Egypt

Hanin Ghaddar talks to Magda Haroun, head of Cairo’s Jewish community, about her people’s legacy to Egypt. Nora Stel explores the role of mukhtars—elected neighborhood- or village-level state representatives—in Lebanon’s consociational political system. Abdulrahman al-Rashed finds much to be optimistic about now that over nine hundred women will be running, for the first time, in Saudi Arabia’s upcoming municipal elections.

Farah Halime studies how continued violence in Egypt, particularly against the tourism industry, negatively impacts the country’s economy. The blogger Maysaloon discusses teaching identity, philosophy, and Descartes to Syrian refugee children. Aras Ahmed Mhamad reflects on how corruption and nepotism is weakening the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq.

Omnia Khalil reviews the struggles of everyday life in the Cairene neighborhood of Ramlat Bulaq. William Tamplin takes a look at Jordan’s most popular Bedouin poet and his use of verse to express Arab political arguments. Dana Hadra argues that the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s threats against Israel are empty.

The Egyptian state is weak. The country’s leaders are in a state of either panic or perpetual confusion. No one is in control. As in the darkest, most contested days of former President Mohammed Morsi’s tenure, Egypt’s failure once again seems plausible. Despite what supporters of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi claim about webs of conspiracies hatched in Washington, Doha, Istanbul, Jerusalem, or wherever, Egyptians have no one to blame but themselves. One need not have some special insight or training to understand that all has not been well in Egypt:  The garish Sisi-mania of 2013, the Jacobin-like nationalist discourse, the scores upon scores who have been arrested, and the intimidation of the press. Against the backdrop of all this is the disturbing, craven, vehement insistence that all is well and that only a Muslim Brother—meaning a terrorist—would see things otherwise. The last ten days have been particularly bad and especially revealing of Egypt’s pathologies. Two Saturdays ago, Metrojet flight 9268 disintegrated high above the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 souls aboard. In their insistence against mounting evidence that the plane was not blown out of the sky and thus security at the country’s airports failed to meet international standards, officials brought back memories of the mad scramble to deny the culpability of First Officer Gamil al-Batouty for intentionally flying EgyptAir flight 990 nose first into the Atlantic Ocean near Nantucket Island sixteen years to the day earlier. One can understand the Egyptian government’s panic after the Russian jet fell given the importance of Sharm el-Sheikh to what remains of the country’s tourism sector. Yet when confronted with American and British intelligence, had Sisi acknowledged the likelihood of terrorism and publicly vowed to improve security, he would have no doubt been showered with international assistance to help Egyptians in their increasingly nasty war with terrorists. Despite the ongoing threat of violence, tourism would likely have picked up again in due time with the confidence that, in time, Egypt, with the help of international partners, would establish proper procedures for baggage screening and ensure that ramp workers were above reproach. Instead, Egyptian officials maddeningly chose to dissemble, deflect, and blame others. Things have been just as damning on the domestic front. On Wednesday, a judge extended the detention of a young woman named Esraa al-Taweel  for forty-five days, who wept as she pleaded for the medical assistance she desperately needs that has seemingly been denied to her by the authorities. As Nervana Mahmoud explains, Taweel, a photojournalist, is on crutches after suffering a spinal injury when she was shot as security forces dispersed a protest in January 2014 and has already spent 155 days locked up pending the outcome of an investigation. Taweel is alleged to have used her Twitter account to call for violence against the police and is accused of belonging to an extremist group. There is no actual evidence of these charges, but even if there were, why deny her a visit with the doctors? It seems that the presiding judge, Counselor Moataz Khafagy, paid no attention to her request because he could, leaving the young woman trembling and in tears. There can be no justice without mercy. The fact that Taweel is likely innocent only adds to the cruelty visited upon her. Then, on Sunday, Military Intelligence detained, interrogated, and charged one of Egypt’s most well-known journalists and human rights activist, Hossam Bahgat, with publishing material harmful to the armed forces. On the same day, Salah Diab, the founder of the newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm, was also arrested over an alleged shady real estate deal. Bahgat has received the most attention because of his track record of extraordinary and meticulous work exposing the misdeeds of Hosni Mubarak, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Mohammed Morsi, and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. I once told Max Fisher of Vox that Bahgat and Amr Hamzawy, who recently left the country fearing arrest, were the only two liberals remaining in Egypt. I was exaggerating for effect, but they were the most effective and, for now, at least both have been silenced. For what reason? One is tempted to say no reason, but both men are dangerous to the regime in an important, though nonobvious way. Neither Bahgat nor Hamzawy command legions of followers, but through their work they have highlighted the gap between what Sisi and his media machine tell Egyptians about their lives and how people actually experience it. That difference is important because it is available to political entrepreneurs to advance an appealing alternative to Sisi’s vision—such that it is. That’s why the soft-spoken, bookish Hossam Bahgat is a threat. The simple fact is that he would not be if Egypt’s leaders were confident that their people were buying what they were selling. Sisi has failed spectacularly when it comes to learning the lessons of the Mubarak era. The new Egypt, with its over-reliance on violence, coercion, and lies, looks strikingly similar to the old one—the difference being that the deposed president seemed far more adept than the incumbent. The unfortunate result is an Egypt that combines the worst of all possible worlds: A flailing, groping, vainglorious effort to establish legitimacy and political control that does precisely the opposite. There is no precedent for this particular set of circumstances in Egyptian history, no familiar pattern that might help observers make sense of what is happening and what might come next. Whatever it is, it seems it will be self-destructive.

This article originally appeared here on the New York Times website on Friday, November 6, 2015. The Turkish authorities have blamed the self-declared Islamic State for the attack on a peace rally in Ankara that took the lives of more than 100 people, though others in Turkey are not so sure. Critics of the dominant Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.), and some victims say the violence is more likely the work of either the government itself or the so-called deep state, designed to destabilize Turkey in a way that undermines Kurdish political goals and the A.K.P.’s efforts to transform Turkish politics. The existence of the deep state is widely accepted in Turkey, even though the evidence that it is actually real is circumstantial at best. The name refers to an alleged network of military, intelligence and civilian officials along with policemen, journalists, academics, business people and mafia figures. Working in the shadows and beyond the law, the group’s goal is to subvert the government and any centers of power that would challenge “the system” and this coalition’s interests in it. A car crash in November 1996 involving the deputy police chief of Istanbul, a member of parliament, a hit man and the hit man’s girlfriend traveling in the same vehicle was, to some, tantalizing evidence of the deep state’s existence. Yet what became known as the Susurluk scandal revealed official corruption and criminal activities among a network of officials and politicians, but it did not shed light on an alleged larger conspiracy of individuals who control the Turkish state. Still, the belief that a deep state exists and that it would perpetrate an act of terrorism against fellow Turkish citizens remains strong. Continue reading here...

Maged Atiya laments the Egyptian state’s devolution into idiocy. Sam Metz and Abdallah Brahimi explore the potential reasons behind the recent dismissal of Algerian spy chief Mohammed Mediene. Nada Elfeituri examines Libya’s tribal divisions and their role in Libya today.

Valerie Stocker explores the overlook conflict between Libya’s Tebu and Tuareg communities. Hossam Bahgat investigates a secret military trial in Egypt of twenty-six officers accused of plotting a coup with the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Matt Piotrowski discusses the challenges and implications of falling oil prices on Middle Eastern governments.

H. A. Hellyer contributed this guest post on the recent Egyptian parliamentary elections. I hope you find it interesting. Egyptians voted this week for the eighth time in four years—ten if you count runoffs. The most blatant characteristic this time appears to be rather unedifying: An abundant lack of interest in the formal exercise of the democratic process. Unlike the enthusiasm of the last parliamentary elections in 2011, generalized apathy marked this round of voting. Yet there are some issues of intrigue to be drawn out and looked at further. Nathan Brown, in a characteristically well-argued piece in the Washington Post, argues that “Egypt’s parliament may be born broken,” a result of “a combination of ad hoc decision-making, historical inertia and absent-mindedness”. There is little to dispute in that regard. I would emphasize that the policies of the current political dispensation in Cairo over the past two years have contributed tremendously to a background environment that makes it difficult to expect anything but a lackluster and fragmented parliament. Beyond indirect methods, very specific measures exist as well, which Brown goes into in considerable detail, particularly when it comes to the Egyptian “war on terror” that has allowed for a great amount of repression in an astonishing amount of time, which different human rights organizations like the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies have examined in a great detail. Beyond that, there are a few items that might be queried further. The first relates to the turnout, which unofficial reports suggest to be 20 to 25 percent, but could actually be much lower. It is clearly not expected to be particularly high. In 2011 the overall turnout was 54 percent—at that time the envy of many a parliamentary vote in many different countries. The vote was not entirely built on democratic rules in that a lot of bribery and unethical campaigning practices were widely reported, but it was a competitive and open process. In 2015 few expected the turnout to reach even half of that amount; rather, it is heading toward closer to a third of that of the 2011 turnout, or less. In the 2014 presidential elections authorities panicked when voter turnout was low, first denying what was happening before undertaking a massive effort to increase participation, including the addition of a third day to vote. Yet in the current elections, authorities were seemingly content to allow that kind of low turnout. Why? Surely low turnout tarnishes the Egyptian leadership’s effort to portray the country as firmly on the path of democracy after the suspension of the democratic process in 2013. The presidency encouraged people to vote in a televised message the day before voting was to start, but he could hardly be expected to do otherwise. State media and pro-state media outlets encouraged people to vote, but the way in which the pleas went, it seems the outlets were more interested in backing the road map imposed by the military in 2013 rather than voting for a more developed democratic dispensation per se. Those outlets weren’t alone in that regard. The electoral law implemented by the executive, which privileges independent candidates as opposed to benefiting party lists, does not encourage the strengthening of political parties as institutions in the country. Rather, it emboldens the preponderance of the following forces, which will often overlap: Proponents of big business interests; representatives of the same rural and urban networks that underpinned Mubarak’s National Democratic Party; and hard-core (as opposed to less staunch) supporters of the current presidency of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Those are hardly likely to push forward reform agendas, but their victories would simply mean a parliament is in place and the road map has generally been completed. Given that backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that Cairo thus far has not exhibited the same signs of panic over a low turnout as it did over previous polls in 2014, such as extending voting by a day. Does the low turnout not bring the parliamentary vote into disrepute and then challenge the legitimacy of the political dispensation in Cairo today? That would appear to be dubious. Internationally, Cairo’s legitimacy is not simply a de facto fait accompli. Cairo has succeeded in becoming accepted thoroughly on the international stage. Sisi has spoken at the United Nations twice; Egypt now has a nonpermanent seat at the United Nations Security Council; and European leaders have visited Egypt, just as Sisi has gone to several European capitals (and is due to visit London in November). Cairo’s political legitimacy is not an issue with which it seems concerned, whether internationally or domestically. Cairo’s rather abysmal human rights record notwithstanding, Egypt is not a pariah state, but has seen the international community accept it. It does not need a big turnout in parliamentary elections to push forward on that score. On the contrary, there is the argument that a low turnout actually works to Cairo’s interest. Obviously, in any healthy democracy, turnout ought to be high in order to establish a level of popular legitimacy for any representative body that should be able to challenge and hold to account the executive. Egypt is not a healthy democracy, however, and the presidency has indicated on a number of occasions that it views parliament as potentially possessing powers that it ought not to be exercised, especially in a time of “crisis,” such as the current “war on terror.” A low turnout may actually allow Egyptian officials to argue that the public is far more supportive of their president than parliament, lending greater legitimacy to the executive’s exercise of often-arbitrary powers. The level of fragmentation that is likely to ensue in parliament will certainly lend credence to that argument. There is another aspect to be considered about this parliamentary election and that is the not-so-wild-card of the Salafist Nour Party. In 2011, it managed to acquire 30 percent of the parliamentary seats, successfully converting the social capital it had built up in Egypt over decades into political capital for the elections. Few expect that sort of dazzling outcome to be repeated. First, apathy will affect Nour Party supporters as much as it will anyone else. Second, many of those who previously supported the Nour Party will undoubtedly have drifted away after general disappointment with its record in the short-lived 2012 parliament and in politics over the last few years. Third, the Salafi base that the Nour Party appeals to is split between those who back the presidency and the executive more generally and those who are sympathetic to or support the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi and his reinstatement to the presidency. All this said, it is difficult to assess the overall support base for the Nour Party. The electoral legal dynamics do not quite allow for that. Back in early 2011 the base for Salafi political support was around 5 percent, according to Gallup polls and was converted to a voting base of 30 percent by the end of the year. It was difficult to ascertain who was voting for Nour in 2011; it is now even more difficult to drill deep down to determine precisely who their supporters are. Beyond the Nour Party, what is to become of the smaller, more leftist, relatively more liberal (though not quite, and Amr Hamzawy’s project at Stanford promises to look at the illiberalism of most Egyptian non-Islamist forces) parties, such as the Egyptian Social Democrat Party (ESDP) and the Constitution Party? The latter has essentially imploded, and many of their members have departed for the former. The ESDP ran their candidates as independents, but their financial backing, compared to parties like the Free Egyptians Party, for example, is paltry. Privately, the ESDP expects single digit success in terms of seats. If they manage to get at least four or five seats they will be insignificant in terms of the parliament itself, but they will be able to build upon that in terms of developing the institution of the ESDP for the medium to the long term. If they do not, it could be an even rockier ride going forward. Finally, what, if anything, is this parliament going to object to when it comes to the executive? There is little reason to believe that the legislature can be a genuine check or balance. When it comes to security sector reform, human rights issues, political improvements, judicial restructuring, and social justice none of these are likely to become an issue for the political forces in this parliament, and the presidency has few, if any, worries. The exception relates to the economic and financial files. On those issues there is a limited potential for the parliament to make its collective voice heard, if only as a nuisance, owing to the preponderance of big business interests in parliament. Even then, however, such objections will be unlikely to relate to social justice issues that pertain to economic reforms. It is not that Egypt’s parliamentary elections are utterly bereft of intrigue. It’s that there is not much to be interested in, particularly when compared to the electoral races of 2011 and 2012.

I have always wondered why leaders of foreign countries feel the need to publish opinion pieces in American newspapers of record. Who exactly are they trying to influence? The folks at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Treasury, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) generally know a lot more about conditions in a given country than what these leaders are trying to convey in 750 to 850 words. Maybe such op-eds are meant for members of Congress and their staffs, many of whom are just far too busy to focus on any one issue. Perhaps they’re intended to build support with the American public, but with the exception of a few issues—transnational terrorism, Israel, Iraq (sort of), and the Iran nuclear deal—Americans do not seem much interested in what foreign leaders are doing at home to make their economies grow and provide opportunities for their citizens. I can only presume that foreign leaders believe it will accrue to their domestic political benefit by having an op-ed in one of America’s elite newspapers. This brings me to Monday’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal under Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s byline. I am going to guess that Sisi did not actually write the op-ed and that it was placed in the Journal, which has been friendlier to the Egyptian leader than either the New York Times or the Washington Post, so that the Egyptian media can trumpet the fact that their president has been published in one of America’s most influential newspapers. Still, I cannot imagine who in Egypt actually cares about this, but it was an interesting piece of writing anyway. Whether intended or otherwise, it reveals that Sisi understands what makes Egyptians tick, though he does not grasp that his approach to governing is at odds with what his people desire above all—dignity, economic development and social justice, and representative government. Strip away all the consultant speak about “creat[ing] a dynamic, competitive and private-sector-led platform for growth”—blah, blah, blah—or the wonky discussion of a value-added tax (all included to convey the impression that Sisi can talk shop with folks like Gregory Mankiw) and the Egyptian leader is talking about some old and familiar themes in Egyptian politics—dignity and social justice. In the first sentence Sisi writes, “Over the past two years, the Egyptian people resolved to regain control of our destiny as a nation and began a process of political, social, and economic renewal.” Forget for a moment—as many Egyptians apparently have—that everything that has happened since January 25, 2011, is the result of decisions that Egypt’s people have made. The very fact that the piece is framed around Egyptians asserting control over their own society indicates that Sisi (or whoever helped the folks at Glover Park Group write the piece) understands the centrality of dignity in Egypt’s nationalist narrative. Yet what dignity is there in a society where arbitrary government is the norm? Where leaders invoke the ideals of two “revolutions” while consistently violating them? Like Mohammed Morsi, Hosni Mubarak, Anwar al-Sadat, and Gamal Abdel Nasser before him, Sisi presides over a system that is rigged to favor the few, leaving the rest of society at the mercies of an unjust judiciary, brutal security services, and an indifferent bureaucracy. The military intervention (or revolution or coup) that brought Morsi’s brief tenure to an end may have restored what the military, judges, police generals, and big business elite believe to be the natural order of things, but that order is and remains profoundly unjust and thus bereft of dignity. Egyptians also want economic development and social justice, which is, in the main, what Sisi’s op-ed is all about. To Sisi’s credit, he addresses the widely held perception that Egypt’s economic growth in the mid-2000s was a crony capitalist bonanza that did little more than enrich the very few and well-connected at the expense of the Egyptian people. The Egyptian president assures his readers that under his watch, “We aim to balance the objective of lowering government deficits against our commitment to promote social justice. This means to ensure that growth this time around will benefit all Egyptians, and not just a few.” Thus far, however, it seems that the Egyptian government has taken action to lower deficits, but has not addressed the issue of social justice—which is not just about sharing the benefits of a growing economy—other than rhetorically. Consider the big policy announcement contained within the op-ed—a value-added tax. A VAT is a good way of raising revenue and thus closing deficits, but it is also regressive, disproportionately affecting the poor who spend more as a percentage of income on basic goods than the wealthy. It is unclear to me from what I have read how Sisi and his advisors plan to address this issue. One of the reasons why Egyptians were so angry at the end of the Mubarak period was the reality of a threadbare social safety net. It’s true; times change and the era of meyya meyya walla ferakh el-gam‘eyya (roughly: A chicken in every pot) are long gone, but the Egyptian state has left the vast majority of citizens to fend for themselves while failing to help give them the means to cope through, for example, a decent education or access to medical care. Finally, Egyptians want representative government, which Sisi says he is going to give to them, declaring: I look forward to the contribution that Parliament will soon make in rebuilding Egypt, crafting new laws to foster the country’s path toward development and greater shared prosperity, and monitoring the government’s performance and representing the interests of the people. That sounds positively great, but it seems unlikely. Previously, the Egyptian president has expressed a rather Sadat-like view of the function of political parties and parliaments. Like Sadat in 1976 when he authorized platforms within the Arab Socialist Union that would later become parties, Sisi believes that they and the legislative body in which their representatives sit have a responsibility to support the government as a loyal opposition. After all, Sisi has called for a single electoral list that would "rise above narrow-minded partisan and personal interests and achieve supreme national interests." Beyond this view it is hard to reconcile Sisi’s sunny characterization of the coming role of parliament and the very fact that those who dare raise an objection to the quality of Egyptian politics, including journalists who are seeking the truth—better known as doing their job—are jailed indiscriminately. It was admirable that Sisi pardoned one hundred people on the eve of his visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meetings, but what about the tens of thousands of others? I am sure Egyptians of a certain perspective who might read this post will accuse me of harboring sympathies for the Muslim Brotherhood, but forget about the Brothers; why are people like Alaa Abdel Fattah or Ahmed Maher or Esraa el-Taweel—who are erroneously believed, perhaps out of convenience, to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood—and other like them in jail? Why have other Egyptians—again, not the Brothers who have set up shop in Istanbul and London—fled the country in fear of arrest? There would be no reason if the Egyptian leadership were genuinely interested in representative government. Sisi closes his op-ed admitting that transitions are hard. They are. Most of them fail. Egypt would likely be in better shape politically, economically, and socially if those in power actually sought to protect the revolution rather than merely proclaiming the benefit of the Wall Street Journal’s readers, most of whom have a passing, at best, interest in what happens in Egypt.

Farideh Farhi explores the Iranian parliament’s review of the nuclear deal. Abdulrahman al-Rashed examines the consequences of a divided Syria. Maged Atiya discusses the illusions and theatricality of Egyptian political discourse.

Beesan Kassab asks why Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is afraid of the constitution and parliament. Elias Muhanna notes how Beirut’s #YouStink protests are changing political participation in Lebanon. Shahram Akbarzadeh examines Iran’s anti-Islamic State strategy.