Issandr El Amrani's Blog, page 16

In Translation: Egypt heading outside history

Courtesy Industry Arabic, the latest in our In Translation series, in which Fahmy Howeidy -- a writer with moderate Islamist leanings and a big following --  critiques 

Egypt Heading into the Unknown
and Outside of History

Shorouq Newspaper, 22 October, 2013

Egypt’s current problem
is that it is moving along a path leading outside of history, and one fears that Egypt will drag the Arab world along with it in the end.

(1)

Reading Egyptian newspapers these
days and following the statements of politicians -- who have begun to compete with
each other to court the military  and outdo one another in praising
its role -- it might not occur to you that the newspaper headlines, the
comments of the editors, and the statements of the politicians could almost be
an exact copy of the discourse in Turkey around half a century ago. However,
anyone who has read the history of the militarization of Turkish society notes
that the voices calling for the armed forces to intervene to save the country
from chaos and collapse reverberated loudly during every political crisis.
Given the fragility and weakness of the political situation, everyone
considered the military the savior and rescuer. The military had credit
with the public that permitted it to play this role, since it saved the country
from occupation after the First World War, established the republic and led the
process of modernizing the state. This is the background that was repeatedly
invoked in order to militarize society from the establishment of the republic
in the 1920’s and for 80 years afterwards.

The episodes of this repeated and rehearsed
scenario would play out as follows: Weak parties fail in running the state; voices are raised calling for the military to carry out its role as rescuer; the military gives a warning to the government, telling it to carry out its
responsibilities; after the warning, the military announces the coup and takes
over the administration of the country and the management of the out-of-control
conditions. Barely a few years go by (most usually ten) before the crisis
recurs and the same voices and calls reverberate again. Then the military would
give its warning, followed by intervention to take over power as the only
disciplined and cohesive institution, and the one with the force of weapons on
the ground. This is a scenario that recurred with the coups in 1960, 1971 and
1980, until the coup of 1997 that was described as a “soft” or “post-modern” coup.
The jumping-off point for these coups was the fact that the military considered
itself responsible for protecting the principles of the Turkish republic, along
with its job of protecting the nation. To fulfill this responsibility, it
imposed itself as the guardian of society. The constitution of 1982 codified
this guardianship, which was exercised by the National Security Council and
which formed advisory offices for the country’s military, political, economic,
cultural, and media affairs, etc. The military institution went on alert after
the elections of 1995 that were a relative win for the Islamist-oriented Welfare
Party. This win led to the formation of a coalition government with the True
Path Party. The head of the government at that time was Necmettin Erbakan, the
leader of the Welfare Party. The military leadership responded to this by pulling
the strings that it had spread out through key posts in the state and the
decision-making authority, until it forced Erbakan to resign from office in
1997.

(2)

The prevailing winds Egypt since the
removal of Dr. Mohamed Morsi are going in this same direction against history,
after the military council’s mission came to an end in 2012. The renewal of the
hopes pinned on the possibility of democratic change and creating institutions
that manage society -- all of that was dashed on the 3rd of July after
the removal of the elected president, the freezing of the constitution, and the
dissolution of the Shura Council and other councils that had been formed. It
became clear that the orientation was towards betting on the military
institution and boosting the state's power over society. In this climate, the
preparations for issuing a new constitution were carried out by a group that
was chosen, not elected, and the military institution became the de facto
source of authority and the decision maker in shaping the new situation. In
this, the military institution did not force itself upon society. Rather, its
steps were supported and welcomed by the elite and the civil forces with their
different orientations – liberal, nationalist, and leftist. The media was the strike
force that succeeded in “manufacturing consent,” in Chomsky's phrase, using the failures of Mohamed Morsi’s rule to mobilize the public and incite them
against his regime, and thus standing with the camp betting on the military
institution.

Given the new situation, General Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi, Defense Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces,
became the presidential candidate around which the civil forces coalesced. The
presence of the armed forces in the committee tasked with drafting the
constitution took on special significance when a clamor was raised over the
defense minister’s immunity and the condition that the Supreme Council of the
Armed Forces approve the minister’s appointment. This action takes this authority
away from the president or the prime minister. As a compromise, some proposed applying
this just during a transition period of ten to twelve years. Also, the concept
of trying civilians in military courts was retained, even though these courts
are not even independent, but rather are subject to the minister of defense’s
orders.

In this atmosphere, we read in the Al-Shorouk
newspaper (edition of 10/5) important statements from a military source that
the newspaper’s editor said is close to the military institution. In his
statements, he focused on the following:

- That the experience of the last few years proves that the army is the only real power in Egypt for the foreseeable future, because of the weakness of secular political parties. Thus the army must have the means to guard the country against any organization or group that wishes to change the country's identity.  

- That under the current circumstances, the army can't hand the presidency to anyone it doesn't know. For the people can't lose the only weapon they possess, their national army. We don't want to far the possibility that someone disguised as a secularists gains the presidency, and appoint whoever he wishes as minister of defense, and thus can change the identity of the army. 

The newspaper Al-Shorouk did not
say that the military source was speaking in the same of the armed forces, but
he at least expresses a school or a
trend within the armed forces that considers the military the only force and
the highest authority in the Egyptian political arena. Also, he holds a
position opposing the Brotherhood experience and is concerned only with
avoiding a repeat of this experience, claiming that it could affect the
identity of the armed forces. As for the nation’s identity and its greater good,
this is a concern of secondary importance.

(3)

With the continuing expansion of the
military institution in the current political vacuum and the military’s undeniably
increasing role, Egypt has begun to move outside the course of history. At the
very least, this means that the dream of the democratic civil state that the
January 25th revolution aspired to is in a state of decline and
retreat. The tangible advancements barely hint at the possibility of achieving
a fraction of this dream in the near future.

The structure that is currently being
set up in Egypt suffers from a fatal flaw in its balance of power and its vision.
That is because it is taking place in the shadow of the strength and dominance
of the military institution, and in the shadow of institutions chosen from sectors
united only by their rejection of and enmity towards the Brotherhood. They
represent fragile political groups without a popular base, to the point that these
groups have begun to derive their legitimacy by relying on the military
institution and riding on its coattails. This represents the heart of the
current political crisis in Egypt. This large country cannot be built on a
foundation made of an alliance between liberals and the military, and its
program cannot be based simply on the idea of excluding the Brotherhood and
continuing the war against terrorism. This is the observation made by numerous Western
analyses that keep talking about how Egypt is headed towards the unknown now
that its political influence has declined and it no longer has a notable role
in regional affairs.

Not only that, but Egypt in its
weakness finds itself surrendering to schemes for security and non-security
cooperation with Israel, especially since the military institution is
considered the most prominent pillar of the Camp David Accords. Perhaps the
international predicament facing Egypt pushed it to become closer to Israel and
to interact with it more. The current regime is comfortable and reassuring to
Israel, contrary to President Mohamed Morsi’s regime, which Israel was
uncomfortable with and found worrisome.

This same weakness – which arises from
the confusion and perplexity that the strategic vision for the new situation
suffers from – has driven Egypt to throw itself into the arms of Arab
coalitions antagonistic to the Arab Spring in its entirety. These coalitions
have their own ties and loyalties that are incompatible with the revolution’s
goals and the desires of the Arab masses. When this happens while the Arab
region is facing giant upheavals that could redraw its maps and subject it to
plans for fragmentation and division, it reveals the high price that the Arab
world could pay because of the upheaval and setback that occurred in Egypt.

(4)

The picture is not entirely frustrating,
because the shocks and upheavals from which the regimes of the Arab Spring are suffering
are almost completely confined to the outward manifestations of
this Spring. However, the Arab Spring has another, hidden aspect that has not
yet lost its vitality. I was among those who said previously that the Arab
Spring, in its actuality, is a historical transformation in the constitution of
the Arab person, who has begun to call for change and announce his rejection of
the political and social oppression that regimes imposed on him. What I
expressed was recorded in a report by the New York Times published on
October 18th. This report talked about the manifestations of an unspoken mass
movement that all of the Gulf Arab countries are witnessing, with Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates at their forefront. This report was written by
Christopher Davidson, a political science professor at Durham, a British
university. He chose an evocative title for this report: "The Last of the
Sheikhs?"

Egypt, if it loses itself through its
current behavior will take the Arab world along with it as well. However, even
if Egypt stands outside the course of history it will not be able to stop the
wheel of history from turning. This is one of God’s rules for the universe, which
is expressed in the Quranic text that states, {And if you turn
away, He will replace you with another people; then they will not be the likes
of you.} (Surah Mohammad, Ayah 38).

 

Trouble on campus

According to the minister of education, if you knew what is going on in Egyptian universities, you would faint. As a frequent university goer, I can assure you that you wouldn't. In all likelihood, you would just lose body moisture and tolerance of others.

His remark was addressed to the “trembling hand” that is the government that is Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi, whom talk shows have been taking aim at for not trying hard enough to stop everything from getting worse. (Presumably they are doing this to salvage some pretense of objectivity and because it is probably fun to heroically yell at “them,” the unnamed people who really are in charge, for not removing the people you disapprove of from their posts.)

One of el-Beblawi’s greatest weakness, many think, is his inability to get universities under control. Since most of the Muslim Brothers lucky enough not to be in prison are in universities, so are most of their protests. (The rest materialize in villages and poor neighborhoods that are easier to ignore and tend to disperse as quickly as they have gathered.) Cairo University Brothers, for instance, protest on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, according to MB youth leader Ahmed Badawi (who recently joined his superiors in prison).

The MB protests usually lead to small counter-protests by smirking pro-Sisi students, which culminates in the protrusion of veins, the stretching of many collars, and occasional injuries sustained while scores of unfazed students shuffle by, hugging books or filming videos that manage to show nothing and explain less.

If one were to graph the number of students protests against apathy towards them, one would have a straight line shooting up to the corner of the page and beyond. And it is more or less the same story everywhere. Some angry students protest. Others disagree. Violence erupts. Security doesn’t intervene due to a committed policy of non-participation in real or potential danger. Flushed, a dean strides in somewhere followed by glaring subordinates. He orders an investigation (a synonym for suspending students, a decision that may or may not be renewed at will, and withdrawing their IDs, denying them entry to campus). Some time later comes an announcement of cameras being installed to record spreaders of chaos in the act.

And then before you know it, there is new security personnel looking into, brushing, waving and nodding at every single student’s bag at forever-decreasing-in-size gates (because if you trickle students into campus, they will be too happy to have finally made it in to wield the weapons security missed when they smiled at their bag) and the administration has destined a number of metal detectors to a state of constant hysteria caused by heavily-accessorized female students. This happened in more or less the same sequence in Ain Shams, Mansoura, Monofeya, Kafr el-Sheikh and Misr International University.

That being said, the university making headlines now is Al Azhar. Earlier this week, around 1400 students peacefully marched out of the university to block and pray on al-Nasr road, where they clashed with the police, which was waiting for them outside. The students were pushed back to campus. Once inside, they lit dumpsters on fire to block the security forces’ vision, then threw rocks at them, broke a few windows and drew some offensive graffiti on the walls, which Gen. Magdy Abbas, the head of security at the university, in a fatherly manner described as a “transgression” not befitting an Azhari student.

After Gen. Abbas hung up with TV presenter Youssef el-Husseiny he was dubbed “Little Beblawi” and wished discharge. Meanwhile, others like Tamer Ameen were reporting the confessions of three female Azhari students to putting on makeup and “red solutions” to make it look they have been attacked by the security forces. This is not the first time Al Azhar’s MB students lied or hurt themselves. Earlier this year in April, after two incidents of mass food poisoning, it was reported that three sheb-sheb-wearing students smuggled the very specific amount of 105 bad tuna cans into the kitchen to make it appear as if the pro-old regime Grand Imam of Al-Azhar is incompetently running a public institution that neglects cleanliness and health.

It is worth noting that Al Azhar is one of the few places were the words “MB stronghold” are accurate. They won essentially every student election in every faculty and according to a 2009 report by Amr Ezzat about how many actually Azhari (i.e. subscribing to Al-Azhar’s standards of Islamic moderation) there are in Al Azhar, it anecdotally ranges between two to three percent of the total number of students.

Apart from demanding the fall of the military regime, the main purpose of these nationwide protests, according to the actual protests, is to free their fellow detained students. Ideally, putting pressure on the college community would pressure on the administration and by extension the government, which will then be forced to release the students to shut everyone up. This admittedly long process is made worse by student indifference and the believed-to-be deliberately inadequate non-MB-dominated student unions, who don’t feel the need to halt classes to embarrass administrations and the government or even make noises about it just for show.

Also, these protests are thought to be the only way to “stay in the picture” and derive satisfaction from being a thorn in the side of the coup lead and supporters.This brewing hostility manifested itself after Egypt lost 6-1 to Ghana, crushing the chances of qualifying for the pined-after World Cup. MB supporters engaged in celebrations and chants like “The story is not about the MB, the story is about the six goals” (it rhymes in Arabic), which embittered people against them more than their alleged Sinai attacks and the assassination attempt on the Interior Minister combined.

But prior to the unforgivable treason of not supporting the national soccer team, the MB’s persistent “resistance of reality” has only earned them exhausted disdain that later merged with incomprehension from fellow students, most faculty members and the general public. After all, where is the sanctity of a university campus? And what is the point of student unions anyway? They just get kids worked up. They should have lectures, not protests, indignant columnists reassured each other. These protests are not peaceful, they add - which is not always untrue. While protesters usually don't start out to physically harm others, they sometimes intentionally provoke confrontation to escalate the situation, out of a commonly held, but not well-articulated, belief that nothing happens unless someone gets hurt. Casualties can become the price of attention.

The wave of student protests has also raised the curious and confusing issue of granting security personnel in universities judicial seizure authority, which the deputy head of Cairo University roughly explains would mean transferring investigative authority from the police to campus security. So, now when a student goes to college with say a kitchen knife, instead of handing him over to the police, whose job it is to investigate and fight crime, the on-campus security can investigate the person, which would save his/her some trouble -- says the Cairo University official. First, they don’t have to deal with potential mistreatment in the police station -- it will be outsourced to universities -- and if the students break the law on some kind of police-only holiday, they won’t have to spend the night in jail until the prosecution gets back to work. It is not like this raises extra questions such as:  How long can you keep a student for investigation? Will there be a mini-jail in universities in case the investigation takes more than a day? What happens based on the result of the findings? Where in the world is the legal text of this not-law law? etc, etc. Not to mention that removing police from campus was the key pre-revolutionary demand of politicized students and faculty groups such as March 9.

If there is one thing we know about the judicial authority transfer, it is that the former allegedly MB-affiliated minister of education, under deposed president Morsi, merely requested it on June 4. Nothing indicates whether or not it was accepted and all the ministry of justice has done is deny granting it, while state-run Al-Ahram published reports bemoaning its absence in universities like Al-Azhar, where apparently it could have been used to investigate students into submission, demonstrating the importance of government coordination.

Recently, the current education minister admitted to not having any idea where this law that is not a law come from and added that while he personally thinks it’s useless, it is still up to the Supreme Council of Universities to decide what to do about it, although the ministry of justice has supposedly not given them an "it" to discuss in the first place. More importantly, since everyone is so keen to note that the not-law law was a fruit of Morsi and his unconscionable terrorists’ reign, why is there any controversy at all about whether or not it should exist, if it does? 

The new Arab capitals

The way of the future? The Burj Khalifa in Dubai

Earlier this month, Sultan Sooud El Qassemi wrote an op-ed in Al-Monitor that has stirred considerable controversy. El Qassemi, a writer, active Twitter presence, businessman, art patron, member of Sharjah's ruling family and friend, argued that the capitals of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have become

..the nerve center of the contemporary Arab world’s culture, commerce, design, architecture, art and academia, attracting hundreds of thousands of Arab immigrants, including academics, businessmen, journalists, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs and medical professionals. While these Gulf cities may be unable to compete with their Arab peers in terms of political dynamism, in almost every other sense they have far outstripped their sister cities in North Africa and the Levant. 

Needless to say, the claim that Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have become what Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo once were to the Arab world raised many hackles. The Angry Arab replied: 

What contribution to Arab culture have those cities made, unless you are talking about sleaze, worship of the European, denigration of the Asians, promotion of singers purely based on breast sizes and lip thickness, prostitution mentality (literally and figuratively), gender segregation and repression, the culture of measuring humans by the size of their bank accounts, etc.  Culture, what culture? Cairo and Beirut were known for hosting a culture that allowed (often despite desires of the ruling governments) various political and cultural trends to co-exist and to clash, and for the expression of divergent political viewpoints.  Cairo and Beirut were cities that allowed artists and writers to seek refuge and to express themselves artistically and creatively, and there is none of that in the Gulf.  Yes, academics and journalists are flocking to the Gulf but what have they produced there? What ideas? They go there and they work as assistants and propagandists in the entourage for this prince or that prince.  If anything, the impact of that Gulf oil and gas culture has been quite corrosive on the entire Arab world and its culture.  In that sense alone, yes, Gulf cities do play a role. 

Al-Monitor also published a response by Abbas Al-Lawaty that rightly highlighted the single most distinctive feature of the Persian Gulf cities: their system of imported, caste labour: 

Millions of workers flocked to the Gulf. Everything from people, ideas, academic institutions, museums, athletes and even bottled water flown in from tens of thousands of kilometers away was imported. In an effort to develop at a breakneck speed and become competitive with Western hubs, they have become replicas of those cities with little more of their own to offer foreign visitors and tourists than the clichéd desert safaris packaged with belly-dance shows.

[...]

Today, in each of the cities that were cited as the new Arab centers, foreigners vastly outnumber citizens. Like the traditional Arab capitals, they have become hubs for migrants. The difference is that migrants in the Gulf have residency cards with expiration dates. It is therefore unrealistic to expect Gulf cities to grow to the level they wish if the majority of the population is transient and continuously reminded that it will one day have to leave. Someone who does not feel a sense of belonging will not invest his or her full potential in such a city.

I'm pretty sure that Sultan did not intend it this way, but it strikes me as in somewhat poor taste to celebrate the advent of Gulf cities when the capitals they are supposedly superseding are suffering from such damaging conflicts, losing lives and losing history. 

Our own occasional contributor Bilal Ahmad makes the interesting argument, at Souciant, that the chaos that besets cities like Cairo is not a symptom of their irrelevance but quite the contrary:

al-Qassemi forgets that cities are a convergence of human experience, and desire. They’re settings in which millions of people arrive at different times, for similar goals of self-betterment, and work. At times when the dreams of their residents, and society as a whole, are not being realized, they also become the main engine by which their residents can better conceptualize, and make manifest, their yearning for emancipation.

[...]

 The reason that Cairo is in shambles is because it’s a city that has been galvanized by attempts to envision the new. For me, that’s what a center of the Arab world is supposed to do: fight for the future. Cairo is still one of the centers of the Arab world, because its current difficulties are a result of the fact that the Cairo that will be hasn’t been born yet. It’s still lost in the fighting of the Arab Spring. That goes for many cities across the region.

The fact that the Khaleeji cities are not dealing with such unrest is not something of which to be proud. It means that they’re absent from critical discussions of what Arab cities will come to mean. How can they be leaders if they’re so conspicuously missing? It’s also worth noting, once again, that their relative tranquility came at a violent price.

The Gulf states only avoided the unrest of the Arab Spring because they’re controlled by morally-bankrupt monarchs, who are backed by investors armed by the West, and who successfully pressed for a peaceful democratic revolt in Bahrain to be crushed. This is because the idea of embracing the new, in any serious way, was too much for the leaders of these alleged centers to bear. As a result, we’re at a point where not only is the new still in the process of being born in cities like Cairo, but it has also been sterilized against in the Gulf, following an induced miscarriage in Bahrain.

Out with the old? A street in Damascus

I'm happy Sultan raised this debate, although I disagree with his general argument (or wish it had included many more nuances and caveats). The hydrocarbon-rich emirates of the Arabian peninsula are undoubtedly a force in the Arab world, and as such they need to be understood, not just reflexively bashed. They are a facet of the future, and important one -- centers of economic, political and yes cultural influence. But to claim that a city is "a cultural center" implies that it is engaged in a kind of sustained, unique cultural production that so far hardly takes place in the Gulf. It's not just that there are very few local artists, writers or scientists. It's that what is produced there, culturally, by locals or expats, has a very tenuous connection to or engagement with its context. When it is relevant, like the politically engaged poetry of the Qatari poet Mohamed Al-Ajami, it ends with 15-year jail sentences. 

Dubai has a booming art market, but it's just that, a market -- art is one of the many forms of capital that circulates there. The art exhibitions, international museums and publishing and translation ventures being generously hosted in the Gulf are a positive development, but this is largely culture for hire, for show, or as a form of international diplomacy. The foreign universities have an agenda to work on issues relevant to national development, but they cater to a minority of the population and are there under the patronage of individual rulers -- they have no solid existence in society, from which to act as independent centers of learning.

And these gleaming, air-conditioned cities remain ones in which the population is divided into precise professional-ethnic castes that are constantly recycled, so that the majority of foreign workers can't and won't develop a stake in the place. Physically and socially, they are cities with no public, shared spaces, because they are designed to keep their residents segregated, to prevent them from mingling, gathering, and participating in free and open debate. And how can cities without centers of their own become the centers of something bigger?  

 

 

 

 

Who was James Henry Lunn?

The blog War in Context has unearthed the most information I've seen anywhere about the middle-aged American man who allegedly killed himself in Egyptian police custody. It's a strange, sad story.  According to someone who says he knew him in Malaysia:

Jim Lund was a retired truck driver from San Diego, living in Malaysia. Some years ago Jim was in a bad car wreck and suffered organic brain damage. For years he has pretended that he is an ‘undercover’ US Army general and had written his name in his passport as ‘Gen. James Lunn’. For some years he has had delusions that he would save the world. Two years ago Jim ‘invented’ a hundred-mile-long seagoing device that could transport water to dry climates. In August he left for Egypt with a small model of the device to ‘give to the Palestinians’. That was the ‘unknown electronic device’ he was carrying. A harmless nut but one who loved to be thought of as a secret agent.

 

Permalink

In Translation: Sisi for president

This editorial by Ahmed Samir appeared in Al Masry Al Youm on October 12. It is translated, as usual, by the excellent team at Industry Arabic.  

Sisi for
President: The Turn, the Turn, the Turn, the Turn

(1)

The Place: The Republican Guard headquarters

The Time: Days after the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi

The Event: The Brotherhood’s sit-in, followed by clashes in
which dozens of Morsi supporters are killed.

And those who joined the Brotherhood are astounded.

For an entire year, the organization prepared to crush those
whom Mohamed Abdel-Maqsud described as “atheists and hypocrites.” The
Brotherhood did not understand why the “Get angry, Morsi!” campaign did not
succeed, while the “Grind them to pieces, Sisi” campaign did… when the smartest
one of them is a grocer in Zad supermarket. [1]

They didn't understand a simple truth: the security state is
loyal only to the security state.

The Guidance Bureau's use of the organization's police dogs
to break up the sit-in by Morsi's opponents at the presidential palace was
proof that Morsi's continued hypocrisy towards the police and the many changes
that he made in the Ministry of Defense, the intelligence apparatus, the Ministry
of Interior, and the Republic Guard were not enough – and the organization had
to do its own suppressing.

Afterwards, the Brotherhood chose a minister who suited them,
and suited what they wanted to do in the country.

After this minister was appointed, the police killed dozens
of people in front of Port Said Prison because they were armed (doesn't that
accusation remind you of something?) before opening fire on their funeral the following
day -- to the cheers of our brothers in God.

Ibrahim is Morsi's choice… but they brought him on for a
reason. He did not carry his mission out in full for them, but did so for someone else.
The question is, why?

(2)

"He was afraid that he would be accused of using
force."

This delicate phrase does not refer to the artist Nancy
Ajram, but to General Mohamed Ibrahim, the Interior Minister.

According to Ahmed Mekki, the former Minister of Justice,
Ibrahim refused more than once to "break up the Tahrir Square sit-in by
force."

The brothers in God in Morsi's government, most of whom are
now carrying the picture of a sit-in that was broken up by force, wanted to
break up their enemies' sit-in by force, but the same minister refused.

It is clear – extremely clear – that Mohamed Ibrahim is now
not afraid of being put on trial.

But what does this all have to do with Sisi?

To put it simply, if Sisi becomes president, Mohamed Ibrahim
will stay, and no Mohamed Ibrahim will ever have to worry about being put on
trial.

(3)

Sisi for president…

Optimism is treason. No tourism, no investment, no stable
international relations, and therefore no social justice. How can social
justice be achieved when there is not even production or growth?

For the sake of security, they want those who frighten us to
rule. Did you know, my fellow citizen, that the largest share of bombings over
the last decade has occurred during the past 100 days?

The country is headed towards ruin, and those who promised
nothing but security have failed to achieve it. Still, they want their turn in
the seat of power.

(4)

The turn, the turn, the turn, the turn.

You're lucky, it's your turn

Her destiny

This one it's her turn, this one it's her turn[2]

(5)

It's often said now in Egypt that the first person who
chanted "This time for sure, we're not budging for anyone"[3]
was General Sisi speaking to his chief of staff.

Once, we were told that we could not take away a citizen's
right to run for president simply because he is the president's son, and now we
are told that we can't take away a citizen's right simply because he is the defense
minister in a country ruled by an emergency law and curfew.

They say that the people are looking for a leader… the same
people told us in 2005 that the people are looking for a young man.

Since time immemorial, we've been living in a free country
in which everyone in power has an equal opportunity to run for president.

Will you uphold the tradition?

(6)

He said, as he said as he said

Surround her with tambourines, clap for her

He said, as he said as he said

Who can appreciate this beauty, this beauty

Other than eyes that hope for her… perfume her with
incense

(7)

The Director of Military Intelligence during Mubarak's time; a member of the military council in Tantawi's time; and Defense Minister during
Morsi's time.

For some reason, a certain segment of society does not
consider him their preferred candidate for president.

The Defense Minister is a candidate for president, which
means that for many years to come, our slogan will be "Down with military
rule."

They will say that the Defense Minister is not military
rule. They will also say that the sun is not in the sky and we are imagining
things.

Those who believe that the just state will last for an hour and
the military state will last forever say that the people love him, don't dismiss
the people. Good logic… but the Brotherhood won five elections – all overseen
by Sisi and his military council – so why is their outcome being dismissed?

It is said that the definition of stupidity is doing the
same thing twice and expecting a different outcome, so how should we describe
those who have tried the same thing for 60 years, and now want a different
outcome?

The soldiers of Islamic preaching are gone and the soldiers
of the nation have arrived. We've gotten rid of the Islamist Salafis so that
the Nasserite Salafis can rule us. Those who aren't able to bring us into the
future are content to rule us and harp on about the past.

We do not need a military president.
How many times have callers phoned into the program to say "Egypt is full
of talent, Captain Shobier"?[4]

(8)

Her destiny has come to her,
her destiny

Bringing something she never
expected

This one it's her turn, this
one it's her turn

(9)

Whoever wants to have everything,
loses everything.

Those who want to control
political life in the way that it has been for 60 years, may be taking
the chance that we will discuss everything with the presidential candidate,
starting with the armed forces' budget, and including lands controlled by the armed forces.

It is their right to call for Sisi
to run for office, and it is our right to be against that.

Sisi promised that he would not
run, and that the military institution would not support a candidate… didn't
they see?

How many before them who broke
their promise not to run for president has God destroyed?

Some say we can count on Sisi's
intelligence – that he realizes the danger of running for office. Do not bet on
anyone's intelligence, since it is well known that the only lesson one can
learn from history is that no one learns from history.

They say that he is in the lead in any opinion poll. Did the
lion of Islamic preaching, the young people's lost one, the king of Maryotia Hazem
Abu Ismail do anything but lead the same polls for a year and a half?

We are not spoils to be had, and whoever wants to consider
us as such, let him have his turn. History shows that those who insist on
military trials for civilians end up in civilian trials for the military.

Ultimately, countries of the future are not going to be
ruled by armies. Those who want to wage a war against the future will soon
become the past.

 

The song The
Turn the Turn… The Turn the Turn, a relevant link.

[1]A reference to Khairat
al-Shater's son, Saad al-Shater, founder of the Zad supermarket chain, with a
pun on the name "Shater," which means "smart, clever" in
Arabic.

[2]
These songs lyrics, which are quoted as a recurring motif throughout this
article, are taken from a 1985 play about Egypt's most infamous serial killers,
Raya and Sakina, who went on a grisly killing spree in Alexandria in the early
20th century. In the play, this song is sung by Raya and Sakina as
they are preparing to kill their next victim.

[3] A common protest chant in
Egypt over the past several years that is being ironically attributed to Sisi –
with something of a different meaning.

[4] Captain Shobier is the
popular host of a sports program called "Captain Shobier's News"

 

Podcast #43: Minority Report

A manly president, a bride like the moon -- this is Egypt,  Americans!

The Arabist podcast is back after a long summer break, hosted by regulars Ursula Lindsey and Ashraf Khalil and featuring Lina Attalah, editor of Mada Masr. We discuss terrorism and military operations in the Sinai peninsula; the Egyptian media's cheering of the army; and the shortcomings of Egypt's new constitution. 

Podcast #43  (MP3, 30.1 MB) - or subscribe on iTunes.

Show notes:Mada MasrCoverage of the military campaign in SinaiLeaked video of El-Sisi and other officers discussing how to control the mediaMaspero anniversaryState media's black list Popular depictions of Sisi as savior (and Egypt as damsel in distress)  

Egypt and the f-word

Photo of graffiti in Tahrir Square by Bilal Ahmed

This guest post is written by Bilal Ahmed, a  writer and activists who is preparing for graduate research that compares the tribal laws and central governance of the tribal areas of Pakistan, and Yemen.

During their brief tenure in
power, the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohammad Morsi were increasingly accused of
fascism. Now, as Egypt’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood continues, the accusations
of fascism have begun again. Much of this is because popular discourse has a
knee-jerk tendency to link any form of authoritarianism with Nazi Germany. It
becomes easier to do that in a national context in which we see fierce
nationalism, growing xenophobia, assault against domestic minorities, and the
gleeful celebration of state violence.

Let us be clear: Egypt hasn’t
gone fascist. And saying that constrains how we should think about its politics
in the coming years.

When we compare trends in
Egyptian politics to something as complicated as the rise of Continental
European fascism, we are as much probing the idea of Egypt going fascist as we
are the nature of fascism itself. The rise of fascism in Europe was the result of
specific political factors that, although currently present in Egypt, have not
been rallied in the service of mass politics in a way that invites the word.

It is far more accurate to
compare events in Egypt with the aftermath of the French Revolution
of 1848 that established the Second Republic.
That revolution came as the result of a wave of spontaneous
revolts in 1848 that were very similar to the Arab spring. Similar to Egypt
now, the initial overthrow of Louis-Philippe led to the decline of the
parliamentary experiment that succeeded him, which was co-opted by a series of
increasingly conservative leaders in favour of the status-quo. Eventually, the
struggle ended with the rise of Napoleon III, who became
both France’s first president and its last monarch (he styled himself as a Prince-President.)

Napoleon III had won the
presidency in December 1848 and was hailed even initially as a candidate who,
although not desirable, would be sufficient to end a variety of domestic
issues. These included national unrest, economic instability, and prevent a
revolutionary push by other forces, then mainly proto-communist factions. Sound
familiar? He eventually came to be France’s absolute ruler as the result of a
political stalemate
over restrictions on universal suffrage which gave him the opportunity to present
himself as the answer to an exhausted desire for national order. The National Assembly
of the Second Republic had stagnated so greatly that it was reviled by the
populace that established it only a few years earlier. Napoleon III then seized
the opportunity to launch a coup d’état on 2 December 1851 that was approved in
a later referendum, and which heralded a new era of strongman rule with
democratic pretenses.

Of course, we should be wary
about comparisons between Napoleon III and Egypt’s commander of the armed
forces, Abdel–Fattah El-Sisi. Sisi’s rule has just begun, for one, and the
complexities of both situations could have led to any number of leaders
breaking through. (Including the unlikely possibility of Morsi himself). The point
to focus on here is that of short-lived democratic experiments, which begin
with popular dissent, and are then curtailed with widespread approval of a paradoxically
equal scale (or greater as was the case with the tens of millions of Egyptians
who marched against Morsi.) Their quick collapses are usually due to some
political maneuvering, whether through Napoleon III’s well-timed defense of
universal suffrage, or Sisi’s equally well-timed coup after mass demonstrations,
followed by an insistence that a war on terrorism is taking place. It is not
fascism. It is smart counterrevolution.

Once we accept that what we are
seeing isn’t so much fascism as it is a pushback against democracy-minded
upheaval, then we can begin to have honest discussions about fascism in an
Egyptian context. Fascism hasn’t taken hold of Egypt’s state institutions,
which are instead being held by cynical elites who are circulating whatever
mythology will direct the public away from demanding structural change. Still,
the seeds of fascism are everywhere.

Much of this is less “Egyptian”
than it is a direct consequence of market-driven societies. There is a great
deal of scholarship
on how numerous features of consumerism, such as advertising, popular
entertainment, and market surveillance, inadvertently helps foster conditions
where the public more easily acquiesces to fascist authoritarianism. These
phenomena have Egyptian manifestations in the same way as do the effects of
economic scarcity in making politics more provincial. This is mainly because
intense conditions of austerity tend to force a reliance on more ancestral ties
of religion and ethnicity, especially when violence occurs.

The conditions of the Treaty of Versailles,
and a general sense of powerlessness that followed World War I, drove the classical fascist movements. We mostly remember the
racial aspects of these mobilizations, but fascists were diverse in the
mythologies they used to create a cult of power, from homophobia to labor
politics. They key is that the cult of power opposed itself on those designated
as nationally “weak” and in need of being violent expunged. These drives allowed
fascists to flee their own mortal vulnerabilities in a period of prolonged
crisis and to embrace totalitarianism.

But elites
didn’t so much subscribe to these philosophies as they did circulate them as an
unwieldy attempt to preserve their own power. This was particularly true with
anti-Semitism. Fascism happened in part because this circulation blew up in
everyone’s face. The myths took on a life of their own and eventually drove a nihilistic
revolutionary push. This crucial step isn’t observable in modern Egypt.

And yet, I think it is actually not
unwarranted to see an intimation of fascism in people cheering for the Supreme
Council of the Armed Forces. The current worship of SCAF is directly related to
a feeling of national weakness. The Egyptian military becomes poetically seen
as everything that Egypt should be: strong, prosperous, and willing to defend
national values (never mind its actual capabilities, and the fact that it has
essentially degraded into an economic empire for its senior leaders.) We are
certainly seeing the possible future of something terrifying.

But it remains that: a
possibility. The main problem I have with calling Egypt fascist is its tinge of
historically-blind pessimism. After all, revolutionaries quickly re-grouped in
France, and seized an opportunity provided to them by the Franco-Prussian War
to establish a number of communes, most notably in Paris itself.
And there was another wave of
revolutions that began in 1917 with the Russian
Revolutions. The eventual, temporary victory of fascism in much of the
continent took place after fierce combat with anti-fascists who had a very
different idea of the world that would succeed the decaying European political
order.

It is too soon to say how these
possibilities, whether of a future revolution against the Egyptian military, or
the eventual emergence of fascist authoritarianism by a nihilistic
revolutionary faction, will play out. However, one thing seems clear: the
coming months, and years, will be crucial in determining whether or not fascism
is really coming to Egypt. For now, let’s all use caution in dropping the
analytical f-bomb.

 

Enter a URL to resolve.

Farewell to Syria, for a while

Syrian writer and dissident Yassin Al Haj Saleh, who after two years in hiding in Damascus fled to his hometown of Raqqa only to find it under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham group. He has now left the country. 

In Raqqa, I spent two months and a half in hiding without succeeding in getting one piece of information about my brother Firas. Nothing could be worse than this. Therefore, instead of celebrating my arrival at Raqqa, I had to keep in hiding in my own liberated city, watching strangers oppress it and rule the fates of its people, confiscating public property, destroying a statue of Haroun Al-Rasheed or desecrating a church; taking people into custody where they disappeared in their prisons. All the prisoners were rebel political activists while none of them was chosen from the regime’s previous loyalists or shabiha. With the exception of this flagrant oppression of the people, their property and symbols, the new rulers have shown no sign of the spirit of public responsibility which is supposed to be the duty of those who are in power.

 

Permalink

Sudan revolts (again)

[image error]

"Should we pack?", asks President Omar al-Bashir wife's as protests in Sudan continue. The answer is no - his rule in Sudan is stable enough he doesn't need to keep a toothbrush on his person at all times and Saudia on speed dial. But Sudan's President, who claims he will not seek "re-election" in 2015, cannot exactly trust the men he pays to bug the country's phone lines these days, either. 

He cannot, apparently, even trust his own uncle: Al-Tayeb Mustafa, the paper's owner, has been ordered to stop publishing the country's leading daily (al-Intibaha) for the duration of the protests.

Closing the daily down is just one of the steps the government is taking to diffuse coverage of the protests. Sky News and Al Arabiya were forced to close their offices, and access to the Internet was also temporarily cut off. It was restored, though: presumably because the security services need it to infiltrate protest circles online to false flag and blackmail people.  Sudan has gone down this route before - preventive detention, torture of detainees, closing down newspapers, and forcing foreign correspondents out  - when demonstrators held protests last June on the anniversary of the coup that bought al-Bashir to prominence in 1989. This time around, at least 70 people have been killed, and some 700 arrested (the numbers of dead and detained may be even higher). Once again, al-Bashir has dismissed the protestors (last year, he infamously described them as "elbow lickers"), but unlike past demonstrations where most of the participants were students, "those involved were … middle-class Sudanese from well-to-do areas, and those from the poorest districts of Khartoum and towns across the country," with significant female participation through silent solidarity and other actions.

As succession begins to be discussed, the ongoing protests will weigh heavily on the minds of the security services vying for advantage and favor - al-Bashir is likely to retain his office in spite of his pledge. In April, as term limits and constitutional changes were discussed, Sudanese daily "The Citizen" reported that the NCP (al-Bashir's ruling party) has effectively split: an old guard camp "consider[s] President Umar al-Bashir an asset, a guarantor of their influence unlikely to accept a political arrangement that would threaten the grip of the NCP over the state institutions, let alone expose the security establishment to closer security or drop the blanket immunities that protect its members," while a group of Young Turks from the clergy and paramilitary forces "have come to see [the President] as a liability and his continuation in office a threat to the power of the NCP in the short term and the political chances of the Islamic Movement in any future dispensation." It is the latter group which has been emboldened by the protests that began two years ago, yet it is hardly clear that they will move against the President and those closest to him so long as he lives, no matter how many lawyers, students, writers, and even well-to-do housewives come out against his rule.

But the camp followers of the NCP are presiding over a shrinking revenue pot. Peter Dörrie notes at Think Africa Press that the President's uncivil society is, like the rest of the economy, running on fumes: "Sudan spends almost a quarter of its GDP on its military and waging several internal wars. With its well of oil money running dry, a military caste unwilling to accept any cuts to its budgets, and few foreign allies willing to pick up the tab, the regime had to look for something to cut." That something - once again - is the welfare net, specifically gas subsidies people depend on for cooking and driving. That, and the much harsher response to this fall's protests than before, brought a much larger slice of society out into the streets.

Dörrie wonders if Khartoum's recent arms sale binge is at all aimed at a buildup against South Sudan - where 3/4 of Sudan's former oil fields now lie as a result of the region gaining independence. A referendum on the disputed region of Abeyi is to be held this month, and a recent visit to the region by Jérôme Tubiana shows that renewed fighting - or more nationalistic protests against Khartoum - would not require much of an impetus:

Both sides know that the area will never be demilitarized. Repeated commitments by Juba to stop harboring northern rebels are unlikely to satisfy Khartoum or end rebellions in Sudan. With South Sudanese authorities not fully willing or able to prevent SPLM-N and allied Darfur factions from going back and forth across the new border, Sudanese rebels are at home in the borderlands.

Another reason both Khartoum and Juba hesitate to make too many concessions on the border is that both are rightly worried about turning disgruntled people from the borderlands into rebels. As much as the Dinka from the border areas were the vanguard of the SPLM/A during the civil war, Arab tribes such as the Rizeigat formed the bulk of the paramilitary forces used by Khartoum to fight the rebels in South Sudan and later in Darfur. Increasingly feeling they were both manipulated and not adequately rewarded, Arab fighters joined the SPLM/A (several hundred are reportedly still in South Sudanese ranks). Some have now turned up among the northern rebel groups as well.

al-Bashir's only long-term hope if the referendum fails to go in his favor would be for the world to look the other way while he escalates the border conflict so that Sudan can bargain for transit fee terms from Juba. But South Sudan would certainly not accept such terms: a short conflict could even spectacularly backfire on Sudan if it were the aggressor. The military is in poor shape from fighting against ongoing insurgencies, and apparently must now be kept in reserve to deploy against protestors. It also cannot fully be trusted: last November, an internal power struggle resulted in the arrest of several alleged putschists linked to both the parliamentary opposition and the armed forces. Loyalty from these men - confidants of the President for decades - is not guaranteed, especially with his health problems (rumors persist that the 69-year old has throat cancer) and international arrest warrants.

While talk of the "Arab Spring" coming to Sudan is somewhat misplaced - the government has been beset by mass demonstrations since 2011 - the latest happenings appear to have had a much larger impact on the public consciousness there. The government retains control of the security services and sufficient dependents among the elite, yet each outburst of dissatisfaction further dents the edifice of the state structure the President and his fellow generals and clerics have spent the last 25 years setting up. What could replace it is anyone's guess.

 

Links 17 September - 11 October 2013

Yet another long overdue link dump.Egypt’s Coming Civil War - BloombergMap showing how border controls ...
Very cool map of migration patterns in North Africa the Middle East and the MediterraneanWhen Wealth Disappears - NYTimes.com
"We are reaching end times for Western affluence"In Sudan, "freedom for my mum"
Women play a big part in recent protests in SudanLibya: In Search of a Strongman by Nicolas Pelham | NYRblog | The New York Review of BooksWhat’s Become of Freedom of Expression? - Sada
Maati Monjib on the Ali Anouzla case.In Leaked Video, Egyptian Army Officers Debate How to Sway News Media - NYTimes.com
Unbelievable.Moroccan king backs away from reforms - The Washington PostCAIRO: Egypt’s ‘revolution’ is over as people accept imposition of military rule
Buyer's remorse in Egypt, yet again.Star Trekking through the Middle East. Whatever happened to Arab science fiction?
It's being lived.Remember Cairo? - By Shadi Hamid and Peter Mandaville | Foreign PolicyUN: NEARLY 1,000 IRAQIS KILLED IN SEPTEMBERWater Wars: Egyptians Condemn Ethiopia's Nile Dam ProjectImagining a Remapped Middle East - NYTimes.com
How things could go right in Middle East - FT.com
Gideon Rachman.URBAN NILE
Cool site. Check out the pic of Tahrir Sq. in 60s.Egypt Through Time: Photographs From 1800-2013 | Egyptian Streets شوارع مصرSpecial report: fixing intelligence on Syria? - Le Monde diplomatique - English editionThe Rising Profile of Algerian Manga « Arabic Literature (in English)Maximum Bibi - By Daniel Levy | Foreign Policy
No deal under Bibi - but really, was there going to be a deal under any mainstream Israeli pol?Breaking Point | MERIP
On the crisis of Syrrian refugees in LebanonMigration Information Source - Middle Eastern and North African Immigrants in the United StatesallAfrica.com: Egypt: Civil Society Representatives - the Draft Law Is a Positive Step Forward and Civil Society Association Needs Every Support Available.Qatar Airways ‘requires’ hostesses to get permission before marrying - Alarabiya.netBrotherhood's Mahdy Akef transferred to army hospital - Aswat Masriya
But will he be sharing a room with Mubarak?Iran Pres. Rouhani's Linked-In Profile
Snark from the Israeli Embassy in the USBBC News - Many die in Khartoum as riots continue
The reaction to a cut to fuel subsidies[Ahram]
Al Ahram reports a high school student turned over to the police by her teachers for writing "Down with Military Rule" on the wall of schoolSalafi sheikh calls for referendum on Islamic Sharia in ConstitutionMilitary spokesperson says Sisi will not run for presidentAffaire Ali Anouzla. Communiqué de LakomeEgyptian Zionists | In GazaOrientalism Upended
On the (ir)relevance of Edward Said to Egypt.Judicial sources: Qaradawi among wanted figures on airport arrival lists | Egypt IndependentallAfrica.com: North Africa: Al-Zawahiri Unveils Maghreb StrategyPossible Flags for the new Egyptian Republic, 1953
All so much nicer than the current one.Syria’s Refugees: The Catastrophe by Hugh Eakin and Alisa Roth | The New York Review of BooksAfter Morsi, Egyptians fear revival of the security state - FT.comToo Little, Too Late - Sada
"In trying to have their cake and eat it too, the liberals have been effectively co-opted by the military and the police."Egypt farmer held for naming donkey after top general | Fox NewsRebel-on-Rebel Violence Seizes Syria
WSJ reports on the friction between jihadists and other rebel militiasAnthony Bourdain, Will You Marry Me?
An excited review of an episode of the famous food show filmed in PalestineIn a Faded Literary Capital, Efforts at a Revival - NYTimes.com
On literature in SudanDemain, nous irons en pèlerinage, sur la terre des ancêtres de Ali Anouzla !Sharia courts of the Sinai
Keeps getting worse.Andalusian music responsible for the fall of Arab Spain, says the Imam of Zeitouna mosque (Tunisia)Israel soldiers confront EU diplomatsPresidential adviser: War is our destiny
Fascism 101.Mamfakinch — Paying for the sins of others – #FreeAliAnouzla
Absurd.What Next for the Muslim Brotherhood
1954 all over again.Algeria’s president: Firmly back in the saddle | The EconomistIbrahim Sharqieh | Tunisia's Lessons for the Middle East | Foreign AffairsMedia Lens - ‘Damning Evidence’ Becomes ‘No Clear Evidence’: Much-Delayed Report On Congenital Birth Defects In IraqAP News: Egyptian army offers no respite for southern town
On DalgaIn Egypt, the kids are not alright. In fact, they're in prison | GlobalPostIslam Al Tayeb: The West’s Egyptian quandary | IISSEgypt’s farmers: A bitter harvest | The Economist
Grim stuffEgypt's Ousted Leader Talks to Family for 1st Time - ABC News
even most of legal team arrestedIbrahim Sharqieh | Tunisia's Lessons for the Middle East | Foreign AffairsEgyptian group launches petition asking for military chief to run for president - The Washington PostKarl reMarks: How Barack and Hassan Became Pen Pals| Mouvement ANFASS Démocratique – حركة انفاس الديمقراطية
New Moroccan movementMacro Man: Ready Reckoner on Syrian NegotiatorsFull Text of U.N. Report on Chemical Attack in Syria - NYTimes.comU.N. provides details of Syrian chemical attack other accounts could not | McClatchyU.N. team confirms sarin attack; Assad military implicated | McClatchyStruggles Continue in Algeria: What to think? | The Moor Next Door
Who better to answer that question.Egyptian authorities recapture Islamist-held town | theguardian.com
"Egypt police recapture Islamist-held town." My piece on Delga, where hardliners had terrorised Christians since JulyReach of Turmoil in Egypt Extends Into Countryside - NYTimes.com
Aga, a polarized Delta town.