Egypt

My friend Hisham Melham, Al Arabiya’s Washington bureau chief, dean of the Beltway-based Arab press corps, farmer, and intellectual with few peers, wrote a piece that appeared over the weekend called “Whatever is the matter with Egypt?” It is a terrific question and one that I have been rolling around in my head for some time, but especially since two Sundays ago when I celebrated my birthday. That morning my lovely wife did what has become de rigueur in the era of Facebook: She posted a photo of me with my daughters wishing me a wonderful day. Among my many well-wishers, an old friend from Cairo posted the following: “Happy birth day Steve hoping you all the best. It might be good idea to visit Egypt after the inauguration of the new Suez Canal. You might change your position or at least sympathize with huge challenges facing Egypt. Take care.” I was happy to hear from my friend and just dismissed the added commentary about my work, thinking “Par for the course in Egypt these days, but—wow!—it is like the dude could not help himself.” I guess I had not exactly shrugged it off because I then planned to write a “what’s the matter with Egypt?” post using this birthday greeting as a device to explore the subject. As luck would have it, Hisham stole my thunder, but like good authors are supposed to do, his article got me thinking. The underlying logic of his question is that Egypt today is different from the way it was in the past. He marshals a good case, but with deference to Hisham—from whom I have learned so much over many years and with whom I agree on so much—I dissent. That is not to suggest the political situation is not bad or that there is not an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula or that the Egyptian nationalist discourse is not disturbing. It is just that with the exception of the apparent lethality and tenacity of the terrorists in Sinai, none of this is actually all that new. Hisham’s eloquent piece is a lament for a country lost: For an Egypt that was the most powerful and influential country in the region; when Cairo was the Middle East’s center of knowledge and culture; a place to which other Arabs flocked; the Egypt of Umm Kalthoum. Hisham, who is fifteen years my senior (though he does not look it) and from Lebanon, no doubt experienced this Egypt in his youth. I know it existed—for better or worse—because of Egypt’s rich and varied intellectual tradition, because Arabs from Dar Bayda (Casablanca) to Dhahran understand the Egyptian dialect, because the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt, because the framework for transnational jihad was refined in Egypt, and because there can be no regional war without Egypt, to name just a few examples. For as long as I have been interested in the Middle East, I have been told, “Egypt has history and weight.” All this is true, but Egypt also has a history of bad governance, religious intolerance, extremism, and proud nationalism that often verges on, and sometimes crosses over into, xenophobia. As an aside, none of these qualities makes Egypt terribly different from a long list of other countries. Hisham references the case of Nasr Abu Zayd, an Egyptian intellectual who in the 1990s applied modern literary criticism to the Quran. In response, the state declared his marriage null and void (because he was considered an apostate) and then ran him out of the country. It was pretty shocking, but before Abu Zayd, there was Taha Hussein, an Egyptian literary giant who made religious conservatives apoplectic in the first half of the twentieth century. Hussein never experienced what Abu Zayd (who died in 2010) was forced to endure, and there is even a street named after Hussein in Cairo’s Zamalek neighborhood, but both men confronted hostile intellectual milieux in which the religious establishment framed the terms of debate. In today’s Egypt, the media routinely peddles government agitprop and the intellectual class has demonstrated its ability to justify absolutely anything in the service of national honor. I know it seems somehow different and especially shocking when many of the same intellectuals who profess fealty to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi positioned themselves as reformers and democrats during the late Mubarak period. But really, what is different? The Egyptian media and intellectuals have a long, if hardly proud, history of self-abnegation. The human rights violations, large number of political prisoners, and the three thousand people killed may be unprecedented in Egypt, but it was Gamal Abdel Nasser, revered by many Egyptians, who built the original Middle Eastern national security state on which a variety of others were modeled. It is true that Egypt is a profoundly repressive place, but rather than the result of some slide into an unprecedented variant of authoritarianism, one can draw a direct line from Nasser to Sisi. I could continue, but by now readers get the point. With the exception of Egypt’s regional role, which truly has deteriorated in ways that mark a significant change, at a basic level many of the things that people lament about Egypt are many of the problems that seem to have always plagued Egypt. That probably does not make people feel very good. After all, Hisham actually has a far sunnier view than me. He is implying that although Egypt has deteriorated dramatically, there was a moment of luster and influence and that there must be a way back. I certainly want Egypt to succeed, but I do not see a country that has fallen. Rather, I see an Egypt that is in a perpetual struggle with its demons and thus continues to stumble again and again.

Mada Masr highlights the celebrations for “Egypt’s gift to the world,” the New Suez Canal. Michael Collins Dunn examines the original festivities for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1867. Safiaa Mounir takes a look at the economic uncertainties of the Suez Canal expansion project.

My friend and colleague, Amy Hawthorne, wrote this terrific preview of the upcoming U.S.-Egypt strategic dialogue.  I hope you find it interesting and useful. On August 2, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Cairo for the first U.S.-Egypt “strategic dialogue” since 2009. The high-level forum has been held on and off since the Clinton administration as part of the still-unmet goal of expanding the relationship beyond security issues into more robust trade, investment, and educational ties. During the presidency of Hosni Mubarak, the dialogue was mostly a talk shop and sop to Egypt for support on counterterrorism and the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. In light of today’s diminished ties, similarly modest expectations for this Sunday’s conclave are in order, despite the State Department’s upbeat announcement that the dialogue “reaffirms the United States’ longstanding and enduring partnership with Egypt and will…further our common values, goals, and interests.” Egypt undoubtedly views the United States’ willingness to hold the dialogue as an important diplomatic achievement and further evidence of its stamina and leverage over Washington, particularly after the White House backtracked on its partial weapons suspension. Indeed, Egypt outlasted the suspension—imposed in October 2013 in response to the mass killings of Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators, then lifted in March 2015 despite the worsening human rights situation—and several months of a White House cold shoulder without making any concessions on human rights. In contrast to the shifting and convoluted U.S. message on Egypt in the past few years, Cairo has kept its narrative entirely consistent, if not fully convincing: Egypt is fighting terrorism caused by the Muslim Brotherhood, the source of all Islamist terrorism everywhere; is building a democracy; is a crucial partner for the West to fight terrorism; and is a relative success story when measured against failed states such as Libya, Syria, or Yemen. As one Egyptian commentator recently wrote, “We need to engage in the dialogue from a position of strength and with greater confidence in our status. The United States is now aware of Egypt’s importance.” To skeptical observers this might seem precisely the wrong time for the United States to bolster such confidence and show support for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, particularly as an intensifying cycle of terrorism and repression may be taking Egypt down a very dark path. The Obama administration is not pleased about Sisi’s crackdown, but seems to have concluded that his repression does not pose any immediate threats to U.S. interests. American officials apparently hope that senior-level talks with his government will advance Washington’s core interests. Short-term thinking continues to dominate the U.S. approach as troubling questions about Egypt’s trajectory—are Sisi’s policies actually making the problem of terrorism worse? Will the current military-backed authoritarian order give way to another mass upheaval?—are pushed aside. So, it seems, are other deeper questions about the future of the relationship as the lofty rhetoric of “enduring partnership” provides a comforting veneer of continuity. Steven A. Cook has written compellingly about “the long goodbye” between the United States and Egypt. He is correct: Although both presidents still describe U.S.-Egypt ties as “strategic,” the relationship has been something less than that for some time. The erosion of the genuinely strategic dimension began well before Mubarak’s 2011 ouster. The lynchpin of the alliance has always been the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. But after several decades, that historic joint accomplishment became a distant memory that could no longer provide enough of an overarching, grand shared purpose. A new strategic-level endeavor has been lacking since at least 2000, when the Oslo-era peace process collapsed and the second intifada broke out. The peace process, heavily flawed as it was, was the only area of highly-visible, presidential-level diplomatic collaboration between Cairo and Washington that aimed at transforming the region’s future. (Counterterrorism and security cooperation has always been robust, but is run by intelligence and military officials far out of public view). Throughout the George W. Bush administration, differences over Egypt’s pace of political reform, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza caused constant friction. When President Barack Obama took office he tried hard to turn over a new leaf by reaching out early to Mubarak and by toning down the democracy assistance and human rights criticism that so antagonized Egyptian officials. Some tensions did subside, but with no larger animating goal and plenty of mutual resentments the relationship continued to stagnate in the final years of Mubarak’s three-decade rule. The four years since Mubarak’s ouster, of course, have brought new frustrations. Egypt’s post-2011 turmoil exhausted U.S. officials who were accustomed to decades of stability and predictability. Anti-American campaigns that Mubarak likely would have quashed—the criminal prosecution of civil society workers for receiving U.S. funding, including the son of an American cabinet member, vitriolic conspiracy theories in the media against Obama, and the imprisonment of several U.S. citizens for political reasons—severely eroded trust. The United States is acutely aware of its poor standing among the Egyptian public and the role that the Egyptian media plays in stoking anti-American sentiment. There is disappointment over the failure of Egypt’s brief democratic experiment among some U.S. officials who believe (correctly) that a successful transition could have reinvigorated the relationship by fostering shared political values and boosting civil society linkages. Adding to the sense of fatigue, Egypt’s ability to be a decisive U.S. “partner” on key regional issues is very limited nowadays. Post-2011 Egypt is inward-facing, understandably consumed by major security, economic, and political challenges at home (see Egypt’s refusal to actively join the anti-Islamic State military campaign). More broadly, to the Obama administration, Egypt—and the rest of the Arab world—is a low priority in global foreign policy and a region where major investments of U.S. political capital usually bring scant returns. The sense of resentment and distance is perhaps even greater on Egypt’s side. Some of it is a natural corrective to what many in Egyptian officialdom (and the public) begrudged as Mubarak’s overly close ties with the United States. The desire for a sharper assertion of Egyptian national interests also reflects an understandable yearning—after the popular self-determination manifested in the 2011 uprising—to be treated as an equal party, not a subordinate one. But, as explained to me by several current and former Egyptian officials during my recent visits to Cairo, some in the Egyptian leadership also do not trust the Obama administration specifically. They truly believe that Obama helped to instigate the 2011 uprising, backed the Brotherhood’s ascent to power, and still supports the banned group. There is also bitterness over the United States’ failure to provide meaningful economic aid during Egypt’s time of need after Mubarak’s ouster, its lack of enthusiasm about the military’s 2013 overthrow of former President Mohamed Morsi (though the U.S. administration did not directly oppose it, either), and most of all, its suspension of military aid. In Egypt’s view, its military is entitled to receive a continuous $1.3 billion in aid as long as it upholds the 1979 peace treaty and gives the U.S. military fast permission to transit through Egyptian territory, regardless of Egypt’s human rights record. Egyptian officials also believe that the United States cares little about the post-2011 chaos enveloping the region. There is particular bitterness over Libya, now a raging conflict zone on Egypt’s western border that the U.S.-backed NATO campaign helped to create only to see the United States walk away afterwards. Like other governments in the region, Egypt believes it can wait out the Obama administration, confident that it will receive much better treatment by the next U.S. president. So what is the relationship about? The two countries are linked through common interests and mutual benefits, but with little affection and no shared vision for Egypt’s and the region’s future beyond “stability.” Much of the relationship remains transactional. The United States relies upon Egypt to provide expedited permission for military overflights and passage through the Suez Canal as a key part of American force projection in the Persian Gulf, the Horn of Africa, and Afghanistan. Washington needs Egypt to fight terrorist groups operating on its territory, such as the Islamic State-affiliate based in northern Sinai, so that the United States does not have to take direct action itself. Such “counterterrorism partnerships” are a guiding principle of Obama’s national security policy. The United States also wants Egypt to maintain peace with Israel, help manage recurrent conflicts between Israel and Palestine, and assist with, or at least not obstruct, other U.S. regional priorities such as the Iran nuclear deal. In fact, in the big picture, Egypt continues to be broadly aligned with Western security and economic interests in the Middle East, even if visible and active cooperation with the United States across the region is rare nowadays. In return for these things, the United States accepts to deal with whatever regime is in place in Cairo and to provide significant military aid. For its part, Egypt seeks U.S. military aid to maintain its Western-oriented strategic posture. Despite Cairo’s recent efforts to show it does not rely on the United States by diversifying its arms sources through deals with France and Russia, it still sees U.S. military aid as superior. Indeed, American assistance comes entirely as a grant (as opposed to loans) and offers advanced equipment, along with training, maintenance and technical support, and prestige through association with the world’s most powerful military. Egypt also wants U.S. backing in international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, should it decide to accept funding from such institutions, and positive signs from American officials to international investors about the country’s business climate. Finally, for the sake of Egypt’s global reputation, which seems especially important to Sisi, Egypt desires tacit acceptance, and if not active legitimation, of its nondemocratic political order from the most powerful country in the world. The relationship on the eve of the strategic dialogue is somewhat better than it was a year ago. This is almost entirely because of U.S. preoccupation with other problems in the region and its decisions to back down from policies, such as the partial military aid suspension, that Egypt opposed—not because of any conciliatory steps on Egypt’s part. But bilateral ties hold little potential right now for reinvigoration or expansion. It is not just that the two governments have different narratives on key issues, much unresolved baggage from the past four years, and not nearly enough cultural, educational, and economic linkages between the two peoples. There is a lack of interest at the highest levels. Obama, nearing the end of his term, is disillusioned by the Arab world and seems highly unlikely to do the one thing that would immediately improve relations with Sisi: Never criticize Egypt’s terrible human rights record and lack of democracy again. Sisi, while he prefers smooth relations, does not appear to seek a close relationship with this White House and has few incentives to change his policies since he knows that he does not need American support to survive. Egypt and the United States will continue to be important to each other, even in the age of the Long Goodbye. The United States still matters to Egypt because the United States is still the most powerful country in the world and thus is every country’s most important relationship. Egypt matters to the United States because of where it is on the map and what it is (the Arab world’s biggest and still most pivotal country and the first to make peace with Israel). This should all seem like enough to create a “strategic” relationship, but it has not been for some time. Certainly, if the two countries can find meaningful ways to cooperate more, especially in economic and cultural realms, they should. But the challenge of this era is to manage a much less special, much less close, more often difficult, relationship effectively.

Randa Ali from Al-Ahram remembers legendary Egyptian actor Omar Sharif. Magdi Abdelhadi laments Omar Sharif’s death as a reminder of a bygone era of Egyptian culture. Watch this 2004 interview with Omar Sharif on his career, his acting, and his politics.

Maged Atiya writes that, two years after, the removal of former President of Egypt Mohammed Morsi is as difficult to condemn as it is to condone. Amro Ali examines the debate on urban development in Alexandria and the rebuilding of that city’s famed lighthouse. Richard McNeil-Wilson challenges the assumed links between terrorist attacks in France, Kuwait, and Tunisia.

This article originally appeared here on ForeignPolicy.com on Friday, July 3, 2015. When Egyptian Prosecutor-General Hisham Barakat’s car was blown up in Cairo this week by as of yet unknown terrorists, there was a profound sense of foreboding that Egypt was in some new, unprecedented phase of violence. These concerns were only reinforced when the Islamic State-affiliated Wilayat Sinai, or “Province of Sinai,” killed dozens of soldiers and policemen in a spectacular raid on the town of Sheikh Zuweid the following day. Egypt is indeed entering unchartered territory, fighting an undeclared war in the Sinai Peninsula that is spreading to population centers in the Nile Valley. It is hard to imagine how Egyptians will avoid a prolonged period of bloodshed. Barakat’s assassination was just the most recent in a long list of Egyptian officials killed at the hands of their opponents. Everyone knows about President Anwar Sadat’s murder in October 1981, but far fewer know that in the 1940s alone, two prime ministers, a minister of finance, a well-respected judge, and the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, were assassinated. With the obvious exception of the greater influence of the British, who occupied Egypt at the time, there are echoes of that era in Egypt’s current political dynamics — notably hypernationalism, political instability, widening violence, and a pervasive sense of chaos. How did it all end then? With a coup. While a coup today seems unlikely, if not entirely implausible, the Egyptian military’s decisions are once again at the center of the current moment. Continue reading here...

After two millennia, it seems Jews are “in” in the Middle East. In what can only be described as a stunning turn of events, Jews—though not Israelis—have become “What’s Hot” in the region, and the Muslim Brotherhood has become “What’s Not.” The nostalgia for lost Jewish communities has been a recurring theme since at least 2012 with the release of Amir Ramses’ documentary Jews of Egypt. The latest installment is the Egyptian Ramadan serial called The Jewish Alley (Haret el-Yahood). In between, there has been a rediscovery of Jewish life and culture in Tunisia, Morocco, and Lebanon, where the Maghen Abraham synagogue has been undergoing a lengthy renovation. It is easy to overstate the case given Egypt’s recent history of seemingly pathological anti-Semitism, but Egyptians seem to have gone further than others in the region in their rediscovery of Jewish life and culture. This should make well-meaning people feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but what is happening in Egypt is actually less rediscovery than reinvention. When Israeli forces reached the east bank of the Suez Canal on the morning of June 8, 1967, they constituted the largest number of Jews in Egypt at the time. In the preceding two decades, the vast majority of their Egyptian coreligionists had fled to Europe, the United States, and Israel. The largest exodus came after the 1956 British-French-Israeli attack on the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal zone. A small number remained, believing their nationalism and anti-Zionism would protect them. It did and it did not. Crude and vicious anti-Semitism became the stock and trade of the Egyptian media as well as a long list of so-called intellectuals who happily blurred the lines between Jews and Israelis. At the same time, the remnants of Egypt’s Jewish community never experienced pogrom–like violence. Cairo’s unused synagogues—there was rarely the required ten people, or minyan, for prayer—were always well protected. This may have been a cynical effort to draw a distinction between official hostility to Israel and Judaism, but importantly, those houses of worship remained as a testament to Judaism’s past presence in Egypt. Jews did play important roles in Egyptian commerce, culture, and politics in the first half of the twentieth century. Ramses, his producer Haitham al-Khamissi, and the people who brought about The Jewish Alley want to leverage a sanitized version of this history to make claims about Egyptian society—especially its once, and future, religious tolerance and inclusivity. In Jews of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Zionists conspired to make the once allegedly idyllic Jewish existence in Egypt a nightmare of sequestration, suspicion, anti-Semitism, and exodus. This Ramadan, unlike some holiday mini-series from the recent past that were notable for their anti-Semitic themes, Jews are portrayed sympathetically, as authentic Egyptians, and as victims of the Muslim Brotherhood. The profound national trauma of post–uprising Egypt has some Egyptians looking back to a time when the country was not locked in an all-consuming struggle with its violence, Jacobin–like discourse, pervasive repression, and widespread distrust. Under these difficult circumstances, Jews are a perfect device through which Egyptians can create a tolerant past if only to give the audience some faint hope of a more just, open, and less prejudiced future. With so few Jews left in the country, their history in Egypt is entirely malleable. It is true that Ramses features Jews outside the country who nurture fond memories of all things Egyptian, but it is clear that he is interested in telling a story about Egypt rather than an accurate reflection of the history of its Jewish population and why it has dwindled to so few. It may well be that the hagiography of Egypt’s Jews is part of a new set of positive myths that will help Egyptians answer questions about who they are and what kind of society they want. For this then, everyone should welcome the new interest among some Egyptians in Egypt’s Jews. Yet that is not enough. In order to build that socially just, tolerant, and more representative society that Egyptians want, they will actually have to grapple with and revise a history that only has a vague resemblance to what they have been telling themselves about their Jewish brothers and sisters.

Nadeen Shaker investigates how Turkey’s Kurds are reclaiming their language in the classroom. Farah Halime of Rebel Economy has published a translation of former Vice President of Egypt Omar Suleiman’s September 2011 court testimony in the case against former President Hosni Mubarak. Sam Houston discusses methods of understanding authority and authenticity in Islam vis-à-vis jihadism.

Sigal Samuel reviews a new Ramadan television series about Egypt’s Jewish community. The Beirut Report recounts the story of a journalist held by Hezbollah in southern Beirut. Imad Stitou argues that the Moroccan regime is seeking to control Salafis by slowly incorporating them into pro-government parties.

Sara Pursley, in a two-part report on Jadaliyya, debunks the myth of Iraq as an artificial state. Mahmoud Riad protests the demolition of the National Democratic Party’s headquarters in Cairo. Ahmad Khalil finds that the war in Syria has turned bicycles into valuable commodities as well as political statements.

I do not know how many times over how many months that question has been put to my colleagues and me at an endless number of panel discussions, roundtables, hearings, and meetings with our friends in government. It is actually a question more about durability—will President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Egypt’s new/old political order exist anywhere from one year to five years from now?—than stability. The intellectually honest answer is: Maybe, maybe not. That is about as wishy–washy as one can get, but analytically that is likely the best we are going to do. On a number of levels, the stability—er, durability—of the Egyptian political system does not look good at all. Egypt manifests the problems and pathologies of a modernizing society: A middle class that wants more and that is afraid of getting less and less, an old elite determined to maintain its privileges, uneven economic development, and rapid urbanization. Add to this mix rising food prices, increased costs for fuel, rolling blackouts, crumbling infrastructure, a social safety net that became and remained nonexistent a long time ago, and a nasty insurgency. This all amounts to a witches’ brew of contested politics, instability, and violence. How has Sisi sought to manage these complex and multilayered challenges thus far? Maybe it is because he is a neophyte, but so far not so good. Sisi rules with a heavy emphasis on coercion, patronage, and with little in the way of an authentic or positive vision of Egypt’s future with which most Egyptians can agree. If there was such a vision, the media and officialdom would not need to question the “Egyptian-ness” of those who happen to disagree with them or absurdly accuse all critics to be Muslim Brotherhood supporters, terrorist sympathizers, and agents of the Qatari and Turkish governments, Hamas, Israel, Iran, and, of course, the United States. When a leader relies almost exclusively on force or the threat of force, they invariably fail to elicit the loyalty of the population, thereby compromising their ability to establish political control. This was Hosni Mubarak’s undoing. Since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces sent Mubarak packing in February 2011, journalists, scholars, and policymakers have tended to look at Egyptian politics through the prism of that event and the massive protests that led to the coup d’état of July 2013. We have been on the lookout for the next Tahrir Square. There is good reason for this, not least of which is the country’s leadership seems profoundly afraid of provoking Egyptians to take to the streets once again. I understand President Sisi is single–mindedly focused on minimizing electricity problems this summer, which coincides with Ramadan. You can understand the man’s concern: With average temperatures in the mid-90s, intermittent air conditioning that come with blackouts can only contribute to the misery and anger of hungry people, even if their stomachs are empty out of religious obligation. There is also the added exasperation of missing one’s favorite Ramadan TV show when the electricity goes. Yet politics in Egypt is not just about “the street.” It remains to be seen whether President Sisi actually commands the state. It is pretty clear that the presidency, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior, the General Intelligence Service, and the judiciary agree that the January 25 uprising, its immediate aftermath, and the Morsi interregnum were disastrous and should not be repeated. Beyond that, there seem to be institutional rivalry, political fissures, and efforts to make sure the narrow interests of each are ensured. These struggles contribute to instability, raising questions about the durability of the Egyptian political system. All the signs suggest that Egypt is a country on the edge, but still I hesitate to say definitively that its present instability will consume Sisi like it did Morsi and Mubarak. It is true that the overwhelming majority of analysts understand that all is not well in Egypt, but no one can be quite sure if the country is headed toward another round of political upheaval. That is not because we are talking to the wrong people (though it is quite possible that we are) or that our assumptions are wrong (also entirely possible) or that we simply do not understand Egypt (we may not), but rather because uprisings and revolutions are, by their very nature, unpredictable. It is also important to keep in mind that before January 25, 2011, virtually everyone had a hard time imagining the fragility of Egypt’s political system. Analysts need to avoid falling into the same trap, but in reverse. That is to say we should consider the possibility that despite Egypt’s contested politics, violence, and repression, Sisi’s political order may be more durable than we imagine. To do otherwise would risk being surprised once again.