Author: issandr

Egypt’s Dangerous Second Transition

ICG’s new report out on Egypt: 

Nearly two-and-half years after Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow, Egypt is embarking on a transition in many ways disturbingly like the one it just experienced – only with different actors at the helm and far more fraught and violent. Polarisation between supporters and opponents of ousted President Mohamed Morsi is such that one can only fear more bloodshed; the military appears convinced it has a mandate to suppress demonstrators; the Muslim Brotherhood, aggrieved by what it sees as the unlawful overturn of its democratic mandate, seems persuaded it can recover by holding firm. A priority is to lower flames by releasing political prisoners – beginning with Morsi; respect speech and assembly rights; independently investigate killings; and for, all sides, avoid violence and provocation. This could pave the way for what has been missing since 2011: negotiating basic rules first, not rushing through divisive transition plans. An inclusive reconciliation process – notably of the Brotherhood and other Islamists – needs more than lip-service. It is a necessity for which the international community should press.

Morsi as Hitler: The analogy that won’t die

Despite sound advice not to, some Egyptian officials and Tamarod activists are persisting in comparing the ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi to Adolf Hitler, the key variable being that they both came to power through democratic means. An actual comparison to the two leaders is kind of interesting, but to those who say Morsi could have turned out like Hitler had he not been toppled, I would say: This analogy does not offer the lesson that you think it offers.

Corrollaries of Godwin’s Law notwithstanding, there are times when it’s useful to invoke Hitler. Let’s say, for example, that your argument partner says it’s impossible for an dog lover to be cruel to humans. Well no, you’d say, Hitler loved dogs. But if you try to make the opposite argument — that there’s something wrong with liking dogs because Hitler was a dog lover — then you should face all the scorn that the Internet can muster.

Logically, the Morsi-as-Hitler arguments pass this test. They don’t say that all leaders who come to power through democratic means are likely to turn out to be Hitler, merely that it’s possible — and thus, a coup to overthrow them is not always going to be a bad thing. It’s in terms of historical prediction, that Morsi was actually likely to turn out like Hitler, that the comparisons fall flat on their face.

Firstly, to clear one thing up, Hitler was not elected. He was chosen as Chancellor (roughly, the prime minister) by the elderly President Paul von Hindenburg on the urging of the failed conservative ex-chancellor Franz von Papen. The Nazis, the largest party in parliament, had a claim on the right to try to form a government.

But here the analogy breaks down. Von Hindenburg was a field marshal, and von Papen a monarchist with ties to the aristocracy, and together they represented that segment of the German state and elite — in particular the officer corps — that was heartily sick of democracy. Most of them hated the Weimar republic’s political chaos, despised pluralism, feared the window that democracy gave to Communists, and generally looked back to the good old days of the Kaiser. The Nazis made quite clear that they intended to abolish Weimar pluralism and the elite was all for it. “If Hitler wants to establish a dictatorship, the Army will be a dictatorship within the dictatorship,” Defense Minister Kurt von Schleicher is reported to have said.

This is important because it explains what Hitler was able to do once he became Chancellor in January 1933. Von Hindenburg essentially abolished civil liberties via the Reichstag Fire Decree — presented as a response to a Communist revolutionary plot. Hitler used that to ban the Communists, arrest much of the remaining opposition, bully the remainder of parliament into making him de facto dictator via the Enabling Act, then complete his suppression of the opposition. All this happened within six months of Hitler taking office. The conservative elite, the armed forces, the police, and much of the non-Nazi public went along with him every step of the way. By mid-1933, Germans were legally required to salute each other in the street with a rousing “Heil Hitler.”  (A lot of individuals instrumental in Hitler’s rise who had the idea that they could control the Nazi leader fell out with him — von Schleicher and von Papen, for example — but Hitler continued to court the institutions and the institutions continued to back him.)

We may compare this to Morsi’s Egypt. By September 2012, Freedom and Justice party officers were regularly being torched across the country, and the police were openly indicating that they weren’t going to protect them. Marx’s tragedy/farce quip is overused but it applies spot-on to Morsi’s version of the Enabling Act, the November 2012 Constitutional Decree, in which the Egyptian president granted himself far-reaching powers over a state that basically ignored him, and ended up having to flee his own presidential palace and withdraw his decree within two weeks. (It’s also highly questionable whether Morsi intended the Constitutional Decree as anything more than a short-term measure to push through a flawed, but still basically pluralist and democratic constitution.)

There are a number of other factors that differentiate Egypt from Germany — it had just gone through the triple trauma of World War I, hyperinflation, and global depression. (For anyone inclined to mention the Egyptian pound dipping to seven to the dollar, this is what a billion-mark banknote looks like). Any account of Hitler’s rise to power must also take into account his astounding abilities as a public speaker. 

But, the difference that speaks the most to Egypt’s current experience is that German state institutions were on board with Hitler’s plan to abolish pluralism and the separation of powers. It’s worrisome when a leader doesn’t respect democratic principles, but it’s a lot more worrisome when the state, and especially the armed forces, don’t do so.

To go back to the beginning, and the appropriate use of historical analogy, the experience of Germany in the 1930s does mean that you have to have the cooperation of state institutions to stomp out the opposition. Sometimes, the army collapses due to internal mutinies, the officer corps is swept away, and the new regime can create new armed forces like Red or Revolutionary Guards that are steeped in its ideology — as in Russia in 1917, or Iran in 1979. Such mutinies frequently happen when groups of conscripts are ordered by officers to fire into crowds. This is another thing for Egypt to keep in mind.

 

Is becoming Pakistan the best Egypt can hope for?

Eurasia’s Ian Bremmer thinks so, saying SCAF’s challenge is to rig the appearance of a civilian government just right :

Today, the main difference with Pakistan’s military is that Egypt’s is now seen as responsible for the day-to-day functioning of governance. The generals will once again go for the Goldilocks approach to forming a civilian government, one that is not too strong but not too weak. It has to be resolute enough to earn a reputation for competence (this is where Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood fell short), but docile enough to not sideline the military or curb its privileges. Most importantly, the new government needs to seem sufficiently independent to take flak and “own” the blame for any economic woes. The last thing the military wants is for the next wave of protestors to aim their anger at the army.

Can the military pull this off? Can it empower a government that earns enough public confidence to restore stability to the country and allows the military to distance itself from economic management and domestic politics?

The new normal in Damascus

Sarah Birke, reporting from Damascus for the NYRB blog: 

While the brutal devastation caused by the Syrian conflict, now entering its third year, has affected many parts of the country, the Syrian government has long sought to portray the capital as an oasis of calm. Unlike Aleppo, parts of which have been destroyed by a year of battle, central Damascus shows few physical scars of war, apart from the many roadblocks and checkpoints, and the burned-out remains of a building northeast of the city that was bombed. Unlike Raqqa, a city in the east of Syria that is in the hands of extremist rebels, Damascus looks like a bastion of tolerant, vibrant life. In this view, the functioning city demonstrates both the continued strength of the regime and the dangers of the increasingly fractured opposition. But as my visit to the Umayyad Mosque revealed, under the surface things aren’t the same in the Syrian capital.

The same day, I went out for dinner with a well-connected businessman—he went to school with Bashar al-Assad and Bashar’s elder brother Bassel and has flourished under the regime, even more so since the crisis started. The restaurant served a take on continental food and any type of alcohol you might fancy. A coiffed young woman with a photo of Bashar as her iPhone cover sang songs as her smiling companions knocked back drinks at a price that would pay the rent of a displaced family for a month. At one point, the businessman got up to use the bathroom and something clattered to the floor. It was a pistol. “Oh, that,” he said. “I am so afraid of being kidnapped. I would rather kill myself than have that happen to me.”

Two quotes from Sisi

The Washington Post  — possibly the publication that is most critical of the Egyptian military in the US – has landed an interview with the generalissimo himself. He uses it for chastising Washington: 

“You left the Egyptians. You turned your back on the Egyptians, and they won’t forget that,” said an indignant Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, speaking of the U.S. government. “Now you want to continue turning your backs on Egyptians?”

So does he want the US to not turn its back and lend support? Because the official media in Egypt seemed to be arguing that the US should not involved at all. 

And then there’s this gem: 

The most important achievement in my life is to overcome this circumstance, [to ensure] that we live peacefully, to go on with our road map and to be able to conduct the coming elections without shedding one drop of Egyptian blood,” he said, before adding, “When the people love you, this is the most important thing for me.”

Surely too late about the blood? 

Not in our name!

Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists — a small, influential and, in the Egyptian political scene today, remarkably coherent and clear-eyed group — has issued a statement that explains why giving General Al-Sisi a “mandate” to “fight terrorism” is a bad, and illogical, idea. Egypt’s April 6 movement — the activist group that began youth protests against Mubarak — has also come out against heeding Al-Sisi’s call for mass demonstrations today. 

Whatever crimes the Brotherhood has committed against the people and against the Copts in defence of its power in the name of religion, we do not give army chief Al-Sisi our authority. We will not go into the streets on Friday offering a blank cheque to commit massacres.

If Al-Sisi has the legal means to do what he wants, why is he calling people into the streets? What he wants is a popular referendum on assuming the role of Caesar and the law will not deter him.

 

A definition of excessive force

AP, reporting on yesterday’s killing of at least 50 Muslim Brotherhood supporters: 

The shootings Monday of Morsi supporters prompted questions about whether troops used excessive deadly force, an accusation the military dismissed as unfair.

“What excessive force? We were dealing with people shooting at us with live ammunition,” chief military spokesman Co. Ahmed Mohammed Ali told The Associated Press. “It would have been excessive if we killed 300.”

Confident in the army’s position, Ali asked those at a televised news conference to stand in silence to mourn the dead. Later he expressed regret for the loss of life, but did not accept blame for the killings.

In Morocco

One of the strangest things about traveling from Egypt to Morocco is exiting a news maelstrom and entering a low-news-pressure zone. Egypt is so full of news these days, and so the focus of international media, that it is almost shocking to me to be in a country that, when Google-searched, does not even return any news stories. And yet, of course, things are happening here too. I was also shocked, for example, to find out that 80 people have set themselves on fire in Morocco since 2011.

I was traveling last weekend (to Fez, which after the devastation that Aleppo has suffered is probably the most amazing medieval Arab city in the region) so I have just found time to link to this post, for the NYTime’s Latitude blog, about Morocco’s political scene. 

 

Hugh Pope on the “Istanbul Gas Festival”

Last time I was in Istanbul, a year or two ago, I had a chance to have a lovely fish dinner at Hugh Pope’s — he writes about Turkey for the International Crisis Group — at his Istiklal Cadesi apartment. It’s a great location to monitor the ongoing protests against Erdogan, and Hugh has a long post up on his blog detailing the events on the day. Here’s his take:

So what’s new in all this? Social media, for a start. Many of my Turkish friends are glued to their Facebook accounts, sharing pictures of the worst police outrages – a remarkable one shows a policeman dousing a protestor with a device like an insect spray gun, as the protestor holds up a sign saying “Chemical Tayyip” [Erdogan] — and spoof posters like an ad for the “Istanbul Gas Festival”, “We can’t keep calm, we’re Turkish” and so on. The spontaneous look of the small groups of protestors coalescing and dispersing in the street outside is quite unlike the usual formal protests organized by unions and political parties, and lacks the angry, violent edge to the pop-up parades by radical left-wing groups. Mostly young and middle class, they include people in shirts for all Istanbul’s big rival football clubs, young women in headscarves, groups of white-coated medical volunteers, and a young man with a big bag of lemons, selling them to the crowd as an tear gas antidote.

On the other hand, Turkey had the same banging of pots and pans in anti-government neighbourhoods in the 1990s, which was widespread on the Asian side of Istanbul last night; and in my district of Beyoglu, every year or two a big issue brings angry demonstrators and policemen with gas weaponry that is used to clear people away. While the government is clearly rattled this time round, after four days, perhaps the only obvious long-term political consequence I can predict so far is that all this will be remembered when Prime Minister Erdogan launches his expected quest for the presidency in an election next year.

There is a little over-enthusiasm in some circles about the scope of these anti-Erdogan protests. Erdogan is no Mubarak or Ben Ali, he was legitimately elected after all and can credibly claim to have effectively tackled Turkey’s economic problems and countered Turkey’s once coup-happy generals. But it’s not all rosy, apart from his political longevity, there is a relatively poor human rights record (especially on the media and the Kurdish question), an economic growth story that is not without its cronyism, rising cost of living and economic inequality, and a cult of personality that is foundering on (among other things) a foreign policy humbled by the Syria question. The parallels to draw are not with the Arab uprisings, and not quite with recent European unrest such as Greece. This appears to be a very Turkish wave of discontent, perhaps the bursting of the much-inflated Erdogan bubble that thrived pretty much unchallenged for the last decade.

Hugh concludes with some commentary on the scandalous media handling (by state TV but also elsewhere):

There’s a lot of talk among my Turkish friends of the Gezi Park demonstrations being a “turning point”, and today it feels that way, with growing numbers of demonstrators in the streets, many cities in Turkey protesting in sympathy, and the unscripted nature of proceedings. Normal patterns have been drastically changed in recent days, not just in  traffic but also in many peoples’ lives. Phone calls with friends in the center are often about “my street is all mixed up now, can’t talk for long”. If anyone gets killed, rather than 100 or so already injured, that will sharply escalate the situation. Here’s hoping the government manages to handle the next 24 hours more sensitively than the last. A good first move would be to get some traction by letting state television give a full version of events – currently, people are consuming a diet of wild rumors and partial views on social media, which can only add to the current escalation.

But do read it all.