(David Gardner)
When the army and security forces ignored pleas for restraint from Egypt’s allies in the US
and Europe, moving to crush the Muslim Brotherhood protest camps that spread across
Cairo after the July 3 coup d’etat that toppled President Mohamed Morsi, they had reason to
feel supremely confident.
What General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his colleagues have done is to restore the security
state – an action that should not be confused with re-establishing security.
This restoration is edging towards the status quo ante the Tahrir revolution that overthrew
Hosni Mubarak in 2011. It started before the coup, with the constitution Morsi and the
Brothers railroaded through last December. Most of the controversy excited by this
Islamist-tinged charter was caused by the way it ignored liberal, Christian and women’s
concerns over fundamental rights and freedoms. Alarmingly little attention was paid to the
way the Brotherhood sought to co-opt the military by embedding the army’s privileges and
prerogatives even beyond the powers it enjoyed under Mubarak.
Much good this illiberal opportunism did the Islamists, whose activists have been shot down
in the streets like rabbits since the coup. After the last massacre on July 27, General
Mohamed Ibrahim, the interior minister (originally appointed by Morsi), resurrected the
political and “religious” crime units of Amn al-Dawla or State Security – the most infamous
of the old regime’s secret police agencies, with a vast political underground of informers at its
command. Disbanded in March 2011 after the fall of Mubarak, its operatives are suspected
of a string of subsequent provocations adding to Egypt’s chronic instability. Now, thanks to
the coup backed by the liberals and secular youth who made the Tahrir revolution, they are
back in business. Martial law, the state of emergency under which Mubarak ruled for 30
years, has been reinstated – ostensibly for a month, but that was how it began after Anwar
Sadat’s assassination in 1981. Furthermore, police and army generals have just been
restored to governing Egypt’s neuralgic provinces.
There are three main, interlocking reasons why Gen Sisi and his comrades believe they are
fireproof, and can ignore any finger-wagging abroad and challenge at home.
US leverage on Egypt’s army is more apparent than real
Ever since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979, its army has been in receipt of an annual
US stipend of $1.3bn (in addition to lesser civilian grants). Whoever has been in power in
Washington, and whatever the state of relations with Cairo, this military aid has been
sacrosanct, with solid bipartisan support for what is universally seen as a terrific investment:
guaranteeing the peace treaty with Israel; securing safe passage through the Suez Canal, not
just for trade flows but rapid US force deployment; and ensuring near automatic diplomatic
support for the US in the Middle East.
Even substantial provocation seems unable to prejudice the annual US aid envelope for
Egypt’s generals. In June, for example, the trial of 43 NGO workers, begun when the
military was in charge after Mubarak’s fall, resulted in jail sentences (in absentia) for 15
Americans, including the son of an Obama cabinet secretary. Their crime? Receiving US aid.
Might that affect the other US aid? Not so far.
And what have the generals seen the US do since July 3? Refuse to call a coup a coup; hold
up the delivery of four F-16 jets; and (maybe*) cancel a planned joint military exercise –
amounting to a rap on two knuckles. There is no real reason why they should listen to this
tut-tutting.
Sisi has the support of Saudi Arabia and (most of) the Gulf
The army’s restoration of the security state has the enthusiastic backing of Saudi Arabia and
its absolute monarchist allies in the Gulf, who can breathe a lot easier now that: the
democratic potential of the so-called Arab Spring looks as if it is beginning to dissipate; and
Gen Sisi and his colleagues are trashing the rival brand of Islam they most fear, the
Brotherhood’s. Within hours of the coup, Gulf potentates led by King Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia – a country that usually takes a long time to react if it does at all – greeted the
military takeover with indecent haste. Within a day Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
and Kuwait had stumped up $12bn for the new order. This is nearly ten times the American
military rent, and outstrips even the largesse Qatar and Turkey had lavished on the
Brotherhood. The generals will understandably feel there is more where that came from.
Military populism is popular again in Egypt
Gen Sisi’s behaviour since the coup makes plain he senses a wave of popular support for the
army – and maybe the call of history anointing him as the new Gamal Abdel Nasser, still a
nationalist icon in Egypt.
The vast size of the pre-coup demonstrations against Morsi and the Brotherhood, and the
siren calls from liberals, leftists, nationalists and secular youth for the army to do its patriotic
duty, will have reinforced Sisi’s feeling. The same crowds that overthrew Mubarak, and that
howled for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces junta that replaced him to leave, have
now propelled him to power.
Sisi will also have seen opinion polls highlighting the popularity of the army as an institution
– which will have influenced his careful patriotic choreography of the coup.
In particular, he or his aides will have noticed the Zogby Research Services polls, conducted
before and after the coup, showing respectively 94 and 93 per cent support among Egyptians
for the army – with no political faction convincing even a third of Egyptians, who at the same
time hanker after Sadat and Nasser, and regard comedians as worthier of confidence than
politicians.
It has become lamentably obvious in the past two months, moreover, that Egypt’s secular
forces are no closer to organising for power. Too many of them seem to believe they can
subcontract that role to the army.
Yet when they step out of line, the army will find room for them in the jails – alongside Morsi
and his Brothers.
*update after Barack Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard statement: no maybes.
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