Colleagues: Many of you have asked for an analysis of what is likely to ensue in Egypt following the overthrow of President Mubarak. I haven’t had time to prepare my own analysis and commentary but have assembled insights and observations from a number of individuals I respect. Below please find a collection of expert opinions on the role of the Egyptian military, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the prospects for a democratic outcome.
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THE EGYPTIAN MILITARY AND THE COUNTRY’S FUTURE
The Egyptian military assumed control in Egypt following the departure of long time dictator, Hosni Mubarak, himself a career military officer and grantor of extraordinary privileges for the armed forces. The Egyptian military has more or less been one with the regime since the 1950s when the Free Officers Revolt replaced the monarchy there. But the military is at the same time in a position it has not been in for 40 years, directly involved with the day-to-day politics and decision-making in Egyptian life.
There is a sense you get that many Egyptians honestly feel the only
thing standing between the Egyptian nation and greatness was the
sclerotic Mubarak regime. Now that Mubarak is gone, the military — and whatever government that follows — will naturally struggle to meet those expectations.
The Egyptian people have now witnessed a dramatic display of people
power: mass demonstrations effectively removed from power a man who
seemed immovably secure in his post just one month ago. The incentives are there for every group of people in Egypt with a grievance (which is to say everyone) to now strike or demonstrate to see, in effect, what they can get.
One of the sources of the military’s frustration is the fact that even if the people have a valid grievance, there is no real authority to negotiate with at the moment. Egypt needs a transitional government of some sort, but right now, you’ve got people agitating for higher wages, back pay, and more reforms on the one hand, and a military on the other hand that is not prepared to act on them.
Egyptians do not know the army. The Defense Minister, the Chief of Staff, and the commanding generals are not nationally known personalities. They have been content to stay behind the scenes—they are hardly personalities who can rally the nation— and become the George Washington of the nation, if you will.
The Egyptian army is very different from the American army. The Egyptian army is an institution–largely self-sustained through enterprises such as farms, factories, hospitals and the like– with the dual purposes of defending the nation against external threats and preserving domestic stability. It considers itself the defenders of the Egyptian people, a view also widely shared in the society at large. It performs the function of a National Guard as well as that of a national army.
In Egypt, the Minister of Defense is also the Minister of Military Production. The armed forces produce many of their own essential goods and services. They own large farms and produce most commodities consumed by the army. They have bakeries, water bottling facilities, and clothing manufacturing factories. All of these are in addition to the military production factories. The logic of these operations is that it assures the military of essential supplies and insulates them from corruption in the private sector.
The Egyptian military also has a large social support structure to take care of its own. Service clubs provide officers a place to have social occasions such as wedding receptions and formal dinners at a price they could not afford in the private sector. By ordinary Egyptian standards, the perks are quite nice. They are modest, however, when compared to the new Egyptian business class and western standards. Living standards in the military are good, but nowhere near that of Egyptian business elite.
The Egyptian military, like most militaries, is configured for major combat operations against the armies of other states — not for what are, in some ways, stabilization operations on the streets of Egypt itself. The Egyptian Army is not prepared for and has no doctrine to support stabilization operations.
The military must also perform the role of policeman in the society, one of those corrupt and incompetent agencies. The police officers you do see, usually directing traffic, never much respected anyway, have lost their ability to intimidate the people, who now periodically hurl abuse at them and who see themselves as having “defeated” the police during the
demonstrations — and not just in Tahrir Square but all over the
countryside, where police stations were burned from Upper Egypt to the Delta.
The Army trying to serve the functions of the police in preserving law and order is as awkward there as it is anywhere else. You need local police to preserve order the reconstitution and development of the police, is probably even more important for Egypt’s internal security.
Thirty years of military cooperation between Egypt and the United States in some ways has transformed the Egyptian military. Thirty years ago the officer corps was trained and educated in the Soviet bloc. Americans were viewed with suspicion, and as subverting Egyptian national interests. Being associated with Americans could be harmful to one’s career. Today, thousands of military officers have trained with Americans. They undergo the same human rights training as does the American military. They understand us and many have close personal friends in the American military. Americans officers and troops are no longer seen as threatening. Differences of policy are recognized, but these are issues to be discussed and not barriers to cooperation. These long ties between the American and Egyptian militaries could be a significant factor in influencing the course of events.
The most senior level of the military is the equivalent of the American World War II generation. Its officers fought in Egypt’s great wars: the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the war of attrition and the 1973 war. Their entire lives have been devoted to the security and stability of Egypt. If they have personal ambitions, these are not openly displayed. They work long hours and expect others to work equally as hard. They are disciplined and professional. Order and structure are important to them. These are serious men who will not act precipitously. While listening to foreign views, they will not give in to foreign pressure and absolutely do not want to be seen as giving into foreign pressure. They are first and foremost Egyptian nationalists.
The mid-level officers know the United States and feel comfortable with Americans. As such, they are more willing than the senior officers to engage in wide ranging political discussions with their American counterparts. They are more comfortable being critical of American Middle East policy and do not consider this as being anti-American. They are above all Egyptian nationalists.
Despite its separation from the population as a whole, the Egyptian military is equally concerned about many of the same social trends that have caused the wave of popular discontent in Egypt. Egyptian officers openly express their displeasure with Egyptian police. They cannot accept the brutality unleashed on the civilian population they are supposed to protect. They take affront at the lack of training and discipline among the police. This feeling is longstanding and has not just developed over the last couple of years.
The Egyptian military has viewed with concern Egypt’s economic transformation during the last several years. On the one hand, as nationalists, members of the armed forces are proud that Egypt is developing its economy and entering the world market. On the other, many have doubts that the radical transformation of the Egyptian economy has benefited the Egyptian people. In the process of making the Egyptian economy more open, many Egyptians were harmed.
In stark comparison, the new Egyptian business class became richer and richer. Conspicuous consumption became the new standard of wealth. Gated communities and nicely watered golf courses sprang up in a land where millions of people have no regularly running water. The military leadership was concerned about what effect the increasing wealth disparity would have on the general population. This concern was clearly illustrated in the January cabinet reshuffle. All of the ministers who engineered Egypt’s economic transformation were removed.
The military will likely focus its attention on making certain that even the poorest Egyptians are able to get basic commodities. Disagreements could develop between the protestors and the military if the military believes that continuing protests are causing great economic hardship for the Egyptian citizenry.
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND THE MILITARY
Military relations with the Muslim Brotherhood are strained. President Sadat was assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists within the military. Islamic terrorist attacks in the 1990’s were considered unacceptable to the military as a partially foreign inspired assault upon Egypt. After the 1997 terrorist attack on tourists in Luxor, the military had to intervene to help reestablish civil order. General Intelligence Services under Omar Suleiman, however, was responsible for the crackdown on the Brotherhood that followed. The Brotherhood is still seen as a potential threat to civil order and therefore needs to be watched.
However, the Egyptian military only reluctantly intervenes in Egyptian domestic affairs. In the previous thirty five years, they have interceded in internal affairs only three times —the 1977 IMF bread riots, the 1985 police recruit riots, and the 1997 terrorist attack in Luxor. Protecting civilians and restoring order were their primary objectives.
Mubarak is gone. Just as Sadat is gone, and Nasser, and King Farouk, and the Brits. The Brotherhood has outlasted all of them. Time after time, it has been repressed, persecuted, driven underground, and officially banned. The Brotherhood survives and thrives in Egypt because its credo — “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest objective” — concisely speaks the sentiments of Islamic Egypt. It survives and thrives throughout the Islamic world because its Salafist ideology admonishes Muslims to take Mohammed, Islam’s warrior prophet, as their guide and to honor the principles of Islam’s founders, the “rightly guided caliphs.”
That is not to say all Muslims agree with the Brotherhood’s call to install strict sharia. Many don’t. It is a disagreement, though, that is perilous to voice. The Brotherhood perceives itself, and is widely perceived, as guardian of the true Islam. If you’re a Muslim, you can rationalize that the Islamists are too retrograde, too literal in their construction of doctrine. In the confines of your mind, you can admire Western thought and the place it reserves in faith for reason — an attribute on which Islam slammed shut its “gates of Ijtihad” a millennium ago. You can insist, in the silence of your conscience, that while you will take sharia as your private ethical guide, you have no interest in its public program. But you won’t say it aloud.
This is the quandary. If you are a Muslim, from exactly what part of the Brotherhood’s motto would you dissent? Allah obviously is your objective. Mohammed is regarded by your scriptures as the perfect human model to be emulated. Are you going to dissent from sharia, the law of Islam taken straight from the Koran and authoritative accounts of the Prophet’s words and deeds? Or from the imperative of jihad, a divine injunction the scriptures say Allah has elevated over all others?
THE MILITARY AND FOREIGN POLICY
Despite the long association with the American military, look for a demonstration of independence from Washington, particularly when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One is likely to be the opening of the Gaza border with Egypt and a lifting of the embargo against the Hamas-led government there, a policy that has been wildly unpopular in Egypt. The embargo—in place because the U.S. and Europe regard Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip as illegitimate and see the faction as a terrorist group—has led to deprivation in Gaza that gets prominent play in the Middle East. Egypt may also decide to recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shorn of Mubarak’s fealty to U.S. diplomacy, Egypt will now emerge as a more potent force in pressuring Israel to step up the pace of negotiations with Palestine.
Still, this assertion of independence isn’t likely to take the form of cutting off the flow of Egyptian natural gas to Israel—an economic tie that began in 2005 and has brought much-needed hard currency into the Egyptian economy. Nor is it likely that a post-Mubarak government, absent civil war or a major terrorist strike, would close the Suez Canal. Canal revenues and related fees contribute about 2.5% of Egypt’s GDP. A new government will have enough on its hands wrestling control of the economy away from the remnants of the venal Mubarak years without pulling the plug on these cash cows.
For Israel, adjustments will be necessary. In the longer term, the U.S.’s ability to sustain a status quo of “moderate Arab states” willing to at least tolerate Israel is diminishing. Israel, which has banked on military superiority for its security since the Oslo Accords collapsed in 2000, should push for peace with the Palestinians while it remains the regional superpower and while U.S. backing still draws grudging respect.
What about the Camp David Accords? From an average Egyptian’s standpoint, the good done for the stability of the region—avoiding a fourth Israeli-Egyptian war—has not translated into a wider peace between Israel and the Palestinians and has utterly failed to transform Egyptian society into the democracy successive U.S. governments have said they wished for. The “cold peace” with Israel will grow colder still.
But peace should remain. Viewed soberly, it was a good deal for Egypt, too: Camp David aligned Egypt with the world’s most powerful nation at a time when U.S. power was at its zenith. Meanwhile, Egypt’s military received US$1.3 billion a year in military aid and the right to produce front-line U.S. armor and aircraft locally on license—the kind of deal offered only to top-tier allies like Japan, the UK and (not incidentally) Israel. All these things will tend to make a renunciation of Camp David much less likely, even if a government that includes the Muslim Brotherhood as a minority partner comes to power.
WHITHER EGYPT NOW?
Despite the basic goodness of people rallying against autocracy and corruption, their movement won’t seamlessly usher in a golden age of good governance. Recent pro-democracy movements across the developing world are largely discouraging about the long-term effects of such popular outbursts.
The Georgian government never succeeded in exercising full control over its territory after the 2003 Rose Revolution. Disputes with breakaway regions helped trigger the 2008 war with Russia, which hobbled Georgian sovereignty.
Six years after the 2004 Orange Revolution, the Ukrainians toppled Viktor Yanukovych for corruption and fraud, only to reelect him later.
The 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon created an ephemeral sense of national unity that vanished in 2007. The national assembly couldn’t agree on a President, the office went vacant, violence erupted in Beirut, and the country veered towards civil war. A national unity government was patched together in 2008. It collapsed last month.
The 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan installed Kurmanbek Bakiyev as President on a platform of reform and clean government. Bakiyev was as bad as his predecessor. He faced down violent protests in 2007, rigged his reelection in 2009, and finally caved to more protests and violence when he fled the country in 2010.
No one knows how the Muslim Brotherhood will react, including the Muslim Brotherhood itself. Elections have a track record of blunting the hard edge of some revolutionary, illiberal movements (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq), and empowering others (the Nazis). The Brotherhood’s greater freedom of action in the post-Mubarak Egypt is something to watch closely. It’s choices in the coming months and years will be more important to Egypt and the Middle East than the toppling of one autocrat. They may be a bellwether for political Islamist movements across the world.
Egypt’s revolution is far from decided, and the Muslim Brotherhood remains the most popular and best-organized opposition forces in the country, poised to play a crucial role in the transition and its aftermath. But in a neighborhood once ceded to militant Islamists, who declared their own state within a state in the early 1990s, sentiments there are most remarkable for how little religion inflects them. Be it complaints about a police force that long resembled an army of occupation, smoldering class resentment or even youthful demands for frivolity, a growing consciousness has taken hold in a sign of what awaits the rest of the Arab world.
We could see Egypt morph into a constitutional democracy. We could see the Military impose martial law and continue to run by Emergency decrees. Or we could see radical groups like the Muslim Brotherhood come to power.
This is not East Europe 1989, nor it is yet Iran 1979, but I do fear that the latter is a more logical outcome. Your thoughts?