Issandr El Amrani's Blog, page 8

The Crooks Return to Cairo

Bel Trew and Osama Diab, writing for FP on the potential exoneration of former spook, Sinai magnate and Mubarak moneyman Hussein Salem:

But for the first time since Mubarak was toppled, Salem's fortunes -- and that of other Mubarak-era businessmen -- may be shifting for the better. Since Egypt's generals ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last July, Salem said he has been ecstatic and is planning his return to Cairo, his lawyer Tarek Abdel-Aziz told FP. The billionaire Mubarak confidant phoned in to a popular television program in January to offer a deal to the new military-backed government: Cancel my convictions and I'll give Egypt millions.

Egyptian officials publicly welcomed the offer.

"Mr. Hussein Salem and other noble businessmen ... your initiative is really appreciated," said Hany Salah, a cabinet spokesman, during the phone-in on local channel CBC. "Anyone who proposes a noble and good offer, then the least we can do is listen to him for the best of our beloved country."

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Tourab Amsheer | The Windy Month

At the blog Not Quite Moi, alibey writes a poignant portrait of an aging Egyptian writer:

to get to Tahrir he has to pass through a hole in a concrete wall erected by the army to stem the tides of demonstrations but the scribe must get to Tahrir Square, as the world knows it, but to him it is still and will always be Midan Ismail, not that monstrosity with the red granite monolith, thankfully now long removed, yes Midan Ismail, ever so elegant it was, Ismail the rightful name of Midan el Tahrir before it was taken over and renamed by a fraud if ever there was one

sad but the scribe has spent that last few decades since his one glorious moment, which he no longer remembers except vaguely, something to do with a reworked version of the story of Keiss and Laila, but he has forgotten writing it, he has even forgotten where it is in his library, his own book, and so wanders about his large mother’s apartment in Garden City looking for something but does not realize it’s the book he once wrote

and so he goes on, sleeping in the very bed his mother died in, looking out the same balcony window (which she referred to as the balkone, in that charmingly old-fashioned Ottoman way of hers), where she saw him carted off to prison in ’67 by Nasser’s goons, because he dared to say that something which he can’t remember now in his favorite beer parlor and the Secret Police overheard it

but all that was long ago and now he mostly wakes up at 4am and shuffles between his various fridges, obsessed with moving unneeded kilos of once fresh spinach, still with dirty roots, and wrapped securely in plastic bags, from one fridge to the another, not to mention all his other foods, which he boils regularly late at night, and which have been so long in the fridges that they are quite difficult to identify

and now a soldier lets him through the hole in the wall and now he is walking to Tahrir in order to get to Bab el Louk and sit down in Café El Horreya as he has always done yes this is his custom

he tried recently, always trying, helpless, to make sense of the animated mural of aegyptianess before him, the roving bands of thugs, the prostitution and drug selling in tahrir, the boys who attacked him in front of the same French Lyçée where he studied long ago

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The life of a Muslim sister

A woman looks at a graffiti of a quote from the Quran, Tahrir Square, November 2011. Photo by Issandr El Amrani.

Nadia is a former Muslim Sister with a gummy smile. She has run out of reasons to show it after the dispersal of the Rabaa al-Adaweya sit-in, which took the lives of 63 of her friends and acquaintances and a part of her that she can only describe by grabbing the air, her head or her chest.

Although she often finds herself in a depressive trance – remembering the overly-friendly girl she befriended during the sit-in who gave her a necklace as she had requested a few days before the dispersal, and how Asmaa el-Beltagy had promised to tell her an exciting secret upon her return to Rabaa – Nadia tries and likes to think that she derives strength from the bloodshed. “The sound of gunshots doesn’t frighten me,” she said, more to herself. This enables her to join the regular student protesters clashes with security forces at Al Azhar University, something many of her friends and relatives can’t do. “They would freak out at the sound of fireworks or any loud noise... and drive around all of Nasr City just to avoid Rabaa,” she added, before admitting that she too has only been there twice since the dispersal and had failed not to sob in front of the Central Security Forces (CSF, the riot-control police) leaning against their black vans outside the mosque on both occasions. But, to be fair, one of the outbursts was aided by a CSF van that followed her home (which is right down the street), matching her pace and discussing her mother on the way, to the great amusement of onlookers.  

Although she frequently gets labelled a Muslim Sister (and suffers for it), Nadia was among those mostly young men and women who left/were kicked out of the Brotherhood shortly after the 2011 uprising for objecting to what they saw as the leadership's deafness to criticism, political opportunism and betrayal of revolutionary goals in alliance with the SCAF.

That batch, she says, is now divided into two camps. The first camp, to which she belongs, that has seemingly and temporarily returned to the MB out of solidarity and sense of obligation. Others remain resolutely separate. Those who have returned are not always fully accepted and often face accusations of betrayal and abuse, especially if they voice any old or new criticism of the leadership’s actions and how they lead to the state the Brotherhood is currently in.

However, inside the MB itself, resentment is mainly directed at the Anti-Coup Alliance (ACA), which is frequently criticized for lacking organization and the clear hierarchy the MB once had, which allowed one to identify the source of a decision and set blame. A prime example of the ACA’s incompetence, Nadia said, was changing the anti-constitutional referendum protest venues last minute on FB, after many protesters had left their homes and internet connection behind, resulting in confusion and the arrest of over 400 Brothers; or trying to stage a sit-in at  Suk al-Sayarat (the car market), an unfriendly neighborhood that probably wouldn’t leave much protesters for the police to shoot.  “No one really knows who is making these decisions,” interjected Hoda, another young Sister, who was just lost in monologue trying to decide whether she should flash the four-finger Rabaa sign or put on a poker face when suspecting classmates inquire about her political views. “Everybody just ends up doing whatever they feel like, there is no cohesion; no vision,” she added, shaking her head before returning to her monologue and deciding to be safe rather than hungry like her brother, Hamza, who now resides in a 2x2 cell with an unspecified number of people and cockroaches that fly, unable to sit or sleep comfortably. She sees him for exactly one minute a day with an officer present. Some of his teeth are broken and so is his right wrist, she suspects. Hamza, she paused to beam, had tried to convince the police officers, who arrested him, that he was a non-religious, playboy who drinks, smokes and copulates before they did. They gave him a cigarette and asked him to prove it, he let out a telling cough and was summarily given for 15 days pending investigation. "Ah, Hamza," she sighed.

“Many of (those arrested) have wrist fractures and things of that nature, it’s the handcuffs,” guessed another Sister, Gehad, rubbing hers instinctively. She has been recently released after being detained for nearly  three weeks on the charge of “piercing a car roof,” carrying a camera and belonging to a terrorist organization trying to destabilize the country. “[Prisoner treatment] depends wholly on the officers and the jail or department you’re in,” she explained. She, for instance, was lucky enough to fall into the hands of a kind prosecutor, who gave her Nescafe. And she managed to charm the prostitutes and convicted murderers  they routinely detain Sisters with, "as a scare tactic," with her religious knowledge. “They thought that God wouldn’t forgive them, so I recited Quran to them and we prayed together,” she recalled with pride. More importantly, the pregnancy test they forced on her (virginity tests for female protesters -- i.e. sluts -- caused an uproar, but pregnancy tests have reportedly taken their place) didn’t break her as well because she knew it was meant to, Gehad said, speaking at a considerably higher volume intended to prove she was unaffected by the memory. Others, however, she said, had cigarettes put out in them, and if the corporal she bribed is to be believed, they were also whipped with belts, electrocuted, stripped and made to stand in a room with holes in the walls known as the Tellaga (refrigerator). Other reports of abuse include being forced to clean the police department, sexual harassment, spoiled food and denial of family visits (and harassment of family members and friends who came for them). 

It is worth noting that Gehad later managed to flee to Turkey, where a small Egyptian MB community has already formed, thanks to the failure of the Ministry of Interior (MOI) to update the no-fly lists. She was then given a five-year sentence in absentia. Also grateful for the poor coordination and communication between state institutions is the Kamal Youssef, a father who waits in line to get into Tora for an average of four hours, gets his bag x-rayed, his body aggressively searched and waits in the cafeteria in plain view for the minibus that will take him to el-’Akrab prison, where he will provide all of his personal information to visit his son, although there is a warrant out for his arrest. “They only let first degree family members in, but I sometimes visit about seven non-related people in the same prison and pretend to be their cousin and no one says anything,” Nadia said, grinning for the first time, before reassuming her inscrutable countenance. 

She then begins to systematically list the problems of getting her jailed friends their exams (if they have not already failed the academic year). Normally the prosecution only requires a registration certificate and the exam schedule from the detainee’s university to issue a permit for said detainee to take the exam, but since sending a bruised student handcuffed to a police corporal to take a test among their classmates might win them some sympathy, Nadia has to get a copy of the police report to prove to the university that the student is in jail and get permission from the student to take the test in jail. Only problem is books and papers are generally not allowed in, making the hassle of getting them their exams almost pointless since they can’t study and will probably fail anyway. This process of selecting what is and is not allowed in, like treatment, seems to be governed by whim. For instance, she once managed smuggle in a cell phone with Internet, but failed to smuggle in a pillow to the same person.

When the contempt Nadia receives from law enforcement wears her or her friends down, she comforts herself and them with the knowledge that they are not one of the leaders or the wives, whom the police targets for particular abuse, according to a number of unverified reports by MB activists.The abuse, they say, includes “threatening (the detainee) with his wife’s honor"  to flush him out or to force a confession out of him. The leaders have had to forgo family visits because theirs require them to sit behind a glass partition and talk over a phone that’s monitored. MB leader and former MP Mohamed el-Beltagy  was allowed to keep the poster of his dead daughter, Asmaa, that his wife, Sanaa Abdel Gawad, gave him -- but they wouldn’t give him the tape to hang it on the wall with, Nadia said. Instead of meeting, Beltagy and Abdel Gawad now exchange letters that a bribed officer delivers – and censors. 

“One time [Abdel Gawad] wrote 'I am proud of you and I love you' and the officer insisted that she crossed it out...They don’t allow anything uplifting through,” Nadia explained. “She just lost it and started praying for retribution so hard, one of the officers cried and asked her to stop because he has nothing to do with this. He is just following orders.” However, most officers were not as affected. They started clapping for a visitor who began singing the pro-Sisi song Teslam el-Ayadi, and bellydancing. What salted the wound, Nadia said, was that the visitor was the mother of a horribly treated prisoner. “The same thing happened with Om Hassan, she hadn’t seen or heard of her son in weeks and [police officers and other visitors] sang her Teslam el-Ayadi,” an offended Hoda said, thrusting a hand in my face like I was Mustafa Kamil (the song's writer and composer).

Although the desire for revenge is palpable within the MB, it is almost always accompanied by equally palpable helplessness and frustration. Regardless of the presumed-to-be-MB attacks on police and army officers, Nadia maintains that so far most of the MB’s retaliation has been limited to mean prayers, reciting Quranic verses like “Pharaoh and Haman and their soldiers were deliberate sinners. [28:9]” to necessitate the punishment of every soldier as well as the commanders. Sure, there is a list, whose accuracy and origin are a matter for consideration, of the officers who dispersed the Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins but no one has done anything with it – yet. Every Brother and Sister I’ve spoken to recently thinks someone is going to lose it soon and that whoever that person is; no one can blame him/her.

Revenge aside, Nadia advocates (and regularly participates) in the burning of police vans and in doing anything that would “upset” the MOI. When asked to explain how that can fall under the title of “peaceful resistance,” she screwed up her face in bored disgust. “They have guns, gas, cars and water. We have Molotov and rocks. It’s not a fair equation... We’re certainly more peaceful.” Nadia’s definition of peacefulness is popular in the MB (and in non-MB revolutionary circles). Ahmad Hijab, a Cairo University Brother, for instance, spent fifteen minutes explaining how not only are the student protesters completely peaceful, but that they must be because military chief, General Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, would love an excuse to have them all shot, before he casually added that he had never been to a protest without fireworks, Molotov and rocks. “What, am I supposed to stand there and let them kill me or go defenseless when I know they are going to attack me?” 

As far as the MB youth is concerned, it seems, the only viable course of action now is to aggravate the MOI at every opportunity. The future, many believe, will likely hold what the present is already offering: politically ineffective, routine clashes with the police like those of Al-Azhar University and Alf Maskan, deaths, injuries, arrests, broken bones, prison visits, uncomfortable body searches, deliveries of exams and medical supplies, police bribes, etc. “Things have to and will get much, much worse for everyone... everyone has to and will taste humiliation and injustice, it has to become unbearable, so they will revolt again,” Nadia hopes. “Or they will apologize and sing Teslam el-Ayadi,” Hoda told the ceiling, resentfully.

So while things get worse, Nadia is just going to deliver some food to detainees and continue to rearrange the digits of a cellphone number an MB prisoner scribbled on her hand, to reach his parents and tell them he has been in jail for the past month. “Is this a seven or an eight?” she asked no one in particular before deciding to try a six.

The names of the people interviewed for this post have been changed to protect their identity.

The pro-Mubarak belly dancer's talk show and other internet detritus

Nour Youssef writes to us regularly with a mix of legitimate, useful information and things I wish I'd never seen. I thought I'd put her latest missive up as a taste of the current ambient Egyptian insanity:

Reasons to at least limit ability to upload videos on Youtube:

This person.And this one too. Remember that belly dancer Sema al-Masry who broke an olla in front of the US embassy and made that anti-Qatar song? She has her own show now where she wears a shirt with Mubarak's laughing face on it and had this supposed El-Baradei look-alike to shake her boobs at. 

Things that maybe interesting:

Bassem Youssef is coming back. On MBC.The transcript of the absolutely ridiculous interrogation of Ahmed Abdelaty, head of the presidential office under Morsi, and one of the defendants in the espionage case. What's funnier than the fact that their "evidence" of the "crime" that is talking to people out of Egypt -- or worse, not even Egyptian people in Egypt, or even worse out of it -- comes from hacking his email is that they a) don't care/understand that that is a crime and so don't react to his emphasis on that and b) el-Watan picked this up and ran with it like it proved that Mohamed Badie surprised the smuggling of weapons from Libya to Egyptian MB youth in 2012, completely indifferent to or unaware of the fact that the word Libya was not mentioned in the interrogation, that the man denied all charges and that the investigative bodies are a).  

When will The Square be shown in Egypt?

Jehane Noujaim's documentary The Square has been short-listed for the Oscar, is now available on Netflix, and recently won her an Directors' Guild Award. But it has still not been released or even screened at a festival here.

There have been a number of recent reviews, which in one way or another have raised the question of the film's viewpoint and its portrayal of a deeply divided, deeply confusing reality. 

At the New Republic, Eric Trager argues that Egypt's protesters also "bear responsibility for the mess that followed." 

But one year later—and only 15 minutes after Morsi’s victory in the 100-minute film’s run-time—the activists are suddenly willing to accept the military’s return to power. Morsi’s dictatorial maneuvers and theocratic ambitions, combined with his use of Muslim Brotherhood thugs to torture and kill protesters, has incited a mass movement against him, and the film’s protagonists eagerly take to the streets. “Do you think the Army will act in the same way it did?” Ahmed asks rhetorically. He clearly doesn’t think so, because he is once again caught up in the enthusiasm of yet another mass protest, and thus convinced that “Now the power is in the hands of the people.” It’s as if the film’s first hour and ten minutes never happened. It’s as if the previous military regime hadn’t shot Ahmed in the head.

Max Fischer takes up and expands on criticism of the movie, focussing on what he sees as the unfair portrayal of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

The viewer receives the strong impression that the Brotherhood did not arrive in force until more than six months after Mubarak's fall, a flood of unwelcome Islamist men taking over the square, although in fact Brotherhood members were crucially present during the very first weeks of the uprising. […] The Brotherhood's role in the revolution itself is not just excised, it is rewritten into something much more nefarious. In the first weeks of military rule, the Brotherhood entered into talks with the new government about forming a transitional government. But the film makes the bizarre choice to instead describe this as cutting "secret deals with the military," the first of many intimations of conspiracy that the Brotherhood and the military are clandestine partners in subjugating the people of Egypt. 

The Square is undoubtedly skeptical of the Brotherhood (although one of its most compelling characters is a member of the group), but Fischer misses the fact that the Brotherhood and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces did collude, more or less immediately after the 18 day uprising, to put a stop to revolutionary momentum by pushing through the March 2011 referendum, which was sold as both pro-Islam and pro-stability, and inaugurated the disastrous, ambiguous road map under SCAF. The Brotherhood knew it would do well in elections, and it viewed the protests and clashes in the Fall of 2011 as destabilizing to its plans -- its leadership forbid its members from participating and expressed precious little sympathy when demonstrators were beaten, tortured and killed by the police and army. 

Evan Hill also had a nice in-depth look at the film, with some interesting details about when and how it was filmed and edited. Like the reviews posted above, he views the filmmaker’s romanticization of its revolutionary characters and its adherence to their point of view as problematic:

Though Noujaim re-edited the film in 2013, after its festival debut, to account for the coup against Morsi, she addresses the killing of his supporters only in a few brief YouTube clips, followed by a title card stating that "hundreds" died. The film concludes with Hassan, who expresses hope that the uprising has birthed "a society of consciousness" that no government can again repress. It gives little indication that matters are about to get worse. By aligning itself with Hassan and his fellow secular activists, "The Square" — which is fast becoming one the most influential accounts of the uprising outside of Egypt — takes on much of their idealistic and naive attitude, at the expense, some would argue, of the truth.

Yasmine El Rashidi, on the other hand, writes a generally glowing review of the film, and identifies with the filmmaker (an old friend) and her protagonists:

The choice of footage in the final cut was meticulous; intended not to offer a nuanced or comprehensive portrait of a political situation, but rather to trace how the thinking of a select group of young activists evolved as events played out. […] Some of the best parts of the film involve Abdalla and his family, relations that seem to capture the generational divide that so defined the uprising. These moments suggest a more complex reality than the film generally depicts— the split between young, educated, English-speaking activists, and a larger portion of the population with very different backgrounds and daily concerns. […] These moments, short, fleeting, possibly overlooked in the larger story of the film, are the crux of many of the struggles we have faced and still face today; a minority of exceedingly righteous idealists, somewhat privileged, fighting a growing majority who increasingly opt for stability over the more ambitious political goals to which the revolution first aspired. 

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the The Square sticking to the particular point of view of a few Tahrir activists. Nor am I convinced that it should be charged with romanticizing Tahrir. There is a deadly romance to revolutionary moments (young people who are risking their lives need to feel and act and speak in idealistic and theatrical and romantic ways), and it was very much part of the culture and atmosphere of the square. But I wish that the film-maker had pushed her subjects much harder to articulate their point of view, and to evaluate their actions and strategies. It's great to have the immediacy of those protests and clashes three years ago, but it would also be great to have some of the perspective that comes, precisely, from the passage of time. What were secular activists thinking on June 30 and, even more, on August 14? The last half hour of the film is where things fall apart for me, into a vague final fuzzy uplift that seems out of sync with events and gives little insight. One does not necessarily have to choose between celebrating what happened in Tahrir (it is emblazoned in my memory as one of the most moving things I’ve ever witnessed) and trying to figure out why and how it failed -- including the failures of the revolutionary forces and the so-called liberal political parties.

What did “we” learn in Tahrir? (perhaps, to start, how difficult it is to define that "we"?) Rashidi admits she can’t quite say. Unfortunately it seems that the military and the police are the ones who have had the steepest learning curve. They were genuinely caught by surprise by the uprising of 2011 but within two and a half years they were capable of turning mass street politics to their complete advantage. 

Meanwhile, The Square has yet to be released in Egypt. The film-makers say they were denied permission to screen in; the Censor’s office claims that it never received an official request; a new application is pending. The breadth and depth of the debate that the film has inspired makes it all the more clear that it should be shown here.

Al-Sisi, the presidency, and the officers

Hesham Sallam, writing in Mada Masr, hits on the central point of yesterday's announcement by SCAF endorsing Sisi as president:

If the purpose behind the general’s quest for the presidency is to afford the political status quo and the military’s dominant position the façade of democratic legitimacy, then yesterday’s announcement makes little sense. Notwithstanding the burdens Sisi has taken on and imposed on the military by entering into the presidential race, kicking off his bid with a formal mandate from the military proves and underscores the very realities that the general is supposed to conceal. Specifically, this development leaves no doubt in the minds of observers that political outcomes in Egypt are dictated by the military and not by a supposedly unpredictable, free-for-all democratic process that is responsive to popular will. By failing to unilaterally resign from his position and announce a presidential candidacy from a place of institutional independence, Sisi missed a perfect opportunity to dispel the claim that he is running as the military’s nominee. Instead, he chose to present his nomination as a direct response to the call of his own peers.

It is tempting to blame these missteps on sheer political incompetence. Yet more compellingly, this move seems to be highlighting Sisi’s insecurities about potential chatter among the officers’ rank and file that he is taking the military into risky political adventures for the sole purpose of personal gain. In such a context, yesterday’s statement signifies the publicized approval that Sisi needed from the officers in order to protect against possible backlash from within the military. By obtaining such a public endorsement, moreover, Sisi in effect made the whole military, as an institution, complicit in his personal bid for power. Such a measure makes it challenging for the officers to distance themselves from Sisi’s candidacy in the future. It makes it difficult for them to wait on the sidelines conveniently and strike a pact with whoever wins, as they had done in the 2012 presidential elections when former Air Force General Ahmed Shafiq and Muslim Brother Mohamed Morsi competed in the runoff vote.

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What Killed Egyptian Democracy?

Continuing today's reflection on the failure of Egypt's revolutionaries, do not miss the sequence of essays in the Boston Review on this issue, starting off with Mohammed Fadel who argues revolutionary purity was the enemy of pragmatic progress:

The January 25 Revolution was also a striking failure of political theory. More precisely, it was a failure of the theories embraced by the most idealistic revolutionaries. Their demands were too pure; they refused to accord any legitimacy to a flawed transition—and what transition is not flawed?—that could only yield a flawed democracy. They made strategic mistakes because they did not pay enough attention to Egypt’s institutional, economic, political, and social circumstances. These idealists generally were politically liberal. But the problem does not lie in liberalism itself. The problem lies in a faulty understanding of the implications of political liberalism in the Egyptian context—an insufficient appreciation of factors that limited what could reasonably be achieved in the short term. A more sophisticated liberalism would have accounted for these realities.

P.S. Fadel has more grim reflections on the state of Egyptian society on his blog, where he doubts the very existence of Egyptian liberals or revolutionaries. 

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"Our sin was pride"

From a long essay by imprisoned revolutionary activists Alaa Abdel Fattah and Ahmed Douma, in which they reflect on what went wrong:

Our sin was pride not treachery. We said, “We’re not like those who came before us, and so the young of the Brotherhood are different and the young Nasserites are different and the leftist young are different and the young liberals are different.” The weakness of our myth was exposed when we came up against the young officers.

To read alongside Steve's post on the revolutionary's need for self-examination – can't really say it's not happening, just that it's happening too late.

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The revolution in winter

The third anniversary of Egypt's 2011 uprising was a dismal day for the revolutionary activists that organized it. Its birthplace in Tahrir Square was filled by pro-army demonstrators calling on military chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sissi to lead the country. Small anti-military rallies in the streets around were quickly dispersed by security forces and chased through the streets by army partisans. Deadlier clashes in the city's outskirts left scores dead. Over 1,000 people have been arrested, joining many prominent activists already in jail. The mood in the movement echoes a poignant letter released several days before the anniversary from one of those imprisoned revolutionaries, Alaa Abdel Fatah: "What is adding to the oppression that I feel, is that I find imprisonment is serving no purpose, it is not resistance and there is no revolution."

This day has naturally triggered despondency in a movement that has long used anniversary protests to rebound from despair. Only a few months ago, activists were telling themselves that having toppled two presidents, Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and Mohammed Morsi in 2013, it could easily topple a third. But now they see both their key symbol - Tahrir - and their favorite tactic - street protest - appropriated by their opponents. If al-Sissi nominates himself for president, as seems increasingly likely, he will face the long-term challenge of presiding over a state and an economy that are far more delicate than they were under Mubarak. However, unlike Mubarak, el-Sissi has a confident and committed mass following that believes Egypt needs a strong Nasser- or de Gaulle-style leader. Unlike Morsi, he has the full loyalty of the security forces and the bureaucracy.

But while the activists are sober, few are self-critical. (Addendum, Jan 27: For some exceptions, see the essay referenced in the post above.) They portray themselves as being stuck between two illiberal forces -- the Islamists on one hand, and the army on the other. The tone is one of a helpless movement that doesn't quite know what happened to it, or maybe never had a chance to begin with, rather than one searching for where it went wrong.

I believe that the revolutionaries did have a chance to change Egypt. They could never have created a human rights paradise, but they did have an opportunity to set the country on a course where power revolved peacefully, where free expression had legal protections, and where police and officials had strong disincentives not to abuse their power. The revolutionaries lost this opportunity, and lost it because they failed to recognize the limits of their power.

It's obvious from voting patterns over the past three years that committed revolutionaries are a small minority. Their concentration in Cairo, and their lack of experience working inside political parties and other such large organizations, make them ineffective in elections. But this decentralization and energy, combined with their links to the media, does give them considerable power between elections: the ability to stage non-stop street protests which, combined with public reaction against the inevitable videotaped brutal police response as well as the disruption to city traffic and economic activity, have twice created a narrative of a beleaguered government, a country facing the abyss. When the revolutionaries have acted in concert (if not always in collaboration) with other movements, the Islamists in 2011 and former members of the National Democratic Party in 2013, that helped to create the momentum that convinces the army that it is safer for them to unseat the ruler rather than stand aside. Where the revolutionaries failed was to think through the ramifications of deploying that power.

I would argue that the point at which the revolutionaries and their liberal allies went wrong was the decision made in spring of 2013 to add their weight to the movement to unseat President Mohammed Morsi Morsi was not remotely friendly to the revolutionaries' agenda, but the means needed to topple him would destroy the environment in which the revolutionaries were able to operate.

As much as the revolutionaries insisted they did not wanted a coup, many knew very well _ or at least their leaders should have known _ that it would likely end in army intervention. This was, after all, what happened to Mubarak in 2011. Demanding new elections only a year into a leader's five-year term, while hinting at the possibility that the army might intervene if he did not, is basically tantamount to a forced overthrow.

But while Mubarak had been president for 30 years, using a variety of means to ensure he was never seriously challenged, Morsi became president through competitive elections generally viewed as mostly free and fair. This distinction makes a key difference to the outcomes of coups. The overthrow of an unelected leader usually brings an outpouring of goodwill and an incentive for all previously excluded parties to participate in the political process, which, if well-handled (it wasn't in Egypt), can bring about a successful transition. The overthrow of an elected leader favors force over procedure, creates a disincentive for parties to participate in peaceful politics, and polarizes the country - all factors that make a successful transition to pluralistic democracy less possible.

Activists say that they toppled Morsi to prevent an Islamist dictatorship -- and, indeed, if the Muslim Brotherhood had installed a theocracy, that would probably be even more hostile to the realization of their aims then Mubarakist restoration. But it seemed clear that since December, when the police and army outright refused to protect Cairo's presidential palace, that there was no serious danger that Morsi could ever have realized an Islamist dictatorship. The much-vaunted "Ikhwanization" was mostly limited to ministries with little power. (The state prosecutor did have power, but he was strongly opposed from within the judiciary.) Morsi's one attempt to move beyond a constitutional framework _ his constitutional declaration _ ended with him in retreat. This is not to say that Morsi was benign: having an Islamist in power did appear to give radicals the confidence to persecute Christians, particularly in the rural south. But the police were defiant of Morsi, the army was against him, the judiciary, the media, and the bureaucracy. He was about to face parliamentary elections that would probably have dealt the Brothers a fairly serious defeat. In choosing to lend their weight to Morsi's overthrow, as opposed to trying to block specific policies, the revolutionaries chose to replace a weak autocratic personality who had no choice but to operate within a basically democratic framework, and a strong autocratic system that could dispense with it.

Where does the movement find itself now? Any repetition of the tactics used in 2011 and 2013 while probably end in failure. The secular and Islamist wings of the opposition hate each other too much to unite. And in the remote chance that protests did force another change of government, the country is far too polarized to go through another peaceful transition.

But while it is probably right to say there is no more "revolution," in the sense that the tactics of mass uprising will not work in the near future, there is a "revolution" in the sense of a set of ideals and a historical legacy that can guide and inspire activists in the future. To accomplish its goals, however, the revolutionaries need to review why they have failed so far. A dynamic minority of activists can destabilize, but in doing so they only pave the way for someone else. To be a partner in government they need the kind of leverage that can only come from a nationwide mass movement, strong in the provinces as well as just the big cities. Right now Egypt has only three of these: the former National Democratic Party, the Brotherhood, and the Salafis. The first was created top-down by the state but the other two were built up painstakingly over decades, sometimes under conditions that are almost as hostile as those facing revolutionaries today. If Egypt's revolutionaries reconsider their tactics, abandoning the adrenaline and theater of protest for the slow unglamorous work of movement-building, it may have a chance in decades to come.

To succeed, the revolutionaries may need to reconsider their message. The Islamists use religion. The Sissists have what is still the most beloved institution in the country, the army. The revolutionaries have few key symbols that resonate with many Egyptians. What they do have is a vision of the future in which no one's basic rights are compromised. 

Since 2011, members of all prominent Egyptian trends have succumbed to the temptation to demonize their opponents to fire up their base. Islamists have agitated against Christians and secularists, pro-army speakers have labelled revolutionaries as drug-taking cosmopolitan libertines _ and revolutionaries too have at times denounced their opponents as feloul, terrorists, and sheep. They have also tossed around proposals that would essentially disenfranchise a large section of the country: a "political exclusion law" against Mubarak supporters in 2011, or the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. 

To form a mass movement, revolutionaries will need to engage with other groups. To leverage a mass movement into power, they will need to make allies. All three trends are here to stay. The future may belong to whichever one learns to make the least enemies.

New book: The struggle for Iraq's future

Our friend Zaid al-Ali, constitution-watcher extraordinaire (see the podcast we did with him last year) has a new book out the disastrous path Iraq has taken since the 2003 US invasion. From the publishers's blurb:

Many Westerners have offered interpretations of Iraq’s nation-building progress in the wake of the 2003 war and the eventual withdrawal of American troops from the country, but little has been written by Iraqis themselves. This forthright book fills in the gap. Zaid al-Ali, an Iraqi lawyer with direct ties to the people of his homeland, to government circles, and to the international community, provides a uniquely insightful and up-to-date view of Iraq’s people, their government, and the extent of their nation’s worsening problems.   The true picture is discouraging: murderous bombings, ever-increasing sectarianism, and pervasive government corruption have combined to prevent progress on such crucial issues as security, healthcare, and power availability. Al-Ali contends that the ill-planned U.S. intervention destroyed the Iraqi state, creating a black hole which corrupt and incompetent members of the elite have made their own. And yet, despite all efforts to divide them, Iraqis retain a strong sense of national identity, al-Ali maintains. He reevaluates Iraq’s relationship with itself, discusses the inspiration provided by the events of the Arab Spring, and redefines Iraq’s most important struggle to regain its viability as a nation.

The Struggle for Iraq's Future: How Corruption, Incompetence and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy



$26.95



By Zaid Al-Ali