Tag: Egypt
Leverage without a fulcrum
The International Peace Institute published this piece today on its Global Observatory under the title “With Democracy, Security at Stake in Egypt, How Should the West Respond?”:
Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the confrontation in Egypt have so far failed. The refusal of coup leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, now the defense minister, to go along with diplomatic de-escalation, and the excessive force used by security agencies signal that they do not aim at repressing only the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian army is trying to frighten the general population and restore autocratic rule to an Egypt that has tasted freedom and expressed itself repeatedly at the ballot box since 2011.
The US and Europe want to get Egypt back on a more orderly democratic path. This entails restraining the Egyptian security forces, maintaining relative openness, and moving towards an inclusive polity with Islamist, and, if possible, Muslim Brotherhood, participation. It also means restoring a modicum of order and stability so that ordinary Egyptians can go about their business without fear of violence or intimidation.
The security forces are continuing their violent crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, which is pledging to continue its protests against the July 3 military takeover. Some Islamists are resisting with arms. About 1,000 people have been killed. What can the United States and the international community do to mitigate the situation?
Analysis
The civilian government the Egyptian army installed after the coup has pledged an amended constitution by the end of the year, to be approved in a referendum and elections early next year. This is a fast timeline. What can the international community do to try to ensure it is met?
The United States has already postponed delivery of F16s to Egypt and canceled joint military exercises scheduled for the fall to protest General Sisi’s crackdown. Inevitably the question of America’s $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt will now arise in Washington. It would make sense to refocus the civilian assistance of about $250 million tightly on democratic objectives. Those most concerned with getting Egypt back on a democratic path are recommending suspension of the military portion ($1.2 billion).
This will be opposed by those more concerned with security issues, including maintenance of the peace treaty with Israel. A proposal in the US Senate to redirect all Egyptian aid to domestic American priorities was defeated last month by a wide margin (86-13), but that was before the worst of the crackdown. The margin would likely be much closer next month.
Even if the US Congress or the Administration acts to suspend military aid to Egypt, the financial impact will not be immediate. This year’s tranche has already been transferred. It will be the better part of another year before money can be blocked. More weapons scheduled for delivery can be delayed, but American industry will spend the year lobbying hard against a funding cut-off, as much of the money is actually spent on US contractors who supply the Egyptian military with materiel and services.
Europe provides much more assistance to Egypt than the United States. Its 5 billion euro (more than $6 billion) mainly economic package is now under review. This was intended to support the transition to democracy, which is now in doubt. Europeans concerned with their own economic problems may well see suspension of aid to Egypt as an opportunity.
The international financial institutions are another important part of the picture. Egypt has been negotiating for many months a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. The US and Europe can block or delay that loan.
But both Europe and the United States need to consider the broader international context in deciding what to do about bilateral and IMF assistance. They are not the only players on the world stage. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait have already pledged $12 billion, dwarfing both the American and European assistance packages. Russia will likely try to take advantage of any opening and provide military aid if the Americans suspend theirs.
Egypt clearly has alternatives to Western assistance, even if the Gulf states are notoriously slow and unreliable, and the Russians significantly less attractive to a military that has been getting advanced American weapons. If they want to see a democratic outcome in Egypt, the Americans and Europeans will need to convince the Gulf states—no paragons of democracy—to back the timeline for a return to democratic governance.
Widening the aperture farther, the Arab and Muslim worlds are watching what the international community does about Egypt. Will it insist on a return to a democratic path and an inclusive polity that allows Islamist participation on the timeline that Egypt itself has defined? Or will it settle for delay or a security solution that allows the army to remain the arbiter of Egypt’s fate? A lot depends on the skillful use of diplomatic and assistance leverage in a context where there are many players with diverse and even conflicting objectives.
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Egypt’s new autocracy
Motives can be hard to discern, especially if those who hold them say little. So far, the Egyptian army has not said much. It merely claims its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood is intended to fight threats to the nation, in particular terrorism.
But most of the violence against security forces came after the crackdown, not before. And there is no evidence that brutality of this sort will stem a terrorist movement or insurgency. To the contrary, few insurgencies yield to force. Most yield to law enforcement or negotiation.
We can try to infer the Army’s objectives from its behavior. The largely indiscriminate violence by the security forces suggests that the intention is not merely to disperse particular demonstrations but rather to intimidate. The target is not only the Muslim Brotherhood but the entire Egyptian population. The army is trying to reestablish the autocracy that fell in February 2011, with new leadership. That requires frightening all the citizens, not just the Muslim Brotherhood.
But it also requires chasing the Brotherhood out of the political game. Even under Hosni Mubarak, there were elections. Under strong international pressure, the army will have to hold elections sometime next year, if not earlier. What it cannot afford is for the Brotherhood to participate and gain a significant slice of the electorate, maybe even a plurality.
This may seem unlikely given the popular demonstrations against President Morsi, but it is entirely possible. The non-Islamists in Egypt seem hopelessly divided. The longer the army postpones elections, the more likely it is Egyptians will be disappointed with its rule, which has no real prospect of solving the economic and social ills that sent Egyptians into the street calling for Morsi to step down. The Brotherhood has a loyal and organized core following. A free and fair electoral contest in a year’s time might well have unpleasant surprises for General Sissi.
The way to avoid this is to make sure the Brotherhood goes underground and is unable or unwilling to participate in the electoral process. It won’t be surprising if the army declares the Brotherhood illegal, but it may not have to do so. Morsi and his minions are likely to say they won’t participate because the process is illegitimate. But there are less militant Brothers and supporters. The tougher the crackdown, the less likely a Brotherhood electoral effort in any guise will emerge. The Egyptian army knows Turkish history well: the Islamists returned repeatedly after military interventions, gained control of the state and are now taking revenge on some of their military antagonists.
Leaving aside the fate of the Brotherhood, can autocracy be reimposed?
The odds are pretty good. The more moderate Islamists and secular liberals in Egypt were never very good at getting votes. They will be glad to see the Brotherhood out of the competition. The Salafists are in a more difficult spot, but their all too apparent sympathies with the Brotherhood demonstrators have not yet made them split definitively from at least nominal acceptance of the military coup. Offered an opportunity to compete at the polls without the Brotherhood in play, the Salafists may well play along. Few non-Brotherhood Egyptians of any stripe are going to stand up for the Brotherhood, especially if it continues to resist the crackdown with ineffective violence of its own.
Of course the new autocracy won’t be the same as Mubarak’s. It is likely to allow greater freedom of the press, a safety valve that many autocracies find useful. It would be smart to allow broader distribution of the economic goodies than Mubarak did, building a real constituency of its own in the business community. It might well get smart about providing for the poorest of the poor, who don’t get much out of Egypt’s subsidies to middle class commodities like gasoline that they don’t use.
But autocracy it will still be, with clear limits on political organizing, protection for the army’s privileges and status, and a truncated ideological spectrum that tries to consign any but the most moderate Islamism to the margins. It will not be democratic in any absolute sense, but it may be a bit more open than the old autocracy. The question now is how many people the army will have to kill to make it happen.
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Mubarak’s last laugh
My friends at the New York Times are repeating their call to cut off military aid to Egypt in response to yesterday’s “madness” (and proposing cancellation of military exercises as well). Until now I’ve opposed cutting off aid, but the time has come. Washington should suspend both military exercises and aid, while sustaining civilian assistance, pending return to civilian rule. Doing anything less will signal approval of a murderous and unjustified attack by the Egyptian security forces as well as the military’s continuing hold on power.
I hasten to add that it won’t do much good. As Eric Trager has noted (unfortunately behind the Wall Street Journal paywall, so don’t expect a link), the Egyptian army regarded the Muslim Brotherhood challenge to the military coup as an existential one. Our $1.3 billion just does not outweigh an existential challenge. General Sissi has surely calculated that he would lose this money if he cracked down. He went ahead anyway. No one should expect him to have any regrets. He is far more likely to denounce the US for hypocrisy for not supporting his war on terror and to look for additional support from the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, Gulf states that have already ponied up pledges of well over $10 billion. Read more
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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?
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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
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Washington’s fault
Even for someone who served abroad as an American diplomat, the Egyptian penchant for conspiracy theories about Washington’s supposed role is astonishing. So too is the crudeness of Egyptian anti-Americanism. While I was treated to a good deal of poor taste and baseless speculation about American machinations while serving as an American diplomat in Italy and Brazil, the admixture of hope for good relations with the United States was significantly greater there. Egyptians seem genuinely to dislike the US and attribute many of their ills to it.
It is difficult to understand how people as clever as the Egyptians have failed to break the code of American behavior: Washington understands that it has relatively little influence over what happens in Egypt and is prepared to accept whoever comes to power with a modicum of legitimacy and promises to steer the country towards something like a democratic outcome with as little violence as possible. That’s what happened when Mubarak fell, it is what happened when Morsi took over, and it is what happened when the demonstrations and General Sissi pushed him out.
Washington is following the Egyptian lead. If American behavior seems erratic and incomprehensible to Egyptians, that is largely because the revolutionary course the Egyptians have chosen is so unpredictable. The result is that all sides in Egypt are convinced the Americans are arrayed against them. Neither secularists nor Islamists in Egypt seem inclined to look in the mirror to see the origins of what ails their country. Both prefer to blame it all on Washington, which has been less than adroit in countering the vituperation.
This is not to say there is no basis whatsoever in the conspiracy theories. Ambassador Patterson likely did try to get General Sissi to negotiate some sort of deal with the Muslim Brotherhood. Deputy Secretary of State Burns did not spend several days in Cairo recently lounging around the embassy–he surely pushed for Sissi to clarify the future roadmap for preparing a constitution and holding new elections. The Americans will be concerned to see things in Egypt move towards relatively democratic stability, with the state’s monopoly on the legitimate means of violence restored (especially in Sinai). They may make mistakes of judgment about how that would best be accomplished, but to imagine that they want Morsi back in power, or Sissi to continue in power without elections, is just plain wrong.
I don’t begrudge Egypt its enthusiasm for its latest military rock star. General Sissi has clearly tapped some deep vein of political gold in the Egyptian body politic. But we should all recognize this cult of personality for what it is: a budding autocrat whose similarity to Gamal Abdel Nasser should raise eyebrows not only in Washington. My dean Vali Nasr predicts that the Americans will soon be back to a policy of supporting Middle Eastern autocrats against more and less radical Islamists.
I hope not. The Arab uprisings are a tremendous opportunity to encourage greater freedom in a part of the world that has seen little of it. Things are now going sour in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and Egypt, not to mention poor Syria. Each circumstance is distinct, but in all of them the genie will be difficult to put back in the bottle. What is needed from the United States is consistent backing for democratic processes, which require relatively stable and orderly environments. The only thing we should want to be blamed for is support to those who seek human dignity and open societies.
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