Egypt

Between the war in Gaza, the ISIS advance on Iraq, Libya’s disintegration, and the monumental brutality of the Syrian conflict—the last week of July was the deadliest of the civil war—the world barely noticed the one year anniversary of the violent dispersal of a sit-in at Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square. Now as the annual UN General Assembly meeting is set to begin, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, and lesser officials are descending upon New York to spread the good word that everything in Egypt is just fine. They are hoping—in some cases demanding—that people don’t ask hard questions about what transpired last year. Despite these wishes, let’s review: On August 14, 2013 almost 1,000 Egyptians were killed and another 3,000 injured mostly at the hands of the Ministry of Interior’s Central Security Forces, but also under the watchful eyes of the Egyptian armed forces. The sit-in at Rabaa and al-Nahda Squares had been underway since the coup d’état that ousted President Mohammed Morsi on July 3. Human Rights Watch recently released a report detailing the massacre. It makes for a chilling read. Others have weighed-in on this terrible event as well. Of particular interest is a piece that Amy Austin Holmes, who is an assistant professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, posted at the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog under the title “Why Egypt’s Military Orchestrated a Massacre.” In it Holmes poses an important question: “How do we explain the behavior of the Egyptian military on Tahrir in January 2011 [which was ostensibly peaceful] and in Rabaa in 2013?” As Holmes recounts—she observed the Rabaa protests—the clearing of the square was the worst massacre in modern Egyptian history and it was, by Egyptian officials’ own admission, entirely planned. The massacre itself tells analysts something important about the trajectory of Egyptian politics in general, but the conduct of the armed forces, which had previously vowed never to use violence against fellow Egyptians, cries out for explanation. Holmes comes up short, however. She offers sound analysis without ever getting to the heart of matter. So what is the deal? How come there was no massacre in Tahrir, but one at Rabaa? My critique of Holmes is a friendly one. Perhaps she is “over-problematizing” if such a word exists, but Holmes is certainly onto something with her piece. A lot of what people told other people about the conduct of the armed forces from the time Hosni Mubarak was pushed from office does not make much sense against the ostensibly shocking violence at Rabaa. This is largely a function of an over-abundance of mythologizing about the armed forces mostly by its Egyptian supporters and defective analysis by experts who are a little too attached to arguments they made after January 25, but before July 3. First, let’s start with the myths that Holmes addresses in her post. The officers are not as averse to using violence against fellow Egyptians as their public statements to the contrary indicate. It is true enough that the military itself seems reluctant to fire on its own people, but it apparently does not have a problem with others doing it. After all, it is mostly the police, para-military forces, and the Republican Guard—which, as the presidency’s praetorian force, is separate from the chain of command—that have done the vast majority of the killing. Nevertheless, it is indisputable that the Egyptian military has overseen the killing of large numbers of Egyptians in the last 3.5 years by a policy that can be characterized in Holmes’s words as a “failure to prevent” the police and Republican Guardsmen from pulling the trigger. This is an important point, which, based on the available evidence, is entirely accurate. Second, Holmes has a beef with the idea that some analysts have put forward that Egypt is fundamentally different from Syria because the military is “institutionalized” and thus could more readily “defect from the regime” and thus dumped Hosni Mubarak—something which Syrian officers could never do because they are dependent on Bashar al-Assad. Egypt is different from Syria, but I agree with Holmes’s gripe with some additional explanation: The Egyptian military is capable of acting autonomously and has a specific set of interests that are all its own. It did not defect from the regime, but from Hosni Mubarak who at a basic level represented the informal linkage between the presidency and the armed forces. A “regime” is not a person, but rather a political order that encompasses rules, regulations, decrees, and laws that shape the behavior and expectations of individuals. In pushing Mubarak from power on February 11, 2011, the Egyptian military actually sought to salvage the regime that Egyptians rose up against eighteen days earlier. Before I get to the heart of the matter, I need to address another issue—one where Holmes and I diverge. At the end of her post, she argues that the military’s failure to prevent the Ministry of Interior’s killing of fellow Egyptians suggests more cooperation between the armed forces and the police than others claim. Holmes advises that future research should take this into account. I am one of those others, having written here and there about the competition between the military and Ministry of Interior. I am all for more research, but it may very well be that Rabaa is the exception that proves the rule of a rather uneasy, mistrustful relationship between the military and the police that has certainly existed since the January 25 uprising, but which actually has its roots in the 1950s and 1960s. It should be self-evident that this historic uneasiness and mistrust would not necessarily preclude cooperation. After all, even if the police generals and the military generals dislike each other, there are times when their interests intersect. Still, it is no secret that the Ministry of Defense looks askance at the Ministry of Interior’s mission and regards policing the streets as beneath the noble mission of defending the country. Given that the military really does not want to be on the front line of maintaining order and that the police outnumber the military, the Ministry of Interior seems to have leverage over the armed forces, constraining the Ministry of Defense from reining in the cops—assuming it wants to—during moments of police excess. As a result, the military has chosen to avoid outright confrontation with the Ministry of Interior. Rabaa, as Holmes indicates, is different. There the kind of institutional mistrust was absent as military and police worked hand in glove to ensure that the violence employed was used to maximum effect. Again why was it ok to kill almost 1,000 Egyptians last August 14, but not in Tahrir in early 2011? The answers come in both the drastically different ways these moments of mass protests were framed and the threat perception of the military. The by now gauzy narrative of Tahrir was that it was a popular, peaceful coming together of all Egyptians to rid themselves of an autocratic leader who through graft, corruption, and violence had done great harm to the country. Once the military realized what was happening and that the demonstrations had legs, the officers positioned themselves as patrons of the people and their desire to live in a democratic society. Some of us were skeptical, but of course impressed with the shrewd way in which the Ministry of Defense managed to place itself on the side of the protesters even though it was a primary beneficiary of the regime and had no real intention of “paving the way to democracy.” There was, of course, violence around the Tahrir protests. Anywhere from 850-1000 people were killed, but the premeditation of Rabaa was absent. Holmes’s brief description of the massacre last August is riveting: The killing was done by the Central Security Forces and Special Forces in close coordination with the Egyptian Armed Forces, with few if any reported defections or refusals to open fire. Security forces began firing on civilians around 6:30am and over the course of 12 hours they continued emptying rounds of live ammunition into crowds of men, women, and children who they had entrapped, despite repeated promises of “safe exit.” This was not a brief killing spree that ended as suddenly as it began, or the panicked response of threatened conscripts in the fog of battle. This horrific scene was made possible because Rabaa was depicted as a disruptive, non-Egyptian, democracy-defying, violence/terrorism-driven premeditated event. Unlike Tahrir, which promised progress, Rabaa demanded Mohammed Morsi’s return, which was portrayed as a call for bloodshed. There was, of course, some truth to this. The stage at Rabaa had become a forum for coded and not so coded language in support of violence, which played right into the hands of Egypt’s new leadership. The killing at Rabaa took place just three weeks after Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s extraordinary speech at the Naval Academy’s graduation ceremony on July 24, 2013, which in part called the people out to the streets to fight terrorism. In the upside down logic of Egyptian politics then (as now) this was an effort to legitimate violence and absolve the military of the blood that would be spilled. It became acceptable to kill large numbers of people in the name of a revolution that Egypt’s leadership does not and never did believe in. There was also the military’s perception of threat. Keeping in mind the historic competition between the officers and the Muslim Brothers for power, the reality was that the demonstrations at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square posed a political challenge to the military in ways that were fundamentally different and more dangerous than the January 25 uprising. Having no compelling answer to this challenge, the commanders resorted to force. What other explanations are needed?

Significant Developments Syria. French President Francois Hollande announced today that France would provide military support, including airstrikes, against ISIS in Iraq. On Monday, Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom pledged support for the fight against ISIS following the conclusion of the Paris conference. Wrapping up his tour of the Middle East to recruit Arab support, Secretary of State John Kerry received assurances of good intentions from Egypt and Iraq, while Saudi Arabia pledged to provide the training of Syrian rebel forces at its bases. Less clear was what, if any, would be their military contributions. Germany is set to host a conference for Iraq and Syria in Berlin on October 28 to discuss security concerns in the region. Meanwhile, the United States carried out its first airstrikes in support of the Iraqi army on Monday, destroying six ISIS vehicles and a combat post. With the support of U.S. aircraft, Kurdish peshmerga forces recaptured seven Christian villages west of Irbil this week. Since President Barack Obama’s address to the nation last week pledging U.S. airstrikes again ISIS, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported that 162 new recruits have joined ISIS training camps in Aleppo. On Tuesday, ISIS released a new propaganda video entitled “Flames of War,” showing wounded American soldiers and ending with “the fighting has just begun.” An unidentified surveillance drone, the first of its kind, was seen over Aleppo today, where ISIS militants reportedly began evacuating in anticipation of a U.S. airstrike. Meanwhile, ISIS seized twenty-one Kurdish villages in northern Syria close to the Turkish border, spurring the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) to call on Turkish Kurds to come to the aid of the Syrian Kurdish population. Saudi Arabia.Saudi Arabia’s state appointed Council of Senior Scholars, led by Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al al-Sheikh, declared terrorism a “heinous crime” yesterday. The Council, the sole body in Saudi Arabia empowered to issue fatwas (Islamic legal opinions), called for adherents to be publicly executed as a deterrent to future recruits and banned militant financing. The move follows previous public statements by the Saudi grand mufti in recent weeks in which he labelled al-Qaeda and ISIS militants “Islam’s foremost enemy.” U.S. Foreign Policy ISIS. President Barack Obama insisted yesterday, in a speech at MacDill Air Force Base, that the United States would not send troops to fight “another ground war in Iraq.” His assurances came a day after U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he could foresee the possibility of U.S. ground troops in Iraq. Aides subsequently said that Dempsey was merely “describing contingency plans” as part of his role as military advisor to the president. The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday authorized President Barack Obama to train and arm Syrian rebels as part of the U.S. led effort to defeat ISIS. The president, vice president and high-raking White House officials personally lobbied for the bill to be passed. The authorization, which was attached as an amendment to a bill to keep the government funded until December 11, was approved with a vote of 273 to 156. This will guarantee that the issue will be revisited in the near future when the routine funding legislation expires. While We Were Looking Elsewhere Qatar. Senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Amr Darrag said that Qatar last Saturday asked several influential members of the Islamist group to leave the Gulf country last Saturday. The Qatari request suggests that Doha, a traditional Brotherhood ally, may be seeking to ease tensions with neighboring Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which view the Brotherhood as a threat to their regimes. Turkey. Turkey’s military has reportedly initiated logistical planning for a buffer zone to be imposed on its southern border as protection against spillovers from the Syria and Iraqi conflicts. Turkish plans include possibly implementing a no-fly zone and providing humanitarian assistance to civilian refugees. The move follows reports last week that Turkey has ruled out participating in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS. Meanwhile, President Tayyep Recep Erdogan hinted on Monday that members of the Muslim Brotherhood recently exiled from Qatar could be granted asylum in Turkey. Libya. Libya’s internationally recognized parliament rejected acting Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni’s proposed cabinet today amidst the country’s escalating security crisis. Members of Parliament had requested a streamlined ten person “crisis” cabinet, but al-Thinni submitted eighteen nominations. Both the parliament and al-Thinni are currently based in the eastern town of Tobruk, essentially in domestic exile after Islamists seized Tripoli and set up a rival government there. Al-Thinni has accused Qatar of contributing to the instability; on Monday, he claimed that Qatar sent three planes loaded with weapons to the opposition-controlled capital. Meanwhile, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo warned yesterday that Libya could devolve into a civil war and become another Syria at an international conference on Libya. Sixteen foreign ministers attended the conference along with representatives from the UN and the Arab League. Egypt. In an unusual ruling, an Egyptian court released Alaa Abd El Fattah , a prominent political activist and blogger from prison on bail last Monday. Abd al Fattah has been imprisoned under four different administrations in Egypt, from President Mubarak to President Sisi. Abd El Fattah, who was released due to procedural irregularities during his earlier trial, still faces retrial in another court. Gaza. Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah announced today that Saudi Arabia has pledged $500 million to help rebuild Gaza. Reconstruction in the coastal strip is estimated to cost $4 billion and take up to three years. Meanwhile, an agreement was brokered by the UN between the Israelis and Palestinians on Tuesday to allow up to 800 truckloads of construction supplies to enter Gaza daily. This figure is four times the amount currently in transit. The materials will enable the reconstruction of the eighteen thousand homes destroyed or severely damaged during Operation Protective Edge this summer. The UN agreed to track the progress of the goods from purchase to arrival in Gaza in order to address Israeli concerns that the materials may be diverted by Hamas to build more tunnels. Golan Heights. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced this week the withdrawal of UNDOF (UN Disengagement Observer Force) troops from their bases in the Golan Heights. The peacekeepers were moved to the Israeli-controlled side of the buffer zone after unidentified Syrian fighters moved too close to their former base. The move comes after forty-five Fijian members of the peacekeeping force were captured by the Al-Nusra Front over two weeks ago. Those forces were released earlier this week. Yemen. Houthi fighters pushed into a suburb of Yemen’s capital today in an escalation of weeks of fighting. Over forty people have been killed in the past two days of clashes between the Shiite rebel group and the Yemeni security forces. Houthi protestors in Sana’a have been calling for the resignation of the government and the reinstatement of fuel subsidies for weeks.  

Full text of the Human Rights Watch report on last year’s forcible dispersal of the pro-Morsi Raba’a sit-in. Nabeel Khoury, writing for The Tahrir Forum, argues that if the United States fails to defeat the Islamic State, then Iran and Hezbollah will have to do it. Ali Hashem traces Iran’s influence in the appointment of Iraq’s new Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi.

This article was originally published here on ForeignPolicy.com on Monday, July 21, 2014. In the 1970s, Henry Kissinger fell in love with Anwar Sadat. To Kissinger, the Egyptian president "had the wisdom and courage of the statesman and occasionally the insight of the prophet." It was from this romance that a set of ideas about Egypt became inculcated in American Middle East policy: Egypt would be a bulwark against the Soviet Union, a base from which U.S. forces would launch in the event of a crisis in the Persian Gulf, and a mediator between Arabs -- especially the Palestinians -- and Israelis. Of these, only the last remains relevant to contemporary U.S. policy. It is, however, nothing more than a myth that American officials and analysts tell each other. Kissinger’s hagiography of Sadat notwithstanding, the Egyptians have never been the effective, impartial negotiators that Americans expect them to be. As Israel’s "Operation Protective Edge" nears its second week, with hundreds of lives lost, what are the Egyptians up to? They’re doing pretty much what they always do -- looking out for themselves. For all the dramatic changes in Egypt since Hosni Mubarak’s fall, the Egyptian military and intelligence services view Gaza in much the same way they have for the better part of the previous decade or more. They want to keep the Palestinians, especially Hamas, in a box, prevent the conflict from destabilizing the Sinai Peninsula, ensure that the Gaza Strip remains principally an Israeli responsibility, and exclude other regional players from a role in Gaza. Continue reading here...

Full text of Bashar al-Assad’s inauguration speech at his swearing-in ceremony last Wednesday, translated by the Center for Research on Globalization. Said A. Arjomand reflects on President of Iran Hassan Rouhani’s first year in office. Amr Khalifa, writing for Daily News Egypt, makes the case for political reconciliation in Egypt.

Sarah Carr, writing for Mada Masr, offers an in-depth and graphic look at sexual assault and the Egyptian state. J.J. Goldberg explores the triggers to an "unintended" war in Gaza. In an interview to Al-Monitor, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani talks about the crisis in Iraq.

My research associate, Alex Brock, is in Cairo getting some well-deserved rest.  I thought you would be interested in his thoughts on recent developments in Egypt.  Enjoy. Cairo, Egypt—I waited, and waited, checking Twitter.  I stopped by Tahrir Square a few times, figuring if anything would happen it would be there.  Some BBC employees staged a moment of silence, but that was in London. There was nothing in Cairo after a court convicted three Al Jazeera journalists and sentenced them to 7-10 years in prison.  Just silence.  The Twittersphere went crazy over the verdicts while the rest of Egypt went about its business.  The political turmoil in Egypt has become a fight between elites, while the rest of the country seems to want some sense of normalcy. Egypt has come full circle: the old regime has resumed control of the country and the majority of Cairenes seem to be OK with it.  The days of making large sacrifices for the sake of political freedoms appear to be over. Egypt is exhausted.  The familiarity of the old order and the stability it promises is to many Egyptians progress, especially compared  to the instability that has dominated the time since Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011.  This is how the old guard has managed to establish political support when on the eve of the January 25 uprising it had none. There is also the intimidation factor. The tourism police, who used to carry semi-automatic weapons equipped with blank clips merely to create a sense of security for foreigners, are now replaced with police with fully functional semi-automatic weapons, backed up by sandbags, blast walls, barbed wire, and the like. To be sure, these preparations are largely a response to the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters some of whom the regime accuses of conducting attacks in Cairo since former president Mohammed Morsi was ousted. But it also seems to send a clear message that organized dissent in the form of protests will not be tolerated. Even those who do have strong opinions about the verdicts fear the repercussions should they organize and go out into the streets, thereby breaking the anti-protest law. Al-Sisi also gave his implicit endorsement of the court’s decision when he telephoned Justice Minister Mahfouz Saber to express his intention not to interfere with the judicial branch’s authority, ruling out the possibility of a presidential pardon and implying that he would not accept strong opposition from the public. This Egypt is the Egypt I knew when I lived here in 2006-2007, and again in 2009-2010. There is not the constant buzz of political chatter that I overheard everywhere during a visit in November 2012.  Where previously there would have been debate and protest, now Egyptians express only some head-shaking embarrassment when pressed for an opinion about the Al Jazeera verdicts. They once again seem to accept the worst excesses of their government in the service of stability.  This backsliding is stunning given the fervor for political change in the post-Mubarak period. There also seem to be a lot of Egyptians who believe that the defendants Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy, and Baher Mohamed, are, “guilty by association” because of Egyptians’ deep suspicion of Al Jazeera more generally.  It does not matter to them whether the journalists did what they are accused of doing.  The mere fact that they work for Al Jazeera, which many Egyptians believe supports the Muslim Brotherhood in its efforts to undermine the political process and worse, makes them guilty of something deserving of long prison sentences. Stability, familiarity, and some sense of order have all now become the priorities of Cairenes. Shop owners want to be able actually to open their doors for customers without the fear of a riot disrupting their transactions yet again; travel agencies and tour companies are nostalgic for the days when the world did not fear traveling to Egypt to see the Great Pyramids of Giza, or the countless monuments in Luxor and Abu Simbel, or to enjoy the beaches in Sharm al-Sheikh and Dahab. Al-Sisi benefits from this reorientation of the public’s priorities. Given his military background, Egyptians reason that the new president will be able to bring stability. Even if a strong hand is successful in bringing order, it will not likely last, however.   Force will ultimately produce more instability in the country when the demands for freedom of expression and assembly that were the impetuses for the uprising in 2011 begin anew as they almost certainly will. But for the time being, it seems that Egyptians are more than happy to return to the predictability of everyday life that once was a source of discontent and frustration.  

Significant Developments Iraq. Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki called on parliament today to impose a state of emergency in Iraq, but then failed to convene a quorum needed to approve it. Maliki’s move came as militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) threatened to move on Baghdad today after a surprise offense against northern Iraq on Monday in which Isis fighters took Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, sending over half a million residents fleeing. According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran deployed Revolutionary Guard forces today to help Maliki’s troops regain control of Tikrit which was lost yesterday. Meanwhile, Kurdish forces took advantage today of fleeing Iraqi troops to take control of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. President Barack Obama expressed concern today about what he called the “emergency situation” in Iraq, and said he is not ruling anything out, but also said that this should be a “wake-up call for the Iraqi government” about the need for political compromise between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. White House spokesperson Jay Carney made it clear, however, that the administration is not contemplating ground troops. The Obama administration reportedly turned down Maliki’s request last month for airstrikes against militant staging areas in Iraq to help combat the rising tide of violence and to prevent ISIS fighters from moving between Syria and Iraq. Syria. President Bashar al-Assad said today that current and former U.S. officials were trying to contact his government, reflecting a Western shift in position on the Syria conflict  motivated by a fear of terrorism. Assad also ruled out further talks with the Syrian opposition. Meanwhile, the Syrian regime began releasing prisoners held in government jails Tuesday, a day after President Assad’s ambiguous declaration of general amnesty. Former UN and Arab League special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, warned in an interview with Der Spiegel earlier this week that there is a “serious risk” that the crisis in Syria will blow up the surrounding region and that Syria will likely become a failed state. Brahimi highlighted the threat to Syria’s neighbors and said, “Your countries are terribly scared that the few Europeans that are there may come back and create all sorts of problems. So just imagine what the feelings are next door!” Israel-Palestine. Pope Francis gathered Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican on Sunday for a prayer summit, in his words, to “seek the things that unite, so as to overcome the things that divide.” Peres and Abbas talked for fifteen minutes and then embraced. Today, Abbas’s office released a statement condemning Israel for escalating violence with a targeted airstrike on Gaza yesterday that killed a Palestinian militant. The airstrike came in response to the firing of a rocket from Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu said: “Our policy is clear - kill those who rise up to kill us.” U.S. Foreign Policy Iran. With the July 20 deadline for reaching an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program looming, a delegation of senior U.S. officials led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met with Iranian negotiators in Geneva on Monday and Tuesday to try to break the current stalemate. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, called the talks “deadlocked.” Next week, the P5+1 countries and Iran are set to meet to continue negotiating over the program’s parameters. There has been little known progress achieving compromise on the number and condition of the centrifuges Iran will be allowed to maintain. While We Were Looking Elsewhere Egypt. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi asked Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb, who will retain his post under Sisi, to form a committee to develop a national strategy to address sexual assault yesterday. President Sisi also paid a hospital visit to a victim of sexual assault yesterday to apologize in person for her attack during his inauguration celebration last week. A Youtube video of the attack had sparked major shock and outrage in Egypt and abroad. Three days before Sisi’s inauguration, interim president Adly Mansour changed Egypt’s penal code to define sexual harassment as a crime. Israel. Former Knesset Speaker and Likud Party member Reuven Rivlin was elected on Tuesday to serve as Israel’s tenth president. Rivlin won with 63 of 116 votes in the Knesset runoff vote against Meir Sheetrit of Hatnuah. He will be sworn in on July 24. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who opposed Rivlin’s candidacy and worked to persuade others to run against him—met with and congratulated the president-elect yesterday. Yemen. President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi replaced five ministers of his cabinet yesterday, a day after attacks on national power lines resulted in a country-wide blackout. Thousands of citizens took to the streets in protest demanding the government’s removal in response to the power outage. State news agency Saba reported that this was the third attack of its kind this month. Libya. Violence continued in Libya yesterday despite reports of a ceasefire as forces loyal to renegade General Khalifa Hiftar conducted air strikes against three northern areas of Benghazi and shelled residential areas outside the city.