Issandr El Amrani's Blog, page 17

The Gulf's faulty gaydar

No, the Gulf states do not have gaydar detectors installed at their ports of entry. But if you are a guest worker -  one of the hundreds of thousands of South and Southeast Asians who enter the Gulf annually - you may be (or already are) subjected to an intrusive battery of tests to make sure your "gender" matches your anatomy. 

Critics refer to "tests of shame" because in many cases, police doctors conduct these bodily exams of individuals detained on the grounds that their attitude and clothing don't match their physical appearance. Kuwait's health minister announced a proposal this week to make the screening for a "third sex" mandatory in his country, and perhaps across the GCC economic zone - which has a notoriously hard time coordinating comprehensive migration policies. Kuwait already has a law in place that allows the authorities to detain and fine anyone "imitating the opposite sex."

The original reporting suggested that the tests would somehow try to determine sexual orientation, which would be impossible to do medically (not that this has stopped countries from listing HIV+ status as a medical reason to bar people entry, with homosexual individuals in mind). But as others then pointed out, the term "third sex" is a particular new Arabic term that refers to people whose behavior doesn't match their gender -- a broader category that includes transgender as well as gay people. 

As The Atlantic points out, it's not exactly like a lot of other governments can cast stones. At least 76 countries still have draconian anti-LGBT laws on the books, and even the US, which banned foreigners with HIV till 2009, still has some restrictions (though not so shameful as the 1965-1990 law that specifically targeted non-straight people by listing "sexual deviancy" as grounds for refusal or entry). 

The moral panic evident here is very much tied into Kuwait (and the rest of the GCC's) wider anxieties about migration - even expat naturalization is extremely controversial in these societies. Naturalization would put heavy pressure on race relations and the welfare net in the Gulf states, which is of particular concern given that in the smaller countries, immigrants now outnumber indigenous citizens.  As Human Rights Watch reported in 2012 (via Paper Bird):

The criminalization of “imitating the opposite sex” in Kuwait is one  element of a broader regime of gender regulation that began to take hold after 1992, when  tensions between “liberal” and “traditionalist” Kuwaitis after the Gulf War intensified as  each tried to establish their status as influential political entities. The battle over women’s rights and role in society constituted one of this conflict’s most  prominent arenas, and presented an opportunity for traditionalists and Islamists to join forces. … Given this long-running controversy within government and society over the appropriate  roles of men and women, it is not surprising that parliament would turn its attention towards those who visibly challenge these gender roles.

The health and hygiene of migrants seem to be a priority for the Kuwaiti health minister - which may be partly understandable, given the movement of people here, but is creepily paternalistic and also insulting because of the assumption that any immigrant  is likely to be a vector for some infectious disease.

The exams will almost certainly not be applied to white-collar Western workers. "The exams are meant to intimidate poor Nepalis or Sri Lankans or Pakistanis, to exclude those who are too recalcitrantly different," Paper Bird notes - their otherness inspiring a great deal of mistrust in their employers. It is about enforcing conformity - conformity in no small measures based on overly sexualized fears about miscegenation and loss of "manliness," and of being "tricked" by men who "aren't men" and women who "aren't women."

 

 

Look who's talking

Can Iran and the US reach a nuclear deal in the coming months, one that preserves Iran's enrichment program yet satisfies the US's sanctions regimen against the Islamic Republic? It is possible, but the pressure for the current negotiations between Secretary of State Kerry and Foreign Minister Zarif to fail is immense, and comes from multiple domestic actors in both countries, as well as from American allies in the Middle East.

Obama's biggest stumbling block domestically is Congress, and the myriad lobbying groups opposed to a negotiated solution with Iran as long it remans an Islamic Republic. There are some Iranian associations (like the former terrorist organization MEK), but most of the pressure comes from Israel advocacy organizations like AIPAC, along with neoconservative think tanks such as the FDD or AEI. These groups - except for AIPAC - cannot really push Obama, but they can and have been pushing Congress. Republicans, especially, want to claim credit for sanctions bringing the Iranians to the UN with all this talk of cooperation and hints of nuclear concessions - but then, the issue arises of who is willing to say: "the sanctions have worked, let's talk concessions" instead of "Iran is bleeding white financially, tighten the screws and go for broke." And procedurally, this spider's web - as the International Crisis Group calls it - of sanctions cannot just be overridden by the President. Already, the Senate is mulling whether or not to enact even more sanctions, and this is no bluff. This is a concerted effort to pull Obama away from diplomacy and send Rouhani back empty-handed.

There are also other competing interests on the US side: Israel and the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia. All are united by their fear and animus towards Iran's regional ambitions.  

 

Netanyahu warned the UN of the Iranian nuclear duck peril. 

It is hard to tell if PM Netanyahu is bluffing about war to extract maximum concessions from both the US and Iran, or if he will only accept Iran's unconditional surrender. In any event, Israel will not go it alone in Iran - there are too many dispersed, hardened targets over distance to strike, unlike in Iraq and Syria. If Israel really does want to set the program back, its leaders would not risk taking action without the US's participation - this is why these generals and former spymasters keep painting talk of a unilateral attack as madness, because the risk of retaliation and international censure is too great. Concerns about state-sponsored terrorism and support for Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, or Islamic Jihad are also present in this debate. But the Nuclear Question is the overriding issue.

Even though he has been crying wolf for years, Netanyahu is not stupid enough to think he can go it alone on Iran. What he is now doing, partly, is hoping that he can regain the initiative in Israeli domestic politics over his Iran critics by castigating anything Obama and Rouhani do to bring down barriers between the two countries. There is a big difference between what the Prime Minister's Office and the Israeli military-intelligence community want on Iran, because the latter sees Netanyahu as a bull in a china shop making the case for military action harder than it needs to be. Israel does not want to lose its unique strategic deterrent in the region. And it needs the US to prevent that from happening. A deal that leaves Iran wiggle room for a nuclear weapons capability is unacceptable, because even that - in the Israeli view - balances the equation between the two countries, emboldening Iran. Netanyahu sees Syria as a test-run for Iran: will the US go all in - increasingly unlikely - or will it give "advantage" to Assad, Putin, and Khameini by supporting a difficult to enforce WMD search and seizure?

The Saudi royal family remains very apprehensive about any deals with Iran as well, in part because of a similar calculus. As with Israel, Iran is a country which a much larger land area and population than them. Iran's leaders have called for their deposal and been linked to terrorist attacks on them. Saudi Arabia worries about Iranian instigations in its Eastern Province and in Bahrain, specifically. Aside from these ideological differences, the Saudis do not want to see a nuclear-weapons capable Iran because that could negate the Kingdom's qualitative military advantage over Iran, given that Iran's military is running on aging American arms and some newer Russo-Chinese equipment while the Saudis have the run of General Dynamics, Dassault, and BAE's catalogs. Geopolitically, the Kingdom is playing for keeps in Syria - they are making unhappy noises about the CW deal that tabled an American air strike, which they had been lobbying very heavily for. Rapprochement with Iran that holds out the prospect of a negotiated solution for Assad would diminish Saudi influence in postwar Syria, and is not welcome because the Saudis have long sought to bring that country closer to Riyadh.

Returning to the US-Iranian dynamic, the language barrier is immense - in the sense that both powers talk past each other (supervised enrichment versus no enrichment), and both are afraid of giving something and gaining nothing. Yet not a decade ago, Iran was helpful on Afghanistan - the pre-Operation Enduring Freedom period saw the best cooperation among the two countries' officials in years. But the Bush Administration's 2002 "Axis of Evil" speech deeply embarrassed Iranian moderates urging reconciliation. More significantly, American mistakes in Iraq emboldened the Iranian military, which saw an opportunity to compete against the clerical establishment for postwar influence - remember that some of the returning Iraqi clerics and parliamentarians, including PM Nouri al-Maliki and the founder of the Badr Organization, the late Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, spent years in exile in Iran - by arming militias. 

Surprisingly, one of the least-cited reasons by Western critics opposing detente with Iran is that Secretary Kerry should not be sitting across a table from people who green-lit the transfer of weapons used to kill American soldiers between 2003 and 2011. Of course, such critics would have a very weak leg to stand in the historical context: Nixon went to China and opened detente with the USSR while weapons supplied by these two countries had  been used to kill thousands of American servicemen in Vietnam and Korea. But US critics of talking to the Soviets simply could not beat the people who felt talk was necessary to avoid WWIII. Whereas, because of US actions against Iran, because the Islamic Republic is not so vital to US interests, because there is nothing so concrete to cooperate on as anti-fascism, and because the Iranian Hostage Crisis is within living memory (no such event defined the Chinese or Russian Revolutions for Americans), a working relationship has been much harder to sell in either nation. 

Iran sees itself as encircled by US bases and allies, has undergone two foreign-backed regime changes - during WWII, to remove the then pro-German Shah, and more famously in 1953. Westerners then trained SAVAK, the pre-Islamist secret police force, and were always the most visible supporters of the Shah from the 1950s to the 1980s. Iran's current leaders also do not forget what happened in the Iran-Iraq War when the US (with the USSR) sided with Saddam Hussein - even going so far as to give Iraq intelligence that the CIA knew would be used to help carry out chemical warfare. Since 2000, there have been cyber attacks, assassinations of nuclear scientists, and even more sanctions - all of which are either directly tied to the US, or ascribed to its Israeli allies. To shift course is difficult not simply because of public opinion, but because so much of the establishment cut its teeth on anti-Americanism and still sincerely feels the US wishes to strangle them by pursuing regime change. After all, dual containment of Iran and Iraq in the 1990s only came to an end with the invasion of Iraq. Though the current crisis in Iran is also the result of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fiscal policies and economic authoritarianism, there is the expectation that Iran will be allowed back into the world energy and banking community in exchange for nuclear concessions.

In Iran, the domestic calculus for whether a deal should be reached or not is more opaque, but two very important groups of people constrain Rouhani's hand. Rouhani can count on the support of the reformist press - some of those "Green Movement" outlets not shuttered since 2008, and some past notables like former President Khatami, Iran's international traders, and most of the Majles. Iranian social media has lit up in support of Rouhani's moves -- Netanyahu's clumsy, condescending attempt to speak directly to the Iranian public has backfired in these same forums. The hardliners, however, count players like the former nuclear negotiator and war hero Saeed Jalili, and the veteran diplomat Ali Velayati. If Rouhani is seen to be underperforming abroad, Khameini will want to have a back-up plan - in the form of pronounced skepticism about trusting the US's sincerity - to wash his hands of the president's work, and will use one of the president's rivals to lead the denunciation campaign. 

Khameini, who puts his own credibility on the line by advancing talks, wants to reserve the option to blame the new president and the US if the talks tank - he does not want to get caught out by the US by offering concessions for no concrete gains. So he states that he approves Rouhani's efforts but finds some aspects of them troublesome. When the Grand Ayatollah talked about flexibility, he might as well be referring to his own position within Iran's domestic scene. 

As for the IRGC, it remains the single most powerful institution in the country, because of its military reputation, forays into politics, and its revenue streams from the factories and trading companies it runs. Corrupt officials constitute the economic foil to sanctions-lifting. Rouhani received a relatively triumphant welcome back home - but not wholly triumphant, as the security services allowed hawkish protestors to jeer at and egg his motorcade. It has used sympathetic media to castigate Rouhani, and is making a big play rhetorically by opposing the idea of ending the regime's "Death to America" rallies. It sees itself as the guardian of a revolution - ossified as that revolutionary is in 2013 - and welcomes opportunities to confront the US and Israel in Iraq and the Levant, and to keep Assad in power despite exasperation with his military performance.

Press statements, editorials, and tweets are the tea leaves by which such factional scorekeeping can be discerned: which editorials are the most vituperative about conciliation, which reports offer praise of Obama, which date and place a speech praising or criticizing Rouhani was given at. Rouhani certainly has a strong position - perhaps stronger than Obama's, because no one has Obama's back while Rouhani has his powers conferred upon him in these talks by Khameini. The downside of that is that Rouhani has more to lose if he slips up, because without getting demonstrable relief from the sanctions, he risks having his mandate to negotiate revoked by Khameini. Obama is in a position to offer much, and has made major steps by allowing Secretary of State Kerry to negotiate directly with Foreign Minister Zarif, but will feel constrained by so many past failures in his and other administrations to take bigger risks.

 

A run-down of terrorism in Egypt

Nour Youssef has been trying to compile a comprehensive list of terrorist attacks reported in the Egyptian press. The problem, as she notes, is that "they keep publishing the same story under different titles, sometimes lumping a couple incidents together, throwing in an update (without saying it is an update), picking up a detail and sensationalizing it -- or all of the above. The result is a flood of bad news that overwhelms readers." After the jump, our list of reported attacks, in rough chronological order -- and some jihadist videos set to really annoying music. 

Sinai:

In Arish, masked men fired at the State Radio's building and a bomb caused serious damage to a mosque in al-Masoura Square. Aug. 22On the 26th of August, there was 9 failed terrorist attacks in one day. They arrested suspects, half of them were by Palestinians.

Two terrorists died while planting a bomb on the Sheikh Zuweid road targetting military’s armored vehicles. Another died in his own car explosion while driving away from a checkpoint he had just attacked. Oct. 7

Another bomb on the Sheikh Zuweid road. No injuries. Oct. 7

Bomb by side of Arish-Rafah International Road. Four CSF recruits injured yesterday morning. In a different article, published today, Ahram reports another bombing in the same place, but says there are no injuries and mentions another bomb going off in a place called Sidot or Sadot (they didn’t settle on a spelling) between Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah. In a another article, also today, they mention the injuries of 10 recruits in another attack, which they say is the second attack on soldiers in 12 hours, near the place with the changing name on the same road.  

At least two were killed and 48 injured in a massive  explosions targeting security headquarters in the southern Sinai town of Al-Tor. Oct. 7

Giza:

Explosion near Egypt Gas lines in Kerdasa. No injuries. (Good chance it was just regular violence, Kerdasa is not the calmest of areas). Oct. 3

Someone put a homemade bomb next to a hotel in Mohandeseen, near a Omar Effendy. It didn’t go off. Oct. 3

An attempt to blow up the Gasco gas line in el-Maryoutyah results in the explosion of a communications room. And someone threw a bomb under a tank in Mohandeseen’s Sphinx square. No human casualties. Oct. 7

Ismailia:

Bomb thrown under police van parked in front of a police department. No injuries. Oct. 7

Car without numbers plates attacks soldiers, killing four.  English Ahram says 6 dead. Oct. 7

Cairo:

Two more failures,  at Shubra’s police department and another at the Nile Health Insurance Hospital. Both found in black plastic bags and defused. August 14. The attack on the Nozha traffic police point that left three dead. August 30

Failed assassination of the interior minister. Sept. 5

The attack on Boulaq's police station, which was denied by State TV's correspondent, then reported and then denied half an hour before it happened, then reported again. "When we denied this report in the 12 (o'clock) news, there really was nothing. This incident took place at 12:30 exactly," the correspondent said as if that didn't violate common sense.  He added that the bomb was just a box of shoe polish and some gunpowder and didn't hit the actual station. Sept. 7

Police defused a subway bomb between Helmiat al-Zaytoun and Hadiqa al-Zaytoun stations. Sept. 19Unknown person throws homemade bomb at the police when latter tried to break up a fight in Shubra. Sept. 26 Bomb defused in front to the Embaba police station Sept. 27 Bomb defused on Abbas bridge Sept. 27 Bomb next to the National Bank in Old Cairo, it didn’t go off and the bombers were caught. Articles everywhere took care to note that it was next to a high school called Amr ibn al-Aas, where pro-MB marches took place. Sep. 28 Bomb defused in 10th of Ramadan Oct. 651 bombs found in Shubra (an army source tells El-Dostour) Oct. 6RPJ fired at a telecom facility in Maadi.  No injuries. Oct. 7

CBC Television also reported today that a bomb was found in a billboard in Mohandiseen. With the exception of Sinai -- and that is a big exception -- and the car-bomb attack on the Minister of Interior, the terrorist attacks in Cairo and elsewhere have rarely been deadly. Most of the reports concern home-made bombs that are either defused or never go off. So far, a lot of the terrorists in Egypt seem to be kind of amateurs -- and the police seem to be kind of lucky. That said, the video below is the first Egyptian jihadist video I've seen. In it, a group calling itself Kataaib El Farqan (Battalions of the Koran) takes credit for the "liquidation" of an "apostate" army officer (whose car they strife in a drive-by shooting). They claim this is retaliation for the killings at Rabba, Nahda, Dalga, etc. 

The video below, from the same group (and found on Wael Abbas' blog) shows the attack on the satellite dishes in Maadi.  

حصري : فيديو لإستهداف القمر الصناعي بالمعادي وبيان مرفق من كتائب الفرقان تتبني العملية 

The Fallacy of Crushing The Brotherhood

Couldn't agree more with this analysis by Amro Ali: 

The late poet Mahmoud Darwish sounded a warning: “Those who spend an era breastfeeding from the milk of cruel despotism can only perceive destruction and evil in freedom.” In this lays the grim inheritance bestowed upon Egypt following decades of authoritarian rule: the public not only perceives destruction and evil in its own freedom, but in the freedom of others and, consequently, any notion of political co-existence. A third route is needed to save it. Instead of crushing the Brotherhood, there needs to be a national inclusive dialogue on the role of religion and politics, a focus on strengthening institutional checks and balances, and the enforcement of rule of law to protect Egypt from political and security violations and excesses, whether by Islamists or otherwise.

 

Permalink

Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi’s Sinai campaign

No wonder the army wants to maintain a media black-out and its war on terrorism in Sinai:

Thirty-year-old Naeem, from the village of Muqataa, also appears to be a victim of these rising tensions. (Again, Naeem and his family asked that their surnames not be used.) Naeem and his mother, Hessa, said six army officers entered and ransacked their home on Sept. 22. They took his laptops, legal titles, television, two gas cylinders, his wife’s makeup, gold, and cash. They helped themselves to water in the fridge, and put pillowcases on the heads of Naeem’s 6-month-old twins when they cried. Then they burned his house to the ground. His home and his car repair shop were two of the buildings I saw blackening the sky with smoke the day before. The walls of his family’s home were still smoldering. Others villagers reported similar behavior.

 

Permalink

Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi’s Sinai campaign

No wonder the army wants to maintain a media black-out and its war on terrorism in Sinai:

Thirty-year-old Naeem, from the village of Muqataa, also appears to be a victim of these rising tensions. (Again, Naeem and his family asked that their surnames not be used.) Naeem and his mother, Hessa, said six army officers entered and ransacked their home on Sept. 22. They took his laptops, legal titles, television, two gas cylinders, his wife’s makeup, gold, and cash. They helped themselves to water in the fridge, and put pillowcases on the heads of Naeem’s 6-month-old twins when they cried. Then they burned his house to the ground. His home and his car repair shop were two of the buildings I saw blackening the sky with smoke the day before. The walls of his family’s home were still smoldering. Others villagers reported similar behavior.

 

Squabbling over religion

Before Jan 25, mosques had been hunting grounds for the MB. In the post-Jan 25 days, mosques evolved to become a place where they can meet, organize, mobilize, campaign, and more recently, treat fallen followers, count bodies and hide leaders. They also become the scene of political squabbles. At the time of the controversial Islamist-backed constitution, there were dueling campaigns to 1) challenge imams who used their sermons to support Morsi/the constitution (نزله من المنبار, "Get him down off the minbar") or 2) physically restrain worshippers who challenged the imam (ربته في العمود, "Tie him to a column"). 

The last thing the Brothers needed, after the eventful summer they've had, was to have their comfort zone fall back under government control and, now, the perked ears of pro-military residents, who would report an imam faster than he could compare what soldiers did to Muslims protesters in Raba’a al-Adaweya to what they haven’t done to the Jewish soldiers in Israel.

With the Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowments) resolved to tighten its grip on mosques by passing a number of laws to substitute the much-criticized MB monopoly over religion with its own, many lips had been chewed and prayers for patience muttered.

Now there is a noticeable change in the khutbah (friday sermon). For the most part, it is  shorter, just like the minister wanted (because the men have other things to tend to) and no longer connected to politics, not even by way of metaphors or anecdotes. A considerable number of imams have been contacted by the ministry and told specifically to stay off politics or else they might be considered a national security threat, inciting violence and possessing illegal weapons. Many imams sense danger and have begun self-censoring in case a  housewife cooking in a nearby building hears the khutbah and doubts their patriotism, or in the not-unlikely-event that one of the new faces in the crowd turns out to be an informant.

Even though the great majority of MB imams have kept fiery sermons to a minimum and seem to have contented themselves with neighborhood night marches against the military in the meantime, some allow themselves a fit of rage and lead a protest out of mosques, three times a week, in areas too densely populated for police officers to be coaxed into visiting, like Ain Shams.

“You can tell (the MB supporters) are unhappy when they hear me preach about patience and generosity rather than comment about the situation,” said licensed Sheikh Emad, who is not Amr Moussa or something and should not be expected to talk politics. In the past month, Sheikh Emad was heckled out of his Ain Shams mosque when he tried to close it between prayers (another ministry rule).

But the fact remains that there are well over a 100 thousand mosques in Egypt and about half of them are manned by state-approved Azhar graduates. The rest are freelancers. The feared anti-military extremists can be either one of them. The new Awqaf minister has suspended the license-to-preach of all freelancers,  said the must re-apply, and that only Azharis -- as representatives of middle-of-the-road, official sanctioned Islam -- will get one. 

The ministry is also trying to limit the activities of zawiyas (unofficial very small neighborhood mosques). This may be why its list of four “conditions”  regarding zawiya operation are closer to requests than rules. Laughable requests, according to Sheikh Gamal, a zawiya imam, shopkeeper, and occasional gas cylinder seller.

The conditions are that there be no (big) nearby mosque, or if there is one that it be full full; one can pray in a zawiya so long as it has a written permission to hold prayers or a licensed imam, as if people are going to walk in and ask for ID and licenses like a traffic cop. Anyway, what happens if people don’t abide by these conditions? What kind of legal consequences, if any, could one face for praying in zawiya?

For all its worth, most people under 45 like to skip the khutbah, if not physically, then mentally, and just wait for the iqaamah (the beginning of the prayer), Sheikh Gamal said with a knowing smile. Youngsters like to loiter by a kiosk and appear the moment the prayer starts in the back rows and the old sit inside and ponder life and prices.

The only people really listening to the khutbah now, Sheikh Gamal suspects, are those who wish they could deliver it and those who are there to make sure they don’t.

Head-butt in Qatar

Qatar has installed a statue of French footballer Zinedine Zidan's infamous head-butt (after Italian player Marco Matterazzi allegedly said something rude about his mother) which may have cost France the World Cup in 2006. Zidan's outburst was criticized and defended at the time. Here is an impressionistic version of the statue (called "Coup de Tete," which in French means both header and whim, impulse) by contributor Paul Mutter, who also notes: "Now if only I could photo-shop something representing the Western left walking off the playing field.."  

The statue has apparently rankled quite a few Qataris.

Interview with Sonallah Ibrahim

A while back, I expressed some misgivings about the great Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim's seemingly uncritical support for the military leadership. I ended up paying him a visit and conducting a rather distressing interview. Despite my admiration for Ibrahim, and his friendliness to me, we were almost immediately disappointed with each other's grasp of what is going on in Egypt these days, and unable to agree on the meaning of words like "massacre" and "nationalism." I was surprised with Ibrahim's willingness to accept repression in the name of abstract, hard-to-achieve and easy-to-manipulate goals like "fighting terrorism" and "standing up to the West."

MM: I can't help feeling that there will never be security sector reform. It's very good for [the security services] to be fighting terrorism. Nobody is going to push them to change. Do you see what I'm saying?

SI: It takes time. The fundamental thing now is, if the police officer who used to insult me and kick me and beat me under Mubarak, if now he is fighting against terrorism, I am with him.

The full interview is at Mada Masr, which also has lots of coverage of Egypt's celebrations of October 6 and of popular sentiment to the army.  

Only room for one general

There has been much media focus lately on the ongoing, growing campaign to get defense minister and commander of the armed forces Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to run for president -- a bandwagon on which we can expect see many more flatterers and opportunists jump. El-Sisi's candid discussion with other officers on how Egyptian need to get used to paying more for services and talk on the phone less, how the army can get the media to practice some self-censorhip, and how military personnel will never be held responsible for killing protesters were recently leaked, and seen as evidence of his nefarious dictatorial tendencies by Islamists and of his economic genius and straight-talking by army supporters. 

It is also instructive to see the reaction to another possible military contender. Nour Youssef has this report. 

While it is generally good to be a soldier rather than another weakling civilian in Egypt, it has not been so for former Chief of Staff General, Sami Anan.

After news of Anan’s announcement of his run for president spread, and despite it being followed by a quick denial, the pro-military media began airing his dirty laundry and then tried to suffocate him with the clothesline. So far Anan, aka  The Bringer of the Brotherhood (or at the very least:  Key Person Who Helped Make Mistakes That Lead To MB Rule), has been accused of having an under-qualified son as head of the Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport, wasting state land (200 acres of it by Cairo-Alexandria desert road on himself and his wife), having grandchildren born in the US for the citizenship, buying a whole floor in a fancy hotel, among other things.

Although many, like Mahmoud Saad, perfunctorily expressed their respect for Anan's constitutional right to run before all but telling him not to, much of the talk about Anan has been focused on his newly published memoirs and his past.

In his memoir, Anan quotes the simple man, saying “If America’s got you covered, then you’re naked,” when he learns that Al Jazeera reported his US visit in January 2011 - which in case you're still wondering was a pre-planned military visit, not a pep rally for Operation Divide Egypt - a tip they must have gotten from a US official source, apparently. 

He goes on to paint the military as politically deaf, blind and mute institutionalized love for Egypt. For instance, he, along with Tantawi and Omar Suleiman, thought the NDP’s rigging in the 2010 elections was insultingly obvious, and separately warned Mubarak about it, but the former president was at ease because “Ahmed Ezz (had) everything taken care of.”

The military leaders never had any interest in politics, he maintained, before writing about the time when he suggested planning a soft coup to stabilize the country in 2011 to Field Marshal Tantawi, seeing how popular the army and “The people and the army are one hand” chant had become. Tantawi told him not speak of it again.

The intended takeaway from the memoirs seems to be that the SCAF did not strike any deals with the MB and that the Brothers won fair and square without their help. If the people still want someone to blame for the MB’s electoral winnings, other than themselves and the lack of political alternatives -- Well, let's not forget the media now. A denial statement even more belated, but probably more effective, than Anne Patterson’s response to the two-year-old US-put-the-Brotherhood-in-power conspiracy theory.

At some point, Anan recalls a conversation with Tantawi where the latter asks him if he would use violence against protesters, if ordered to do so, like his Tunisian counterpart, to which Anan said no, before adding that he was sure such orders would never be made. He cited the Palestinian incursion in Rafah as an example of a time when Egypt's political leadership demanded violence and the military didn't deliver. And they were Palestinians, so could he shoot Egyptians? Anan had a similar conversation with Gen. James Mattis, retired commander of U.S. Central Command, while waiting for his plane back to Egypt, which according to Abdullah Kamal, was suspiciously cut down to a four-sentence moment when it actually was an over-an-hour long meeting.

The fuss about the memoir and the denied announcement earned Anan a lot of belittling questions about whatever gave him the (false) impression of popular support anyway, where he would get the kind of money campaigning require, in addition to criticism about his timing, not to mention his writing, which could potentially "cause confusion" and risked national security by divulging “military secrets” without permission. This has lead some to believe that General Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s recent remark about the army’s no-position position in the next elections was a message to Anan specifically, as opposed to everyone.

That being said, it is worth noting that Anan denied announcing the intention to run for president, but not the intention itself. When it came to that possibility, Anan always maintained a “Well, if the people asked me to...I mean, it would be rude not to” approach.

Gems from the memoirs include a time when parents called him saying that their civilian offsprings couldn’t come home because Brothers, desperate to make the mass hostage situation look like continued street resistance, wouldn’t let them out of Tahrir, and concluding that Mubarak's true mistakes in the 18 days was making the right decisions, like appointing Omar Suleiman as VP and Ahmed Shafik as prime minister, too late.