Egypt’s Second Liberation

By Raza Naeem – 

The Egyptian people have spoken again, this time against a religious demagogue

Soon after the overthrow of the despot in Tunis, and a few weeks before the end of Hosni Mubarak, Iraq’s greatest living poet – and one of the Arab world’s greatest – Saadi Youssef could hardly contain his euphoria when he wrote these lines:

Splendid Egypt, our mother, has come to the square

Splendid Egypt has unfurled to the wind her headscarf

And turned around as a banner fragrant with jasmine and gunpowder

Splendid Egypt, our mother, has come to the square

And you,

My lifetime comrade

Are there

As I had known you

With your steps ablaze in the Liberation Square

How splendid the struggle is!

How inglorious restfulness is!

Homegrown social media analysts and their counterparts in the liberalWestern press are now scrambling to define whether the recent events in Cairo, where Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi was overthrown by the military on July 3, qualify as a classic military coup or people’s revolution. Meanwhile, the Egyptian people have indeed once again proven the glory of restlessness by ousting their second authoritarian leader in two years, following the overthrow of Mubarak in 2011.

There are, of course, many features which suggest thatthis latest uprising – the largest in Egyptian history – qualifies as a people’s revolution. For one, the events of July 3 were not a unilateral action by the Egyptian military, unlike the overthrow of old King Farouk by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers back in 1952. In this case, the army responded to almost 32 million people gathered in Tahrir Square, demanding the removal of an authoritarian leader who had lost his mandate and consequently the legitimacy of his rule.

Prior to Morsi’s overthrow, the army tried to make a deal with Morsi, hoping tonudge him toward compromise, and away from his authoritarian ways, before finally issuing 24-hour ultimatum. When Morsi didn’t honour it, the army did what it felt it must, installing the head of the Supreme Court as the Interim President, followed quickly by a civilian prime minister and one of the country’s most prominent liberal politicians and a former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Nobel Laureate Mohamed El-Baradei as his deputy. A roadmap for the redrafting of the constitution, which would be followed by elections, was then quickly laid out.

Military coups are seldom marked by such magnanimity. Returning to 1952, the Free Officers unilaterally deposed the Khedive dynasty and took absolute power without any call for elections. It was only after they took power that the people came out to voice their demands. The events of 2013 do, however, bear a striking resemblance to 2011, when the million-strong crowds thronged in major cities to demand the ousting of Mubarak, following which the army confronted the latter and took power for itself. Yet, for Egyptians the events of 1952, 2011 and 2013 all constitute key revolutionary moments which all contain within them the promise of the Arab Spring.

Like Mubarak in his thirty-year dictatorship, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in their one-year of government hadn’t done much to endear themselves to the Egyptian masses. More was expected from Egypt’s oldest and best-organised political party, especially following decades of repression and censorship by the Nasserists and the secular dictatorships which followed them. However, there was and still is much in the MB’s history, politics and ideology to suggest they wouldn’t make a successful transition from an opposition party to a ruling regime. They were routinely used by the British in the colonial period to organise bombing campaigns against communists and secular-nationalists demanding independence for Egypt.

When Egypt shook off the monarchy through a popular revolution, their leader, Mohamed Qutb, was offered the Education Ministry. But still the party tried to assassinate Nasser. Throughout the dictatorships succeeding Nasser, they and their allies organised violent and destructive massacres against ordinary Egyptians and tourists and had an on-again, off-again relationship with the Mubarak regime. Not only were they given the education and communications portfolios with which they attempted Islamise the country and spawn a whole generation of angry Egyptians, they were also jailed and released with greatfrequency, depending upon the temper of the day in Washington. They served as a convenient foil for Mubarak and his coterie to perpetuate their rule.

Their slogans also did little to inspire. Apart from the refrain of “Islam is the solution”, the MB lacked coherent political, social and economic programmes to alleviate the problems of ordinary Egyptians, for which the Arab Spring uprisings broke out across the Arab world in the first place. When I last went to Egypt in 2006, I saw that the MB had managed to set up a makeshift clinic and madrassa on every street corner. Doling out free food and medicine to the poor could have helped as an opiate for the masses, particularly against the backdrop of a state that had simply stopped providing assistance to the poor after becoming a client of the World Bank and the IMF. Obviously, having three former communists in its Central Committee also helped them achieve some grassroots respectability.

When millions erupted against Mubarak in late 2010, the MB did not immediately join the protests because they expected them to be crushed by Mubarak’s security establishment; they didn’t want to damage relations with the dictator. However, after some of the younger Brothers cajoled the seniors, the MB joined the dissent. Following admissions by then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the US had been in touch with the MB for a decade, the latter also assured a lot of jangled nerves in the West about their intention to follow the Turkish model – a model of utter compliance to Washington ala NATO-Islamism, privatising and Islamising everything, and crushing the mass movement.

Ironically, the model is now no more a success in Turkey than it is in Cairo. In June, protests broke out (and are still ongoing) against the Erdogan government following a decision to privatise a public park for conversion into a military barracks. These protests, which were met with Erdogan’s customary arrogance and use of brutal force, have put paid to his attempts to become a 21st-century sultan of Turkey, by aiming to become its president. Events in Turkey also have been a good excuse for Morsi to file his divorce from the Turkish model. But it wasn’t to be.

Here is an excerpt from a piece I wrote in 2011, before the elections:

In the wake of the uprising in Cairo, the military took over from Mubarak, both because of the prestige it enjoyed among the masses owing to its revolutionary history and because Washington did not want a more revolutionary alternative in the absence of a pliant client. However, the Egyptian military is no longer the revolutionary outfit it was in the 1950s; Sadat’s pro-Israeli volte-face ensured that it regularly received the bulk of U.S. aid as a valuable ally of Washington. So far, the people have been pressuring the military regime with strikes and protests on a daily basis, despite the postponement of elections.

Whatever the outcome of the elections in November, the country desperately needs a new constitution that will guarantee basic freedoms of education, health, housing and employment as well as a renegotiation of the humiliating terms of the “peace treaty” with Israel, something that is anathema to Tel Aviv and Washington. In that, the old Nasserist state set up in 1952 could well serve as a model minus the overbearing role of the military which eventually bled the revolution to death…Now, with the successful revolt of the Egyptian people, the country’s ruling elite – primarily the military – can no longer ignore the needs and hopes of a people who are anxious to remake history in their own image, a promise unfulfilled by the revolutionaries of 1952.

Unfortunately, the MB totally overrode the mandate it had been given by the people after it came to power, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy. In winning the elections, it was undoubtedly a beneficiary of the sympathies of those secularists who had no time for Morsi’s presidential opponent at the polls. Their competition, former Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq, was a holdover from the discredited Mubarak regime, and so was destined to lose, despite the fact that he held secular credentials.

A constitution was rushed through, but only after the lower house of parliament was declared unconstitutional by the court. The constitution was imposed in a most authoritarian manner, without seeking to allay or accommodate the concerns of Egypt’s minorities: the historic Christian Copts and Shias, as well as women. It unnecessarily fanned the flames of sectarianism against Christians and Shias with its calls for jihad and Islamisation. It also refused to try members of Mubarak’s notorious security establishment for their brutal killings of Egyptian protesters in 2011, all the while ingratiating themselves with the police and the military. The country’s economic problems remain unsolved, but the MB had no hesitation in applying for a loan from the IMF, and maintaining the neoliberal programmes that have severely damaged Egypt.

Meanwhile the regime’s collaboration with Israel in the policing of Gaza continued as it choked the sewers with garbage so that Gazans, could not escape into Egypt; the humiliating Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty (which forbids the movement of Egyptian soldiers inside their own territory without permission from Israel) also remained unaltered. The regime in Cairo also continued its vassal status under Washington by becoming a pawn in its counter-revolutionary strategy in Syria, openly supporting jihadis there against the secular government. Washington was so grateful that, as a reward, they decided to send Ms. Anne Patterson, former proconsul in Islamabad, to Cairo. Patterson was still busy cosying up to the MB a few days before Morsi was overthrown, and even as crowds began to accumulate in Tahrir Square.

The military strongman in power – General al-Sisi – is not known for his secular credentials, nor as someone particularly loyal to Morsi, despite the fact that it was the latter who handpicked him last year,perhaps in the hope that piety might be a good substitute for ability. The army has its own interests in Egypt, but it must be understood that the Egyptian army – unlike its counterparts in Turkey and Pakistan –has a proud revolutionary tradition going back to British colonial times. The Egyptian army has always been at the centre of major political and social upheavals in Egypt, beginning from the 1882 Urabi Revolt against the British, to the 1952 Revolution against King Farouk, down to the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak and now the 2013 overthrow of Morsi. The armies of both Pakistan and Turkey have always sided with Washington against their own people’s wishes, and are guilty of terrible retributions against them. Millions of Egyptians, including leading intellectuals like Samir Amin, Nawal El-Saadawi, Alaa Al-Aswany and KhaledFahmy have supported the army’s intervention against Morsi as a legitimate people’s revolution.

So what of the army now that it is once again in power? After handing power to civilians in the second week of July, it was accused of ordering a massacre of 54 MB supporters who were protesting Morsi’s detention in what the former said was an attempt to protect itself against further provocation. As I write this, that record has now been exceeded by its assault on the MB protest camp in Cairo on August 14, leading to the deaths of around 500 people. We must remember that among the millions of protesters in Tahrir Square calling for Morsi’s resignation were not only people from the left, young people, peasants, trade unions and secularists; there were also many from Morsi’s own camp who had tired of their leader, having seen neither Islam nor a solution to their problems.

The Egyptian military has been the recipient of American largesse since making peace with Israel.Baradei had undoubtedly been brought in to strengthen a Plan B for Washington (he resigned in the aftermath of the August 14 assault), should the MB emerge again as winners of another election to be organised after the Egyptian constitution has been redrafted. However, it is the Egyptian people’s relationship with the ruling elite which has changed in the last two years, having become a proud and dignified people via a courageous struggle against both a secular dictator and a religious demagogue.

It is not uncommon for military interventions to pave the way either for a continuation of the revolutionary process or another round of counter-revolution. Contrary to the polite factotums of Western newspapers, the Egyptians are anything but a patient people, having instigated a dozen revolutions and rebellions in the last 130 years. Thus, there are still hopes that the revolutionary processes currently under way in Egypt will be neither tragedy nor farce for the valiant struggles of its people.

The writer is an Arabic-speaking Pakistani social scientist, literary critic, translator and political activist. He is currently working on a history of post-Arab Spring Yemen. He can be reached at: [email protected]