back. But this time the outpouring is coming from Egypt.

Pictures on Facebook and Twitter show dozens of bodies wrapped in white burial sheets lying in rows in morgues, hospitals and even mosque hallways. Others show charred bodies with the victims’ brains visible from sniper shots to the head. Most of the posts urge one thing: justice."There's a valid fear that some of them may turn to violence after they have despaired that democracy could ever be a means towards meaningful change.” -- Sami Al-Dalaal

“Our self-control now is not out of fear. It’s out of respect for human blood and for the safety of our country,” said one post on an Islamist Facebook page. “If we are pushed too hard and our back is to the wall, we’ll defend ourselves.”

Three months after a Jul. 3 military coup that removed Egypt’s first elected government, hundreds of anti-coup activists have been killed, thousands injured and many more, mostly Islamists, thrown behind bars without charge or trial. The achievements of the country’s brief two-and-a-half years of freedom have been all but erased.

Amnesty International estimates that at least 1,089 people were killed in just four days – the period between Aug. 14 and 18 during the military operation to disperse anti-coup protestors at Rabaa square and Al-Nahda square in Cairo.

Human Rights Watch called the carnage the largest mass killing in Egypt’s modern history.

Weeks later, the military crackdown is still raging, with casualty numbers reportedly rising almost by the day, prompting calls for self-defence among the country’s targeted Islamists.

Al-Qaeda’s ideology of violence as the only path to change, which was discredited by the mostly peaceful changes of the Arab Spring in Egypt, has now received a new lease on life as a possible and viable option after all, according to several observers of Islamic political movements.

“We followed Western democracy prescriptions to the letter, but the minute a Muslim man comes to office, the world looks away. Nobody really respects democracy,” said one Islamist’s Facebook page.

The urge to resist the bloody crackdown has been most pronounced among young people. In private discussions, many of them, especially from the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest Islamist organisation, express frustration with their leaders for preaching gradual rather than “revolutionary” change.

Some activists described the top policy-making body of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Group’s Shura Council, as “dervishes”, an Arabic word connoting being detached from reality.

“The Iranian revolution model might not be so bad after all,” said one activist who asked not to be identified.

The current military crackdown is so ruthless, sweeping and indiscriminate that it has become a personal daily story for many young people, especially the Islamists. There’s hardly anyone who hasn’t had a brother, father or sister killed, arrested or tortured since the coup, the activist said.

If the young decide to take up arms, it will be on a massive scale. Senior Muslim Brotherhood leader Salah Sultan, before his arrest earlier this week, estimated the group’s active membership to be between 800,000 and a million, not including their families and sympathisers.

Pressure on Islamists towards self-defence comes from unlikely outside corners as well.

The militant Somali Shabab group, which was at the receiving end of preaching from the Muslim Brotherhood that violence was counter-productive, got a chance for payback.

In August, the Somali militant group issued a statement taunting the Brotherhood and urging them to condemn democracy. The call was spurred by the scenes of carnage against defenceless anti-coup protestors in Cairo.

“You are leading Muslims to extermination by your insistence on democracy,” the Shabab said.

The pressure on the Brotherhood’s aging leadership has been so intense since the coup that Essam Erian, parliamentary majority leader before the coup, had to issue several audio messages urging a continuation of “peaceful protests”.

On Sep. 25, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement insisting on “peaceful resistance”.

“We all should resist the coup and resist oppression peacefully and without any violence and in a civilised manner,” the group said. “The coup leaders and the oppressors want to create waves of violence that they can use as a cover for their murderous police practices that they excel at.”

Elder Islamists justify their pacifist position on the grounds that there are religious admonitions against bloodletting. From a political standpoint, taking on the U.S.-backed and armed military and their pro-government militias will drag both sides into a civil war that would only strengthen U.S. and Israeli hegemony, they argue. Impoverished and violence-torn Somalia is hardly a model, they say.

“Democracy is still the main option for most Islamists now,” Sami Al-Dalaal, an expert on Islamic movements in the Middle East, told IPS. “Yet there’s a valid fear that some of them may turn to violence after they have despaired that democracy could ever be a means towards meaningful change.”

Dalaal said excluding political groups by force often leads to violence.

“There’s a precedent to that. When the military thwarted democracy in Algeria after Islamist democratic wins, they found no option but to start an armed revolution,” he said.

Dalaal was referring to a bloody civil war two decades ago in Algeria that started after army generals launched a coup and denied the Islamists the chance to take power in elections. Some 100,000 people died in the violence that ensued. The Syrian pro-democracy protests also started peacefully until Bashar al-Assad reacted violently and bloody pictures went viral on social media, starting another civil war.

In Egypt, with the military showing no sign of letting up on use of excessive force, it might be only a matter of time before at least some young Egyptians decide to do what their elders have refused to do: defend themselves.

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:

Saeed wears a gas mask outside a mosque in Cairo in anticipation of a police gas attack. Credit: Sam Kimball/IPS.

By Sam Kimball
CAIRO, Aug 26 2013 (IPS)

With the sun inching closer to the horizon on Friday afternoon in the Mohandiseen neighbourhood of Cairo, the call to prayer from Mostafa Mahmood mosque goes out over a street empty of all but a few soldiers lingering beside their tanks.

Just last week the square and streets around Mostafa Mahmood were the sight of an impromptu sit-in by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood organisation. The sit-in hastily formed after their violent eviction from two major camps at the hands of the Egyptian military that same day, which left at least 600 dead and thousands wounded.

Since then several hundred Muslim Brotherhood leaders around Egypt have been arrested on charges ranging from vandalism to inciting violence. Yet a call by the Brotherhood to take to the streets on the ‘Friday of martyrs’ (Aug. 23) to protest the military’s violence brought only scattered protests of a few hundred in Cairo and a few governorates.

Last week’s killings and the round-up of the Islamist organisation’s leadership since hasn’t wiped out the Brotherhood, but has dealt it a serious blow and left its political future uncertain.

Standing beside the battered and dusty fence of the Assad Bin Al Furat mosque in Cairo, frequently used as a gathering point for Muslim Brotherhood marches over the last several weeks, middle-aged truck driver Amr Faraghani Numeri and several older men paint a bleak picture of the Muslim Brotherhood in national affairs.“Considering the 30 years of peaceful protest carried out under Mubarak, the Brotherhood will return to that - they have no other choice.”

“The future of the Ikhwan (Brotherhood) is over, done,” Numeri said. He was quick to add, “This doesn’t mean that Islam is over. The Muslim Brotherhood do not represent Muslims. They do not have a political or an organisational future because the people do not want them.”

Numeri and swaths of Egyptian society who share his views represent a new kind of challenge for the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Adel Abdel Ghafar, a scholar at the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, “The Muslim Brotherhood is facing a grave trial. It is a period of serious adversity to be overcome.”

Never before in the Muslim Brotherhood’s 85-year history had it attained such public political influence, only to see it quickly snatched away, says Abdel Ghafar.

Isaam Shahid, a former member of the shura council in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), seemed unfazed at first by the hole the Brotherhood has found itself in. “Despite the unrest that has happened, I am optimistic that this situation will not continue for long,” he said self-assuredly.

The “situation”, he noted, was the violent repression of the Muslim Brotherhood by the military-backed government. He saw little difference between the mass of the Egyptian people and committed supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, saying, “The people will always continue their peaceful protest against the military.”

Shahid said that the recent threats to ban the Muslim Brotherhood and send it right back to where it began before the 2011 revolution opened up space for them to participate above ground, were hollow: “There was talk by the legal scholars working to amend the constitution that was approved in 2012 that, based on a clause that prohibits the foundation of parties based on religious identities, the FJP would be banned. But this isn’t going to happen. The FJP is a party for all Egyptians.”

Mohamed, who declined to give his last name, is a Muslim Brotherhood member and a student union representative at Al Azhar University in Cairo. He says that he ran for his post in the student union openly as a Brotherhood member, and faced no criticisms on the basis of his affiliation. He does not, however, think the Muslim Brotherhood can compete in the open as it did until Morsi’s ouster.

“I don’t think the military regime will now allow the Muslim Brotherhood in government,” he said.  But, he added, the organisation will continue to push to participate in public life. “Considering the 30 years of peaceful protest carried out under Mubarak, the Brotherhood will return to that – they have no other choice.”

Yet when pressed regarding the political future of the Muslim Brotherhood in the face of the military-backed government’s overpowering hostility, Shahid didn’t seem so optimistic.

“The forces of the coup have overtaken democracy and created ‘tankocracy’, so I doubt that they will allow The Freedom and Justice Party to participate in the coming elections,” he said. “They [the military-backed government] will soon hold elections that are on their face democratic but on the inside are full of cheating. But who talks about elections in this kind of situation anyway?”

Mohamed Elmasry, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the American University in Cairo, said that “The Brotherhood is a deep organisation, with hundreds of thousands of committed members. They have been part and parcel of Egyptian society for more than 80 years. If they are banned and forced underground, they will adjust.”

Giving a nod to much of the organisation’s history from after the Second World War until Mubarak’s overthrow, he added, “They have, after all, operated underground for most of their existence, and functioned as a religious and social service organisation.”

Because of their grassroots base, Elmasry thinks the game is not up for the Muslim Brotherhood. “I think they will fight to get back into politics, and, should Egypt’s political system once again offer the chance at free and fair political competition, I would not be surprised if the Brotherhood is able to achieve significant electoral success.”

“The Muslim Brotherhood will always be part of the political process,” Abdel Ghafar said. “However, the recent disappearance of the leadership will push the rest of the membership underground. The system has just closed up. Now they are waiting for the opportunity to re-enter.”

The killing of Muslim Brotherhood supporters has only strengthened resolve within the party to resist the current regime. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Aug 23 2013 (IPS)

The ongoing crackdown on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi has prompted some analysts to warn of the apparent resurgence of the Mubarak-era police state.

“Since the Jul. 3 military coup against President Morsi, we’ve seen what can only be described as a return of the police state,” Seif Abdel-Fattah, professor of political science at Cairo University and former Morsi aide (who resigned from the post last November), told IPS.

“We’ve now reverted to Mubarak-era fascism, replete with killing demonstrators, raiding homes [of political activists], emergency laws and perpetual surveillance,” said Abdel-Fattah, who is not affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since Morsi’s ouster, hundreds – possibly thousands – have been killed by security forces, including Brotherhood members and others opposed to renewed military rule.

On Wednesday Aug. 14, hundreds of demonstrators were gunned down in a violent dispersal of a pro-Morsi protest in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawia Square.

The authorities say that scores of security personnel have been killed in clashes with “armed demonstrators” and in attacks by “militants”.

Speaking on Monday (Aug. 19), social solidarity minister Ahmed al-Borei defended the methods used by security forces to disperse pro-Morsi protests, alleging that demonstrators at Rabaa al-Adawiya were armed and had posed a “threat to national security.”

Following the bloody protest dispersal and the angry demonstrations that came in its wake, the government announced a month-long state of emergency, including an 11-hour daily curfew. A staple of Mubarak’s 30-year rule, Egypt’s emergency law allows police to make arrests without charge and search homes without warrant.

This week, authorities rounded up hundreds of Brotherhood members nationwide, along with figures from allied Islamist groups, such as Egypt’s Gamaa Islamiya. At least 1,000 high- and mid-ranking Brotherhood members are reported to have been arrested to date.

On Tuesday (Aug. 20), Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie was arrested in Cairo and charged with “inciting violence”. His trial has already been set for later this month and he reportedly faces the death penalty if convicted.

“Carrying out mass arrests in such a manner…constitutes nothing less than a return to the Mubarak era, the emergency state, media lies and fabrications,” Gamaa Islamiya declared in a statement.

It went on to note that senior group member Mustafa Hamza had been arrested by “dawn visitors” who raided his home in Egypt’s Beni Sueif province, “taking him from his family without levelling any charges.”

“Dawn visitors” is a Mubarak-era term used to describe early morning raids by security forces on the homes of the regime’s opponents.

The military-backed government, insisting that it is “fighting terrorism,” blames the Brotherhood for a series of attacks on security installations and personnel in the restive Sinai Peninsula.

On Monday, the government announced that 25 policemen had been killed by “suspected militants” near the North Sinai city of Rafah.

The Brotherhood has condemned the violence in Sinai, denying any involvement or that of its Islamist allies. It also strenuously denies any connection to a recent spate of attacks on Christian churches, and has continued to call for strictly peaceful means of protest.

State media organs, meanwhile, along with most of their privately-owned counterparts, have consistently portrayed pro-Morsi demonstrations as “violent” threats to the general public – while providing little credible proof in support of their claims.

Last year Brotherhood candidate Morsi became Egypt’s first-ever freely elected president. On Jul. 3 of this year he was overthrown by the head of the powerful military establishment Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, head of military intelligence under Mubarak, amid massive and well-coordinated demonstrations against his presidency.

Morsi, who faces a raft of criminal charges his supporters say are politically motivated, has been held at an undisclosed location ever since.

Morsi’s opponents call his ouster a “second revolution” along the lines of Egypt’s January 2011 uprising, which ostensibly ended the Mubarak regime.

But Morsi’s supporters call it a “military coup” against a democratically elected president; a “counter-revolution” by Mubarak’s “deep state” which they say has remained deeply entrenched in Egypt’s judicial system, media institutions, intelligence apparatus and security services.

Fears of looming oppression – especially of Islamists – were stoked last month when interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim announced the reactivation of a Mubarak-era police unit devoted to monitoring and combating “religious extremism”. The unit had been part of Mubarak’s dreaded state security apparatus, known for committing gross rights violations, especially against the regime’s Islamist opponents.

Last week Ibrahim went further, vowing to provide levels of “security” unseen since before Egypt’s Jan. 25, 2011 uprising. “As soon as conditions stabilise and the Egyptian street stabilises… security will be restored to this nation as if it was before Jan. 25 – and more,” he said.

According to Cairo University’s Abdel-Fattah, Ibrahim’s comments “reveal an intention to restore the interior ministry to its pre-revolution glory with all that it entails, including rights violations, spying, heavy-handed policing, a total lack of accountability, and the domination of Egypt’s political and cultural spheres.

“And from what we’ve seen recently,” he added, “it’s already begun.”

Foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdel Ati dismissed any comparison between the Mubarak regime and Egypt’s new military-installed government.

“The emergency law will only last for one month and for one objective: to fight terrorism,” he declared. “And the only way to fight terrorism is to apply the rule of law and some emergency measures, for only one month, to restore law and order.”

Abdel-Fattah, in line with increasingly common opinion, was not reassured. “Since Morsi’s ouster, some of those most closely associated with the Mubarak regime, including key members of Mubarak’s [now defunct] National Democratic Party, have begun returning to political life.”

On Wednesday, Mubarak himself was released from prison after being acquitted of corruption allegations. Although he still faces other criminal charges, including complicity in the murder of unarmed protesters in 2011, the Brotherhood described the development as “a victory for the counter-revolution.”

The Muslim Brotherhood formally renounced violence in the 1950s and says it has used strictly political methods to accomplish its aims ever since. Under Mubarak, the group was outlawed and its members routinely persecuted.

In Egypt’s first post-revolution parliamentary poll in late 2011, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won roughly half of the seats in the People’s Assembly (later dissolved by the military), while another quarter went to other Islamist-leaning parties.

Analysts worry about the effect of Egypt's ongoing crisis on U.S.-Saudi relations. Above, CNO Adm. Jonathan Greenert and Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz in February. Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Aug 22 2013 (IPS)

As the administration of President Barack Obama continues wrestling with how to react to the military coup in Egypt and its bloody aftermath, officials and independent analysts are increasingly worried about the crisis’s effect on U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia.

The oil-rich kingdom’s strong support for the coup is seen here as having encouraged Cairo’s defence minister Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood and resist western pressure to take a conciliatory approach that would be less likely to radicalise the Brotherhood’s followers and push them into taking up arms.

Along with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia did not just pledge immediately after the Jul. 3 coup that ousted President Mohamed Morsi to provide a combined 12 billion dollars in financial assistance, but it has also promised to make up for any western aid – including the 1.5 billion dollars with which Washington supplies Cairo annually in mostly military assistance – that may be withheld as a result of the coup and the ongoing crackdown in which about 1,000 protestors are believed to have been killed to date.

Perhaps even more worrisome to some experts here has been the exceptionally tough language directed against Washington’s own condemnation of the coup by top Saudi officials, including King Abdullah, who declared Friday that “[t]he kingdom stands …against all those who try to interfere with its domestic affairs” and charged that criticism of the army crackdown amounted to helping the “terrorists”.

Bruce Riedel, a former top CIA Middle East analyst who has advised the Obama administration, called the comments “unprecedented” even if the king did not identify the United States by name."Saudi Arabia does not consider the U.S. a reliable protector, thinks it's on its own, and is acting accordingly."
-- Chas Freeman

Chas Freeman, a highly decorated retired foreign service officer who served as U.S. ambassador to Riyadh during the Gulf War, agreed with that assessment.

“I cannot recall any statement as bluntly critical as that,” he told IPS, adding that it marked the culmination of two decades of growing Saudi exasperation with U.S. policy – from Washington’s failure to restrain Israeli military adventures and the occupation of Palestinian territory to its empowering the Shia majority in Iraq after its 2003 invasion and its abandonment of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and its backing of democratic movements during the “Arab awakening”.

“For most of the past seven decades, the Saudis have looked to Americans as their patrons to handle the strategic challenges of their region,” Freeman said. “But now the Al-Saud partnership with the United States has not only lost most of its charm and utility; it has from Riyadh’s perspective become in almost all respects counterproductive.”

The result, according to Freeman, has been a “lurch into active unilateral defence of its regional interests”, a move that could portend major geo-strategic shifts in the region. “Saudi Arabia does not consider the U.S. a reliable protector, thinks it’s on its own, and is acting accordingly.”

A number of analysts, including Freeman, have pointed to a Jul. 31 meeting in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Riyadh’s national security council and intelligence service, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, as one potentially significant “straw in the wind” regarding the Saudi’s changing calculations.

According to a Reuters report, Bandar, who served as Riyadh’s ambassador to Washington for more than two decades, offered to buy up to 15 billion dollars in Russian arms and coordinate energy policy – specifically to prevent Qatar from exporting its natural gas to Europe at Moscow’s expense – in exchange for dropping or substantially reducing Moscow’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

While Putin, under whom Moscow’s relations with Washington appear to have a hit a post-Cold War low recently, was non-committal, Bandar left Moscow encouraged by the possibilities for greater strategic co-operation, according to press reports that drew worried comments from some here.

“[T]he United States is apparently standing on the sidelines – despite being Riyadh’s close diplomatic partner for decades, principally in the hitherto successful policy of blocking Russia’s influence in the Middle East,” wrote Simon Henderson, an analyst at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).

“It would be optimistic to believe that the Moscow meeting will significantly reduce Russian support for the Assad regime,” he noted. “But meanwhile Putin will have pried open a gap between Riyadh and Washington.”

As suggested by Abdullah’s remarks, that gap has only widened in the wake of the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown on the Brotherhood this month and steps by Washington to date, including the delay in the scheduled shipment of F-16 fighter jets and the cancellation of joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercises next month, to show disapproval.

U.S. officials have told reporters that Washington is also likely to suspend a shipment of Apache attack helicopters to Cairo unless the regime quickly reverses course.

Meanwhile Moscow, even as it joined the West in appealing for restraint and non-violent solutions to the Egyptian crisis, has also refrained from criticising the military, while the chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee of the Duma’s upper house blamed the United States and the European Union for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

“It is clear that Russia and Saudi Arabia prefer stability in Egypt, and both are betting on the Egyptian military prevailing in the current standoff, and are already acting on that assumption,” according to an op-ed that laid out the two countries’ common interests throughout the Middle East and was published Sunday by Alarabiya.net, the news channel majority-owned by the Saudi Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC).

Some observers argue that Russia and Saudi Arabia have a shared interest in containing Iran; reducing Turkish influence; co-operating on energy issues; and bolstering autocratic regimes, including Egypt’s, at the expense of popular Islamist parties, notably the Brotherhood and its affiliates, across the region.

“There’s a certain logic to all that, but it’s too early to say whether such an understanding can be reached,” said Freeman, who noted that Bandar “wrote the book on outreach to former ideological and geo-strategic enemies”, including China, and that his visit to Moscow “looks like classic Saudi breakout diplomacy”.

But reaching a deal on Syria would be particularly challenging. While Riyadh assigns higher priority to reducing Iran’s regional influence than to removing Assad, some analysts believe there are ways an agreement that would retain him as president could be struck, as Moscow insists, while reducing his power over the opposition-controlled part of the country and weakening his ties to Tehran and Hezbollah.

But Mark N. Katz, an expert on Russian Middle East policy at George Mason University, is sceptical about the prospects for a Russian-Saudi entente, noting that Bandar has pursued such a relationship in the past without success.

“I’m not saying it can’t work, but this has been his hobby horse,” he told IPS. “Whatever happens in Saudi-American relations, however, the Saudis don’t trust the Russians and don’t want them meddling in the region. Everything about the Russians ticks them off.”

He added that Abdullah’s harsh criticism was intended more as a “wake-up call” and the fact that “the Saudis are on the same side [in supporting the Egyptian military] as the Israelis has emboldened them”.

The ruins of the Evangelical Church in Minya that was burnt down by supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. Credit: Rimon Zaky/IPS.

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Aug 20 2013 (IPS)

Churches across Egypt are being attacked heavily following the brutal killing last week of supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

The Coptic Christians rights group Maspero Youth Union estimates that as many as 38 churches have been “completely” devastated by fires across nine governorates since Aug. 14. Many others have been looted or stormed.

The attacks have been led by angry demonstrators loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood, Ishaq Ibrahim, religious rights researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told IPS. “They seek to drive a wedge between Christians and Muslims to show the world that Egypt is on the edge of collapse.” "The burning of the churches has extended to several churches of particular historical and heritage value." -- Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Monica Hanna

Christian homes and Christian-owned businesses have been attacked, Ibrahim said, and many Christians driven out of their homes and cities.

“Fifty-eight houses and 85 stores have been burnt and looted all over Egypt since black Wednesday,” he said. At least 525 Brotherhood supporters were killed and more than 2,000 reported injured in the brutal crackdown on Morsi supporters on Wednesday last week.

“The Brotherhood assumes that Christians instigated the toppling of Morsi because they have been against Shari’a,” Ibrahim said.

Six Coptic Christians, the dominant Christian sect in Egypt, have been killed, and seven have been kidnapped during the torching of churches, he said. “The Upper Egypt governorate of Minya was the scene of the worst anti-Coptic attacks; 12 churches were totally devastated.”

Muslim Brotherhood spokesperson Dr. Ahmad Aref condemned violence against Christians and the destruction of the churches, and accused military leaders of plotting these incidents to tarnish the image of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Egyptian Coptic Church issued a statement affirming that it stands by the police and the armed forces in the face of what it called “armed violence groups” and “terrorism”.

“We have not seen such cruelty before,” Anba Makarios, bishop of the Orthodox Church in Minya, told IPS. He said Coptic Christians have been suffering for decades, and struggling to get building permits for churches.

“In less than three days the toll of burnt and looted churches exceeded 55.

“They were shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is the greatest) while burning our churches, orphanages and hospitals. They were fighting as if it was a holy war against the cross. How will people trust any religion after seeing how blood was shed in the name of god?” 

Makarios said the attackers seemed to belong to radical Islamic movements. “They believed that the church supported the overthrow of Morsi financially and spiritually, so they came to take revenge.”

But the bishop opposed some Christian pleas for foreign intervention to protect them. “Churches and Copts’ properties should be protected by the state,” Makarios said. “Christians have refused such interference despite our long suffering from religious discrimination.”

The attacks are being seen by many as a political game. The Brotherhood has been trying to attract the attention of the Western community in all sorts of ways, Fouad Badrawi, deputy chairman of the Hizbu Al-Wafd liberal party, told IPS. “The Brotherhood expected that committing religious repression against Copts would encourage the U.S. and the European Union to intervene.”

The terrorists planned these attacks at Upper Egypt, where security reinforcements could not easily be sent, Badrawi said. This strategy had weakened the efforts of the police and army, he said.

In turn Islamic groups had found the reaction of the Pope and of Christian leaders shocking, Badrawi said. Badrawi is the grandson of the late leader of the party, Fouad Serag Al-Din. Hizbu Al Wafd is a nationalist liberal political party founded in 1920. It was the most popular party in Egypt till it was dissolved after the 1952 revolution. It was revived in 1983.

Archeologists have condemned the attack on church buildings; some of them were many centuries old. “The burning of the churches has extended to several churches of particular historical and heritage value,” Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Monica Hanna told IPS.

An ancient monastery of Virgin Mary from the 4th century CE has been ruined, she said. “Thugs took advantage of the lack of security and have been digging illicitly for antiquities in the monastery of Deir Mawas in Minya governorate that was attacked and burnt by pro-Morsi supporters.”

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.

One day after the killing by the Egyptian army and security forces of hundreds of civilian protestors, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced the cancellation of joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercises scheduled for September.

Cancellation of the biannual Operation Bright Star marked the first concrete step taken by Obama to distance Washington from the Egyptian military since the latter ousted President Mohamed Morsi Jul. 3 and installed an interim government which it increasingly appears to dominate.“There is no question this has highlighted the reduced significance and leverage the U.S. has with regard to Egypt.” -- Samer Shehata

The move came, however, amidst growing calls from lawmakers and others to go much farther by immediately suspending 1.3 billion dollars Washington provides in military aid to Egypt each year, a step that the administration is considered by most experts unlikely to take unless Wednesday’s bloody crackdown continues in the coming days.

“(W)hile we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back,” Obama declared in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where he is currently vacationing with his family.

“As a result, this morning we notified the Egyptian government that we are canceling our biannual joint military exercise which was scheduled for next month,” he added.

“Going forward I’ve asked my national security team to assess the implications of the actions taken by the interim government and further steps that we may take as necessary with respect to the U.S.-Egyptian relationship.”

With the official death toll from Wednesday’s violence climbing overnight to well over 600 and another 4,000 people injured, prospects for restoring stability to the country appear very uncertain.

The Muslim Brotherhood, whose partisans were the principal victims of the bloodshed and whose leaders are reportedly being rounded up throughout the country, has vowed to continue demonstrating until Morsi is re-instated.

Virtually all analysts here agree that Washington’s influence over events and the key protagonists in Egypt appears extremely limited at the moment.

Efforts by top U.S. officials, including, notably, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel, to persuade his Egyptian counterpart, Gen. Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, not to evict pro-Morsi protestors and two Cairo encampments with lethal force were clearly unavailing. Similar efforts to convince top Brotherhood leaders to drop their demand that Morsi be re-instated also came to naught.

“There is no question this has highlighted the reduced significance and leverage the U.S. has with regard to Egypt,” Samer Shehata, an Egypt expert at the University of Oklahoma, told IPS.

The suspension of military aid, he added, “seems to be the most extreme action the administration would take. If the levels of violence continue, it will be seriously considered, but if they diminish, I don’t think it will.”

Nonetheless, a number of influential lawmakers are calling for precisely such action.

“While suspending joint military exercises as the president has done is an important step, our law is clear: aid to the military should cease unless they restore democracy,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the key Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Thursday.

He was joined by Republican Sen. John McCain, who last week personally warned officials in Cairo that aid would be cut if the military carried through with its threat to use force in clearing two squares in Cairo that had been occupied by tens of thousands of pro-Morsi demonstrators since the coup.

Only two weeks ago, McCain had spoken in opposition to legislation mandating a cut-off of all aid to Egypt, arguing that it would reduce U.S. influence with the generals.

They were backed by the editorial boards of both the Washington Post and the New York Times which Thursday argued that until “the generals change their ways, …the United States should slam the door on an aid program that has provided the Egyptian military with a munificent 1.3 billion dollars a year for decades.”

The cancellation of Bright Star “falls short of what the circumstances on the ground merit, given the bloodshed and how many civilians have been killed,” Mona Yacoubian, an Egypt expert at the Stimson Centre, told IPS.

The administration, she added “should very strongly consider a suspension of aid until the situation improves.”

But a number of analysts believe the Egyptian military may be willing to forgo the aid in what it may believe is an existential struggle against the Brotherhood.

“[T]he military there are not concerned about American opinion,” wrote Col. Pat Lang (ret.), a former top Middle East analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on his blog, “Sic Semper Tyrannis” Thursday.

“They don’t think the money will be cut off for long. They have other sources of money. They are basically an internal security force and do not need the fancy gear that we have provided them. Abrams tanks, F-16s, etc. are too sophisticated for them to use effectively in actual combat.”

Those other sources of money include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait which together have pledged 12 billion dollars for Egypt since the coup – almost 10 times the total amount of U.S. military aid, most of which ends up, in any event, in the coffers of U.S. arms manufacturers which, along with the Gulf states and Israel, can be expected to lobby hard against any aid cut-off.

“The calculation of the Egyptian generals is right,” noted Joshua Stacher, an Egypt expert at KentStateUniversity in Ohio. “As the administration, what’s your ultimate play? You’re [not] going to break 35 years of a policy …whose essence is reliance on the Egyptian military.

“The Israelis, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis are saying, ‘Don’t cut those relations.’ Not only are they allies and friends, but they also buy an enormous amount of military hardware [from U.S. manufacturers],” he told IPS.

According to Shehata, “What the U.S. is concerned about, first and foremost, is the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. That is the lens through which the U.S. sees Egypt.

“Secondary to that is military co-operation: expedited passage of naval vessels through the Suez Canal, overflight through Egyptian airspace, intelligence sharing in the so-called ‘War on Terror’. Of course, human rights concerns are there someplace, but, unfortunately, they are below these other concerns on the list of priorities.”

Indeed, in an op-ed published Thursday in the New York Daily News, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton of the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) noted precisely such considerations in arguing not only against cutting off aid but also against the administration’s appeals for a post-coup transition that would include, rather than repress, the Brotherhood.

“What Washington needs to do is clear. U.S. policy should be to support only Egyptian leaders unambiguously committed to Camp David [the Israeli-Egyptian treaty]…And we must assist those who place highest priority on repairing Egypt’s badly weakened economy and securing its international economic obligations, particularly safe transit through the Suez Canal.”

Even an aid cut-off which, according to Stacher, has become a real possibility, is unlikely to have the desired effect for the reasons cited by Lang.

“If you really want to get to the heart of the relationship, you have to attack the military-to-military exchanges – the training visits to the U.S., and the informal officer-to-officer relationships that take place outside the formal chain of command.

“As long as these informal officer-to-officer relationships exist, the generals won’t believe threats coming out of Washington as credible,” he said.

“Until these relationships are severed and the military-to-military relationship is formalised, any U.S. administration has wiggle room to look like it’s changing its policies without actually changing the essence of the relationship, which is U.S. reliance on the Egyptian military.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

The revolutionary aspirations for justice, dignity and hope that Egypt’s young people brought to the world in January 2011 were crushed Wednesday by the military’s bloody crackdown.

Declaring a State of Emergency and putting the army on the streets is a sure sign that the January 2011 revolution, which toppled Hosni Mubarak, has been upended. Many Egyptians are worried that key elements of the Mubarak regime are back in the saddle. Egypt may be sliding into civil war and state failure.

Muhammad El-Baradei’s resignation as vice president indicates that Egyptian liberals who supported the military in ousting former democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi are becoming clear-eyed about the military’s intention to scuttle the post-Mubarak democratic experiment.

General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s appointment of over a dozen and a half retired army generals as governors throughout Egypt is yet another sign that the military is here to stay.

The massive street demonstrations, which al-Sisi called for as a “mandate” to depose Morsi, would soon reappear demanding his own ouster. It will again mobilise the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters.

No matter how much they despise the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian liberals now realise that military rule cannot be synonymous with democracy.

In an op-ed posted on IPS and LobeLog a month ago, I warned of the strong possibility of the military hijacking democracy in Egypt. The army did just that Wednesday, 44 days after it ousted Morsi from office.

Prominent liberal leaders who are currently serving in al-Sisi’s provisional government protested for months against the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or SCAF. Following the fall of Mubarak, the military under General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi engineered their return to power and defended their autocratic rule in the name of combating instability and chaos. They were forced out by street protests.

This time around, the military again used a similar argument to repeat the same pattern. In addition to the appointment of new governors, al- Sisi and interim President Adly Mansour have brought back rules and procedures as well as senior elements from the Mubarak era.

Once the military emasculates the revolution, the Egyptian people will be out in the streets demanding a return to genuine democracy. Because of civil strife, factional divisions, and rogue elements from the old regime, it might be too late to recapture the revolution of 2011.

The Barack Obama administration endeavored but failed to broker a deal between the military and the Morsi supporters, including releasing Muslim Brotherhood prisoners, and respecting the right to peaceful protests and assembly. The failure signals Washington’s diminishing influence over the Egyptian military despite the billions in foreign and military aid Egypt receives from the United States.

Whether in Egypt or Bahrain, the United States has been caught in the middle of deeply divided countries. According to media reports, some Egyptian revolutionaries and some pro-government Bahrainis are no longer interested in receiving U.S. aid.

In Egypt, U.S. aid is perceived as supporting military dictatorship. In Bahrain, U.S. military presence is perceived by pro-regime elements as empowering the pro-reform movement, including the Shia opposition, and restricting the government from cracking down on the opposition.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement condemning the bloody violence perpetrated by the military and police against peaceful sit-ins was forceful but ineffective. The military has already done its nasty deed without any fear of international condemnation.

The Egyptian military has co-opted most of the Egyptian media and is feverishly attempting to win over international media. The regime has restricted media activities and banned some international journalists from operating in the country.

Unfortunately, three international reporters were killed on Wednesday during the one-day bloody crackdown.

U.S. policymakers should ask what leverage, if any, Washington still has to influence events on the ground. Despite its perceived weakened position in the region, the United States continues to have a special relationship with the Egyptian military. If the Egyptian military wants to bring the country back from the brink, it should take several urgent steps. Washington most likely would stand ready to help if called upon.

First: The bloody confrontations with peaceful protesters, including the Muslim Brotherhood and other opponents of the recent coup, should stop immediately.

Second: A return to civilian rule through parliamentary and presidential elections should be accomplished within a few months. All political groups and parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, should have the opportunity to participate in these elections without fear or intimidation.

Third: All political prisoners, including deposed president Morsi and the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, should be released immediately and be invited to participate in national reconciliation talks under the auspices of al-Azhar.

Fourth: The Egyptian military regime fully realises that a stable Egypt is pivotal to Middle East stability, but that enduring domestic stability cannot be imposed by the barrel of a gun. If Egypt does not return to civilian rule, descending into chaos, political violence, civil war, and possibly state failure is not unthinkable.

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 and Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society.”

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

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Aug 15 2013 (IPS)

The youth within the Muslim Brotherhood may become very difficult to restrain following the bloody killings in Cairo, senior party members say.

Former youth leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, Haytham Abu Khalil, told IPS that the Brotherhood youth are now in a state of anger, confusion and uncertainty. Given the killing of so many, bringing the militant among them round through intellectual and religious campaigns will now be very difficult.

“The bloody attack they suffered during the sit-ins has made them see themselves as oppressed. They think they must come together to overcome this,” Khalil said.

One consequence will be a revolt against moderate leadership within the party, he said. “After passing through the current plight, the young members will overthrow the current leadership to restore community trust in the group. But I do not expect this in the near term.”“They are using the youth as a fuel for violence, and will abandon them at the first turn.” -- Political analyst Dr. Wahid Abd-al-Majid

Defections to more militant groups are expected, said Khalil who is author of the fictional book Reformist Brothers. “But it will occur in the long term, because everyone now will work to maintain the organisation. We are a complicated group and not as easy to deal with as the military thinks.”

The more immediate danger may be the forming of splinter militant groups, he said. “I do not rule out that some angry members formulate armed groups individually without reference to the leaders.”

Any move by the military to ban political parties based on religion would only drive members to radical Islamic groups who would then adopt ideas of jihadist extremism, he warned.

Dr. Amr Hashem Rabie, head of the Egyptian studies department at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said a tendency may emerge within the group to get rid of the established principle of obedience. Such a step would create an imbalance within the Brotherhood because it would be certain to attract many of the youth.

“The young feel now they have been thrown into a bloody confrontation,” he said. “Those who reject the current leadership will abandon the Brotherhood, and either quit political work or join armed militias such as the Salafist Jihadi.”

Rabie said senior Brotherhood leaders want a political role for the party, and would not like to return to darkness again. But, he said, “the voice of neo-reformists will rise from within.”

The shape of the future of the Muslim Brotherhood itself is at stake after the massive killing in Cairo and the bloody clashes over a sit-in to demand reinstatement of Mohamed Morsi, removed by the military as president.

Many political analysts believe that the future of the Muslim Brotherhood will be determined by young people, several of whom have been taking to violence to hit back over what they see as religious persecution.

Political analyst Dr. Wahid Abd-al-Majid said the crackdown by the military is turning into a confrontation between the army and the police on one hand, and an increasingly armed Muslim Brotherhood on the other.

In the face of the bloody crackdown by the military, Abd-al-Majid pointed out that there has also been violence from an armed faction within the Muslim Brotherhood. Two divergent camps are emerging within the party, he told IPS.

“I have information that there are some senior leaders within the Brotherhood who reject the escalation method of the leading sit-in group,” he said, adding that have been instructed to not show this.

Abd-al-Majid said that some armed groups, led by young members who believe that change will come only through violence and jihad, have already emerged out of the Brotherhood, and that these were gaining strength. “They would kill for the sake of the Brotherhood and in the name of Allah and Islam.”

The Brotherhood youth has been diverging into two since the Jan. 25 revolution, Abd-al-Majid said. One side has been forming peaceful groups such as “Brothers Without Violence” and “Free Brothers”. Some have gathered around dissident Brotherhood leaders or joined political parties such as al-Wasat and Masr al-Qaweya. But these are relatively minor groups.

However, the militant Brotherhood group is more dominant, he said. They are immersed in an ideology of full obedience to party leaders – at present. Reformist leaders within the Brotherhood will now struggle to change the strategy of motivating the youth into aggressive opposition.

“They are using the youth as a fuel for violence, and will abandon them at the first turn.” The youth have not been given responsible roles inside the party. They were not represented for instance within the Shura Council, he said. This may only deepen divisions between moderate party leaders and an increasingly militant youth within the group.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has denounced in unusually harsh terms Wednesday’s bloody military crackdown against supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

But, despite a growing chorus of calls by prominent lawmakers, commentators and Egypt experts here to suspend all U.S. aid to the interim government in Cairo that was installed early last month in a military coup d’etat against President Mohammed Morsi, the administration suggested only that it will review “the implications for our broader relationship which includes aid”.“You can’t sit idly by. There has to be an escalatory roadmap that at least has some teeth." -- Michael Wahid Hanna of the Century Fund

“The United States strongly condemns the use of violence against protestors in Egypt,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where Obama and his family are currently vacationing.

“The violence will only make it more difficult to move Egypt forward on a path to lasting stability and democracy, and runs directly counter to the pledges by the interim government to pursue reconciliation,” he noted.

Earnest added that Washington was also “strongly oppose[d]” to a return to a State of Emergency law which the military announced as the crackdown got underway earlier Wednesday morning.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who, in a widely criticised statement, praised the Egyptian military for “restoring democracy” by ousting Morsi earlier this month during a press conference in Pakistan, echoed Earnest in an unusual appearance during the daily State Department press briefing later in the afternoon.

“Today’s events are deplorable, and they run counter to Egyptian aspirations for peace, inclusion, and democracy. Egyptians inside and outside of the government need to take a step. They need to calm the situation and avoid further loss of life,” he added.

“The only sustainable path for either side is one toward a political solution. I am convinced from my conversations today with a number of foreign ministers, including the foreign minister of Egypt …that that path is, in fact, still open… though it has been made much, much harder, much more complicated, by the events of today.”

The statements were issued amidst horrific reports of the violence that began with a full-scale military and police effort to clear tens of thousands of pro-Morsi protestors from camps at two major Cairo squares that sprang up in the immediate aftermath of the Jul. 3 coup. Violent clashes between pro-military activists and Brotherhood demonstrators were also reported in Cairo and other cities.

Nearly 300 people were killed in Cairo and elsewhere around the country, according to an evening report by the government health ministry, although Brotherhood officials, which called the killings a “massacre”, said the death toll was many times that number in what was the worst day of violence in Egypt in living memory.

It was precisely the kind of crackdown that U.S. officials – both from the Pentagon and the State Department – had been trying to persuade their Egyptian counterparts to forgo over the past several weeks in hopes that the Brotherhood and its supporters would give up their demand that Morsi be re-instated and that some kind of reconciliation process could get underway.

The administration even appeared to approve a special trip to Cairo last week by two of its fiercest Congressional critics – Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham – for the purpose of conveying to the military, in particular, that any violent crackdown would result in a cut-off of the roughly 1.6 billion dollars, including 1.3 billion dollars in sophisticated weaponry, Washington provides Egypt in aid every year.

“As we predicted and feared, chaos in #Cairo,” tweeted McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, early Wednesday. “Sec Kerry praising the military takeover didn’t help,” he added in a jab at Kerry’s statement in Pakistan.

The administration clearly fears that Wednesday’s violence will greatly diminish, if not eliminate, the possibility of any reconciliation between the Brotherhood and other Islamist parties, such as the more fundamentalist Al-Nour party (which until now has taken a more-neutral role in the ongoing crisis), and the secular forces which backed the coup.

Indeed, the risk of even greater polarisation and escalating civil conflict in the Arab world’s most populous and influential country, whose stability has long been considered critical to U.S. strategic interests in the region, has risen sharply as a result of Wednesday’s bloodshed, according to independent analysts.

“The events in Egypt will provide a substantial boost to extremism, and specifically violent Islamist extremism,” Paul Pillar, a retired top CIA Middle East analyst who now teaches at Georgetown University, told IPS in an email.

“It was bad enough that moderate Islamists are being so clearly and completely excluded from a peaceful, democratic political process. Now the inevitable anger in response to large-scale bloodshed is being added to the mix.”

That observation was echoed by the interim government’s own vice president and a Washington favourite, Mohammed El-Baradei, who resigned in the face of Wednesday’s violence.

“Violence begets violence, and mark my words, the only beneficiaries from what happened today are extremist groups,” he said in his resignation letter.

What precisely Washington will do now remains to be seen. Despite increasing signs over the past month that the military was extending its control over the government – the latest coming Tuesday when the government appointed generals to 19 of the country’s 25 provincial governorships – it has refused to label Morsi’s ouster as a “coup d’etat”, a move that would force it to cut off all U.S. aid.

Cutting off aid, according to officials, risked reducing, if not eliminating, whatever influence Washington retained with the military.

But that position appears increasingly untenable in the wake of Wednesday’s violence. Indeed, the Washington Post editorialised Wednesday Obama’s decision not to cut aid made his administration “complicit in the new and horrifyingly bloody crackdown…”

“The bloody assault on the protester camps – after repeated American opposition to such a move – leaves President Obama little choice but to step away from the Egyptian regime,” wrote Marc Lynch, an influential Middle East analyst who has generally supported the administration’s “quiet diplomacy” with the generals, on his foreignpolicy.com blog Wednesday.

“Washington should, and probably will, call for a return to an elected civilian government, a rapid end to the state of emergency, and restraint in the use of force. When that doesn’t happen, it needs to suspend aid and relations until Cairo begins to take it seriously,” he wrote.

“Particularly after today, the country is much further away from a potential resolution and stability; compared to 24 hours ago, things are much worse,” Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egypt expert at the New York-based Century Fund, told IPS in a telephone interview from Cairo.

He said he favoured “an escalatory step-by-step process in terms of coercive measures or signals of displeasure (by the U.S.), as opposed to an all-or-nothing formulation.

“You can’t sit idly by. There has to be an escalatory roadmap that at least has some teeth,” possibly beginning with the cancellation of the bi-annual Bright Star joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercises which normally takes place during the fall.

“In the end, if we’re unsuccessful in changing behaviour, then we have a much more fundamental question about the sustainability of the bilateral relationship despite the strategic importance historically accorded it [by the U.S.],” he added.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 2013 (IPS)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has refused to describe the Egyptian army’s ouster of a democratically-elected government last month as a “military coup”, lambasted the country’s security forces for Wednesday’s massacre of civilians in the streets of Cairo.

He condemned in the “strongest terms” the violence that occurred when the Egyptian military used force to clear Cairo of sit-ins and demonstrations."Disaster has befallen Egypt." -- Chris Toensing, editor of the Washington-based Middle East Report

“While the U.N. is still gathering precise information about today’s events, it appears that hundreds of people were killed or wounded in clashes between security forces and demonstrators,” he added.

Asked why Ban still refuses to describe the army takeover as a “coup”, U.N. associate spokesperson Farhan Haq told IPS, “No real comment on that; I think the language of the statement speaks for itself.”

According to reports out of Cairo, the death toll was around 149 – and rising. The number of injured has been estimated at over 1,400.

Egypt’s acting Vice President Mohamed El-Baradei, Nobel Laureate and a former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has resigned.

“Disaster has befallen Egypt,” Chris Toensing, editor of the Washington-based Middle East Report, told IPS.

The country’s agony is a boon to the army, the secret police and other elements of the “deep state”, he added. Over the last two years, with the eager cooperation of state-run and private media, they have painted themselves as national saviours in the minds of a majority of Egyptians, Toensing said.

“Today’s massacres, sadly, will cement that image for the near future,” he said.

“It is the nastiest trick in the autocrat’s book. Cry ‘after us, the deluge’, then disappear from public view and watch the deluge occur, so as to ride back on a white horse,” said Toensing. “As for the shameful U.S. position, it simply proves that the real U.S. ally in Egypt is the army, as has been the case since Camp David, if not before.”

He said the meek calls for restraint from Washington, Europe and the United Nations are reminiscent of nothing so much as the similar pabulum issued when Israel mounts an assault on Gaza or the West Bank.

The U.S. brokered the 1979 Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, delivering billions of dollars’ worth of economic and military aid to both countries.

An Arab diplomat told IPS that Ban apparently is toeing the official U.S. line that last month’s military ouster of Egypt’s first freely-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was an attempt to “restore democracy”.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters last week: “The (Egyptian) military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people.

“The military did not take over, to the best of our judgment – so far,” he added.

If the administration of President Barack Obama had described the take over as a “coup”, it would have been forced to cut off all U.S. aid to Egypt, amounting to over 1.5 billion dollars annually, under current U.S. legislation.

The U.S. fear is that such a drastic step would further destabilise the country, which is already in the throes of a major political crisis.

Dr. Toby C. Jones, associate professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University, described the U.S. position on Egypt as “hypocritical”.

“The U.S. primarily approaches its relationship with Egypt through the framework of security and strategic interests – thus the military, not human rights or democracy,” he told IPS.

He said the Obama administration has exactly who it wants in power in Cairo.

“Of course, American officials would prefer that they behave better and avoid the kind of violence that is taking place now, but not enough to denounce it strongly or consider political alternatives,” said Jones, who has a doctorate in Middle East history from Stanford University.

Asked about a proposal for Security Council intervention in Egypt, U.N. deputy spokesperson Eduardo del Buey told reporters Wednesday that would be a decision for the Council members to take. “The secretary-general will not opine on that,” he said.

In a statement released Wednesday, Ban said that only days ago, he renewed his call for all sides in Egypt to reconsider their actions in light of new political realities and the imperative to prevent further loss of life.

Ban said he regrets that Egyptian authorities chose instead to use force to respond to the ongoing demonstrations. He conveyed his condolences to the families of those killed and his wishes for a full and speedy recovery to those injured.

The secretary-general also said he is well aware that the vast majority of the Egyptian people, weary of disruptions to normal life caused by demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, want their country to go forward peacefully in an Egyptian-led process towards prosperity and democracy.

In the aftermath of today’s violence, he urged all Egyptians to concentrate their efforts on promoting genuinely inclusive reconciliation.

While recognising that political clocks do not run backwards, the secretary-general said he also believes firmly that violence and incitement from any side are not the answers to the challenges Egypt faces. With its rich history and diversity of views and experiences, it is not unusual for Egyptians to disagree on the best approach forward, he added.

What is in important, in the secretary-general’s view, is that differing views be expressed respectfully and peacefully.

To his regret, that is not what happened today.

Before an ultimatum to attack an anti-coup sit-in earlier this week, Egypt’s new strongman and coup leader Gen. Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi received one of his warmest endorsements ever – something that might have been torn right out of the steamy pages of the “Arabian Nights”.

Gen. Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi. Credit: U.S. State Department/public domain

A female secular columnist for the liberal, privately-owned daily Al-Masry Al-Youm wrote in support of his planned action, literally offering herself as “a sex slave”.

If this sounds like a typical example of how depraved Arab tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and Hafez Al-Assad strengthened their iron grip on their countries on the shoulders of compliant media and elites, it is because it is.

After all, this is the Middle East where more than two years after the Arab Spring, the elite, military and local media remain the world’s most skilled inventors of ruthless autocracies, from mad despots such as the deceased Muammer Gaddafi of Libya to brutal tribal monarchs such as the Al Saud royal family in Saudi Arabia and Al Nahian tribe in the United Arab Emirates.

It is through armies of similar cheerleaders who are willing to enslave and humiliate themselves that those rulers rise in tyranny and establish their unrivaled bloody hold on power. In Egypt, this is how pharaohs are made.

Hours after columnist Ghada Sherif offered her passionate physical backing, Sissi’s troops launched an overnight assault on his opponents. By daybreak, at least 82 people had been killed and dozens more injured, with many receiving sniper bullets in the head and neck.

The “sex slave” episode also shows the great lengths Sissi’s well- greased propaganda machine, backed by the treasures of the sprawling Egyptian military business complex and the riches of the country’s elite, will go to to catapult the 58-year old Sissi, or Super-Sissi as his fans call him, as Egypt’s saviour and next leader.

Sissi is backed by Egypt’s self-styled liberals, secularists and leaders of the Christian Orthodox minority who were routed and humiliated six consecutive times in fair and democratic elections at the hands of campaign-savvy Islamists during the country’s two-and-half year brush with democracy.

For them, tanks, assault rifles and military brass have become the only burrow they could ever dig to get close to office. To that end, they are showing utter disregard of law, human rights and respect for democracy.

As Sissi’s forces were slaughtering dozens of people and injuring many more in their overnight attack outside the Rabaa Mosque in Cairo Saturday morning, Pope Tawadros, leader of the country’s five million Christian Coptic minority, who detests Islamist parties, jubilantly tweeted: “Thank you to Egypt’s great military and its wonderful police force, for opening the doors of hope.”

Tawadros repeated “thank you” six times in his post.

And despite the bloodshed at the hands of Sissi’s military and police, the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper made splashing headlines of a report that one Egyptian man in the Red Sea city of Suez named his newborn child “Sissi”.

So thirsty for legitimacy and public acceptance of their coup outside of their supporters, the top commander of Egypt’s Third Army, who is supposedly busy fighting terrorism in Sinai, took time off to pay the parents a visit and hand them a reward for naming the new baby after the coup’s leader’s highly uncommon name. As expected, cameras were there to take pictures.

The Facebook page of the Egyptian military’s propaganda arm, the Morale Affairs, and other sympathetic Facebook pages widely believed to be run by intelligence officers entrusted with peddling Sissi to the public are lavishing pictures of tough, muscular and mustached officers in camouflaged uniforms, stamping a drooling kiss on portraits of Sissi.

The image-building gets even more ridiculous with attempts to create unsubstantiated heroic tales for Sissi.

A military Facebook page popular with Sissi’s fans and other obedient newspapers claimed that the U.S. Fifth Fleet was sent to Egypt’s shores last week to intervene in the turmoil only to be sternly told off by “Sissi the brave”.

The Americans tucked their tails between their legs and left the Mediterranean after Sissi’s thunderous warning, so the fable goes.

“Sissi threatened to annihilate the U.S. Fleet,” declared Al-Nahar newspaper of the story.

The signs are unmistakable. Such folk tales were a hallmark of Gaddafi’s 40-year rule, with his media inventing gallant military adventures for the consumption of gullible Libyans in a bid to legitimise his reign.

Over the past month, Sissi had displayed other megalomaniac traits a la Gaddafi, the touchstone of despotic tyranny in the region, who had a penchant for full military uniforms, sunglasses and extravagant medals. Sissi gave his last speech in identical dark eye shades, a full ornamental cap and a chest full of colorful medals.

But more ominous are the signs of how Sissi is concentrating power for his rule.

Egyptian prisons are filling up fast. Media outlets critical of the military are shuttered. Coup opponents face threats of confiscating their property and hurriedly cooked up criminal charges.

Ousted president Mohammed Morsi himself was held incommunicado for nearly a month before far-fetched accusations of espionage for the Palestinian group, Hamas, were conjured up.

Editors from the privately-owned pro-coup Shorouk newspapers banned articles by two writers, Wael Kandil and Ahmed Mansour, for questioning the coup leader’s ability to bring stability to Egypt. One of them, Kandil, later quipped that the incident made Hosni Mubarak sound like an angel as none of his harsh columns were censored before.

Worse, Gen. Sissi disbanded the elected Shura Council, revoked the constitution agreed upon by a whopping 64 percent vote in fair elections, and re-instated officers of the country’s repressive secret police, the country’s most hated and feared institution, who were fired after the Jan. 25, 2011 uprising against Mubarak for human rights abuses.

The secret police have powers to censor the media, screen applicants for government jobs, arrest opponents and hunt down dissidents with complete impunity.

Sissi’s reach hasn’t spared ordinary Egyptians either. Makeshift checkpoints manned by heavily-armed joint police and military units pepper Egypt’s streets, a scene not witnessed since the bloody era of Sissi’s role model, former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bearded men and women who choose the Islamic covering are stopped, arrested or abused based on their visible religious orientation. Those who are not visibly religious complain about the maltreatment at checkpoints and the return of non-optional bribes to traffic officers.

The rhetoric from the private media, owned by the country’s wealthy elite classes and members of the minority Christian Coptic church who both support Sissi, routinely encourage crackdowns against opponents. Examples include urging Sissi to cut off water and electricity from opposition sit-ins, flooding the sit-ins with sewage, and calls to shoot at “just their legs”, while all along showing fanatical devotion for their new Pharaoh, Sissi the Savior.

But nobody has yet matched Sherif’s offer. “Sissi, all you have to do is just wink,” the liberal writer titled her column.

“He is a man that Egyptians are infatuated with. If he wants to take four wives, then we are at his bidding. If he wants just a sex slave, by God, we’ll not be hard to get either.”

Emad Mekay is a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He worked for The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Inter Press Service in the Middle East. He is the founder of America In Arabic News Agency. He covered most of the initial protests of the Arab Spring for The International Herald Tribune and for Inter Press Service.

Egypt’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has called for nationwide rallies to give the military a mandate to confront what he termed violence and terrorism following the removal of President Mohamed Morsi.

In a speech on Wednesday at a military graduation ceremony, Sisi called for the protests to be held on Friday, and denied accusations that he had betrayed Morsi.

“I ask … that next [upcoming] Friday all honest and trustworthy Egyptians must come out,” Sisi said in remarks broadcast live by state media. “Why come out? They come out to give me the mandate and order that I confront violence and potential terrorism.”

Sisi also vowed to stick to a political roadmap that laid the way for a reform of the constitution and new elections within some six months.

He said his appeal for protests was not a call for violence and expressed support for efforts for national reconciliation.

The Muslim Brotherhood reacted quickly, with senior member Essam al-Erian issuing a statement directed at Sisi saying: “Your threat will not prevent millions to rally against coup … You have been always in your office conspiring.”

In a press conference later, Egypt’s opposition Islamist coalition read out a list of its stipulations. They called for Sisi to be tried for crimes against humanity, and termed Friday’s rally “irresponsible” and “an announcement of civil war”.

They also called on their supporters to oppose Sisi’s call.

“[General Abdel Fattah] al-Sisi’s threats are an announcement of civil war,” said the Muslim Brotherhood-led coalition which has been demanding Morsi’s reinstatement ever since his overthrow in a Jul. 3 coup.

Violence continues

The military also reacted, declaring a ‘state of alert’. A source confirmed to Al Jazeera that the army would deploy in the coming hours additional troops in all streets and provinces and especially greater Cairo and the surrounding areas to secure them against any violence.

The source added that the armed forces will work on preventing any attempt to “incite violence or terrorism”.

The army chief’s speech came ahead of proposed “national reconciliation” sessions called for by the interim leader Adly Mansour, and followed renewed violence in and outside the capital Cairo, in which at least three people died.

Sisi offered condolences to the families of victims killed in such violence, which has been seen as recently as Wednesday morning.

Unknown gunmen who shot at Morsi supporters in Cairo killed at least two people, witnesses and health officials confirmed, adding to a death toll of more than 100 people since the president was removed by the military on Jul. 3.

In a separate development on the same day, a bomb exploded at a police station in a province north of Cairo, killing one conscript, and wounding more than 15 people, health officials said.

Reconciliation talks

Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood has said it will boycott Mansour’s reconciliation talks.

A senior member of Al-Nour, Egypt’s most powerful Salafi party, told Al Jazeera that it will also not be attending.

“The Muslim Brotherhood rejected an invite to Wednesday’s national reconciliation meeting. For them, the legitimate president of Egypt is Mohamed Morsi,” said Al Jazeera’s Nadim Baba in Cairo.

Former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, tweeted a warning against the talks.

“Military coup government failed to stop bloodshed and detains tens of peaceful protestors every day and besieges media and closes its channel. Which reconciliation are you calling for?” he wrote.

Earlier this week, Mansour renewed appeals for reconciliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We want to turn a new page in the country’s book with no hatred, no malice, no division,” he said in a pre-recorded speech that also highlighted the importance of the army in Egypt’s history.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

An anti-Morsi protest in August 2012, almost a year before the former president's ouster. Credit: Gigi Ibrahim/CC by 2.0

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Jul 21 2013 (IPS)

The events of Jun. 30 have split Egyptians into two categories. For those in the first, what happened that day was an army-supported public uprising to fulfill the objectives of the revolution of Jan. 25, 2011 and topple a president who broke promises and worked only to benefit his own group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

The second category sees the events as a military coup planned in advance, a crisis orchestrated by army leaders and Egyptian intelligence to provoke citizens’ wrath against a democratically elected president and give them reason to oust him and seize power.

As the situation continues to unfold in Egypt, the events of that day have become even more divisive as protests supporting or decrying varying sides take place throughout the streets of Cairo and analysts and experts offer a variety of explanations for Morsi’s ouster.

According to Muhamed Omara, a member of the Salafist Nour Party and Egypt’s Constituent Assembly, the Egyptian opposition has long called for democracy, and so whomever Egyptians elected as their leader should be respected and given the chance to lead.

The behaviour of the liberal opposition toward the military coup was completely disgraceful, according to Omara, and ousting the legal president, Mohamed Morsi, could not be defined as democratic, he added.

Omara, who is also a professor at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, believed that the liberal opposition refused to accept Morsi’s initiatives to cooperate in building a new Egyptian state and instead described him as a non-democratic president, even as they saw their alliance with the army to oust him as a democratic move.

Ultimately, Omara concluded, the elected president was betrayed.

A smart plot

Hisham al-Husseiny, a pro-Morsi business man, believes that what happened on Jun. 30 was premeditated and that the leaders of the armed forces had long been waiting for an opportunity for a coup against Morsi.

Army leaders and Egyptian intelligence masterminded the crises in fuel, electricity and traffic and created a deficit to incite people to protest and demand Morsi’s departure, Al-Husseiny believed.

Meanwhile, although people were angry, Morsi made decisions against his own interests, and so people lost sympathy for him , al-Husseiny said. He expected that the Muslim Brotherhood would not participate in the political arena again soon until it received a guarantee that election results would be implemented and protected.

No longer legitimate

Mohamed Abu Hamed, the former vice chairman of the Free Egyptians Party, which was founded after the 2011 revolution and supports a liberal, democratic and secular political order in post-Mubarak Egypt, said Morsi ignored public sentiment when Egyptians called for early elections, so the Brotherhood president had to be overthrown by force.

Abu Hamed told IPS that Morsi began losing legitimacy when he issued a constitutional declaration to expand his authority, mistakenly thinking that such a move would shield him from criticism from the opposition and prevent the legal repealing of his decrees.

On Nov. 22, 2012, Morsi announced that the president was authorised to take any measures he saw fit in order to preserve and safeguard the revolution, national unity or national security. According to the decree, all constitutional declarations, laws and decrees made since Morsi assumed power could not be appealed or cancelled by any individual or political or governmental body until the ratification of a new constitution and the election of a new parliament.

Abu Hamed, a former member of the post-revolutionary People’s Assembly said that the president’s actions left the public and the military with little choice. After millions took to the streets, the army had to support the people, he added.

Tarek Zidan, head of Egypt’s Revolution Party (Hizb Thawret Masr), founded after the January 2011 revolution and consisting of 11 political coalitions and movements with moderate religious backgrounds, told IPS that democracy does not mean simply a ballot box.

Rather, democracy is the promises and pledges made by the nominated candidate to voters, he said. If these promises are not carried out in the agreed amount of time, voters have the right to withdraw the candidate in a revolutionary form of democracy.

The concept of democracy, according to Zidan, means popular sovereignty. The people are the source of authority, and so laws and the constitution lose legitimacy in the face of public revolutions. Accordingly, the people alone are the main source of authority, not the ballot box, as claimed by Morsi supporters, Zidan said.

What happened on Jun. 30 was a real revolution, supported by the army, where millions demanded the departure of Morsi and his group, Zidan maintained. It was not a military coup but democracy in its loftiest sense where the army listened to people and established a revolutionary democracy, without gaining for itself, he insisted.

The Egyptian military’s removal of the democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from power upended the MB’s 20-year old political participation programme. If the new regime aims to achieve genuine reconciliation and political consensus, the MB and its supporters must be included in the restructuring of Egyptian politics.

The Egyptian military in the short-run might succeed in marginalising the MB but will not defeat or silence it."As vast majorities of Muslims worldwide reject the radical message and as Bin Ladin’s jihadism fades away, it’s more urgent than ever to continue engaging Muslim youth and other groups worldwide."

During his short tenure, Morsi was unable to move the country forward economically, politically, and socially. The Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, equally failed to transcend their narrow MB partisan ideology.

Elements from the old regime also conspired to make Morsi fail. Yet, political fracturing, which Morsi was accused of promoting, is likely to continue under the new regime.

The symbiotic military-liberal alliance, driven by a visceral dislike of the MB, is destined to be short-lived. Over the next year, the economy is not expected to improve measurably, food and energy prices would not go down noticeably, tourism would remain stagnant, and hundreds of thousands of youth would stay unemployed.

Dissatisfied Egyptians would again hit the streets demanding change. When that happens, will Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi yet again find it necessary to impose military rule? While Islam might or might not be inimical to democracy, military dictatorship most certainly is. Deposing an elected leader by decree is not a harbinger for democracy. What will Egyptian liberals do when they wake up to this unpleasant reality?

It would be naïve for today’s Egyptian liberals and secularists to believe the military could stamp out Islamic ideology from Egyptian society. Forcing the MB out of politics will push many youthful MB supporters to become angry and alienated. As their frustration and disappointment with democratic politics grow, some of them would turn to violence, radicalism, and even terrorism.

Excluding MB ministers from the recently appointed interim cabinet is a formula for failure. The new cabinet would not be able to gain the trust of the Egyptian people if Islamic parties are not in the political mix.

Contrary to the opinions of so many Western talking heads and analysts, Morsi’s ouster does not signal the failure of political Islam or the demise of the MB. Nor does it signal the end of the “Arab Spring”.

“People power”, which toppled Hosni Mubarak and which played a role in toppling Morsi, is a new reality in today’s Egypt. The military was able to ride the popular wave in the Morsi case but should not count on a similar outcome in future power struggles.

The Egyptian MB is down but not out. Islam has deep roots in Egypt, which has underpinned local and national politics for decades, if not centuries. It can’t be wiped out so easily by a new brand of military-liberal secularism.

Nor can Islamic tendencies be muted by the billions of dollars of promised aid from Gulf countries, which for years promoted Islamism against Egyptian-led Arab nationalism and other secular ideologies. The cynical exploitation of Islam and Islamism by these regimes has always backfired on them over the years. It will not be different this time either.

Since its founding in 1928, the MB was in conflict with the Egyptian state for most of the past century. Some of its leaders were jailed, executed, or exiled. Others went underground. Many of its members became radicalised, especially during the Nasser era, and some resorted to violence and terrorism. Others went to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries where they were received with open arms.

In partnering with Saudi Salafis and Wahhabis, the anti-Nasser MB preachers and proselytisers who fled to the Gulf articulated a more radical, intolerant worldview of political Islam. Beginning in the late 1960s, these radicalisers embarked on a global plan of proselytisation or da’wa. The call for jihad against the “infidels” and the “enemies” of Islam was funded by Saudi Arabia.

While radical MB activists were busy in the Gulf and worldwide, their “mainstream” MB counterparts remained more active in Egypt, albeit in jail or underground. Despite massive suppression by Egyptian security services under the Mubarak regime, the movement did not fade away.

By the early 1990s, the Egyptian MB concluded it could not defeat the Mubarak regime through violence and opted instead to turn to politics. They refocused their efforts on Islamising society from below, arguing that if they could Islamise society, power would change at the top.

In a conversation with a U.S.-educated MB activist over 20 years ago about transforming society from within, he invoked the U.S. baseball field analogy. He said, “Build it, and they will come; change society from below, and the rest would follow!”

By the end of that decade, the MB had participated in parliamentary elections first as members of the Wafd Party, then as partners with the Labour Socialist Party. Finally, they ran as “independent” representatives. They had to play that game, they argued, because religious parties were banned under Mubarak.

MB spokesmen often reached out to U.S. officials in Cairo telling them repeatedly about their commitment to participate in national elections openly and freely if they were allowed to do so. My CIA analysts and I occasionally met with MB activists in Cairo during the 1990s.

The debate among U.S. policymakers on this issue was whether the MB’s shift from violence to politics was tactical or strategic. U.S. officials generally supported including political Islam in the political process, including elections, on the grounds that the performance of Islamic political parties in national legislatures, not their ideology, should be the litmus test for their long-term commitment to “human-made” democracy.

Numerous Sunni Islamic political parties with MB roots in the Arab world and across many Muslim countries have participated in politics for over two decades. They have served in legislatures in many countries, including in Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Turkey, and others. Political Islam is here to stay regardless of the nature of the regime in which these parties operate.

The recent history of Islamic activism tells us including Islamic parties in national politics usually breeds pragmatism and political compromise. When they are forced underground, they become more radicalised, leading fringe elements to turn to violence and terrorism.

Engaging Muslim civil society communities, including political parties, has been the hallmark of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11, which was of course highlighted in President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech four years ago. As vast majorities of Muslims worldwide reject the radical message and as Bin Ladin’s jihadism fades away, it’s more urgent than ever to continue engaging Muslim youth and other groups worldwide.

U.S. officials should use their influence to persuade General al-Sisi to turn over the Egyptian political system to civilian control in which the MB would be free to participate. The alternative could bring more instability, violence, and chaos to Egypt, and of course to U.S. interests in the region.

*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”.