Sisi and new/old Egypt

S P SETH

The former Egyptian army strongman, General Abdel Fattah el Sisi, is now the country’s new President, which formalizes his position as Egypt’s real ruler since the army coup last year. At the time of deposing Mohamed Morsi as the country’s elected President, Egypt’s military was very sensitive about its characterization as a military coup. From the beginning the army had sought to unsettle the new Muslim Brotherhood government, but Morsi managed to last a bit longer than the army would have liked. The Morsi administration had sought to coopt the army and made Sisi the defence minister, as well as head of the army, because of his good Islamic credentials.  They believed that he would, over time, fit into their ideological mould, but it didn’t happen for a number of reasons. First, the army, now led by Sisi, was not willing to become subservient to the Muslim Brotherhood’s scheme of things. Having got rid of Hosni Mubarak by throwing their support behind the protesters, they didn’t want to become a tool of an Islamist Mubarak in the person of Morsi and the Brotherhood. From the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s military had strongly distrusted the Muslim Brotherhood with its messianic Islamist agenda. Nasser had shown no mercy in dealing with the Brotherhood, throwing them into jails in large numbers. Against this backdrop, Morsi and the Brotherhood were wrong to think that they might, over time, bend the army to serve its ideological and political agenda. But, this time, they believed that the country’s transition to democracy with Morsi’ in the presidential seat gave them the right credentials. As we know this didn’t work.

Second, in their hurry to establish political dominance and pursue an Islamist agenda, the Brotherhood started to lose the support of the idealist, secular and young pioneers of the revolution that brought down Hosni Mubarak. In the process they started behaving like the Mubarak regime by issuing arbitrary decrees and creating a climate of fear. Which gave the army a civilian popular base with large-scale anti-Morsi demonstrations. Therefore, there was some truth to the army’s claim that their coup, calling it another revolution, was people’s will of sorts. However, not long after the coup the army also went after the secular youth when they started criticizing the military, realizing that they had been cheated of their revolution to be replaced with another dose of military rule.

As for the Brotherhood, the army was on a mission to destroy the organization by branding it terrorist and banning it. As part of its crackdown, it put thousands of its supporters behind bars and more than a thousand were summarily sentenced to death though some had their sentences commuted to long jail terms. The entire leadership of the Brotherhood is behind bars. It is reported that its spiritual guide, Dr Mohamed Badie and 182 supporters had their death sentences confirmed by an Egyptian court. The army let loose a volley of violence killing 1000 people. Some militant groups also targeted the army and police forces, identifying themselves as an al Qaeda offshoot, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, from northern Sinai.

Undoubtedly, there was a swell of support for the army as the Brotherhood-led Morsi government had lost much of the goodwill it had when it came to power. And that was because it refused to be inclusive, committed to pursue its Islamist agenda in the shortest span of time. Having convinced itself of popular support, the army decided to put up Sisi as their candidate to be the country’s civilian president. With the army in virtual total control of the state, Sisi was assured of victory and, lo and behold, he won about 97 per cent of the votes polled, the kind of results Hosni Mubarak used to claim. Even with such exaggerated claims, the legitimacy of the electoral process and its result is less than credible. For one thing, with all the state’s resources to mobilize people for Sisi’s ‘crowning’, less than 50 per cent turned up to vote. And the celebrations of Sisi’s victory were marred with a video of the mass gang rape of a girl (s) in Tahrir Square. To make it worse, some of the official media tried to blame it either on the Brotherhood to mar the celebrations, some calling it even a fake video and so on. It is not a good augury for an administration claiming popular support.

Egypt is a highly polarized country. Even though the Sisi regime is determined to crush the Brotherhood, its history has shown remarkable resilience to maintain its organizational structure through a network of countrywide cells around it. Under sustained army crackdown over a period of time, they might revert to their old role as a network (at local level) of charity and social services organization, to be resurrected into a political role at an opportune time. As things stand, there is no hope that Sisi as President will be able to deliver goods for Egypt’s suffering masses. Apart from ruling with a large stick, and depending on the largess of Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf rulers, the new/old rulers of Egypt have no clear idea or plan to pull out the the country from its deep morass. In some ways, Sisi looks like a newer and younger version of Hosni Mubarak. And we know how Egypt was left behind in everyway under the old dictator.

Egypt is in a terrible shape with its rock bottom economy and broken down social fabric.  Sisi’s dalliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf kingdoms as Egypt’s cash cow will not help much as its problems have deep roots. This might even make things worse by making the country a handmaiden of Saudi interests that are backward looking. They simply look to resurrect a Hosni Mubarak-like strongman hopefully to rule Egypt for another 30 years. And that will be a recipe for disaster. What Egypt needs is an inclusive democracy focusing on the country’s economic recovery. The military, from its position of strength and the great need of Egypt’s people for economic and physical security, can play that role. But will it do by continuing to suppress and repress Brotherhood, as well as its youthful secular critics? And if it does, Egypt will continue to wallow in its sorrows, making things even worse in an already unstable region. 

Note: this article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au   

Palestine's perpetual agony

Palestine’s perpetual agony

S P SETH

The perpetual agony of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israeli occupiers is likely to get worse. The reason for this is two-fold. First, with the two-state framework talks under John Kerry’s hectic shuttle diplomacy collapsing due to Israeli intransigence, the Palestinians went ahead to sign 15 international conventions they were entitled to under the UN observer-state status accorded them some time ago. They had refrained from doing this under US pressure to facilitate peace talks with Israel. And with no headway in that direction, Palestine has sought to create some international leverage, as some of these conventions might allow it to highlight human rights violations under Israeli occupation. Israel was furious and threatened to withhold taxes it collects in the occupied West Bank for the Palestinian Authority (PA). The US was also not happy because it would further derail the peace talks, which were not going anywhere anyway.

Second, the two main components of the Palestinian movement---the Fatah exercising control in the West Bank and Hamas controlling Gaza--- have agreed to form a unity government of technocrats to be followed in a few months with new elections. Considering that such agreements in the past have floundered because of deep-rooted differences between them, this new deal too might not go anywhere, considering the pressure that will be brought upon the Palestinian Authority by Israel and the US on for supping with Hamas, regarded as a terrorist organization by much of the west and Israel. Which makes the PA’s agreement for a unity government with Hamas somewhat ‘sinister’ for Israel. At a more practical level, the loss of revenue withheld by Israel as well as possible loss of US aid, might seriously damage the structure of an already shaky Palestinian Authority.

The main reason for the collapse of the peace talks, though, is that Israel is not really keen on a two-state solution. Therefore, they were stalling the diplomatic process while not outrightly rejecting the US initiative to find some sort of a solution to the intractable Palestinian question, which tends to complicate its relations with the Muslim world. Saeb Erkat, the Palestinian negotiator in the talks, is spot on when he says that, “Mr Netanyahu and his government were using Palestinian division as an excuse not to make peace. Now they want to use Palestinian reconciliation as an excuse for the same purpose.” And: “During the past nine months of negotiations, Mr Netanyahu’s government has increased settlement construction, home demolitions, killings, detentions and military raids.”

And why are the Israelis doing it? Because they want to complete their imaginary state of Judea and Samaria through a creeping process of building more settlements and demolishing more Palestinian homes. In Netanyahu’s view, Israel has already made, as paraphrased by Peter Beinart, vast, gut-wrenching concessions by abandoning its claim to Jordan, which by rights should be part of the Jewish state. With this mind-set, the idea that Israel might be receptive to a two-state solution is simply a delusion, nurtured in some realm of the Obama administration. Israel will always find ways of stalling any peace process by blaming its intractability on the Palestinians. For instance, one reason it has generally advanced in the past was the absence of peace partners among the Palestinians. Of course, Hamas is always the problem as a “terrorist” organization, as if Israel is the friendly neighbourhood watch.

And they are getting away with it because they have managed to subvert the US political system through a powerful Zionist lobby. To quote Beinart from his article in New York Review of Books, “… in the United States, groups like AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and the Presidents’ Conference patrol public discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace.” Furthermore: “In the world of AIPAC, the Holocaust analogies never stop, and their message is always the same: Jews are licensed by their victimhood to worry about only themselves… “ And: “…since Jews are history’s permanent victims, always on the knife-edge of extinction, moral responsibility is a luxury Israel does not have…” In the process, the Palestinians are demonized in all sorts of ways as terrorists, subhuman and whatnot, the way Nazi Germany demonized Jews before seeking to exterminate them in the Holocaust.

In another issue of the NYR, Beinart speaks of the heartache of a woman, a Harvard researcher, whose father and other members of her extended family were murdered in the Holocaust. It was living among Palestinians, she says, that brought her closer to her parents, not because Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians echoes the Nazi treatment of Jews—it obviously does not—but because for the first time she encountered people (Palestinians) utterly terrified of the state (Israel) that enjoyed life-and-death power over their lives. And, as Beinart paraphrases, by seeing Palestinians---truly seeing them—we glimpse a faded, yellowing photograph of ourselves. We are reminded of the days when we were a stateless people, living at the mercy of others.

The tragedy of the Palestinian people is not likely to end anytime soon because the United States, which alone has the power to change the situation, is seriously constrained by the political power wielded by the Zionist lobby. The most recent example of this is the abject apology the US secretary of state, John Kerry, had to make for a rare moment of truth when he said that, if Israel continued on its rejectionist course, it risked becoming an “apartheid” state. In apologizing for the wrong choice of words, Kerry said, “If I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term…is through a two-state solution.”

The point is that Israel is already an apartheid state and wants the Palestinians and the Arab world to recognize it as a Jewish state. This is a relatively new demand designed, at an opportune time, to exclude its Palestinian citizens from exercising their rights. As for the Palestinians in occupied West Bank, they are already living in a state of apartheid. As Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said of Kerry’s apartheid comment, “ He [Kerry] is using the word in the future tense, but [the Israelis] have already created an apartheid state in the West Bank.” Elaborating, she said, “When you build roads for settlers that no one else can use, or have two separate legal systems, what else can you call it?”

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au  

US-Saudi Rift

S P SETH

It is an open secret that the relations between the US and Saudi Arabia, one of Washington’s important strategic allies in the Middle east, have been frayed for some years. Indeed, Riyadh has been quite unhappy about aspects of the US’ policy and let it be known without mincing words. The recent visit to Saudi Arabia of the US President Barack Obama was an attempt to address this and to reassure the kingdom that it still remained one of Washington’s main regional allies, and that its political and security interests featured prominently in US calculus.

The question then is: what are the issues that have put considerable strain on a relationship forged over many decades? It all started with the Arab Spring, especially the popular uprising in Egypt against Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. Saudi Arabia wanted Washington to save Mubarak and his political order. Not that the US was too keen on replacing Mubarak with an unknown and unknowable alternative. But by then the popular movement had developed its own momentum and there wasn’t really much the US could have really done to stop it. Even the Egyptian army seemed to recognize that Mubarak’s time had come and he should go.  

Riyadh favours strategic stability in the Middle East with trusted authoritarian rulers and monarchs making decisions without popular input, lest it opens up the Pandora’s box of all the unresolved issues. Things can get out of control and they did in Egypt. And when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, with Mohammad Morsi as President, Riyadh didn’t find it a hopeful augury. At some level, Saudis and Muslim Brotherhood should be natural allies as committed Islamists. However, the latter combine political activism with their religious ideology to shape an Islamic society. And that is not good for Arab monarchs and dictators who believe in a compact between religious orthodoxy and political power, with each underpinning the other. The events in Egypt, with Muslim Brotherhood in power, seemed to seriously undermine this compact, being potentially dangerous for Saudi Arabia and its fellow monarchs in the region.

Saudi Arabia is supportive of the new military/political order in Egypt after the military coup that brought down Morsi, elevating General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi (now Field Marshal) as the country’s new strongman. He is likely soon to become the country’s new president, having decided to contest the elections. The Muslim Brotherhood will remain banned as a terrorist organization. But this has the potential, indeed already is, deeply polarizing the country with hundreds of Brotherhood supporters thrown into jails, and its leadership languishing there as well. In this situation, even though the US is not a supporter of the Brotherhood, Washington is critical of the ham-fisted approach of Sisi and people around him.

Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf monarchs (and Israel) would be happy to see a strong hand in Egypt, whether an outright general or in civilian garb as president, to keep things under control. And they are prepared to write a cheque of billions of dollars to stabilize the country’s economy (if that were possible), as well as the purchase of weapons for the military from Russia. During his recent visit to Russia, Putin wished Sisi luck in his resolve to “assume responsibility for the fate of the Egyptian people”, referring to his presidential ambitions. Saudi Arabia is no friend or admirer of Russia but seems likely to go along with Egypt in exercising its other options. In other words, the US-Saudi rift over Egypt is quite serious, even more so when read with other developments in the region.

Which brings us to Riyadh’s serious concern over the direction of the US’ opening with Iran over the nuclear question. Saudi Arabia never thought that the US and its European partners will reach a deal with Iran, albeit an interim one, to virtually freeze Iran’s nuclear programme. They had hoped that the US would keep Iran on edge by further expanding sanctions and/or by threatening to attack its nuclear facilities, thus forcing it to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But Obama chose a different path of exploring a diplomatic solution for a possible permanent freeze on Iran’s nuclear programme, with negotiations already under way. Which is making the Saudi ruling dynasty extremely unhappy.

Iran’s perceived nuclear ambitions are not the only problem, though they constitute a major hurdle. Iran’s links with the Syrian regime and Hezbollah (in Lebanon) are seen as projection of its larger regional ambition to carve out a determining role in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, increasingly sees itself as the guardian of the region’s Arab interests, and the custodian of Islamic holy sites. Iran represents, both in sectarian and political/strategic terms, a rival centre. While Iran is supporting and actively providing assistance to both the Syrian regime and Hezbollah in their collaborative effort to beat back the insurgents in Syria, Saudi Arabia is doing the same for the insurgents/rebels. Riyadh was terribly disappointed and angry when Obama didn’t go ahead with the planned surgical attack on Syria that might have toppled the Assad regime, instead opting for the Russian proposal for the elimination of its chemical weapons. Which has not only given the regime breathing time but also enabled it to mount fairly effective operations, with Hezbollah, to push back the rebels in key areas. 

With Russia and Iran actively supporting the Assad regime, the Saudi exasperation with the United States has, at times, been quite high. The Saudis would like the US to give sophisticated arms to the rebels in what, they regard, as an uneven and unequal battlefield between the two sides. It is not that the US doesn’t want to get rid of Assad, but it is worried about its arms falling into the wrong hands of the al-Qaeda linked/inspired groups that now outnumber and outgun the moderate and secular rebels fighting Assad. In other words, while the Saudi and US strategic interests still converge broadly, whether it is the nuclear issue or the geopolitical picture, Riyadh is not sympathetic to the need for the US to tread carefully and avoid further overreach in its already overstretched commitments in the Middle East. While Obama’s recent visit might have softened the hard edges, Riyadh is still not convinced that Washington is on the right path.  It would rather want the US to pursue a more assertive policy in the region on par with its own urgent concerns.

An important, though coincidental, factor in the Middle East is the remarkable degree of strategic convergence between Saudi Arabia and Israel, be it on the need for a harder US policy towards Iran, support for the new military order in Egypt and a tougher stance with Assad’s Syria. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au      

Turkey: troubled times ahead

S P SETH

Turkey is in trouble. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government are facing difficult times. Not long ago, Erdogan was the country’s brightest political star in raising Turkey’s international profile. He got rid of the country’s generals given to staging military coups in the name of maintaining its secular polity as the custodians of modern Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk. By winning successive elections over the last decade with his Islamic credentials, Erdogan showed that Islam and capitalist economic model weren’t antithetical. And that a political party rooted in Islamic traditions could successfully practice democracy. So much so, Turkey was often touted as a political model for other Islamic countries.

Internationally, Erdogan carved out a high profiled role in the Middle East following the Arab Spring; though the volatile nature of the developments in that region, particularly in Syria, where he sought to play a decisive role to bring down the Bashar al-Assad regime didn’t play out to his script. In Egypt too he had a falling out with the new military-backed regime for ousting Morsi and for his support of the Muslim Brotherhood. His initiative to make Turkey a member of the European Union hasn’t worked out because of opposition, particularly from Germany and France, to incorporating a Muslim country into this exclusive European club, though efforts in this regard continue. His reputation internationally has received a setback because of his crackdown on domestic opponents, as we shall see.

All in all, he did a good job as Turkey’s Prime Minister and that, in a way, is part of the problem. This perceived success led him to presume people’s approval of whatever he might decide to do. He has become an authoritarian father figure making decisions without referring to his ‘grown up’ children.

Which is leading him into confrontation with his people in different ways. The first test was his decision to turn Istanbul’s major public park, Gezi Park, in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, into a replica of the Ottoman-era military barracks and a mall, which led to popular protests that later spread all over the country, crystalising a range of grievances against the Erdogan government. The police crackdown on the protesters led to large-scale arrests, there were fatalities and the protests were ruthlessly suppressed. Not wanting to face reality that his government was losing popularity, he blamed the protests on terrorists, vandals, looters and foreigners.

This is reflective of Erdogan’s arrogance and self-belief that he knows best. Having won a series of consecutive elections, he believes that he now has the popular mandate even to lecture people on how they should their lives. For instance, he has urged Turkish families to have at least three children. At the same time, his creeping programme of Islamisation in a society with a strong streak of secularism is not liked by many people. His government is increasingly putting curbs on drinking as it is against Islam. Indeed, there has been a concerted effort to reengineer society to conform to Islamic precepts and traditions. But Turkey is not entirely a traditional Islamic society. It is culturally pluralistic, with its secular tone set by modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Erdogan’s great strength was to seemingly reconcile capitalist mode of production with Islam. His Islamic credentials gave his political experiment of combining democracy and capitalism a certain moral tone, without the unsavoury effects of corruption and nepotism. No wonder, Turkey was touted as an example to other Islamic countries.  But that was not to be. The flurry of recent corruption scandals involving his ministers, their families and even his son has shaken Turkey, even more so because Erdogan and his government claimed to epitomize Islamic values. And when the news came out about the corruption scandal, claiming four ministers, he reacted angrily and blamed it on some “dirty foreign plot”. He has followed it up with purging the country’s judiciary and police, punishing them for doing a good job of trying to cleanse the system. Instead of being a statesman welcoming the opportunity to overhaul the system, he has acted like an autocrat, blaming everyone else but himself.

Turkey’s liberals hate him for his intolerance and absolutist views. In his scheme of things, the right way is the Erdogan way. He doesn’t talk to his people but he tells them what everybody should do. As Christopher de Bellaigue writes in the New York Review of Books, “…he criticizes the lives of his subjects, and his views are rarely less than vigourous. All drinkers are alcoholics; every family should have three children; wholemeal flour is best…abortion is murder and Caesarean sections should be avoided. Twitter is a ‘menace’…” Turkish society is becoming increasingly polarized.

With Erdogan behaving like a modern day Sultan at home, some of it was also projected on the international stage. For instance, in the Syrian crisis he was the first regional leader to work towards Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow, though unsuccessfully so far. In the wake of the Arab Spring he apparently had ideas to recreate Turkey’s old zone of influence on the lines of the Ottoman Empire. All these grand visions have crashed, and Erdogan is a much weaker leader than before.

Another important reason for Turkey’s declining situation is the fraying of a compact between Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party  (AKP) and Hizmet movement led by Fetullah Gulen, a spiritual leader, living in the US. Gulen has a powerful political and spiritual base in the country and joined forces with Erdogan to ease out the country’s powerful generals given to periodic military coups. But now Erdogan fears that Gulen’s supporters in the judiciary and police  are seeking to destabilize him. Which accounts for tightening his control over the judiciary and police by purging those behind investigating corruption in his government at the highest levels.

Erdogan is becoming increasingly paranoid and sees conspiracies all around. The Turkish press has been muzzled and many journalists are behind bars. The control over the Internet is being tightened to the point of virtual suffocation. With the stench of corruption reaching the highest levels, including government ministers and even the prime minister’s son (by implication the prime minister), the decade old experiment of popular democracy in Turkey appears to be rolling back. Even as the political situation is increasingly troubled, the country’s economy, Erdogan’s main achievement, is also faltering. As one Turkish political scientist has reportedly said, “ What is happening is the erosion of Turkey as a state—it is a meltdown.”

Despite such a dire picture, AKP is likely to win the next election because of the lack of an effective alternative. But Erdogan’s ambition to become the country’s executive president might further complicate the situation. His ambition to concentrate more power in his hands, at a time when corruption scandals are flying round, might prove counter-productive.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au