Day: August 14, 2013
Alas, poor Egypt
The big issue on everyone’s mind today is the crackdown in Egypt. Here is how I’ve answered a few of the press’s good questions:
Q: What’s your take on the crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood? What might result from this confrontation?
A: The unnecessary and ill-advised crackdown will make it far more difficult for Egypt to heal the rift between Islamists and secularists and move towards an inclusive and democratic government. The military will now be quite clearly in charge, as the resignation of El Baradei confirms. Washington will have to decide whether to suspend assistance. It will be difficult not to do so, though suspension is unlikely to make things better.
Q: What might be the international implication of the crisis – for other Arab countries prospects of democracy there?
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Bad but not hopeless
News from the Arab uprisings this morning is particularly grim:
- In Egypt, the police and army are attacking pro-Morsi demonstrators, causing what appear to be well over 100 deaths;
- In an unconfirmed report, Italian Catholic priest and opposition enthusiast Paolo Dall’Oglio is said to have been killed by opposition Islamists in Syria;
- The American mission in Yemen remains closed as the US continues its heightened drone war against militants.
Add to these items the Islamist government in Tunisia finding itself unable to protect non-Islamist politicians from assassination and Libya’s continuing difficulty in gaining control over revolutionary militias and you’ve got a pretty ugly picture.
I don’t want to minimize any of this. It is all real and problematic. But it is not catastrophic. Revolutions have their bad moments (and days, months and years). Some of them end badly. There is no guarantee that won’t be the case in the Middle East, with some or all of the uprisings.
Egypt is in the most peril. It has not found a steady course but lurches between extremes: either military-backed secularists or Muslim Brotherhood/Salafist dominance. Co-habitation of the two has proven unworkable. It is hard to picture how today’s crackdown can put things right. The Islamists will find it harder to compromise. Secularists and minorities will fear even more a return of the Brotherhood to power. Read more
RSS - Posts
