Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby stefano » Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:12 am

AlicetheKurious » Thu Feb 18, 2016 1:25 am wrote:Who had the means to hold this man for 8 days without being discovered, even though he was being horribly tortured and presumably not quiet at all? Who had a motive to torture, disfigure and display his body in such a spectacular way? Who had the opportunity to kidnap him, keep him out of sight and hearing for over a week, and to transport his body without being stopped at one of the innumerable police check-points that dotted all the roads and streets surrounding Cairo during the days before and after January 25th?

I don't know, and the investigation is ongoing.


Seriously, Alice? You can't think of an organisation in Egypt that has access to jails, that can get waved through police checkpoints, that has a habit of beating detainees to death, that had a motive to interrogate a man who had links to trade unions and who moreover used to work for a foreign private intelligence outfit?

I can, and so can everyone else. Including you.

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Doesn't matter though - the investigation will conclude that it was the terrorists, and the Italians, for the sake of Eni's bottom line, will agree.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby AlicetheKurious » Fri Feb 19, 2016 10:34 am

stefano wrote:Seriously, Alice? You can't think of an organisation in Egypt that has access to jails, that can get waved through police checkpoints, that has a habit of beating detainees to death, that had a motive to interrogate a man who had links to trade unions and who moreover used to work for a foreign private intelligence outfit?


The police have access to jails and can get waved through police checkpoints, but to assume they did this, you'd have to willfully ignore the context and the significance of the dates, and the compelling motive they point to, which I outlined. You'd also have to ignore the very deliberate and horrific mutilation of the body and the fact that it was dumped on a road that is extremely busy during daytime, where it was certain to be found quickly by ordinary citizens. Only a few kilometers away, stretches the vast and empty Western Desert, where the body could have disappeared, possibly never to be found. Instead, it was displayed in a manner to achieve the maximum shock value, specifically timed to coincide with the arrival of a 60-member trade delegation from Italy, in Egypt to sign multi-billion dollar deals that are crucial to Egypt's national interest.

Secondly, the crime must have involved a large number of criminals and active or passive accomplices. The Muslim Brotherhood gang, which also happens to have the most compelling motive for targeting an Italian citizen at that particular time, also happens to have a sordid and horrible record of committing such atrocities, including sadistic torture and mutilation, such as the torture and mutilation of police officers in the Kerdasa police station in August 2013 in Giza, after the dismantling of the Brotherhood's terrorist camp in Nasr City, on the other side of Cairo, to name but one of many examples. (Don't watch the video unless you have a strong stomach). At least 188 criminals were involved in that massacre, and thousands more were aware of what was happening but did nothing to stop it. It took months for police to even be able to enter Kerdasa and disarm and capture the killers. Also, the Brotherhood, like their Daesh/"ISIS" and other Islamist offshoots, love to cut off body parts, including ears, and engage in that practice whenever they can.

Thirdly, I suggest you search "Kerdasa" on a Google Map. On the map, there are two parallel roads: the Mansoureya Road, a rural road, and the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road, a major inter-city highway. East of the Mansoureya Road you'll find Kerdasa and a series of other rural towns, including Abu Rawash, which remain hot centers of Islamist and outlaw activity. West of the Mansoureya Road is almost another universe, with high-end gated compounds, office buildings and shopping malls, on either side of the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road. Now draw a straight and short line between Kerdasa, the Islamist flash-point, and Pyramids Heights. Regeni's body was found on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road right at the entrance to Pyramids Heights.

In other words, if the crime was committed in Kerdasa, all the killers had to do was to transport the body a very short distance away, to dump it in front of the KPMG office complex, which is closed at night. There were no police check-points there, since they tend to be located on highways at the entrances to urban centers.

In other words, there is one suspect (the Muslim Brotherhood) which meets the criteria of motive, means and opportunity, and also has a documented history of similar crimes involving mutilation and torture.

The police may, as you say, have access to jails and can get waved through check-points, but that's it. Even if Regeni worked for foreign intelligence, and the police knew that (which they almost certainly did), it would hardly be the first time the police were aware of a foreign spy. Egypt is infested with them, and always has been. There have been Israeli spies, American spies, Iranian spies, and spies from all over. When they've been caught, they've been followed and monitored, or in rare cases arrested and either tried or deported or released to their countries in prisoner exchanges.

I'm not aware of a single instance of a foreign spy either being tortured or murdered, or both. Ever.

stefano wrote:Doesn't matter though - the investigation will conclude that it was the terrorists, and the Italians, for the sake of Eni's bottom line, will agree.


Take those blinders off, stefano. The facts and logic support the conclusion that doesn't fit your prejudices.

P.S. The Egyptian Homeland Security is an agency that conducts domestic intelligence-gathering and analysis, and is divided into a number of sectors such as "Zionist activity in Egypt", "Islamist activity in Egypt", etc. It doesn't have any kind of police force, or weapons, or anything like that, just offices. It was a main target of the Islamists and the Soros- and CIA-funded "revolutionaries" following January 2011, and of course, of the Islamists' foreign patrons and their media propaganda, and was effectively dismantled and inactive while the country was flooded with foreign operatives and mercenaries during the nightmare of the Brotherhood's rule. It took nearly a year to get it back up and running, although many of its top officers have left the country and are now employed as security consultants abroad. Still, thank God it's back.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby AlicetheKurious » Sun Feb 21, 2016 9:38 am

By a strange coincidence, (I swear I didn't plan it!) yesterday afternoon my husband and I were in the exact area where Regeni's body was found. We were driving on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road and my husband answered a phone call and got distracted, so he took a wrong turn. Thus we found ourselves on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Rd. driving north, as though we had just come from Kerdasa via the Ring Road. We had to take the very first U-turn to turn back south, and lo! and behold! it put us precisely where Regeni's body was found. I was very alert and focused, but didn't say anything, fearing that my husband would make fun of my amateur sleuthing. But as we passed the place, it seems we were on the same wavelength, because he remarked that the trip from Kerdasa to where the body was left would take 10 minutes or less, and the car would have had to barely slow down to open the car door and push the body out. Unlike during the daytime, at night, that part of the road is dark and quiet, and the chance of getting caught is extremely slim.

Kerdasa happens to be where the torture and massacre of police officers took place in August 2014, and the neighborhood surrounding the Ring Road is where the apartment was booby-trapped last January, killing 6 police officers and several civilians. That area is one of the bases of violent Islamist activity. Regeni's body was found precisely at the turning point where a car would be driving away from the scene of the crime and then making the first available U-turn to go back home, without the body. Something to think about.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby semper occultus » Fri Apr 01, 2016 7:58 am

Opening the black box of Egypt's slush funds

Investigators chase $9.4 billion siphoned into secret accounts – police accused of stealing records disclosing own corrupt funds, Finance Ministry uses accounting trick to bury the bodies

BY NIZAR MANEK AND JEREMY HODGE

Full post here :

http://www.africa-confidential.com/angaza-file

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=594245#p594245
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby stefano » Sat Apr 02, 2016 4:40 pm

semper occultus » Fri Apr 01, 2016 1:58 pm wrote:Opening the black box of Egypt's slush funds

Investigators chase $9.4 billion siphoned into secret accounts – police accused of stealing records disclosing own corrupt funds, Finance Ministry uses accounting trick to bury the bodies

Thanks semper. Yeah that's a terrific investigation, what journalism ought to be. They've now sacked Hisham Geneina, because his corruption reports are supposedly inaccurate. Of course they haven't gone to the trouble of telling us why, exactly, they're inaccurate, they just threw the guy out and squashed his work (he's suspect, you see, because he was named by Mohammed Morsi and his wife is Palestinian). His replacement will no doubt make less noise.

Speaking of Egypt, there's been news on the Giulio Regeni murder case. About 10 days ago the cops tracked down his killers... and shot them all dead. Four of them. One of the dead gangsters' sister had her flat searched and the cops found Regeni's passport and ID (because obviously if a murder you commit makes headline news all over the world you hang on to incriminating evidence), a bag with an 'Italia' badge (as we all know Italians all over the world carry bags that say 'Italia'), a bit of hash (he was clearly a degenerate) and a woman's purse (he was probably a fag).

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The Regeni family called bullshit, as, to its credit, did the Italian government. So then Cairo made a U-turn: we never said they were definitely the killers, what what. They might end up having to find a Lynndie England to throw under the bus.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Jan 14, 2017 12:27 pm

Sounder » Sat Jan 14, 2017 11:16 am wrote:
The Arab Spring began six years ago in Tunisia. From Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Syria and beyond the working classes and anti-imperialists and fighters for freedom rose up. They rose up against dictators, against U.S. imperialism and against oppression. The fighting people of the region brought down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. They inspired people who yearn for freedom throughout the world from the Occupy movements to anti-austerity struggles to the Movement for Black Lives to prisoner struggles and beyond. But now, in Egypt, a new military dictator, Sisi, with the support of U.S. imperialism, is in power. The revolution is in retreat. U.S. imperialism and Russian imperialism and the local capitalists throughout the region attempt to reassert control and maintain control by smashing or diverting the struggles of the working people for freedom.


Oh, you mean the Muslim Brotherhood?

Still trying to put lipstick on this pig. Those 'revolutionaries' were paid by USAID and other NGO's to do the bidding of transnational corporations.

They are naive people manipulated by their self-righteousness while using 'revolution' as a cover.

Out with the old, and back in with the old.


So ignorant but no surprise. You want to make this case, I just revived the Egyptian revolution thread for you. You can actually follow it first before posting, to see said MB fail to participate until their youth group forced it, and said Western establishment desperately try to save their 28-year investment known as Mubarak, and said MB betray and attack the revolution in tandem with the Army (which ruled throughout, in reality). Then the Army crushed the MB too. Meanwhile, in most places, your Western establishment aids jihadis against secular revolutionaries, as it always has. I hope this discussion goes in the right thread, here, which started at the time, and that you can refer to actual events that buttress your reactionary claims.

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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 02, 2017 6:18 pm

Former Egyptian President Mubarak Acquitted of Killing Arab Spring Protesters
BY ROBBIE GRAMERMARCH 2, 2017 - 1:57

Former Egyptian President Mubarak Acquitted of Killing Arab Spring Protesters
A top Egyptian appeals court on Wednesday acquitted former President Hosni Mubarak on charges of killing protesters during the country’s 2011 uprising. The ruling ends six years of a legal battle over the former ruler’s involvement in the deaths of Arab Spring protesters, a popular uprising that ultimately led to his ouster from government.

Some 900 protesters were killed in Egypt during the revolution, though Mubarak was only implicated in the deaths of 239 in the court case. He was originally sentenced to life in prison in 2012, but an appeals court ordered a retrial. In 2014, he was cleared of all charges, before a final appeal that led to Wednesday’s ruling.

“This ruling is not fair and not just. The judiciary is politicized,” Osman al-Hefnawy, a lawyer for the families of the killed protesters said, according to Reuters.

Mubaraks’ clearance in 2014 sparked public outrage and mass protests. But, outside of defense lawyers, Wednesday’s ruling has so far been met with deafening silence.

“Egyptians have gotten used to this,” said Michele Dunne, Middle East expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They’ve become used to seeing more and more of the Mubarak-era officials acquitted or have their cases dropped,” she told Foreign Policy.

Not that Egypt’s political climate allows for public protests these days. A military coup in 2013 toppled the Islamist government first elected after Mubarak’s ouster. Since then, the new government under former General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has violently clamped down on political freedom and dissent. On Monday, Egypt expelled one of the country’s last remaining outspoken opposition politicians from parliament, further undermining the country’s crippled opposition.

Al-Sisi’s government likely won’t see a newly-acquitted Mubarak as a threat to power. The former president, who ruled Egypt for 30 years, is now 88 years old and in poor health.

Behind the scenes, there’s potentially a quiet power struggle simmering between the ruling military al-Sisi represents and Mubarak’s sons, who have close ties to the country’s business elites. Dunne said it’s still unclear whether Mubarak’s acquittal will pave the way for any political future for his sons, but it’s not out of the question.

But the acquittal Wednesday showcased how far the country has drifted from the ideals that animated the early days of the Arab Spring, particularly for the young people who led the revolt against Mubarak.

“It’s just one more sign that the changes that they pushed for and thought they had won in 2011 are completely gone,” Dunne said.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/02/for ... crackdown/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 03, 2017 11:22 pm

Egypt's authoritarian-minded president gets a warm White House welcome
Placards of Trump, Sisi
Supporters of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi chant slogans as Sisi meets with President Trump at the White House on April 3, 2017.
Tracy Wilkinson and Noah Bierman Contact Reporters

President Trump pledged “strong backing” for one of the United States’ most important and controversial Arab allies, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi, as the two held private White House meetings Monday at the start of a week of high-stakes international diplomacy.

“We agree on so many things,” Trump said of Sisi as the two men met in the Oval Office and shook hands.

Sisi, Trump said, has "done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt.”

“You have a great friend and ally in the United States and in me,” Trump told Sisi.

Sisi, whose government has been accused of killing, jailing or torturing tens of thousands of opponents, is the first Egyptian head of state to visit the White House since 2009.

Responding to Trump through an interpreter, Sisi said he admired the U.S. president’s “unique personality” and praised Trump for fighting “this evil ideology,” an allusion to Islamist-inspired terrorism.

In sharp contrast to the Obama administration, which kept its distance from Sisi and never invited him to Washington, Trump had not been expected to raise critical issues such as human rights, the president’s aides said. Instead, the daylong session was aimed at “rebooting” a bilateral relationship often strained in the past, a senior administration official said. Trump allowed numerous photo ops throughout his day with Sisi.

At $1.3 billion a year, Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, after Israel. In exchange, Egypt is one of the few Arab countries to maintain diplomatic ties with Israel and serves as a backstop control over the Gaza Strip.

Planned budget cuts that would gut foreign aid may put some of Egypt’s funding in danger, but administration officials said the “security” of the Arab world’s most populous country will not be threatened.

Sisi is also seeking to have the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that dates to 1928, designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. In 2013, Sisi, as commander of the military, overthrew Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, who was a Muslim Brotherhood leader. The group has since been outlawed in Egypt, but many human rights organizations and longtime regional observers do not consider it to be a radical advocate of terrorism.

Yet evoking the fight against Islamist-inspired terrorism seemed to be sufficient to win Trump’s support.

“President Trump aims to reaffirm the deep and abiding U.S. commitment to Egypt’s security, stability and prosperity,” the administration official said, briefing reporters before Monday’s meetings on condition that he not be named, a common practice in government. “We are going to maintain a strong and sufficient level of support to Egypt and Jordan,” the official added.

Sisi’s visit kicked off a consequential foreign-policy week for the Trump administration. Jordan’s King Abdullah II goes to the White House on Wednesday, followed by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s two-day summit with Trump at his resort in Florida, a meeting that likely will be the businessman and former reality TV celebrity’s most complex diplomatic challenge yet.

Even before Monday, the Trump administration had unusually kind words for Sisi, a heavy-handed strongman who won election in 2014 with 93% of the vote after leading a bloody crackdown on Islamic and other opponents.

Trump has cited Sisi’s “courage” in fighting Islamic State, the Sunni Muslim terrorist group that has made inroads in Sinai and other parts of Egypt and killed dozens of Egyptians, including Coptic Christians, in attacks.

In 2013, the Obama administration suspended the $1.3-billion aid package after the Sisi-led Egyptian military ousted Morsi and embarked on a broad crackdown against perceived domestic opponents.

But the Trump administration has indicated human rights will not be a public priority. The senior official said it was “most effective” to handle such issues “in a private, more discreet way.”

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer echoed that stance Monday, as the Trump-Sisi meeting was underway, when pressed by reporters on the lack of a public White House condemnation of Egypt’s human rights record.

“We understand the concern, and I think those are the kind of things that I believe progress is made privately,” Spicer said.

He hinted that what he called the “new day in the relationship between Egypt and the United States” was not free of blemishes. “It was a candid dialogue during which they discussed both areas of cooperation and of concern,” he told reporters.

Human rights advocates here and abroad were appalled.

“Inviting [Sisi] for an official visit to Washington as tens of thousands of Egyptians rot in jail and when torture is again the order of the day is a strange way to build a stable strategic relationship,” said Sarah Margon, Washington director at Human Rights Watch.

Sisi has presided over “near-total impunity for abuses by the military and security forces” and restrictions on civil and political rights, she said, a heavy blow to hopes of liberalization after the so-called Arab Spring uprisings and the ouster of longtime Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Egypt is also holding an American citizen, Aya Hijazi, in prison on what supporters say are trumped-up charges. She was arrested in 2014 for setting up a nongovernmental organization in Cairo to aid street children. Many such groups promote democracy and human rights, and the Sisi government regards them as subversive.

President Obama restored the military aid package, which included Cairo’s purchase of a dozen F-16 fighter jets, in early 2015 as he sought support from the region’s Sunni leaders for the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal between world powers and Iran.

However, the Obama government slated for 2018 an end to the so-called cash-flow financing system, which allows Egypt to place advance orders for expensive U.S. weaponry. Trump officials said they were prepared to reexamine ending cash-flow financing in their conversations with Sisi and his delegation.

Ahead of Sisi’s arrival at the White House, Secret Service officers cleared Lafayette Park, across the street, of demonstrators.

Sisi may also have pressed Trump on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Egypt, which, like Jordan, has a peace treaty with Israel, was alarmed by the administration’s lack of endorsement of a Palestinian state. The so-called two-state solution — of Israel and a Palestinian nation living side by side, sovereign and in peace — has for a generation been the bedrock of a solution to the seemingly intractable conflict. But Trump, during a visit from hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he would be open to either a two-state or a one-state solution. Critics say the latter would make it impossible for Israel to retain both its democratic and Jewish character.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-fg-na- ... story.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby Elvis » Sun Apr 09, 2017 3:31 pm

I wish Alice would check in...

Egypt: Isis claims responsibility for Coptic church bombings

Ruth Michaelson in Cairo
Sunday 9 April 2017 12.11 EDT

State of emergency declared after attacks on churches in Tanta and Alexandria kill dozens and injure more than 100

Isis has claimed responsibility for two bomb blasts that struck Coptic churches in Egypt, killing at least 47 people as members of the country’s largest religious minority celebrated Palm Sunday.

An explosion in the city of Tanta, about 56 miles (90km) north of Cairo killed 29 and injured 71 as they prayed at the Mar Girgis church according to the Egyptian health ministry. A second blast struck the Egyptian port city of Alexandria three hours later, killing 18 and wounding 35.

The bombings were the latest in a series of attacks on Egypt’s Christian minority, who account for about 10% of the population and have been repeatedly targeted by Islamic extremists. The attacks come weeks before Pope Francis is due to visit Egypt.

Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced a three-month state of emergency on Sunday night in response to the bombings after meeting his national security chiefs.

Video from the moment the blast struck the Mar Girgis church in Tanta just before 10am on Sunday showed the sounds of a choir gathered to sing hymns celebrating the Christian holy day, rapidly turning to screams of anguish and panic. Egypt’s state television later reported that a bomb planted under one of the pews ripped through the church.

“As I was passing by the church, I heard a huge blast – I’d never heard a sound like this,” said Salah el Arby, a taxi driver in the town of Tanta. “People began running out of the church – shouting and afraid.”

“I believe this attack was the fault of the security forces,” he continued, citing a bomb previously diffused by police at Mar Girgis church in the town on the 29 March. “The police didn’t protect the church on an important day like today.”

Gruesome images circulated on social media in the aftermath of the blast, showing blood-stained woven palm branches, of the kind traditionally carried to celebrate Palm Sunday. Churches across Egypt had anticipated a higher than average attendance to celebrate the holiday.

The second blast in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria struck St Marks Coptic Orthodox church came three hours later. Egyptian state media reported that Coptic Pope Tawadros II was inside the church when the explosion struck, after leading worshippers in Palm Sunday prayers.

Three policeman were killed as they tried to prevent the suicide bomber from entering St Marks Cathedral in Alexandria, including one who embraced the suicide bomber just 100 metres from the Cathedral, preventing him from entering.

“Although there was a police constable who hugged the person holding the explosive belt to stop him entering the church, at the same time we cannot ignore the fatal mistakes by the security authorities that let this many attacks happen in a short time,” said Haitham al Hariri, a member of parliament with the Socialist Popular Alliance.

“If a bomb had been placed under the seat in Alexandria while the Pope was speaking as it was in Tanta, this would have been an even bigger disaster.”
Speaking to the Guardian from the Amiri public hospital where victims of the blast had been taken, he said: “I’m here in the hospital and people are angry at me - and angry at every official in this country. Families here are disappointed, frustrated and angry at everyone with no exception – from the head to lowest in the state.”

Despite the efforts of Egyptian security forces on the ground at the site of each attack, a day of intense violence left Coptic Christians asking whether they are safe in Egypt despite the government’s pledge to protect them.

The twin attacks, timed for a day of Christian worship, come following months of attacks on Egypt’s Coptic minority. St Peter and St Paul’s church in the St Marks Cathedral compound in Cairo witnessed a similar attack in December 2016, in which a suicide bomber was able to enter the church, killing 29 people as they worshipped there by placing a bomb under a pew. When claiming responsibility for the attack in February this year, Isis vowed to “liberate” Cairo and threatened Christians across Egypt.

News of the bombings came as Francis was marking Palm Sunday in St Peter’s Square.

The pontiff asked God “to convert the hearts of those who spread terror, violence and death, and also the hearts of those who make and traffic in weapons”

The Egyptian president Abdel-Fatah al Sisi said in a statement that the blasts “will not undermine the resolve and true will of the Egyptian people to counter the forces of evil, but will only harden their determination to move forward on their trajectory to realise security, stability and comprehensive development.”
Christians have been increasingly targeted in Egypt following the overthrow of former Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013. December’s attack was followed by increasing attacks on Coptic Christians in the Sinai Peninsula, causing some 250 Christians to flee the northern Sinai town of Arish.

“The problem is that there is a virulently anti-Christian sentiment among radical Islamists and there is unfortunately no failsafe way to protect everyone all the time. This is unfortunately true in countries around the world,” said H.A Hellyer of the Royal United Services Institute.

“It’s not the first time Christians in Egypt have witnessed attacks like this,” said Mina Thabet, a specialist in religious minorities at the Cairo-based Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms. “They feel that no one is providing them with the necessary protection.”

“The government is responsible for their security,” he said. “Combating terrorism isn’t just about force, it needs a new strategy – and Christians are paying the price.”

“Two explosions in the same day are organised,” he continued, saying that the close timing of the attacks suggests that the attackers coordinated with one another to plan the attacks. “It happened today and it could happen tomorrow,” he said.

Additional reporting by Makarios Nassar

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... anta-cairo
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Oct 10, 2017 11:58 am

.

Hell of a piece.

This thread in one post:


https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/10 ... and-egypt/

- www.counterpunch.org - https://www.counterpunch.org -

Two Contrasting Springtimes: Tunisia and Egypt

By Kenneth Good
On October 10, 2017 @ 1:57 am

Image
Photo by Chris Belsten | CC BY 2.0


TUNISIA: ADVANCED DEMOCRATIZATION

After 23 years of domination, the end came quickly for President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. He had constructed an elaborate security system around his regime, built upon extensive financial dependencies, non-accountability, fear and silence, described by Beatrice Hibou. But the self-immolation of a young peddler, Mohammed Bouazizi, in the inland town of Sidi Bouzid, where unemployment was high, on 17 December 2010, shattered the despot’s wall of fear. First twenty Tunisians were killed in one day, then over 200 before 11 January. As demonstrations in support of the martyr were suppressed, Tunis was engulfed in revolt. The general staff of the army and a section of the power elite worked in collaboration with the American embassy to stave-off popular revolution. According to Massimo Di Ricco, major social unrest in Tunisia ‘always came from underdeveloped regions, mainly in the South.’

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, denounced the heavy use of force in Tunisia on 11 January, and Ben Ali’s exile to Saudi Arabia, with the bulk of his wealth and his family, followed on 14 January. He was deceived both by America and by his own illusions: he thought his destination was France and his departure only temporary.

Overthrowing the autocracy was the initial task, but Tunisia possessed capacities for democratisation. The population of some 11 million was ethnically and religiously homogenous, and people in the coastal towns enjoyed good education, health and housing. Economic growth was around five per cent, based on tourism, mining, manufacturing and services. The status of women was high in regional terms. More than 80 per cent of adult women were literate, and figured prominently among university students, magistrates and diplomats. Civil society was strong. Trade unions, and specifically the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT), had an established role: in 1983-84 during a spontaneous, southern-based bread revolt, and in 2008 when it was prominent in a ‘disobedience movement’ in the phosphate mining basin of Gafsa (not far from Sidi Bouzid). Across three ‘dusty desert towns, workers, trade unionists, mothers and children took part in widespread acts of civil disobedience, sit-ins, hunger strikes, occupations’. One of the strongest actions involved a group of 12 women, all widows, whose husbands had died in the service of the state-owned Gafsa Phosphate Company. Defying violence and intimidation, the women demanded employment for their children as traditionally due to them: the uprisings lasted several months. These protests, says Penny Green, ‘arguably paved the way for the revolution in 2010-11.’

In December 2010, UGTT affiliates, the teachers’ unions, ‘became the headquarters’, according to Mohamad-Salah Omri, for the revolt against Ben Ali. The country’s material conditions were pressing. The jobless rate for graduate women was above 40 per cent, and higher in the interior. About 800,000 of the working-age population of some 3.5 million were unemployed.

Democratisation began to be concretised through the successful holding of parliamentary elections as early as 23 October 2011. Tunisia was distinguished in the Islamic and Arab worlds by having an Islamist party with viable democratic aspirations. Ennahda (Renaissance), repressed under Ben Ali, had quickly rebuilt its structures, and led by Rachid Ghannouchi, campaigned on its long opposition to autocracy, its identification with the Tunisian working class, and its pluralist values. Against some small secular parties, and on a turnout of some 60 per cent of eligible voters, it won 37% of the vote and 41% of the seats in the constituent assembly. It came comfortably ahead of the Congress for the Republic (CPR) led by a prominent human rights campaigner, and Ettakatol with slightly less. It confirmed its pluralism by entering into a coalition government with both these secular centre-left parties: Moncef Marzouki, founder and leader of the CPR, became President, and Hamadi Jebali of Ennahda was Prime Minister.

A vital long-term step was the writing of a new constitution. The members of the Assembly, in close consultation with the people, wrote the document. In a ‘national dialogue program’, more than 5,000 Tunisians, participated in 44 meetings (including 18 abroad). The people thus wrote their constitution, ‘without tutelage of any kind’: legal expertise was consulted and civil society groups proposed, sometimes ‘imposed’, amendments. This open, deliberative process was impacted upon by argument between secularists and Islamists, but it was not dominated by the latter, as was flagrantly the case in neighbouring Egypt. Dispute had focussed on sharia and the role of Islam in a democracy. Words were taken from article one of the 1957 constitution, stating that ‘its religion is Islam’, where ‘its’ had long been understood to refer to…the country or the people, not to the state’. This crucially re-affirmed the civil nature of the state, and offered some satisfaction to the secularist parties and civil society. Compromise was achieved, and eighteen months after work began, a draft constitution was released to the public on 14 December 2012. This outcome represented for Mohamed-Salah Omri how Ennahda was governing and responding to a strong civil society and active opposition.

Lilia Weslary described the actualities of the democratisation process at work in Tunisia: how excited she was to be voting on 23 October 2011, how her joy of being a new citizen was shared by all Tunisians, and how the assembly members had worked around the clock to realise the popular revolutionary demands for “Work, Freedom and Dignity”. Problems had been overcome, new ones awaited, but the initial achievements were already immense. A new party had emerged, Nidaa Tounes (Call for Tunisia) which already was supported by about half the assembly, while a coalition of left parties, known as the Popular Front, had also appeared. Most threatening was the violence erupting from hard-line Salafist Islamists across the country, with support among younger people. Dictatorial remnants and new problems existed, but the people now had the “required weaponry”, she said, to bring them down, the pen and freedom of speech.

Much depended on the pragmatism and pluralism existing in Ennahda. President Marzouki recalled how he had ‘reached out to Ghannouchi’ when the latter was in exile in Britain. A series of discussions had resulted in the Islamist movement joining others in a “Call to Tunis” signed in Aix-en-Provence in 2003. The basis for this inclusiveness, according to Yasmine Ryan, was three pledges: on the equality of men and women; that the state would be based in civil society, not theology; and that Tunisia would be a democracy. Tensions had arisen within the ruling coalition over Salafist-jihadist activities, but Marzouki affirmed that collaboration between Islamist and secularist parties around common democratic values was essential and achievable. For Ghannouchi, it was “only [through] the construction of true democracy…with the participation of all key moderate voices” that stability would be ensured. This would necessarily be a long task. They were speaking at the end of 2012-early 2013.

But democracy was directly threatened when Shokri Belaid was killed at his home on 6 February 2013. He was a trade unionist and lawyer, prominent in the Popular Front. Many called for change in the coalition, and the UGTT proposed a general strike solely aimed at ending violence. The Defence Minister, Abdelkarim Zebidi, immediately re-affirmed the neutrality of the military.

The threat intensified when another leftist politician, Mohammed Brahmi, was shot dead in Tunis in July. The killing was flagrant. Brahmi was killed in front of his wife and daughter, and police soon found that both men were shot with the same weapon. More than 70 assembly members resigned. Thousands of people demanded the resignation of the Ennahda-led government in early August. The UGTT with some 600,000 members, joined with the employers’ union UTICA, the League for Human Rights and the Bar Association in shuttle negotiations between the coalition and opposition parties. On 5 October compromise was again attained. Ennahda held 90 assembly seats (with half of them women), but it stepped down in favour of a temporary technocrat administration tasked with finalising the constitution. Ghannouchi had sought a rapprochement with the leader of Nidaa Tounes, a party containing many former members of the old regime: its founder and leader, Beji Caid Essebsi, was foreign minister under Habib Bourguiba and parliamentary spokesman under Ben Ali.

One of the highest points of the early democratisation process was achieved on 26-27 January 2014 with the passing and endorsement of the new constitution. In the aftermath of the two assassinations and mass street protests, civil society, represented by the above four big ‘historical organisations’, soon formalised as the Quartet—recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015–compelled the assembly men and women to concentrate on the finalisation of the foundation document. Consistent with what had earlier been done, the final process was open, highly participatory, deliberative and lively. Debates were aired live on a national channel and painstakingly monitored and circulated by dedicated civil associations like Al Bawsala. Shouting matches occurred between deputies, especially on religion and Islam. Accusations of apostasy were excluded, ‘a key innovation among constitutions in the Arab world’, and rights of women were strengthened. Democracy and freedom were extended, as Tunisia acquired some 11 million people, in Amira Yahyaoui’s words, “who are no longer silent”. The writing of the constitution’s 149 articles had taken two years: in sharp contrast with the rushed, unrepresentative and non-deliberative process under the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo at much the same time.

Omri depicts the January constitution as ‘the outcome of a process of struggle’ over what the post-revolutionary society was to be like. The turn towards a religious state ‘ha[d] been aborted’. Ennahda would no longer be ‘driving the agenda, and its opponents could no longer capitalise on opposing its policies.’ It was ‘a consensual constitution’ where, however, those in the marginalised regions had lost out. Article 12 ‘promises no more than “striving to”, rather than the much demanded “commits to” achieving regional balance within the framework of positive discrimination.’ Both the problems and the revolutionary commitments of the interior had been neglected.

Parliamentary elections in late October saw Nidaa Tounes, running on an explicitly anti-Islamist platform, and ruling out a future coalition. They won 85 seats, while Ennahda came second with 69 seats. The first round of presidential elections took place on 23 November. With a turnout of 62.9 per cent, Essebsi was first with 39.46 per cent, while Mohammed Marzouki was second with 33.43 per cent. Thousands of people had walked in the streets to protest against Essebsi and to support Marzouki. Ennahda chose not to field a candidate. In a run off on 21 December, Essebsi comfortably won. But ‘a swathe’ of people with grim memories of life under Ben Ali, reportedly stayed with Marzouki: for them, Essebsi’s party ‘smacks of the old regime under a new guise’. The results also exposed the gulf between the poor and rebellious south and the richer north of the country: ‘in the five southernmost regions, 80 per cent of voters plumped for Marzouki,’ The Economist reported. The regional divisions were palpable: unemployment in the region of Gafsa exceeded 30 per cent, while the national average was half of that; in Tunis, 97 per cent of people had access to sanitation services, but in Sidi Bouzid only 12 per cent did.

Essebsi’s electoral success brought no political advance. Nidaa Tounes remained a patchwork of disparate interests, conservatives, liberals, businessmen and remnants: united chiefly by opposition to Ennahda, but with “no unifying ideology, no political programme, no socio-economic vision”, according to Maha Yahya. Many of them had ties to the Ben Ali regime. Essebsi reportedly ‘faced calls for accountability for state repression against student and leftist movements’, according to Amna Guellali. Such responsibilities were both financial and political. The despotism as noted was built upon wide, systemic corruption. The World Bank reported in 2014 that, between 1987 and 2011, ‘Ben Ali and his relatives embezzled assets worth $13 billion,’ equivalent to 25 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2011. The Bank recognised too that ‘corruption remained endemic’. According to Achraf Mnif, 80 per cent of Tunisia’s development budget in 2012-13 was ‘skimmed off by a well-established mafia’ embedded in the extensive bureaucracy.

Confronted by this problem in a context of low growth, the Essebsi government proposed to increase business confidence by suspending the prosecution of those accused of fraudulent activities under Ben Ali. An ‘economic reconciliation’ bill would let businessmen and bribe-taking officials secretly declare their gains and re-pay them to the state. For many this looked ‘like an amnesty, a whitewashing of corrupt practices.’ The more so since the nefarious networks were now ‘active again under the cover of Nidaa Tounes, noted Mohsen-Finan. Beset by a range of mainly self-induced pressures, the party split in November 2015, with Essebsi losing a third of his parliamentarians and the party its majority, and Ennahda regaining its position as the largest parliamentary force–Ennahda with 69 seats and Nidaa Tounes with 57.

Giving the Victims a Voice

Providing justice to the victims of struggle against oppressive and non-accountable elites is a long-term task in Tunisia. It began with the focus on the estimated 317 people who died and the 3, 322 who were wounded in the uprisings in 2010-11. Hearings and appeals had been going on since 2012 before the Tunis military tribunal, as the law then proscribed. Human Rights Watch had criticised the authorities’ failure to identify the direct perpetrators of killings, despite detailed testimony from witnesses, and there were no mechanisms to prosecute senior officers with command responsibility. Leila Haded, a prominent lawyer, said that, while some 58 of the 60 accused military and police in the Tunis region were found guilty, the ‘sentences were derisory’. The Association of Tunisia Magistrates declared that military tribunals were inappropriate and called for a new independent judicial authority. Amidst ‘strong condemnation of the verdicts,’ the National Assembly on 14 April and ‘agreed to accelerate the creation of a Commission of Truth and Dignity’.

The Tunisian commission, unlike South Africa’s earlier Truth and Reconciliation Commission, aimed specifically to address Dignity and how it was threatened by corruption and economic crimes like fraud and misuse of public funds: and Dignity was one of the specific aims of the revolution. This would be in addition to its focus on overt repression.

Its public hearings on 17-18 November that year made an immediate impact. First ‘came the mothers’, and ‘their voices rang clear on television and radios across Tunisia.’ The public hearings were held in a former residence of Ben Ali’s wife. Bechir Labidi, a political prisoner, hesitated, then decided to appear: “History is not to be written in the palaces. Our [existing] history falsifies history.” Testimonies indicated that Leftists and Islamists had been particularly targeted. Nearly 15,000 claims had been filed. One victim of prolonged solitary confinement, said he was willing to forgive, “but I want them to admit the truth, apologise and explain why they did it.” For a country that had spent six decades under authoritarianism, first under Bourguiba then Ben Ali, the hearings were a chance to ‘confront the past, and bring it squarely to the present.’ President Essebsi was ‘notably absent’ on both days, as were representatives of Nidaa Tounes, when the current government’s record was reportedly ‘lambasted’. Raida Kadousi’s son was killed in the uprising of 2010-11, and she told the TDC: “You are our last hope,” Sarah Souli reported.

Sihem Ben Sedrine, a journalist and human rights activist under Ben Ali, was president of the TDC, and was known for her confrontational style. “The people who initiated [the Reconciliation] law are furious…They want my scalp,” Yasmine Ryan reported. But the TDC was not without strengths of its own. It was empowered to subpoena witnesses and government archives, and to reopen previously tried cases. In Tunisia’s fraught circumstances, the fact that the public hearings took place at all ‘needs to be seen as a success’ for the TDC. Near the end of 2016, ‘one and a half years [we]re left of its initial mandated time,’ and only one fifth of admissible files had been heard.

Terrorism, Jihadism and Corruption

Jihadism and terrorism were huge threats to justice and democracy in Tunisia, and they came early to the new country, which contained strong Salafist adherents. In the spring of 2012 Ansar al-Sharia marched in the holy city of Kairouan, south west of Tunis, waving black flags and demanding that the government reform the education system and the media. Jihadist banners were hung from buildings in the centre of Tunis and other cities. The United States embassy in Tunis was attacked in September 2012 by Ansar al-Sharia elements and four Tunisians were killed. But counter measures by the Ennahda coalition restricted the group’s movements and ‘thwarted its social activities’. After the government classified Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist organisation, the group was ‘eradicated’, according to the International Crisis Group.

Heavily armed young gunmen struck the Bardo National Museum in central Tunis on 18 March 2015, and killed more than 60 people, overwhelmingly foreign visitors. The Bardo is adjacent to the national assembly. The previous year the country’s museums and beaches had attracted six million tourists, whose spending accounted for some 7 per cent of GDP, and tourism supported more jobs than any other sector but agriculture. Ongoing war in neighbouring Libya represented one threat to Tunisian stability. But the country’s ‘biggest problem’, was of its own making: the ‘failure to cut the red tape and end the corruption’ that stifle business. The 2014 World Bank report said that firms connected to Ben Ali had reaped 21 per cent of private-sector profits, and this corruption system ‘remain[ed] largely in place’, The Economist reported. French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, noted in March that it was precisely because Tunisia “represent[ed] hope for the Arab world”, for peace, stability and democracy, that terrorism had struck. Just four months later, another young man dressed in black entered the Marhaba Hotel in the beach resort of Sousse and methodically killed 38 people in a few minutes with a Kalashnikov and grenades. A suicide attack on a bus in Tunis in November 2015, killed 12 members of the presidential guard.

After the assassination of Belaid in February 2013, the Ennahda-led government took steps to control Salafist-led mosques, and ‘thousands of would-be jihadists’ were prevented from leaving the country, Hugh Eakin reported. The country contributed disproportionately to the fighting in Syria and Iraq, and significantly to jihadist activities in Libya: one report claimed that some 6,000 Tunisians had ‘joined armed groups abroad’, with most of them fighting in those three countries. On a list of 10 world countries with jihadists in Iraq and Syria in 2015, Tunisia was easily the world’s biggest contributor: Saudi Arabia was the second, while Russia and Turkey were respectively third and fourth. These engagements heavily impacted on Tunisia. The country’s police said that the man who perpetrated the Sousse massacres had trained at a jihadist camp in Libya. That country alone represented a huge threat. In March 2016, a reportedly ‘large group of Tunisian Islamic State members’ assaulted the town of Ben Gardane in the country’s south east, killing 65 people.

Jihadism was interwoven with regional disparities in this area. On 14 January 2017, hundreds of people took to the streets in Ben Gardane to demand jobs, and the protest soon spread to neighbouring Sidi Bouzid, Meknassi, and Gafsa: the 2011 slogan, “Work is Our Right” rang loudly again.

Tunisia had a small national army, some 45,000 active soldiers, the smallest in the region, said James Denselow. This distinguished it further from Egypt, with its huge and grandiose military, closely aligned with the United States, and pre-dominant in government. The neutrality of the army during the ousting of Ben Ali had facilitated the country’s initial democratisation. Fierce clashes in March 2016, between the army and Islamic State forces, resulted in significant losses for the latter. Expenditure on national security then represented some 20 per cent of the budget.

Responding to the heightened Islamist threat to the nation, Ennahda in May subordinated its religious values to its democratic ideals, separating its religious and its political activities. In a vote among 1,200 party delegates at its 10th congress, 93.5 per cent supported the separation. Ghannouchi declared that there was now “no justification for political Islam in Tunisia.” Collaboration and then coalition with Nidaa Tounes had caused internal frictions, said Sarah Souli, and there were renewed concerns now about the retention of its old religious social base. ‘Ennahda draws strength from the fact that it’s not just a political party’ but also a social movement, she said. It was distinctively both Islamic and democratic. Additionally, since Islam is part of peoples’ everyday lives in Tunisia (and Egypt), it can’t be easily ignored for democratic reasons.

Corruption, and unaddressed poverty and inequalities were compounding the difficulties for democratisation. The country was facing a budget deficit of 5.9 per cent of GDP in 2017, and Nidaa Tounes, proposed sweeping austerity measures, including wage cuts, tax rises and the suspension of investment in infrastructure. At the same time, protesters in the interior were demanding jobs and a share in regional oil revenues, and had blocked roads, halting oil and phosphate production. President Essebsi had then taken the exceptional step of deploying the army to guard industrial sites. Troops were to be deployed against democratic protests, while the underlying corruption networks flourished. ‘Thousands’ of people marched in Tunis on 13 May shouting “no to forgiveness” (The Economist).

Addressing the scourge of jihadism also required that the root causes of violence be effectively addressed. The Crisis Group called for a broad strategy that prioritised prevention, tacked the roots of radicalisation, and enhanced security capacities. The formal economy must be made ‘more inclusive for newcomers from the interior and redouble political will in the anti-corruption struggle.’ Corruption must be tackled directly: simplifying administrative procedures, reducing opportunities for fraud and bribery, and curtailing influence-peddling. Corruption compounded by regional inequalities had left people of the interior deeply distrustful of government. The open, participatory, dialogue approach that facilitated the writing of the constitution, and rescued and reinforced democratisation in 2013, was perhaps indicative of the way forward now. A national strategy was necessary because of the depth and intractability of the present deeply structural problems: the inter-linked religious, economic and socio-political problems plaguing democratic Tunisia.

EGYPT: SOCIAL REVOLUTION AND INSTITUTIONAL REGRESSION

Since 2010 three big processes have gone on in approximate sequence. The first was huge in size—millions of people, centred symbolically on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, focussed on the overthrow of the Mubarak autocracy, and on freedom and solidarity. What the uprising was like was noted by Mona Hussein Wasef, age 26: “For eighteen days we were in Tahrir Square, side by side, men and women, educated and uneducated, rich and poor. Never have I felt so much solidarity. I was Egypt, we were all Egypt, fighting for freedom.”

The second saw an attempted closure of the social upsurge through a power sharing interregnum between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military, before the incompetence and authoritarianism of the Islamists saw them swept from power in July 2013, through popular revulsion. Since then the Egyptian military has re-asserted its power directly, backed by the regional interests of the United States. The powers of the labour unions and social movements have been suppressed but not negated. The whole nearly decade long process has been characterised by the absence of popular political organisations, in contrast with Tunisia: no Ennahda, no CPR, no Quartet of tried and respected civil organs. The Muslim Brotherhood had large numbers and organisational skills, but lacked competence and democracy. General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi exploited the popular prestige accorded to the military, but had to use unfair tactics to win the presidential election of May 2014. He now enjoys the effusive support of President Donald Trump.

Egypt experienced its Mohammed Bouazizi moment on 6 June 2010 when Khaled Saieed, age 28, was beaten to death in public by two police near his home in Alexandria, in a sustained assault. Photos taken by relatives showed Saieed’s mangled face and bloodied head: soon ‘there wasn’t anyone in Egypt who didn’t know who Saieed was’, in the words of the owner of a café which he’d patronised. Existing human rights movements like the April 6 Youth Movement immediately mobilised and new groups formed.

Ahdaf Soueif feels that ‘the Egyptian street started to move for the first time in thirty years’ around 25 January 2011. Repression was already heavy. One conservative estimate says that the numbers killed in clashes with security forces, January through February 2011, was 846. Washington’s reluctance to intervene was clear. Secretary Clinton had referred to President Mubarak as a loyal friend and even as “family”, and President Obama described him as “a counsellor and a friend to the United States.” Not until 1 February did Obama press for an immediate and meaningful transition.

The ties that bound Washington and Cairo were indeed strong with United States’ military aid running at $1.3 billion a year (discussed below), and viewed by the Pentagon as an untouchable investment in regional security. By 11 February the arrangements for Mubarak’s removal had been made. The decision was in any case largely made for them by the people: ‘millions of Egyptians [had] poured into the streets all over the country’. In Cairo ‘a mass of humanity’ surged towards Mubarak’s residence while hundreds of thousands protested in Tahrir Square, as Steven Cook noted. Early that evening Vice President Omar Suleiman briefly announced that Mubarak had stepped down and power had been handed over to the military, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

A long experience of labour protest and trade union action underlay the popular upsurge. Workers’ action had increased when Mubarak had implemented neoliberal privatisation programmes including lowering wages and benefits. In 2006-08 almost the entire textile industry was on strike, and labour activism became ‘the primary form of resistance to the regime’ over the years preceding 2011, said James Gelvin. They continued apace during the transition from Mubarak to SCAF. In mid-2012, strikes were rife across the large textile sector, and unrest also occurred in the ceramics industry: disputes at Ceramics Cleopatra, the largest privately-owned ceramics firm, saw clashes between workers and police.

What would come from SCAF was unclear except that the military wanted a complete and speedy end to revolutionary activity. When Ahmed Maher of the April 6 Movement was taken to see General Sisi (then head of military intelligence) soon after 11 January, Sisi told him: “You are heroes, you did miracles…something we failed to do for years, but now we need you to stop demonstrating.” As protests and hundreds of deaths continued, the military’s response was to broaden the composition of the ruling elite, and offer ‘a political settlement that combined procedural democracy’– the protesters would be unsatisfied with less–‘with practical autocracy’, according to Jack Shenker. They needed ‘a new partner in the ruling enterprise’, with values not dissimilar to the military’s. That was the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Interregnum of the Brotherhood and the Military

The Brotherhood had little or no positive role in the great uprising. It gained from its large size—reputedly some 800,000 dues-paying members in 2012—and disciplined organisation: it provided welfare services in rural areas, and was skilled in getting out the numbers. It was disposed towards collaboration with government and against revolutionary activity. A clarifying event had reportedly occurred in mid-November. Before parliamentary and presidential elections began, a big uprising against military rule erupted centred on Mohamed Mahmoud, one of the main streets out of Tahrir Square. At the height of the clashes in which ‘more than a hundred’ were killed, Brotherhood members ‘had linked arms to prevent revolutionaries from reaching the security forces’ and just possibly toppling the regime.

The Brotherhood’s political wing was the Freedom and Justice party, and its presidential candidate was Mohammed Morsi, an engineer and career Brotherhood politician. It repeatedly declared that ‘it would participate but not dominate’, and that it would govern ‘for all Egyptians’. But on Carrie Wickham’s assessment, it had no ability to cooperate equally with other groups or entertain criticism. Morsi was ‘a quintessential organisation man’, loyal to the Brotherhood’s old guard and faithful in following their directives. During the presidential elections, he stressed that ‘no party, group or class would ever again be allowed to monopolise political power’, and that he would appoint a number of vice-presidents to represent other socio-political forces, working under the oversight of parliament and civil society. Morsi was named president in mid-2012 with 52 per cent of the vote, against an opponent who was Mubarak’s last prime minister and former air force commander.

President Morsi thereafter stressed rhetoric over substance, and neglected all of his promised reforms. The writing of a new constitution exemplified his failings. The draft published at the end of November ignored the rights of women, children and workers, limited freedom of expression in the name of religion, and affirmed the political pre-eminence of the military. The drafting process was quite unlike what was underway in Tunisia. Only seven women were included in the 100-member assembly, and that number soon fell. Young people so prominent in the uprising were unrepresented. In a final seventeen-hours session that ended at 06.40 on 29 November, the entire 236 articles were supposedly reviewed, revised and voted on. The approval process was equally farcical. National literacy rates suggested that about one-third of voters were unable to read the draft, but less than 15 days were allowed between its publication and the first round of voting. In the outcome, 63.8% of voters approved Egypt’s draft; but turnout was just 32.9% of the population, which meant that ‘a mere 21% of eligible voters’ had actually approved the constitution.

In office, Morsi used state power to beat protesters, break strikes and restrict rights: 200 cases of police brutality were reported in his first 100 days, and an activist claimed that a torture chamber existed wherever there were security forces. Feuding with the judiciary, in late November 2012, Morsi issued a declaration that placed him effectively above the law. Tasked by the military with containing the revolution, protests against Morsi’s rule grew larger by the month, and a series of demonstrations brought ‘millions back on the streets,’ on Shenker’s assessment, in the summer of 2013.

The Tamarod (rebel) Campaign began mobilising for the resignation of Morsi from early April. With leaders who were young and unknown, and possibly connected with elements in the security apparatus (Shenker cautions that mass mobilisation and elite influence were not mutually exclusive, and street protests against the Brotherhood were real and revolutionary). People had long been reluctant to sign their names to any protest, but Tamarod now invited them to provide their ID numbers as well as their names, registering their solidarity and opposition. Using humour and ridicule (cartoons declared that ‘Religion is Not Just a Beard’, and exhorted supporters to ‘Stay Calm and Tamarod’, some 22 million signed the petition, about 40% of the electorate. As many millions took to the streets, Tamarod gave the president an ultimatum to resign by 17.00 hours on 2 July or face ‘complete civil disobedience.’ General al-Sisi announced the military’s readiness to intervene “if the demands of the people are not met.” Cabinet ministers resigned, and the headquarters of the Brotherhood were ransacked and burnt in an all-night rampage. Tahrir Square was festive. The army acted on 3 July. In the absence of independent popular organisations, Hazem Kandil wrote soon after, ‘the revolt would have been aborted without the support of the military.’

It was of course possible to support the need for the military’s intervention on 3 July and oppose military rule. Alaa al-Aswany was a leading liberal writer who supported the ousting of the Brotherhood, which had “used violence from the very beginning.” Al-Aswany’s position was clear: “We don’t want the Ikhwan (or Brotherhood), and we don’t want the old regime. We want a democratic state,” Patrick Kingsley reported.

Shenker noted the army’s ‘canny manoeuvring’ in and around a public weary of turmoil, but its actions soon acquired increasing clarity. When thousands of Brotherhood supporters and other opponents of the military had gathered in August in Rabaa and Nahda, two large Cairo squares, security forces launched what became ‘the bloodiest massacre in the country’s modern history’. The authorities counted 638 corpses, the Brotherhood over 2,500. At one of Rabaa’s field hospitals, one protester recalled, each floor of the building ‘gradually filled up with bodies, as sniper’s bullets pounded the hospital door’.

The crack-down was soon broadened into a full authoritarian array. The April Sixth Movement was targeted, and its leader, Ahmad Maher, imprisoned along with other key activists. By late October there was reportedly a big wave of popular support for General Sisi. The army’s decades-old popularity had been boosted by the removal of Morsi, and al-Sisi appeared different from other SCAF commanders. Born in 1954, he was SCAF’s youngest member. He had trained in Britain and had a Master’s degree from the US army’s War College in Pennsylvania.

Sisi was Morsi’s defence minister, and since 2012 had cultivated a ‘restrained persona’: when he announced Morsi’s removal in July 2013, that was reportedly the first time many had heard him speak. After he announced his candidacy for the presidency on 26 March 2014, this largely continued. He left any semblance of campaigning to his aides. His only competitor was Hamdeen Sabahi, who was ‘too poor even to hire a hoarding’, but issued a detailed manifesto, and aimed to “give hope to the youth and to the poor”. He was denied access to the media. The election occurred in a stifling atmosphere, and liberal and secular activists shunned the polls, and thus also Sabahi’s campaign. He had supposedly been arrested 17 times. The process was without any semblance of fairness. The government declared the second day of voting a national holiday then, when booths remained empty, extended the election for a third day and threatened non-voters with a large fine. Al-Sisi obtained 96% of the vote. But he had aimed at a turnout of 80%, and actually gained only 47.5%, almost five points lower than when Morsi ran against Shafiq. Sabahi said near the end that “the greatest thing we achieved is that the Egyptian people have begun to feel that they are the decision-makers.”

The American-Backed Military Barriers to Democratisation

Corinna Mullin and colleagues have analysed the weight of the repression that the Egyptian people have faced, its continuities under the rule of Mubarak, SCAF and Morsi, and how this was supported throughout by the United States’ military and economic aid over three decades. Between 1978 and 2011, the US provided Egypt with bilateral foreign aid worth $71.6 billion, including military aid of $1.3 billion annually from 1987. The strategic function of a ‘large part’ of the weaponry purchased through the United States was ‘to repress internal dissent’. Mubarak, they state, created one of the region’s ‘largest and most repressive state security apparatuses’, wherein ‘torture…was endemic.’ Bilateral relations deepened in the context of America’s expansive war on terror after 2001, when ‘state violence and human rights violations increased.’ Violence ‘characterised’ SCAF’s 17-months rule, including ‘systematic torture’ in prisons and detention centres, the referral of some 12,000 civilians for trial in military courts, and so-called virginity tests on women activists (a practice for which General al-Sisi was particularly identified). State violence ‘continued unabated throughout Morsi’s presidency’ (including a new form of organised public abuse of women activists). After Mubarak’s removal, the US continued to offer military and economic aid, limiting the potential, they note, ‘for a meaningful democratic transition to succeed.’

Mubarak Country versus Resistance/Revolutionary Country

Shenker sees Egypt divided between two systems of power, historically and politically. The former represents the infrastructure of exclusion and domination in modern Egypt, and the latter recognises how those structures were exposed and undermined during Mubarak’s final years. He sees Egypt as a country caught between two models: ‘one broken, but not yet fully defeated, the other full of life, but not yet fully emerged.’ The enlivened, emergent, revolutionary system expresses the hopes and energies of, as Anne Alexander and Mostafa Bassiouny claim, ‘the vast majority of Egyptians: the urban and rural poor; the small traders and artisans; industrial, transport and office workers; teachers and health workers…They [we]re the heart and soul of the January Revolution’. The state, SCAF, Morsi and Sisi, ‘wishes to remake these people in its image, but the people have it in them to remake the state as well’, Shenker believes.

Trade unions and workers’ action are at the heart of resistance and revolutionary Egypt, and few do this with greater determination than those at Cleopatra Ceramics. It is one of the largest ceramics plants in the Middle East, containing thousands of workers, who make everything from tiles to toilet basins, which are exported to many countries internationally. Shenker met Cleopatra’s vice-president, Madame Daniela, whose sphere of power since 2011, extends little further than her office suite, and management now operated in ‘multiple jurisdictions—part Mubarak Country and part Revolutionary Country’.

Workers at Cleopatra had occupied the factory many times since 2011, and were no longer ready to stand around while the owner, Aboul Enein, former Mubarak ruling party stalwart and rich Cairo landowner, yelled insults at them. Each mobilisation had involved four or five thousand workers walking out. Cleopatra workers had also blocked streets in Cairo and stormed government offices in Suez (another locus of repeated union agitation). One aim of their struggles was to “cleanse” Cleopatra of ‘mini-Mubaraks’, typified by Enein. This fight for ‘collective democracy’ was being waged in many places in recent years, in Tahrir, in Suez’s el-Arbaeen Square, and other public spaces. Some Cleopatra workers, says Shenker, had stopped seeing themselves as employees, but rather as ‘custodians of a shared productive resource’.

Statistics suggest that state power has not quelled workers’ action. In 2014, after Sisi had attacked all forms of protest, more than 2,200 labour protests were recorded. Democracy Meter noted that 1,117 worker protests had occurred through 2015, around three per day. Volatility sometimes involved professional middle classes too. Thousands of doctors across the country protested against police brutality in February 2016, after two doctors had been beaten up by police, and staff threatened with a gun, in a Cairo hospital: the Egyptian Medical Syndicate initiated a campaign to have the police culprits punished, declaring; ‘We want the rule of law.’ For Shenker this indicated that ‘a significant proportion of the [people] no longer think about themselves and about politics in the same way,’ echoing Hamdeen Sabahi’s observations.

Sisi’s repression of ‘any social or labour protest’ steepened in early 2017. Ahmed Maher, Sisi’s erstwhile heroic miracle-achiever, spent three years in Tora Prison, mostly in solitary conditions, but still managed to smuggle out eloquent critiques of the dictatorship: when released, however, he lived under round-the-clock surveillance, bereft of any capacity to speak or write. Almost any independent individual action faced repression. Shena Cavallo reported an estimated 60,000 political prisoners, that ‘countless NGOs had been shut down’, and respected activists and journalists faced ‘a myriad of trumped up charges’. Quoting reputable sources, Aljazeera noted three to four ‘forced disappearances a day’, 2015-16, and Amnesty International placed the number of the disappeared at 1,700, and said that extra judicial killings were ‘common’. The Economist reported ‘unprecedented repression’, and wrote that only China and Turkey locked up more journalists: so many political prisoners were jailed, that the state had to build 16 new ones.

Perhaps the most glaring of extra judicial killings was the Italian graduate student, and Cambridge doctoral candidate, Giulio Regeni, age 28: glaring in both its barbarity and its international associations. He was an Arabic speaker who felt at home in a revolutionary Cairo. His research focussed on the new independent trade unions, and particularly on the union of street vendors. The numbers of such independent unions had ‘exploded from four to thousands’, 2010-17, spawned by the anti-Mubarak revolution. He disappeared in downtown Cairo on the evening of 25 January 2017, a redolent anniversary, and his body was found near a highway nine days later. He had been ‘beaten, burned, stabbed and probably flogged on the soles of his feet over a period of four days, and he died when his neck was snapped.’ No credible official explanation has been offered, despite sustained high level intervention from Rome. But the cause does seem reasonably clear. Declan Walsh quotes (on 15 August) ‘an Obama administration official’ that “we had incontrovertible evidence of official Egyptian responsibility.” One of three former officials told Walsh: “There was no doubt”. The United States passed this conclusion to a furious Prime Minister Renzi: Italy was then Egypt’s biggest trade partner in Europe.

There were indications that such suppression had had its effects. The state had implemented a range of adjustment policies including raising the price of petrol and floating the currency (in order to secure an IMF loan), described as ‘the harshest since Anwar Sadat’s lifting of price controls in January 1977. These had led to a decrease in real wages, a spike in inflation, and a deterioration in living standards, across classes. In 1977, Sadat’s actions had resulted in bread riots. Some now asked ‘why isn’t the public taking action?’ This question, Mostafa Bassiouny felt, was similar to what perplexed the world before January 2011.

Khaled Dawoud is a journalist who supported Sisi’s ousting of Morsi, but he feels now that the President’s position was ‘more fragmented than it appears’. He has staked his legitimacy on effectively fighting terror and turning around an economy that had collapsed after 2011. ‘He has failed on both counts.’ The economy remains stagnant, inflation high, and with huge infrastructure projects (like the widening of the Suez Canal), eating up hard currency. And suppression ‘has done little but foment anger.’

One thing Sisi can possibly count on is the uninformed support of President Donald Trump. He has praised the way he “took control of Egypt”, and believes that what he called “safety” was “very strong” in the country. Sisi was also visited by the CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, who stressed that Washington seeks to “bolster strategic ties” with Cairo, especially in security cooperation, The Economist reported.

The struggle between revolutionary country and Mubarak Egypt seems set to continue. The advantages of power and national organisation lie with the latter, while the former represents the bulk of the people and their apparent determination to persist. 30 months after the ousting of Mubarak, ‘perhaps 10 million people across the country’ took to the streets again to demand Morsi’s departure. Max Rodenbeck attested then to the ‘creativity of ordinary Egyptians, who are clearly ready to fight for the freedom they have tasted.’

The nakedness of Sisi’s despotism is now clearly displayed, unlike the unknown, somewhat attractive figure who assumed the popular task of removing Morsi: his scope for more ‘canny manoeuvring’ is about zero. Unaligned with a political party, Sisi relies, notes Walsh, on ‘the totems of the state, generals, judges and security chiefs’. The country is most distinguished today by the immense size of its political-prisoner population. President Donald Trump voices support that few other state leaders would utter, but is known for his unreliability and unconcern for facts. Responding to Trump’s fulsomeness, Sisi said that the American president was “a unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible”. That task actually faces both of them.

Springtime in Tunisia and Egypt

Democratisation is normally a long process of struggle, but Tunisia gained great success in a short time, advantaged by its homogeneity, and by the strength of its political organisation in both civil society and in its national institutions. Tunisia also benefited from possessing a democratic Islamist party, able both to attract popular support, and ready to establish pluralist government with secular forces. A readiness to compromise has been repeatedly demonstrated, most notably by Ennahda and Ghannouchi. The absence of an overweening military was another of the country’s strengths, along with the neutrality it displayed at critical times. But one of the country’s biggest threats is endemic corruption stemming from Ben Ali’s ramifying security system, and continuing under the cover of networks associated with Nidaa Tounes. Another big and immediate threat is Jihadist terrorism, and a third big problem is the need to redress historic regional inequalities. The three are deep structural and closely inter-related threats. Perhaps the best long-term solution is to be found in the genius of Tunisian democracy, its open, participatory and deliberative capacities which it utilised well in the writing of its constitution, and in its response to political assassinations.

Oppressive institutions have long dominated in Egypt, and its people have responded over decades with bravery, determination and adaptability. But without national popular organisations and leaders able to mobilise engagement in the mundane details of democracy like electoral turnout, which might seem mere ‘procedural democracy’ to some, but also constitute over time the building blocks of meaningful democratisation. General Sisi is just another in a line of military despots stretching from Nasser, through Sadat and Mubarak, with the last, an air-force commander, as admired in his last days by both Secretary Clinton and President Obama as Sisi is today by Trump. Egypt now experiences especially heavy military domination backed by the United States, without any thought from Trump for the plight of its people.

Kenneth Good is an Honorary fellow, Global Studies, RMIT, Melbourne.

Article printed from www.counterpunch.org: https://www.counterpunch.org


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