We
don't know what shape Egypt's political direction will take. One
bargaining process that's going on is negotiations between the United
States and Egypt in which Washington is the patron of the Muslim
Brotherhood, Put roughly the U.S. proposal is that American aid and
recognition will be given the military takeover in exchange for the
release of Muslim Brotherhood and other prisoners of the army, a chance
for the Brotherhood to participate in fair elections and in a coalition
government.
Is this good for Egypt? Of course not. Such a government would be inoperable and would daily increase the tensions.
It prevents the understanding by
the Islamists that the are defeated and must be submissive.
It plays in the naivete that showing compromise (weakness) will bring conciliation.
Is this good for U.S. interests?
Of
course not. It can only help if one believes that the Brotherhood and
Salafists will be moved by American backing and reciprocate by not
staging terrorist attacks.
Any
way, the new regime will have twice as much Saudi and other Arab
monarchy aid than the West would offer on tougher conditions, though of
course that won't be advanced military aid.
One
thing is for sure: a year or two from now Egyptians will not be happy
with the current regime. Why is that so certain? There are
social-historical and objective reasons. Let me focus on the less
controversial latter ones. Egypt is a country where too many people live
on too little land without many resources. It is also trying to become
an industrial society too late in history with too much competition.
Egypt’s
social problems are perhaps more the result than the
cause of the difficulties. And discussing these would take a lot of
words many of which you’ve already heard. The economic problems will not
go away no matter what happens. There are no billions of dollars in aid
out there; no—if you forgive please this phrase—Allah ex machina. If
massive international support per capita couldn’t get the Palestinian
Authority of 2.5 million people going how is it going to happen in a
place with 35 times more people?
Then,
too, is the political situation. There are now three factions which we
can broadly call the military-civilian complex (the ruling class for the
last half-century and its supporters); the Islamists; and the
“moderates.”
The
military-civilian complex are the same people who have always run the
country. They have not done a great job, with marked greed, corruption,
and incompetence. If this were a movie the title could be ”Back to the
Past.” It will be a more tolerable Mubarak situation, just as it would
have been if that president had turned over power five years ago, as the
military-civilian elite wanted him to do.
Westerners
may have deluded themselves into thinking that Egyptians changed their
opinion in two years but most have not. Many of those who voted for the
Islamists may have decided they prefer the comforts of a relatively
benign dictatorship but lots of Egyptians of Egyptians oppose the
counterrevolution.
What
is the saving grace? First, as Westerners continually misunderstand
what might be called the power of power. People go with the winner.
Whoever governs is popular until things just get beyond toleration, as
happened in Iran and Syria. That process takes a long time to build up.
Second,
the Muslim Brotherhood, it is hard to put this in polite Western terms,
is either going to be craven or murderous. It remembers what happened
in the 1950s—when the regime crushed it, sent its leaders to
concentration camps, and hung some of them. The Brotherhood may snarl
but it is frightened of the army.
Still,
no doubt, many of the Salafists and some Brotherhood militants will
take up arms, especially in Upper Egypt (the south) and the Sinai. It
will not be a civil war but as in the 1990s, it will be an insurgency.
[To read about the fighting in the 1990s, see my book Islamic Fundamentalists in Egyptian Politics online or download it for free.]
In
addition, the Islamists, especially the Salafists, are deeply divided
and never seem to overcome personal, ideological, and organizational
rivalries. The
army will simply kill anyone who fights it or imprison them. In the
1990s it sometimes imprisoned the parents of insurgents until the wanted
man gave himself up.
Finally,
there is the “moderate opposition” which will become restive under the
return of the traditional elite. There are a lot of people who are
celebrating today and will be protesting tomorrow. I want to be very
clear that there are millions of good people who want better lives for
their families and one should sympathize with their democratic
aspirations.
But
the truth is that their leaders are incompetent, the quarrels among the
groups will reemerge, and some of these groups are
undemocratic or anti-democratic. An Egypt led by Muhammad al-Baradei,
the spokesman of the opposition and a candidate for its leadership,
would not be a better place than one led by a technocratic candidate of
the military. His mismanagement of the International Atomic Energy
Agency and favoring Iran was obvious.
It
all reminds me of an article written by a Western newspaper
correspondent about the Balkans in August 1940. Nazi Germany had just
given its ally, Hungary, the Romanian-ruled territory of Transylvania.
He asked an old Jewish man living there what he thought about it. “The
best thing that could happen,” he said, “would be that the Romanians
left and the Hungarians never arrived.”
Meanwhile,
Obama’s favorite Middle East leader, Prime Minister Recep Erdogan,
shows how much he favors the anti-American Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan’s
EU minister said, “One Mursi will go, a thousand Mursi’s will come in Egypt." Erdogan has said similar things.
It
is understandable that the Turkish Islamists are uncomfortable about
that kind of coup since it was once done against
their predecessors. But the line should be drawn for U.S. policy: those
who favor Islamist radicalism whether in Afghanistan, Jordan, Iraq,
Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, or Hamas and Hizballah are enemies of the United
States. Those who oppose it are at least potential allies.
"
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
Forthcoming Book: Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press)
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies, http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftur20#.UZs4pLUwdqU
No comments:
Post a Comment