E-gypt Us!

The Arab Spring provided a miracle of voices that tripped up the hardline rule of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, among the list of Middle Eastern absolute rulers toppled or severely threatened by populist movements. Cairo’s Tahrir Square (above) was the media’s focal point for mass demonstrations and confrontations that led to Mubarak’s ouster and ultimate incarceration. Today, another storm is brewing in Tahrir Square, one that joins once-incompatible factions into a series of protests against the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that stepped in on an presumably interim basis to govern a country in transition.

And those protests, like the ones that ousted Mubarak at the beginning of this year, are turning violent: “[R]umors ran rampant that police officers from the much detested Ministry of Interior were gathering at various entrances to the square… Up a side street to the west, in the direction of the Interior Ministry, bouts of rock throwing and tear gas firing continued. There were numerous reports of badly wounded protesters, including at least two who had lost eyes after being hit in the face with rubber bullets.” Huffington Post, November 19^th. With parliamentary elections looming, wasn’t this supposed to be simply a peaceful, transitional military government?

Ahhhh… There’s a little piece of history that maybe needs retelling. Since 1952, Egypt has been ruled strictly by persons who have come from the military elite. “On 23 July 1952, the [a rebel group from within Egypt’s military called the] Free Officers commenced the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 with a coup d'état to depose King Farouk. [Major-General Muhammad] Naguib was appointed, first as Commander-in-Chief of Army, in order to keep the armed forces firmly behind the junior officers' coup. In September, Naguib was appointed Prime Minister of Egypt and a member of the Royal Regent Council, with Nasser serving in the background as Minister of the Interior [, becoming the nation’s first president in 1953]…

“Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein (…15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib …which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of modernization, and socialist reform in Egypt together with a profound advancement of pan-Arab nationalism, including a short-lived union with Syria.” Wikipedia.

Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, a graduate of Cairo’s Royal Military Academy was also a member of the Free Officer’s Movement, and also rose through the ranks, eventually leaving for higher office: “During the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sadat was appointed Minister of State in 1954. In 1959, he assumed the position of Secretary to the National Union. Sadat was the President of the National Assembly (1960–1968) and then Vice President and member of the Presidential Council in 1964. He was reappointed as Vice President again in December 1969.” Wikipedia. Hosni Mubarak also rose through the ranks, becoming Commander of the Air Force, before becoming Sadat’s vice-president in 1975. When the latter was assassinated in 1981, Mubarak took over and reigned until his fall this year. All military, all the time.

The Egyptian military accepted that Mubarak was a sacrificial lamb that needed to go, but under the guise of settling the chaos of transition pending the creation of a permanent civilian rule, SCAF was created to run the country… and keep the military elite in charge. While the nascent voices in the movement to topple Mubarak were primarily secular modernists, more religiously based groups from the radical and strict traditionalist Muslim Salafists to the more moderate (believe it or not) Muslim Brotherhood, have joined the movement (and maybe overwhelmed it) to determine Egypt’s future … and perhaps push it into a more religiously-based form of government. Note: there is no civilian government right now, and even though parliamentary elections (which were postponed from this past September) are scheduled for November 28^th (with a runoff to take place on December 5^th), the presidential election is not slated until 2013. Hmmmmm….

So on November 18^th, “Tens of thousands of people poured into Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the site of the original protest movement that brought down Egypt's dictator in February, to express their disaffection with the military council that has governed the country since… Back in February, protestors -- largely secular and civic minded, but with a healthy contribution of religious Muslims -- had joined hands with a compliant Army to demand the ouster of an autocratic president.

“Now, Tahrir was dominated by bearded Muslims in traditional garb, many of them members of a strict religious community known as Salafists, who had come to protest that very same Army, and call for the restoration of a presidency. (The far better known Muslim Brotherhood, also in Tahrir in force, advocates a more moderate vision of Islam's role in government.)

“The decision by the Brotherhood and several Salafist groups to take part in [the November 18^th] ‘day of unity’ against the Army's rule had forced the hand of liberals and the young revolutionaries, many of whom have been apprehensive about joining forces with the Salafists, but equally wary of ceding to them any remaining political momentum, or the symbolic power of Tahrir… ‘The secularists and the Islamists are one hand,’ an elderly Islamist in a green full length gown said cheerfully, echoing a common refrain from the days of the revolution, when it was frequently said that the people and the Army were ‘one hand’ -- joined in a common purpose.” Huffington Post, November 18^th. And as we have seen above, on November 19^th, the violence escalated.

Wanna bet at exactly how the military is going to maintain its grip on this desert nation? Think they will truly relinquish control to a completely separate, more powerful and autonomous civilian government that is not generated from or beholden to the military? Yeah, right…. And here’s the bigger question for us: is the West willing to accept a democratically elected, anti-Western Islamist state or is a continuation of a military dictatorship the kind of dramatic hypocrisy we have supported for years our preference?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the more stuff changes, sometimes things really just won’t.