Issandr El Amrani's Blog, page 7

In Translation: "The army's job is to protect us from foreign enemies, not each other"

Once again, the team at Industry Arabic brings us a new installment in our In Translation series. Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh is a Brotherhood leader who left the organization to run as a moderate Islamist candidate in the 2012 presidential election. He is the leader of the Strong Egypt party. His party campaigned both against the Brotherhood's constitution, and against the one that recently passed (a few of its members were just given 3-year sentences for handing out flyers encouraging a No vote). We include the original headline and introduction, although it is rather inaccurate and tendentious -- Aboul Fotouh spends most of the interview criticizing the army's intervention and does not actually suggest that the Brotherhood is supporting potential presidential candidate General Sami Anan, just that they would sooner vote for him than for Aboul Fotouh himself. 

Aboul Fotouh in a conversation with Al-Ahram: “I reject the participation of the religious current in the political process…Morsi is a failure…what happened at the Presidential Palace was a crime”

Interview – Zeinab Abdel Razzak and Karima Abdel Ghani

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, the chairman of the Strong Egypt Party, has announced that he will not be running for presidential elections. [He stated] along with this announcement what he felt were strong justifications, while others feel they were a cover for the decline in popularity of the Islamist current on the Egyptian street. Others still went so far as to say it was part of a prior agreement to clear the field for Sami Anan to be the Muslim Brotherhood candidate.

However, in his conversation with Al-Ahram, Aboul Fotouh asserted that his popularity in the Egyptian street had doubled, and that if he were to run in the upcoming elections, he would receive many times more votes than he had in the previous election. He stated that he rejects the Islamist current’s support for him and outright opposes the presence of Islamists in political life. Concerning the Brotherhood, Aboul Fotouh confirmed that the organization is “prepared to stand behind Sami Anan and not behind me.” As for reconciliation, he indicated he had made efforts in this regard, but was met with intransigence from both sides, though he is continuing his efforts.

The heated discussion with Aboul Fotouh revolved around these and other thorny issues, rubbing him the wrong way at times. In any case, however, frankness is the overarching quality of this interview.

Why are you not running in the upcoming presidential elections?

I made this decision early on, more specifically when I called for early presidential elections. At that time I made it known that I would not be running, as the Muslim Brotherhood had harshly attacked me because I called for the early elections. They accused me of seeking to run myself. However, my call was prompted by President Mohammed Morsi’s weak performance and failure to keep his promises. I felt it necessary to save our country and our nation from chaos. This is what I had been calling for throughout the three months leading up to June 30. We were rushed and I was personally shocked on July 3, thus I differentiate between June 30 and July 3.

Don’t you think that the army's intervention at the request of the masses protected the country from a civil war and all-out massacres?

Claiming that what happened on July 3 transpired in order to face down the prospect of a civil war is untrue. I reject such claims, since we don’t have Sunnis and Shiites or Christians and Muslims that are going to kill each other.

We do not deny that the people had rejected Morsi. I shared this opinion with them; however, there are democratic mechanisms through which to express this rejection.

There is a difference between political and judicial accountability. This does not mean that every time we get a failure of a president we call on the army to come in and remove him.

The army is the guardian of the people, so what is wrong with that?

The army’s job is to protect us from foreign enemies, not from each other.

What could the people do when faced with the Brotherhood’s militias?

What militias?

The ones that killed and tortured demonstrators in front of the presidential palace?

What happened at the presidential palace was a crime, though it has nothing to do with militias.

Don’t you think what happened at the presidential palace could have been repeated on June 30 if the army had not stepped in?

Let me be clear that what happened in front of the presidential palace is a crime that is punishable by law. This does not, however, justify what transpired after that. The army’s job is to protect the people from foreign enemies, period.

Do you want the army to let the people quarrel internally with the ruling power and not intervene to stop the bloodshed?

We were not quarrel internally and there was no fitna [strife].

Wasn’t the country on the road to perdition at the hands of the Brotherhood?

Not at all. Morsi was simply a failed president and he had to go. However he should have gone via the ballot box, which is where I differ with others from the National Salvation Front (NSF) who wished to bring down Morsi through a coup. This become apparent through the NSF’s statement in anticipation of the first statement from the army. Whoever prefers this does not love the Egyptian army, which is a national institution of which we are proud and the most protective of. However, its only role is to defend the country from any foreign enemies.

The internal political dispute should have been dealt with through peaceful means.

Why didn’t you oppose the army’s involvement in the January 25th revolution when it stood with the people?

The Egyptian army did not side with the people or with Mubarak on January 25th, nor did it fire a single bullet. The police were firing at us and at the youth. The army hit the streets after the police collapsed, and it took a neutral position. It did not carry out a coup against Mubarak – even though he was a corrupt president over the course of 30 years – in the way it did with Morsi for being a failure of a president.

What does the referendum on the constitution represent for you?

A constitutional text that was very poorly amended.

Doesn’t the large turnout of Egyptians casting their votes on the referendum signify that the popular will backs the road map?

Who are the Egyptians that turned out?

More than 20 million Egyptian citizens.

You mean the Egyptians who voted on the constitution; do you want to ask whether or not this is a constitution? We'll say it's a constitution.

Don’t you think that the broad popular turnout represents the Egyptian will to support this roadmap and discredits the theory of a coup?

Everything you are saying is incorrect. It [the road map] was not submitted to the people in order for them to vote on it. What was submitted to them was an amendment to the constitution, which is a respectable procedure. However, what we demanded from the current authorities in order to gain some sort of legitimacy was for the people to approve the road map via a referendum, but the authorities refused.

If the people were opposed to the road map, wouldn’t they go out in the streets and object like they did against Morsi?

Not necessarily.

Some think you are not running for president because you know your popularity in the street has declined.

If I ran this time, I would receive many more votes than I received last time.

But the climate of these elections is different.

There have not been any changes in the Egyptian street or in reality. Egyptians rejected the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood; they will not reject Islamists. They will accept the idea of an Islamist candidate; we cannot mix between Islam, religion and the Brotherhood, since the latter is a political faction. Egyptians rejected them because of their political practices; they did not reject them from the beginning as shown by the five elections in which they gave their votes to the Muslim Brotherhood with their full desire and awareness and without having drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid.

Were the people deceived by the phrase: “Those who know God”?

Do not say deceived. They rejected them after they tried them out and found them to be weak and their performance poor. I was certain that if the Muslim Brotherhood was left to continue in its weak performance, it would not have won the next elections.

Don’t you think what we’re suffering from as a people and a state is because of the Brotherhood’s violence?

No, and it would have been better to wait out the four years.

And for the country to collapse?

This rhetoric is false and is only propagated by the media. The Egyptian people are not oblivious and their army would not stand by while their land was squandered and sold.

Aren’t you bothered by the number of terrorists let into Sinai by the Brotherhood?

There has been terrorism in Sinai since the days of Mubarak; under the Military Council; and during Morsi’s presidency; and it still exists there now under the current regime. Terrorism entered into the Sinai because of the army’s involvement in political life!

And the terrorists that were released by Morsi?

Most of those who were pardoned…Field Marshal Tantawi was the one who released them, while Morsi released some of them. However, they were not terrorists, but rather a group whose sentences had ended and they were wrongly being detained. They were released.

How do you respond to accusations that you are a Muslim Brother by inclination and belief and just left the organization because of conflicts and issues around positions in the Guidance Bureau?

It is not commendable to pretend to be heroes or brave now and to speak about and defame the Muslim Brotherhood. I was the strongest of those who faced them and their errors during their time in power.

What do you say about the acts of violence carried out by them?

Whoever commits violence must be arrested.

Why do you regard those who are arrested for acts of violence as [political] detainees and not as accused?

That is not true. What is happening now is that people who did not commit acts of violence are being arrested. Did Ahmed Maher [head of the youth grassroots movement April 6] commit any violence? What about [secular activist] Alaa Abd El-Fattah, [head of the Islamist party El Wasat] Abu al-Ala Madi or [former speaker of parliament] Saad El-Katatni? They are being held captive to settle political scores.

They are all being held on charges and in most of their cases voice recordings have emerged that condemn them…what do you think about that?

Which cases are you referring to?

How do you think the trial of the deposed President Mohammed Morsi is being handled?

I am not in a position to evaluate Morsi’s trial.

Do you think that he is not being given his right to a fair trial?

Morsi himself proclaims that he is not permitted visits from his family. Regardless of how the trial is being handled -- which is evaluated by the judiciary itself – we reject the fact that as an accused detainee he is being subjected to abuse, no matter who he is.

Witnesses say that Morsi is being treated well, but he does not want this. For example, the prison food.

Have you tried prison food? Everyone who speaks about prison, including those in power, I challenge them to put up with one week in prison.

How can you consider Morsi's being held at the naval base in Alexandria to be a sort of kidnapping, when EU Foreign Affairs Representative Catherine Ashton was able to visit him where he was being held?

Was Morsi the one who asked Ashton to visit him?

He is being detained appropriately in a way that is not degrading to him…and Ashton visited him where he is being detained.

Did I say he was being degraded? Are you making up things I haven’t said?

Doesn’t the entrance of Hamdeen Sabahi into the presidential race indicate that there is equal opportunity, contrary to what you have said?

Although Hamdeen Sabahi has decided to run, I do not feel that the presidential elections are following a sound democratic course. Here is a question: Does the propaganda for Sisi allow any candidate, whoever they may be, to enter into the competition with him?

Why don’t you run and get all the supporting votes that in your opinion are being repressed?

The ballot boxes have been prepared ahead of time!

Do you think the presidential elections and the ballot box will be rigged?

I did not say that the ballot would be rigged.

Do you deny that there exists a real, popular will for Field Marshal Sisi to run?

This popular will does exist…but we must know who manufactured it, who told them Sisi’s name and if they knew of him before.

The people are the ones who sought his help to do away with the Brotherhood’s rule.

The media propagated this to the people and told them: Sisi is the savior who rid us of terrorism.

Why don’t you bet on the awareness of the Egyptian people, who are capable of choosing and making their own choices?

I cannot “bet on” the awareness of the Egyptian people amid the power of businessmen and their control over the media, be it state or private media.

What about the Islamist current and the Muslim Brotherhood…can’t they help you win the presidency?

I do not want the support of the religious current and have been opposed to its involvement in the political process since 2007. As for the Brotherhood, they and the Salafis were my biggest obstacle in the previous elections, and now it’s worse. This is clear from the declarations made by their leaders, since the Brotherhood could vote for Sami Anan or Hamdeen Sabahi, but they cannot vote for Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh. I base this on my own understanding of them and not on any information I have from them.

How do you respond to the accusation that you refused to run for the sake of Sami Anan, the Brotherhood candidate?

I have not seen Sami Anan nor have I met with him, neither before nor after the January 25 revolution. I have never met him. I reject Sami Anan’s candidacy just as I reject Sisi leaving the army.

You always criticize the way Brotherhood violence is dealt with; how can the state deal with such events?

The difference between normal citizens and the police is that the latter must be trained to deal with acts of violence and unrest. An officer is entitled to defend himself, and the law is against whoever tries to deal with him.

There is a difference between a police officer who shoots someone in the foot for inciting unrest and throwing Molotov cocktails and a police officer who aims for his head or heart in order to kill him. There is a difference between security institutions trained to face violence by stopping its perpetrators without killing them, which is how it happens all over the world.

What do you feel about the acts of terror and the assassinations sweeping the country?

They must all be confronted by a professional police apparatus.

And what about the assassination of policemen themselves?

It is wrong and a crime…No one applauds terrorism or assassinations against policemen.

Aren’t these assassinations and explosions sufficient justification to classify the group as a terrorist organization?

I have nothing to do with the group. Go and ask them.

What do you think of the comment made by the wife of a Brotherhood leader on the bombing of the airplane in the Sinai, which provoked not only the families of those killed, but all Egyptians?

In a surprising response from Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, he said: “You’re talking like the Kharijites."

I interrupted him with my laughter in order to salvage the situation: How can you compare me to the Kharijites? That makes me mad.

He began to tone down the way he was speaking at this point and said: I’m comparing you to the Kharijites in that they cursed whoever kills a flea when they were the ones who killed Hassan ibn Ali. You are talking about a crazy woman who said something on Facebook. You did not come and carry out a discussion with a leader of the Brotherhood. I left the group in 2009 because of mistaken ideas help by its members, however I am proud of my association with Islamist thought and civilization and I fully stand by it.

Aren’t some of the ideas you say you rejected the sort of extremism that has brought us to the sort of violent acts happening today?

None of them were extremist ideas. This was never a point of discussion between me and anyone. My differences with them had to do with my rejection of the idea that the group should become a political party, as my vision was that its role should be preaching and education. They insisted on turning it a party, however.

In your view, what is the solution to patch things up and avoid violence and terrorism?

The solution is that the media oppression and the hatred it transmits among Egyptians must end. Likewise, the security oppression must stop and the freedoms and human rights that have been violated must be restored. Whoever uses violence must be held accountable in order for the country to rise up again.

The idea of reconciliation has been proposed by numerous figures, but it has not yet happened.

Reconciliation was one of the points in the roadmap that was not carried out and it will never be if the oppression and animosity continue as they are. For this, all Egyptians are paying the price.

Why have you not tried to make an effort to reach out to all sides in order to reach some sort of reconciliation?

I did do this; however, I was met with intransigence from both sides of the conflict.

The Strong Egypt Party has recently been experiencing a great number of defections within its ranks.

There have not been any defections; some of its members have left since some of them are aligned with the Brotherhood and others seek to antagonize the NSF. It is the party’s principle to reject polarization.

On Being A Journalist in Egypt

I wrote something last weekend for the LRB blog, about journalism in Egypt these days.  We had to cut some passages, for length, that I'm adding back here on the blog. 

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A campaign to show solidarity with jailed Al Jazeera English reporters and protest "the lack of freedom of speech in Egypt" Or, another instance of the vast Western media conspiracy against Egypt. 

I stumbled into journalism twelve years ago, at the dingy and convivial offices of the Cairo Times, a now defunct independent English language weekly whose Egyptian and foreign interns and journalists have gone on to report across the Middle East. I’ve worked as a reporter in Cairo ever since – as an editor at other local independent publications and as a correspondent for foreign media – and I’ve never known a worse time for journalists in Egypt than the present.

The trial began yesterday of three al-Jazeera journalists. On 2 February, the private satellite channel Tahrir TV broadcast a video filmed by the Egyptian security services of their arrest. Set to the soundtrack of the movie Thor: The Dark World, the video pans past the frightened face of the Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, and then over laptops, tripods and cameras in a room at the Marriot Hotel (the arrested men are known as the ‘Marriot Cell’ in the press here). To an ominous crescendo, it zooms in on cell phones, power cords, recording devices and notes on night stands. The off-camera policemen make Fahmy count out the $700 dollars in his wallet. Then they interrogate him and the Australian correspondent Peter Greste, badgering them for the names of colleagues and interviewees.

The al-Jazeera English crew was working in Egypt without official permits, after the authorities had shut down their offices. But the prosecutor filed much more serious charges against them: He claims they and 17 other journalists were part of a terrorist cell, intent on ruining Egypt’s image by broadcasting fabricated news. Al-Jazeera is reviled here, considered a mouthpiece of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood (to whom the Arabic channel is, indeed, overly sympathetic). There are no al-Jazeera journalists left at liberty in Egypt, yet again and again someone in a crowds points and yells ‘Jazeera!’ at a reporter whose look or questions they don’t like, leading to a mass beating and citizen’s arrest. At the end of January, someone on an Egyptian TV crew posted cell phone footage to YouTube in which, as they attempt to approach clashes between protesters an police, an officer can be heard saying: ‘Get out of here. Get out of here or I’ll say you’re Jazeera.’

The arrested journalists’ real crime was meeting with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the interim government has declared a terrorist organisation, and is intent on keeping incommunicado: Mohamed Morsi makes his court appearances in a soundproof glass box. Under Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood was legally banned, but it was OK to visit the group’s offices in central Cairo, a modest place where middle-aged men padded around in their socks and delivered stentorian soundbites about political oppression and the Islamic project. After pressure from the foreign press corps to clarify whether it is a crime to interview Brothers (if any avowed ones can be found), the State Information Service issued an ambiguous statement that, while not coming right out and criminalising contact with the Brotherhood, fell short of offering any guarantees that communication with the group would be viewed as innocent.

Tahrir TV was created three years ago, and its first broadcasts were from the square during the 18-day uprising, featuring young stars of the revolution. It was backed by Ibrahim Eissa, the former editor of the independent newspaper al-Dustour, who clashed publicly and loudly with the Mubarak regime. He was taken to court several times, for publishing reports on the Mubarak family’s corruption and on the president’s failing health. I remember him giving an electrifying, defiant speech to a roaring crowd at the Journalists’ Syndicate in Downtown Cairo in 2005, calling Mubarak a would-be pharaoh who had reduced Egypt to a comatose body on suspended animation. During Mubarak’s first trial, he gave detailed testimony of the violence against protesters, saying he saw special forces shoot and hit many of those in the crowd around him as they made their way to Tahrir Square.

Eissa sold Tahrir TV in 2011 to Islamist businessmen. It has since been acquired by another businessman, Suleiman Amer, and is now a conduit for security services leaks and a strident supporter of the military. Eissa meanwhile has spent the last six months inveighing against the Muslim Brotherhood. At his recent deposition in Mubarak’s retrial, he said that ‘Mubarak definitely didn’t order to shoot at protesters, because he is a patriotic president who wouldn’t do that.’

Since Morsi was ousted, the Egyptian media has given the impression that the Muslim Brotherhood is indistinguishable from al-Qaida, and that the revolution which the same channels celebrated three years ago was actually an Islamist, US-backed plot, in which the young revolutionaries were pawns at best and at worst foreign-funded conspirators.

Last August, the state newspaper al-Ahram ran a front-page story alleging that the former US ambassador Anne Patterson and Muslim Brotherhood leader Khairat El Shater had a plan to divide Egypt (‘with EU approval’). A TV presenter recently said that the peaceful Christian protesters run over by army vehicles in autumn 2011 were actually killed by Hamas. A guest on another show said the American are planning to assassinate General El Sisi. The presenter: ‘I won’t ask for your sources, but are you 100 per cent sure?’ Grave nods all around.

After the revolution, filul (‘remnants’) was a common insult for the hold-overs of the old regime. Today there is a TV channel called Filul, one of whose presenters, a belly-dancer known as Sama El Masry, first rose to notoriety by breaking a clay pot outside the American Embassy (the gesture demonstrates satisfaction at being rid of an unwelcome guest). She has also made a song insulting the Emir of Qatar’s wife and, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Mubarak’s laughing face, shook her breasts at a Mohammed El Baradei impersonator in a Grouch Marx mask.

On al-Faraeen, Tawfik Okasha, the glowering face of the counter-revolution, sits in front of a bank of television screens all tuned to a fluttering Egyptian flag, barking smears and threats and conspiracy theories. He recently announced there only two true revolutionaries in Egypt: himself and General al-Sisi.

Many journalists harboured a genuine and growing fear of the Muslim Brotherhood, which certainly was more interested in limiting that protecting freedom of expression. When Morsi was in power, sheikhs on Islamist channels issued nasty threats; Islamists held raucous sit-ins outside studios calling for the ‘purification’ of the media. The businessmen who opened TV stations and newspapers in the last decade did so largely to have a source of leverage with the regime; when they felt there was no room to manoeuvre with the Brotherhood, they launched an all-out war on them.

Now the Brotherhood has been routed; but almost all the public figures who denounced human rights abuses and attacks on freedom of expression under Islamist rule have fallen silent. Some have surely been demoralised by the propaganda, not to mention more practical forms of intimidation and censorship: when the newspaper El Watan ran a front-page story on Sisi’s personal fortune, the issue was stopped at the printer’s.

Many others have embraced the lure, and the safety, of speaking for power rather than to it. General El Tohamy, the director of military intelligence, reportedly gave a four-hour lecture on the ‘internal and external threats facing Egypt’ to a group of fifty media stars, telling them they were the ‘front line’ in the battle against the Brotherhood. Several months ago, a leaked video showed Sisi discussing with other officers how to persuade the ‘20 or 25 businessmen’ who own the country’s media to co-operate and report on the army in a favourable way. ‘It takes a long time before you’re able to affect and control the media,’ Sisi says. ‘We are working on this and we are achieving more positive results, but we have yet to achieve what we want.’

Much appears to have been achieved already. Take the case of Al Shorouq, a well-regarded newspaper that continues to print a significant number of critical view points. When the writer Bilal Fadl wrote a column gently questioning the complicity of the media establishment in the county’s 60 years of military rule, the paper chose not to print it, and it and the columnist parted ways. (The piece was later published by independent news site Mada Masr). 

Fadl had simply excerpted, from one of the famous journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heykal’s own books, an exchange he had with Field Marshall Montgomery, at the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s presidency, in which the British commander raised the question of the military’s unwarranted politicization. Montgomery criticized the decision to give Abdel Hakim Amer the title of Field Marshall, which is usually reserved for those who have won a significant military victory (General El Sisi was just elevated in the same way, with the same lack of battlefield qualifications). Amer would go on to oversee Egypt’s naksa, its disastrous route by the Israelis in the 1963 war -- which Egyptian radio would deny for days, broadcasting false reports. 

Fadl concluded: “The people have generally been fully appreciative of the Armed Forces thus far, but the military’s intervention in politics could deepen political rifts in society, freezing democratic development and returning Egypt back to repressive times; a move that is supported by state media, its resources and its intellectuals. […] I am left to conclude that Montgomery's fears have come true and that the officers’ intervention in politics has left Egypt defeated.”

Heykal, who is 91 today and still monopolizes headlines whenever he speaks, was a confidante and ghost-writer for Nasser. He remains a greatly respected eminence grise and a model for a generation of journalists who consider proximity to power an asset -- a perk of the profession -- rather than a contradiction and liability. This is the journalist seen as a sort of elevated court scribe, protecting and defining the national interest, explaining things to the ungovernable, unreliable -- they voted the Brotherhood into power after all -- benighted people. 

But the Egyptian media is largely not on the same page as the rest of the world. Foreign correspondents (and a few intrepid local bloggers and reporters) who can’t be blandished or coerced into adopting the local narrative are a source of perpetual rage. The authorities lament the international media’s bias, but can’t seem to stop arresting journalists and photographers, and fomenting public opinion against them -- outsourcing censorship to angry mobs -- and therefore inevitably adding to the country’s “image” problem.

Today there are only a few hold-outs: a handful of principled columnists and presenters; the satirist Bassem Youssef, who skewers his fawning colleagues as much as the military authorities; and new online sites, staffed by twentysomethings and unencumbered by investors, that operate on the vulnerable, digital edge of press freedom. Recently they managed to highlight the plight of thousands of Egyptians who have been arbitrarily arrested, detained without charge and tortured since the summer. One of them was a 19-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of being a Brotherhood protester (she was eight months pregnant and on her way to a doctor’s appointment, she says). A picture of her handcuffed to her hospital bed after giving birth finally led to her release.

When I worked at independent magazines under Mubarak, we faced something close to an advertising boycott. Our publisher occasionally had to field inquiries from state security. An issue with a provocative cover was ‘lost’ at the government-run printing house. But we weren’t too worried about being raided, about being arrested, about people turning on us in the street for being journalists. We feared the state, but even so we felt there were limits to its power and abuses. Now the repression seems unpredictable and boundless; and we fear the citizenry.

Female party head doubts Egypt path

Hala Shukrallah, the new leader of the Destour Party (and the first Coptic woman to head a political party in Egypt) gave AP a great quote on the path of the current regime:

"It is not only pulling us back to before Jan 25, (referring to the anti-Mubarak uprising) it also brings us back to Morsi's rule, when critics were described as infidels."

Update: she also gave an interview to Mada Masr, saying on the presidency: "We won't support someone representing a state institution and making use of its resources for his candidacy."

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The police and the people: one hand, for now

LUXOR, EGYPT - JULY 19, 2010: Egyptian police road check point, On July 19, 2010 Luxor, Egypt. Source: Shutterstock.

One of the main reasons many Egyptians are nostalgic about the Hosni Mubarak era is the absence of security. Or rather the false sense of it.

"The Interior Ministry never provided general security, just political security (i.e. crushing dissent and bullying the Muslim Brothers)," says a former member of Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party, who spoke on condition of anonymity and confessed to never quite understanding what gave the public the wrong impression. It was this sense of security that was overturned by the events following January 25, driven, the former NDP official sniffed, by “emboldened thugs” and the collective realization that one can drive in any direction one pleases on almost every road after the 2011 uprising.

Now, three years after the January 25 outburst of public fury they partly caused – which consumed much of their dignity, stations and vehicles, breached their prisons and relieved them of  their weapons – Egypt’s Interior Ministry is still struggling to get back on its own two feet and restore some of that longed-for political security with excessive force and arbitrary arrests, as always disregarding the risk of galvanizing more opposition. A practice justified by pointing at the recent bomb attacks on police installations.

There is, however, something new about the general attitude towards security forces. After all, they went from having to withdraw from the streets after failing to quell protests against Mubarak in 2011 to receiving shoulder rides and kisses for handing out water to anti-Morsi protesters rather than spraying them with it in 2013. The change in police activity and popularity here – as videos and reports of continued police abuses suggest – is not the fruit of quick and radical police reforms, but rather the result of the popular reconciliation with them and the military in the wake of their overthrow of the unpopular but elected president Mohamed Morsi. This would not have been possible if it weren’t for the incredibly effective “[image] polishing [media] campaign,” according to a grateful police general, who also asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

It was hard trying not to stare at the 15 bullet holes in the wall behind the general’s head, while he was talking about how life has improved for police officers after June 30.

He caught me looking and laughed.

“These things [he looked over his shoulder to wave off the plaster-oozing evidence of attacks on the police station] happen in the best of countries,” he said. What matters is that policemen can, once again, sport their white uniforms everywhere without fear of verbal or physical abuse and they can arrest people without need for reinforcements to overcome the families and neighbors of the arrested, who used to body-block their vans to help a loved one or an acquaintance in cuffs. This is progress, he announced contentedly.

Much of that progress, the general, who is also head of a major explosives department noted happily, is thanks the media’s reframing of the police’s mission as a war on terrorism rather than a war on activism and opposition to the deep-state. This coverage of the shadowy war has substantially increased public sympathy for security forces in the past few months. Having decided from the very beginning that the terrorist attacks were too many to count or investigate, most journalists and TV presenters chose to simply blame the Brothers, even though Ansar Beit al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for them. These anti-MB media rants are always more zealous after attacks like the one on the Mansoura Security Directorate . In fact, had the constitution not been passed yet, they would have probably turned the attack into another Vote Yes To Disappoint Terrorists commercial, complete with blood dripping from the MB’s four-finger Rabaa sign for symbolism.

When asked to comment further on the media’s enthusiasm for this topic, the general  awkwardly admitted that they do exaggerate slightly, but they have good intentions. “It is not to spread panic in society, but respect (for policemen),” he added paternally.

While the uptick in attacks in Sinai seems more plausible given the region’s lawlessness, and drug, weapons and human trafficking trade, the reports coming out of the rest of the country are unreasonably exaggerated -- so much so that most of the police officers I have spoken to laughed when they heard the numbers and one asked if it included the tumultuous First Intermediate period of Ancient Egypt.

The few numbers reported in national and independent newspapers so far are 300 attacks in Sinai alone and a total of 1072 incidents of political violence, according to Democracy Index’s November report (that is, in four months here, more than double the total number of attacks in Iraq in the two years following the US invasion).

It is important to note that Democracy Index also supported the fantastical tales of 30 million protesters marching against Morsi in July and that newspapers used its figures to figuratively pat the state's shoulder, despite the fact that the report says that less than one-tenth of these attacks targeted state institutions.

FROM POLICE VS PEOPLE TO ‘RESIDENTS’ VS PEOPLE

According to the report, 190 of these acts of “political violence and terrorism” are clashes between protesters and security forces – 101 of which are clashes with plain clothed men dubbed “residents,” which, according to another former NDP MP, is code for baltageya (hired thugs) – which the MOI now uses to disperse protests to save the police force the effort and the damaging footage bound to emerge. Also, because there is the added advantage that no one seems to have qualms about a group of presumed civilians shooting one another, so long as the ones left bleeding are bearded. Sixty-two incidents are classified as protest that were dispersed by said residents; 16 attacks by Brothers on property, journalists and regular citizens; four attacks by citizens on MB property; 64 student clashes in universities and 32 clashes between students, security forces and the so-called residents. This leaves 610 incidents completely unaccounted for.

The real number of terrorist attacks, the head of the explosives department said casually, is around 100. Most probably. They, too, are not really keeping track. “(The count) is relative,” he said, airily.

That one-hundred-something, he added, includes all failed and successful attacks on police officers, soldiers, stations, checkpoints and churches, etc, that happened from July 3 to December nationwide. Yet Giza’s police department, for example, used to get an average of ten to twenty car bomb reports a week and about 200 reports of suspicious objects per month from mid-August to November.

“There is like a one in fifty chance the report is legitimate and it’s an explosive device...But just imagine that: an actual explosive device that can explode and kill people,” he said, as if shocked by the mere prospect of something blowing up in the middle of an allegedly merciless war.

Although driving for two hours with an explosives detection team for nothing is a pain, the general admitted, the police has and will continue to kindly refrain from legally pursuing citizens who make false reports, provided they are related to terrorism, to maintain the newly built bridges with the public. There is no point in arresting a housewife or shopkeeper wary of a dusty car parked in front of their property, when you can have a dog sniff it and save the day. This combined with the fact that the police seem to have taken the advice of national radio talk shows and now do ask nicely for one’s driver’s license in checkpoints has more than redeemed their image in the eyes of many, namely taxi drivers.

Meanwhile in Sinai, little to no news comes out, except for the rare Western report, and the army's daily self-congratulatory "(Insert any number) dangerous takfiri(s) down" reports and obituaries. This intense focus on defused terror threats stands in stark contrast to the reluctance to or disinterest in discussing the casualties and exact details of the “war on terrorism.” However, oddly enough, many are not denying the reported loss of civilian life and property due to the  military’s campaign in Sinai in comparison to the disturbingly sincere denial of the violence the Raba’a el-Adawiya sit-in’s dispersal, which the majority of the police officers I spoke to exhibit. To them, only 43 people died on August 14. And they were all officers, regardless of what the official health ministry’s 627-dead report says.

There are two main approaches to justify the casualties of the military’s campaign in Sinai. The first argues that the Egyptian army is doing what the US army did to Afghanistan in the American war on terror: Following an understandably violent, but ineffective strategy. Supporters of this approach blame the Sinai mess on the hobbling of Egypt’s hated State Security, which they say means there is little intelligence for the military to use to narrow down their targets, and so it has to go in blind. In order to improve the situation in Sinai, the minister, they suggest, should man up and empower National Security – which former interior minister Mansour el-Essawy created to replace State Security – so it can do what its predecessor has always done well: oppress the bearded. The second approach says to shush.

“The army is doing a good job and this is good practice,” proclaimed one of the interior minister’s aides. “They haven’t fought since 1973, this is very good,” he added, with a thumbs up.

Another gain from the June 30 protests and its subsequent polishing campaign, according to a Giza police colonel, was the end of  the “broken record” of complaints about police abuses of human rights, which briefly fooled people into thinking the police needed reform. “All that 'police are the tool of oppression' talk really got old,” he muttered.

The colonel’s reading of a leading cause of the 2011 uprising is unsurprisingly common inside the ministry. So is his ill-concealed contempt for the society that gave the Muslim Brotherhood a chance to rule, having failed or not even bothered to grasp the wisdom behind the ministry’s long history of persecuting it.

 

CAIRO - SEP 05: Remains of a big local store at Mostafa Nahas st and neighbors cars after explosion that was targeting the convoy of the Egypt's Interior Minister in Cairo, Egypt on September 05, 2013. Source: Shutterstock.

GRUDGINGLY BACK TO SCHOOL

In addition to pushing the subject of radical police reforms (a revolutionary demand) to the bottom of the list of things that can be discussed when (and if) the war ends, the media have also helped shove the fed-up security forces back to direct confrontation with protesters, namely student protesters. Ever since college campuses nationwide have become the center of MB protests, a debate within and outside the ministry has raged over whether or not the police should ignore another revolutionary demand (that they stay off campuses). The debate further exemplifies the police’s disdain for the civilian inability to appreciate their heavy-handedness.

“If Cairo University bursts in flames right now, I will not budge,” vowed the red-faced colonel, who still remembers the days when faculty members filed a lawsuit for the removal of security forces from campuses for freedoms and other nonsense, he said mimicking their voice childishly.

“The MOI is not (their) handmaiden, or anybody else’s for your information,” the colonel snapped, wagging a finger. “(Universities) kicked us out when we took care of things, so don’t come running back now. We don’t from and go as you please.” Which is why the police now require a phone call by the head of a university requesting their services before they make an appearance at or near the gates, where they obligingly position their weapons between the bars to shoot bullets and tear gas canisters at the protesting, rock-throwing students. Although they often wander further in and kill or seriously wound someone.

A NEW FRIENDSHIP

To many officers, the most significant change since 2011 in the ministry – besides the long-awaited pay raise, which was presumably granted to bring back absent officers who didn’t want to face angry Egyptians for less than 2,000 pounds a month – has more to do with the army and how the MB helped them get over their old rivalry with the Interior.

“There is used to be coldness between us,” said a young detective lieutenant. “We thought we were better than them and they thought they were better than us. But after Morsi, we started talking... And we worked on the street shoulder to shoulder, protected each other and broke bread together. We are one now,” he added, earnestly. This seems to corroborate a Reuters’ report about how mid-ranking police officers actively sought out and met their military colleagues to win them over and explain why their arch-enemy, the MB, should be a common enemy.

Some of the friction between the two is believed to have been born from police resentment of the additional financial and social privileges their army colleagues received, which should have been reduced by the pay raise, according to another ex-NDP MP.

However, some things don’t change – like the officers' respect for Mubarak's infamous former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, which they justify with tough-dad analogies and by citing his sagaciously heavy hand with Islamists and the creation of fancy sports clubs and hospitals for the force in his time. That deference to el-Adly has been passed down to the recently-graduated generation of officers, who never even worked under him and believe the rumor that the ministry’s budget allocated 6,000 pounds a month for their lowest-ranking officers (the lieutenants), when they were in fact only getting a meager 750 pounds. “[El-Adly] even used to tell officers who complained about their salaries that it was just their ‘pocket money'… you take your actual salary from the citizen,’” said the ex-NDP MP, chuckling at al-Adly’s (and her own) candour.

But despite the pay raise and the promise of more to come, lower level officers are unlikely to attain much social or personal gain in the coming years. A first lieutenant's salary is still, and will probably continue to be, not enough to afford him a life where he can sit in cafes often, shop or marry comfortably without the help of his father. “I have been working for three years now and I still have to take money from my parents,” a young detective said, laughing sheepishly. "Better than taking it from the citizen, right?"

The detective went on to say that if we ignore the fact that the force is underpaid, overworked, under-appreciated and under-equipped, it is one of the best in the world for it “has nothing, but does everything,” according to the impressed, and overtly envious, Western envoys his superiors told him about. “They [the Western envoys] always ask them: ‘How do you do this?’” he said with satisfaction.

Also happy with June 30 are the  feloul (remnants of the Mubarak regime) who are suddenly also proud of their label, the ex-NDP MP said.“You know, when I walk into a conference or meeting, the first thing I say is I am feloul. We all do. The best minister in the cabinet now is feloul,” she said, patting her ironed-stiff black hair before adding that there was and still is nothing wrong with supporting Mubarak’s dictatorship or the “inheritance project” [i.e the plan to pass down the presidency to his son, Gamal] since at least, she argued with a sneer, it would have yielded civilian rule – “the unlikeliest form of governance in Egypt now.”

Links 27 January - 17 February 2014

From the comic strip Luna of Cairo - see link below. 

Tunisia’s new constitution: progress and challenges to come | openDemocracy
Zaid al-Ali and Donia Ben RomdhaneConvince, Coerce, or Compromise? Ennahda’s Approach to Tunisia’s Constitution | Brookings Institution
Monica Marks on Ennahda's internal politics.What was the thinking behind Libya’s transition? | THE DAILY STAR
Pete Cole urges patience.The Strategy of Egypt's Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis
Long War Journal's David BarnettThe Egypt Effect: Sharpened Tensions, Reshuffled Alliances - Carnegie
Regional impact of July 3.Qatar’s leadership transition: like father, like son | ECFR
Andrew Hammond argues Qatar as Ikhwanophile as ever.An account of torture from Wadi al-Natrun prison | Mada MasrCairobserver — Review: Ahdaf Soueif's CairoCairobserver — Second Print Edition of CairobserverLuna of Cairo by Luna and Leela Corman - Narratively
Cute comic on life of foreign belly dancer in Cairo.(No) Dialogue in Bahrain | MERIPEgypt blames Muslim Brotherhood for 'expected' electricity crisis
But of course.Are protesters overthrowing a brutal despot, or merely bad losers at the polls? - The Independent
Patrick Cockburn on Egypt, Thailand, Ukraine, Turkey.Sabbahi calls for candidate debate with El-Sisi ahead of Egypt's presidential poll - Ahram OnlineMorocco police block launch of rapper's new albumThe Resurgence of Militant Islamists in Egypt | Middle East Institute
Khalil EnaniPolitical Scientists Are Targets in Egypt’s Crackdown on Islamists
On the ripples of concern raised by the Emad Shahin caseNew rail freight link could become 'Israel’s Suez Canal’ - Haaretz
Huge mistake re: MB, but interestingLibyan army commander calls for parliament to be suspended | Reuters
He's no Sisi - http://youtu.be/R5uXd3oGDTw"Pourquoi je veux mourir en Syrie" : confession d'un djihadiste français - France 24Security Forces in Egypt Detain Employee of American Embassy
For setting up meetings b/w Embassy and MB. Egyptian government now retroactively criminalizing all contact with the Brothers?Pharaohs, Caliphs and Field Marshals - NYTimes.com
Powerful op-ed by Bahaeddin Hassan.Egypt Detains a U.S. Embassy Employee - NYTimes.com
For talking to MB.Hazem Kandil · Sisi’s Turn: What does Sisi want? · LRB
Scathing on the MB, problematic in many places.L’empire DRS contre-attaque.
Post on political machinations in Algeria.Meet Chechclearr, the Web-savvy foreign Islamic militant in Syria - Los Angeles TimesCommentary: No Iran Deal? No Problem | The National InterestSudan, Egypt officers collude in migrant abuse: rights groupBritish company negotiates exporting gas from Israel to Egypt
Possible that Egypt will become consumer and exporter of Israeli gas...The Quest for Cultural Authenticity and the Politics of Identity - LSE
Lecture by Sami ZubeidaMassacres in Egypt Report - HRMThe Brotherhood Withdraws Into Itself
Nathan BrownLetter from the wife of a detainee: A visit to prison - Daily News EgyptTurkish police caught in middle of war between PM and ex-ally | The Guardian
Fascinating on Gulen network penetration.From nationalism to resistance and back again | Mada Masr
Lovely bit of musical history by Sarah CarrThe motorbike girl gangs of MoroccoThe Crooks Return to Cairo
On the "reconciliation" deals in the works with Mubarak-era businessmenA murder mystery set in post-Saddam Baghdad is as good as it is daring - Reviews - Books - The Independent
A review of Elliot Colla's Baghdad Central, which is in my daunting to-read stackمفاجأة | وقف طبع جريدة الوطن بسبب تقرير «ثروة السيسي» المقدرة بـ 30مليون جنيه
Issue of El Watan newspaper banned after it reports Sisi's personal fortune is $4 millionWho’s afraid of a binational state? - Haaretz
Gideon Levy makes the obvious argument: it's already one state.Egypt forecasts gas shortage next fiscal year | Reuters
And BG just declared Force Majeure...Egypt's quick-fix minimum wage hike fails to calm workers | ReutersEgypt summons Qatar's charge d'affaires over Egyptian cleric | Reuters
Qaradawy.Mr Blair goes to Cairo
Fuck you Blair. Bet you miss your vacations with Mubarak.The Political Marshal of Egypt | Mada Masr
Belal Fadl on Nasser, Amer, Montgomery, Heikal and of course Sisi.State security charges film-maker with spreading ‘false news’ to foreign countries
Egyptian film-maker detained for having footage of Rabba dispersal, using term "coup"In Egypt, just speaking to Brotherhood is a risk for foreign reporters
Journalists in Egypt face growing threatsThe Collapse of the Phrase ‘Constitutional Pragmatism’
Amr HamzawyWhat are the legal steps before Sisi's candidacy? | Mada MasrThe Future That We do not want to see in #Egypt
What is wrong w/ these people?Arabic Erotica
Scholarly blog on "Sex and Erotology in Mediaeval Arabic Literature"Syria’s Polio Epidemic: The Suppressed Truth by Annie Sparrow | The New York Review of BooksIs it time for the west to recognise Cyrenaica? | Nick Butler
Dangerous and misguided piece.Syria Plea: ‘We Are Eating Cat and Donkey Meat, Have Mercy on Us’
Heartbreaking reporting from Yarmouk.The sad story of Amr Hamzawy and Emad Shahin
Nathan BrownPresidential Elections: The Key Step in Egypt’s Roadmap [Part I]
Nader Bakkar: Sisi running is "akin to gambling" - is that a Salafi diss?Influential cleric urges Saudis to stop backing Egypt's dominant military
Qaradawi sowing fitna in Saudi, says false flag ops in Cairo.Letter to Obama From American Detained in Egypt - NYTimes.com
Gut-wrenching.English translation of new Tunisian constitutionBBC News - Egypt Air Force helicopter 'downing' a major escalation
New manpad threatRefashioning Morocco’s Loyalist Party - Sada
On the PAM.Egypt, reneging on roadmap, to start elections with presidential vote
So long, July roadmap.Latest copy of Cairobserver
[PDF]On Moroccan Hill, Villagers Make Stand Against a Mine - NYTimes.comLes enfants fauchés par la révolution égyptienne - Libération
Portraits of the parents of 2011 "martyrs".

In Translation: Why don't activists have armed forces?

Last month, as the hit documentary film The Square hit silver screens, there were several reviews that used its heart-wrenching footage of Egypt’s revolutionaries to address the failings of the mostly young protest movement. Some American commentators like Eric Trager (in the New Republic) and Max Fischer in the Washington Post argued that the protestors were “incoherent”, that they “practically never leave Tahrir Square”, naively “too principled for politics”, that they “so alienated their fellow Egyptians as to actually engender sympathy for security forces” to take The Square’s director, Jehane Noujaim, to task for “never really addressing the many errors of the liberal protest movement.” Similar sentiment was echoed elsewhere, most recently (and prominently) by the influential New York Times foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen, who wrote in a piece generally despairing of the state of Egypt,

There is plenty of blame to go around — for Obama, for the hapless Morsi, for the paranoid power-grabbing Muslim Brotherhood, for the controlling military. But above all I blame the squabbling Egyptian liberals who fought for Mubarak’s ouster but did not give democracy a chance.

In our view, these observers of the situation in Egypt compound mistake after mistake, in both their analysis and their taxonomy. Reducing the protest movement of 2011 to an ineffectual, middle class, left-wing group people detached from more profound realities of a poor country is not just unfair, it is simply inaccurate. Like so many observers of the “Arab Spring”, they confuse the media depiction of the protestors with their complex, at times surprising, reality. They also repeatedly make the mistake of labeling those people were neither members of Mubaraks’ regime nor Islamists as “liberals”, rendering the word meaningless in a country where that group actually includes many illiberal leftists, nationalists, progressives, and, yes, conservatives. But much more fundamentally, their decision to appropriate blame at the weakest component of Egypt’s polity (rather than the two strongest actors on the scene, the Muslim Brotherhood and the military and its backers in the business elite) appears not just misguided, but grotesque. This is not to say that these “liberals” did not make mistakes – no one has escaped unscathed from Egypt’s tragedy. But these are arguments are so specious (yet so widely propagated, most often by Western liberals – a category of people that itself hasn’t exactly shone in the last decade or two) it as if these commentators come from another reality.

This why the text below, by noted Egyptian activist and writer Amr Ezzat, packs such a punch. His indignation is fully understandable (even if he is somewhat unfair towards Trager, whose article does contain some worthy insights) and it amounts to a powerful rebuttal of the simply bizarre current trend of assigning blame on a generation of Egyptians that, tentatively but bravely, dared to imagine that their country could be different.

Many thanks to Industry Arabic for translating the article below (please use their services to make it possible for them to continue providing us with content only available in Arabic!), and KK for suggesting it to us.

Why Don’t Activists Have Armed Forces?

By Amr Ezzat, al-Masri al-Youm, 6 February 2014

There are questions that everyone knows need no answer – questions like: “How much of my life before you is gone and passed, my love” or “What love did you come to talk about”[1] Linguistically, these are not interrogatory questions, and I believe that, grammatically, it is better not to put a question mark after them. These are rhetorical questions, the goal of which is to express emotions, like astonishment or condemnation. Any attempt to answer this type of question is an exercise in futility, just like trying to answer the question “Why didn’t the activists or the revolutionaries provide alternatives and political programs for governing instead of just protesting?”

This last question is one of the frequently asked questions repeated by talk show philosophers and establishment experts whenever they have extra time. Whenever it gets a little tricky to justify the current insanity, they alleviate it by repeating words that, in reality, have no meaning. Lately, however, some supposedly notable researchers have joined them. Not only have these researchers joined them in repeating this rhetorical question in different ways but also, in an impressive gesture, they have answered it.

In mentioning these researchers, I mean specifically Eric Trager, a researcher at the Washington Institute whom some find notable, and his article that comments on the documentary The Square. In this article, he volunteers ridiculous answers such as:

“It’s hardly surprising that the activists are so routinely and self-destructively caught by surprise: They practically never leave Tahrir Square. They don’t venture into the poorer neighborhoods of Cairo. They don’t speak with the citizens in the Nile Delta or Upper Egypt.”
“The activists never tried to form their own party.”
“The activists don’t have any clear ideology, let alone a policy platform, around which they could mobilize anyone beyond their own comrades.  They constantly intone, ‘bread, freedom, social justice and dignity’ but don’t give even a moment’s thought to what this slogan might actually mean in practice. Yet perhaps more than anything, the activists’ refusal to form a party is a consequence of how they see themselves: as simply too principled for politics.”

These ridiculous answers that are repeated in ridiculous television programs, ridiculous articles, and in ridiculous research, are entirely consistent with the ridiculous way that this question is formulated. There is a big difference between asking a rhetorical question that expresses distorted emotions towards media and cinematic images of young people demonstrating and revolting, and a serious question that seeks to get close to the problem and examine it. When one begins to seriously examine the issue, talking about “activists,” “protestors,” or “revolutionaries” as a single group becomes a kind of inability to see, which doesn’t deserve to be discussed.

The media or cinematic image taken at the moment of a mass protest or at the moment of clashes with the police forces, or clashes between different crowds, is the peak moment expressing the strength of the crowd or the conflict between the crowd and the police, or two opposing crowds. However, away from this moment of peak media interest, an interested observer – not necessarily a notable researcher – can see and follow thousands of events related to establishing parties, movements, fronts, ties, alliances, work groups, and different specialized initiatives to reform the state’s apparatus, policies and laws.

A close observer can see the faces of these “protestors,” “revolutionaries,” or “activists” when they are speaking in the name of the high committees of parties, alliances, fronts and the campaigns of presidential candidates or electoral blocs, or talking about technical details regarding the structure of the police apparatus or the amendment of laws that restrict freedoms. Such an observer could see them suggesting alternatives to reform unions, the system of local governance, religious institutions or the health, environmental, and urban systems, or even dealing with the status of the military institution and its powers. This observer could see the cultural or artistic movements that went to neighborhoods and governorates and organized cultural and artistic forums, campaigns, and events.

Of course, these organizational forms, initiatives, ideas, working groups, and events can be criticized, and one can measure the degree of their success and political effectiveness in facing the social and cultural situation, with its conservative legacies from which the traditional statist and Islamist forces benefit. It does not appear to be easy for liberal or democratic ideas and practices to challenge these legacies and win quickly.

However, such criticism is different from being stuck in front of the most attractive media images of a moment of protest, or being swept away by a film that shows a group of protestors and activists that participate in nothing but protest throughout the film. It is different from failing to notice that those who do nothing but protest always move in parallel with the activity of organized political groups that try to coordinate or express the movement of the street, like the “Revolution Youth Coalition” in 2011 or the “Salvation Front” in 2012 and 2013, or failing to notice the rally to protest under the banners of these fronts’ various parties, most of which are new parties established with the participation of a large number of the young “protestors/revolutionaries/activists.”

Of course, an interested observer – who does not have to be a researcher – could notice that, while there were protestors in the street, there were also “young people,” “protestors,” and “revolutionaries,” on the lists of the “Egyptian Bloc” and the “Revolution Continues” in the parliamentary elections. Of course, however, there was no party called the “Activist” party, nor was there an electoral alliance for the “Revolutionaries” – even if there was the “Revolution Continues Alliance” – because these people are not protestors, activists, and revolutionaries who live in Tahrir Square 24 hours a day and don’t know anything about Upper Egypt, the Delta, and the poorer neighborhoods, as Trager’s ridiculous words suggest.

Outside of the film The Square, and outside of peak moments on the screens, there are less attractive and more effective images. Everyone knows about these images but they don’t like to ask about them, because asking serious questions about their details is certainly more difficult than asking the stupid question, “Why don’t activists provide any alternative other than protesting?”

The serious researcher or the interested citizen will find that, usually, the real question revolves around the “crisis of non-Islamist forces that don’t want to become the lapdog of the military institution or of the network of old forces.” They will find complicated questions on problems and the obstacles to democratic political organizing among non-Islamist activists.

For example, we can talk about the way many rushed to organize in groups that, in reality, are not brought together by a coherent liberal, leftist, or nationalist inclination, even if this inclination is somewhat present among the leadership of these groups and in their senior cadres. However, in reality, the thing that pushed people into these organizational groups was a desire to participate in politics for the first time, a desire to experiment. Thus, these are essentially primitive forms of organization that interested citizens rushed to participate in. Some of these people are interested in “the revolution’s goals” or “democracy,” and within these groups there is discussion over details that have become difficult to agree on, and which need more time. However, there is one issue that will not wait: how to deal with the “Islamist forces,” which enjoy a strong network of support that can be immediately put to use in any electoral field.

Many of those who were interested and excited found that difficult tasks and a long road await any democratic current in a complicated social context rocked by moments of cultural, religious, and political confusion, at a time in which it enters power struggles that demand a decision now. That is to say nothing, of course, of the paranoid citizens who are not excited about revolution or democracy, and who hate revolutionary or political movement in general because, to them, these struggles appear frightening and they believe that they will end in the victory of the authoritarian Islamist currents.

Many who are now being blamed because they are “activists who didn’t provide alternatives” fought battles to provide an alternative, whether organizational or in the form of ideas or initiatives. They did so to provide alternatives to the old faces in the political world and in civil society. Most of them are people who are interested and excited, who wanted to fight the battle until the end, and still do.

But some who were interested became tired and frustrated, and joined the ranks of the paranoid haters, deciding that the decisive “force of the military” is the only power able to contain Islamist authoritarianism.

Those people, and the writers, experts, and talk show philosophers who represent their views – to say nothing of Eric Trager – express a distorted vision of contempt for the “democratic currents’” gamble, through ignorance, and the complete ignorance or denial of any effort in this direction, as though they themselves should not be participating in these efforts.

At the same time, they are celebrating the leader of the military as sole presidential candidate, when he has not said one word about politics, alternatives, and programs – unless words like “the people will wake up early and we will all share the food” are considered serious talk.

Serious talk is the fact that all of those frustrated people surrendered completely to the failure to enter the political gamble, the revolutionary gamble, and the gamble to demand freedoms and human rights. They think that serious talk has no relationship to programs or alternatives. Instead, what is serious is the force that enables them to stop the Islamists’ authoritarian plan of “empowerment,” even if that is accomplished by empowering a different authoritarianism.

Then, it seems like they will ask a more honest rhetorical question: “Why weren’t those who were working for democracy from the beginning of the revolution and before generals in the military like Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, so that they could defeat the Brotherhood by themselves, without all this effort?"

This is another stupid question, but it is honest and very real. Answering it is simple and does not take much discussion. It needs courage to recognize that we wasted our time talking about politics and democracy and we must look at the past three years and sing together for the military and the general without waiting for answers: “How much of my life before you is gone!”

Well-known lyrics from Umm Kulthoum songs.  ↩

Podcast #45: Underdogs

Arabist podcast hosts Ursula Lindsey and Ashraf Khalil talk to Khaled Dawoud, a prominent Egyptian reporter and activist. Dawoud campaigned to remove the Muslim Brotherhood from power in 2013 but resigned as spokesman for the National Salvation Front, a secular political coalition, in protest over the killing of Islamist demonstrators on August 14. Dawoud has been attacked from all sides of the political spectrum as he continues to argue for a poliitically negotiated solution rather than the ongoing cycle of violence and repression. He looks back on his last three years of activism; the role of the revolutionary; the secular movement and whether, in ousting the Brotherhood, it became the pawn of the former regime and the military.

Links:


Mohamed Morsi's November 2012 constitutional declaration - link
Family of Al-Hosseini Abu Deif alleges he was assassinated - link
National Salvation Front Statement on August 14, 2013: "Today Egypt holds its head high..." - link
Constitution Party's Khaled Dawoud Stabbed by Pro-Morsi Supporters - link

Pharaohs, Caliphs and Field Marshals

Eminent human rights activist Bahay eldine Hassan in the pages of the New York Times: 

Egypt has never ceased being a police state. Hazem el-Beblawi, the interim prime minister, says it “is run by the security bodies,” which control the presidency, cabinet, media and judiciary. Interrogations and court sessions take place in prisons, security directorates or police compounds. Eyewitnesses are no longer required to identify defendants. Warrants are issued by prosecutors after arrests. Brotherhood members are arrested based on their ranks in the organization rather than their involvement in crimes. When detainees ask to see a warrant, they may be hit over the head with the butt of a gun, as in the case of a leftist blogger, Alaa Abd El Fattah, and his wife, Manal. When a prominent international judge reviewed Manal’s account of the arrest, he described it as reminiscent of the days of apartheid in South Africa.

 

In the midst of its clampdown on the Brotherhood, the security apparatus shifted its focus and began targeting non-Islamist youth activists, under the same pretext of “fighting terrorism.” At the end of January, the Justice Ministry established special courts to accelerate trials for “suspected terrorists”; peaceful demonstrators, too, are referred to these courts.

Tarek Hussain, 20, was convicted last year of attacking the Brotherhood’s headquarters. Last month he was among dozens of young non-Islamist activists arrested as they demonstrated on the anniversary of the revolution. All were prosecuted as members of the Brotherhood.

Sayed Weza, 18, a member of the liberal April 6 movement, also took part in these demonstrations and was killed. His last Facebook post said, “Please tell the coming generation that we loved our country!”

 

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On the Cairo Book Fair

Carriers can help avid book-buyers at the fair

I wrote something for BookForum on the recently held Cairo International Book Fair -- on what books were selling well (crime thrillers and an Arabic translation of Gustave Le Bon's 1895 Psychology of Crowds among others) and what kind of talks were being given by the country's cultural establishment (I missed one entitled "The Deep State and How It Protected Egypt's Identity Under Brotherhood Rule"). 

 

The book signing of rapper Zap Tharwat

On our way to the area housing publishers from other Arab countries, a crowd of young people flows past us, emitting a collective high-pitched fluttering sigh of excitement. A girl in a hot pink hijab and matching lipstick tells me that there’s a book signing by rapper Zap Tharwat. Later, I find some of his songs online, a mixture of the genre’s required bragging with the social awareness that many of the new “revolutionary” artists exhibit—he describes himself as “king of the oppressed.”

Saudi Arabia has its own hangar, a huge expanse of beige carpeting and identical stalls put up by the kingdom’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs. The vast majority of the books on offer are on religious topics, and they all look similar, thick tomes with titles in intricate gilded calligraphy. Young men in sandals, socks, short pants, and long beards—the outfit of the fundamentalist—earnestly peruse the books. Giggling teenage girls take group photos in front of large pictures of the Kaaba.

Across the way, at the stall of the Lebanese publisher Dar El Saqi, Issam Abu Hamden is promoting Solo, by the Saudi novelist Nour Abdul Majid, which is set in Cairo and chronicles the affair between a doorman and the wife of one of the residents of his building. He also has an Arabic edition of a book by the Lebanese feminist and poet Joumana Haddad, Superman is an Arab, a critique of Middle East machismo. Haddad likes to provoke, and just for good measure there is a special introduction of the Arabic addition entitled, “Why I’m an Atheist.”

 

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A visit to prison

The testimony of the wife of Khaled ElSayed, a political activist who helped plan the protests on January 25, 2011 and was arrested on January 25, 2014. Read the whole thing. 

And I was searched again – the same humiliating search. Then I saw Khaled, and I wish I hadn’t. He looked tired and could not talk. He did not utter a single word.

I asked him, “Did they do anything to you? Do you want to complain of something?”

He did not reply.

I asked him. “Do you need anything? Do you want me to bring you anything?”

Again he did not reply.

The look in his eyes made me feel that he had been through a terrible ordeal in the past 48 hours. I could not see any signs of beatings or obvious injuries in his face, but his condition made me feel sure he had been subjected to pressure and violations.

The officer said, “That is enough. Goodbye.”

I had hardly been there for two minutes. I looked into the bag where I had put his food. Everything was open and torn apart and could not be eaten.On my way out I heard a wife of one of the criminal detainees say, “I have never seen such a crowded day. It is like three quarters of Egypt are in prison!”

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