The Egyptian Crisis , July 16-31,2013 , Just In Print, Page 21

The Egyptian Crisis  ( INTERNATIONAL )

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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had handed over power to the military, ousted by a historic 18-day wave of anti-government demonstrations. Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took part in the protests aimed at forcing the longtime leader out of office.

The unprecedented protests on the streets of Cairo caught the world's attention. Demonstrators were gathered peacefully in Central Cairo Jan 25, 2011 to demand an end to Mubarak's nearly 30 years in power and protest economic woes in the North African nation. The protests came days after Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced into exile by demonstrations in his home country.

In Egypt, discontent with life in the autocratic, police state has simmered under the surface for years. But there has also been growing discontent over economic woes, poverty, unemployment, corruption and police abuses.

The U.S.-educated engineer Mohammed Morsi became Egypt's first democratically elected president in June 2012. But he ran into trouble almost immediately afterward. His opponents accuse him of authoritarianism and demand that he step down.

Morsi's supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood have rallied strongly behind Morsi, and have clashed in the streets with his opponents. The military says it is giving Morsi until Wednesday to compromise with protesters. It was unclear what the president's next step would be.

United under the name Tamarod — Arabic for rebellion — the protesters began their campaign two months ago as a signature petition to demand Morsi's ouster. The group, which said it gathered 22 million signatures, rallied in Cairo and across the country last Sunday, the first anniversary of Morsi's ascension to the presidency.

Protesters are calling for new presidential elections. The New York Times says the five friends who began the signature campaign all "worked in opposition news media, but have distanced themselves from political parties. They were all Muslims and personally devout, but deeply distrustful of the political Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood."

The military's warning to Morsi thrust the armed forces back into the center of Egyptian politics. The military effectively ran Egypt for 16 months after Mubarak's ouster, but retreated after Morsi was elected. The military says it is not looking to take power. And it is "still licking its wounds from the year and a half in which the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces directed Egypt's transition to democracy.

The White House says publicly that it's committed to democracy in Egypt, and has urged Morsi to ensure "that the voices of all Egyptians are heard and represented by their government." The Obama administration is urging Morsi to call early elections, and is warning the military against staging a coup. The U.S. realeased more than $1 billion in military aid to the country that is dependent on the Egyptian government meeting certain democracy standards.

The army has been accused of a military coup after its deadline for a resolution to the country's political crisis elapsed with rival protesters out in force on the streets of Cairo.

Egypt's leading Muslim and Christian clerics and opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei are set to jointly announce details of a political road map for a short transitional period followed by presidential and parliamentary elections.

More than two years after Egyptians overthrew an authoritarian, military-backed leader and later installed their first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, the country is facing the possibility of more forcible change — from the military. It is a dangerous moment with no guarantee that another transition will be any more successful than the last.

The military played a role in Egyptian politics for decades but withdrew 10 months ago under pressure from Mr. Morsi. Although many opposition groups applauded the military’s willingness to again intervene in politics now, that would be a major setback for Egyptian democracy. It would effectively give the military an opening to reinsert itself whenever there is a political crisis — and it is certain there will be more if Egypt wants to be on the road to real democracy. 

The ultimatum seemed to leave Mr. Morsi with few options: cut short his presidency and hold early elections; share power with a political opponent in the role of prime minister or — the worst outcome — fight for power in the streets. For the sake of all Egyptians, the government and the opposition need to finally work together.

Opposition groups, meanwhile, have proved hugely successful at harnessing discontent and bringing people into the streets but not at articulating a coherent message, winning elections and projecting themselves as an effective alternative political force. There is no excuse for the violence on both sides, including the killing of seven people and the ransacking of offices of the Muslim Brotherhood. No one wins if Egypt remains an economic basket case at war with itself.

Egyptians are especially irate over the miserable economic situation, as the prices of bread, gasoline and natural gas continue to rise, despite generous subsidies. The Egyptian pound is in freefall. And there are frequent power outages, because the government lacks the money to import electricity.

Although the official unemployment rate is only 12 percent, says economic expert Hagras, the figure is relatively insignificant, because most Egyptians already worked in the shadow economy. Almost one in two Egyptians lives below the poverty line of $2 (€1.54) a day. The population is growing, and so is the number of high-school graduates, but most lack jobs or prospects. To create sufficient numbers of jobs, the economy would have to grow by at least 8 percent a year -- compared to the most recent growth figure of only 2 percent.

The tourism sector, the country's most important source of income, is in especially bad shape. Some 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010.

Exploding government debt is one of Morsi's biggest problems. The president has been negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for months over a multibillion-dollar loan agreement. In return, however, the IMF is demanding measures to clean up the government's finances, which would include cutting subsidies for fuel.

This would affect the poor most of all. Morsi has been reluctant to take such harsh steps, fearing the loss of his social base. But the longer he delays reform, the more difficult it becomes.

Thanks to generous loans, especially from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Morsi is able to come up for air periodically. The Sunni sister states have approved several billion euros in loans in the last few months. This enables Morsi to focus on other things, such finding new allies, now that more and more citizens are turning their backs on him.

On June 15, Morsi attended a large rally in a Cairo stadium that was broadcast on Egyptian television. Speaking to 20,000 supporters, the president announced that Cairo was severing diplomatic ties with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Perhaps because Damascus is an ally of Iran, it didn't seem to trouble the president that the imams who spoke after him began fanatically agitating against Iranians and other Shiites, deriding them as "unclean" and as "infidels."

Eight days later, one of these "infidels," a Shiite cleric, entered the majority-Sunni village of Abu Musallam, near Cairo, where he and a group of fellow Shiites planned to celebrate an Islamic holiday. When the men and the teenagers of Abu Musallam found out, they formed a mob.They attacked the houses of Shiites with rocks and Molotov cocktails, dragged their screaming victims into the street and stabbed them with knives and swords. "Kill them!" the tormentors shouted. By the time it was over, four Shiites had lost their lives and dozens of men lay bleeding in the dust. A few police officers looked on but did not intervene. They only removed the bodies.

On June 15, Morsi embraces a man named Assem Abdel-Magid, a leader of the group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. Abdel-Magid was partly responsible for the 1997 massacre of tourists in Luxor, where 62 people died. He was also one of the backers of the murder of former President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. Egypt's current president has made the terrorist group socially acceptable. Three weeks ago, he appointed a member of Gama'a al-Islamiyya to be governor of Luxor. However, the man resigned when local citizens protested.

Abdel-Magid is an important ally of the president. Morsi has even tolerated a death threat Abdel-Magid made on TV against German-Egyptian writer Abdel-Samad, because he had supposedly insulted Islam.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called upon the Egyptian government to distance itself from the death threat, but Morsi remains stubbornly silent.

"Its close relationship with a former terrorist shows how morally bankrupt the Egyptian regime is," says Abdel-Samad, who now lives under police protection in Germany.

Obama is wary of seeming to force America’s will on the Arab world’s most populous country. That careful neutrality comes with real risk, however. In country that remembers American tolerance of Mubarak’s repressive regime all too well, Obama is accused of turning a blind eye to Morsi’s power grabs and insularity. 

In fact, many protesters—a broad term, given their varying social, political and economic agendas—were already wary of Obama, who only pushed Mubarak towards the exit after several days of massive protests and his regime’s thuggish response. In some quarters the wariness turned to outright hostility after the U.S. ambassador in Cairo, Anne Patterson, warned last month speech against more mass demonstrations.

The anger towards Patterson raises an issue of particular concern for the White House: the security of the U.S. embassy in Cairo, which was threatened by an angry mob on the same day last year as the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya. On Sunday, White House national security council aide Ben Rhodes said that “additional security measures” are being taken at U.S. facilities in Egypt.

Patterson may have been impolitic, but her words accurately reflect the view of an administration keen to see Egypt—whose crippled economy has only survived months of haggling with the IMF over a $4.8 billion loan thanks to massive subsidies from oil-rich Qatar—find a measure of economic and political stability. Washington may not have been overjoyed to see Morsi, a leader of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, emerge from Egypt’s June 2012 elections. But Morsi’s willingness to maintain Egypt’s peace deal with Israel, and his relative friendliness towards the U.S., have appeased Washington.

That raises the possibility of the military ruling the country again, as it did after Mubarak’s departure—a period that left no one happy. Even the military is disinclined to assume a political role and Obama, mindful of America’s reputation not only in Egypt but throughout the Arab world, isn’t eager to been seen supporting what many are describing as a possible military coup.

A return to military rule would violate the democratic “process” that Obama calls paramount. How to respond would be just the latest in a series of unpleasant dillemas the Arab Spring has handed him since it began thirty months ago.

The coup in Egypt is unfortunate and dangerous for any democracy. According to some sources this is the second Arab Stream and people have won through army as Morsi is communal and fundamentalist. But the people have forgotten that that he was an elected leader. Army in a democracy must be under its civil master. Ninty percent of people were against emergency in India. But none of the opponents were in favor of Indian Army’s intervention. Morsi may be unpopular,but he was a symbol of democracy.

Siddhartha Shankar Mishra,

Sambalpur , Odisha