Fārūq al-Awwal - a/k/a King Farouq I – was the last non-military ruler of Egypt until the election of Mohammad Morsi about a year ago. Farouq (1936-1952) was deposed by a military coup that installed Gamal Abdel Nasser as the new president. Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarek, both selected by and from the military, succeeded Nasser. When the Arab Spring toppled Mubarek in 2011, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces stepped into the void until free elections on June 24, 2012 placed the first non-military Egyptian leader in six decades, Mohammad Morsi, at the helm.
With little in the way of functional leadership experience and ties to Islamists seeking to install greater religiosity in what had been a secular nation for a very long time, President Morsi grappled with moving his nation’s nascent constitution more in the direction of his Muslim Brotherhood roots while still walking a relatively neutral line in dealing with the outside world, Palestinian autonomy and US relations (Egypt is America’s fourth largest recipient of foreign aid, most of which supports the military: a total of approximately $1.5 billion a year).
However, Morsi’s appointments and ministerial functionaries were simply unable to get Egypt on a path that was remotely close to the operational viability that existed during the Mubarek regime. Egypt began to unravel for most citizens. Unemployment skyrocketed, infrastructure crumbled without repair, social services vaporized, schools were closed early, and the economy seemed to be in rudderless free-fall. Day-to-day life in Egypt moved from difficult to miserable.
Still, the military watched. With an estimated 450,000 troops, Egypt’s army is the largest in the Middle East. While ordinary soldiers and junior officers live pretty low on the economic spectrum, its senior officers have their own economic super-benefits, privileges and power, secure in the knowledge that anyone purportedly running Egypt is ultimately serving only as long as the powerful military will allow such rule. “For decades, however, its tens of thousands of elite officers have jealously guarded their privileged station. They live as a class apart, with their own social clubs, hotels, hospitals, parks and other benefits financed by the state [and U.S. foreign aid].
“Many have also grown wealthy through government contracts and business deals facilitated by their positions. It is, in some respects, a hereditary Brahmin caste, in which sons follow their fathers’ careers and they all live inside a closed social circle… ‘It is a tightly knit group,’ said Robert Springborg, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and an expert on the Egyptian military. ‘They tend to think alike and they are a force to be reckoned with because, besides the Brotherhood, they are the only really cohesive institution in the country.’” New York Times, July 3rd.
The military really didn’t care who was in power as long as their special status remained intact. As civil unrest escalated, protesting against conditions that the Morsi government seemed incapable of correcting, the army began to make plans. Violence in the streets exploded. This level of instability was bad for business and hurtful to the benefits and privileges of the military elite. The Muslim Brotherhood thought they had a deal with the military… until the army felt too much irreparable damage had been done to the nation.
The military pressured Morsi to step down, and he refused. “With tanks and soldiers in the streets and around the presidential palace, the military’s top officer, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, did not even utter Mr. Morsi’s name as he announced that the president had been deposed and the Constitution suspended.” Morsi was taken into custody, and the relatively low-profile head of the Supreme Court (Adli Mansour) was installed as an interim caretaker until new elections could be held.
As the military moves to clamp down on members of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as members of the press who are interviewing those the army wishes to displace, regional reaction is hardly uniformly supportive: “Turkey, which had formed an emerging alliance with Egypt's ousted Islamist leader Muhammed Morsi, on [July 4th] slammed the democratically elected leader's overthrow by the military as ‘unacceptable’ and called for his release from house arrest… Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted government [which recently faced its own wave of secular protests] has been watching developments in Egypt with concern as the armed forces ousted Morsi, an Islamist and Egypt's first democratically elected president.” Huffington Post, July 4th. Pro and anti-Morsi protestors continue to clash, the military is actively involved in the violence, and the death toll is rising.
For the United States, this change has also placed our policy-makers in a very difficult position. Having championed the Arab Spring and the free elections that brought Morsi into office, the United States bent over backwards to support this new regime. The U.S. wanted to show the world that it could work well even with a regime that was backed primarily by a pretty radical Islamist party. The opposition saw such American efforts as cozying up to Morsi and keeping him in the saddle way beyond what was useful or prudent.
Our Cairo ambassador isn’t cushy political appointee. 63-year-old Anne W. Patterson (pictured above), an Arkansas native, is a distinguished career Foreign Service officer who has served as our envoy to Egypt since 2011. But now, many Egyptians are blaming the United States for trying to interfere in their country at too many levels. Patterson has now become the rather clear and personal target of a very large number of protestors. “Her image has been plastered on banners in Tahrir Square, crossed out with a blood-red X or distorted and smeared with insults. She is too cozy with Egypt’s deposed president and the Muslim Brotherhood, the signs say, and should leave the country…
“As her bosses in Washington struggle to exert even modest influence over the events in Cairo, Ms. Patterson, 63, has been portrayed as a sinister force by pro- and antigovernment protesters alike: a defender of the status quo as well as a troublemaker who schemes with the opposition. …‘She’s being lambasted because she’s the face of America,’ said Vali Nasr, a former State Department official who worked with Ms. Patterson when she was ambassador to Pakistan. ‘But the fact that she’s being excoriated instead of the president only represents the fact that the rest of the American administration is absent.’
“In his first reaction to Mr. Morsi’s ouster, Mr. Obama warned of the dangers of violence and tried to steer Egypt’s military toward a prompt resumption of democratic rule. But the flurry of White House meetings and phone calls on Wednesday served to underscore the lack of leverage the United States has over Egypt, once a crucial strategic ally in the Middle East but lately just another headache.” NY Times.
When a military coup is staged, the general mandate is for the U.S. government to cut off military aid to that nation instantly… with a few potential exceptions. And you can pretty much bet that the Obama administration will find a way to keep funding the only real power in Egypt that has mattered in six decades!
I’m Peter Dekom, and when taking a walk in a minefield, one must expect explosions and losses.
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