THE DESPERATE FIGHT FOR EGYPT’S SOUL
Amir Taheri
NY Post, March 29, 2012
A year after Hosni Mubarak was forced out of power, many Egyptians feel that the real fight over their country’s future is just beginning. For decades, the army-led regime kept Egypt frozen; now all options are open, both good and bad. Which to pick is the question facing a 100-member commission formed to write a new constitution.
The commission consists of 50 members appointed by the newly elected parliament and 50 others chosen for their legal and academic expertise. Of the 50 parliamentarians, 25 belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, while its more radical Islamist rival, the Salafist al-Nour (Light), has 11.…
Even before its first meeting, the commission has run into trouble, with various parties threatening a boycott [the Coptic Church formally withdrew on Monday its six representatives from the committee. Upwards of 25 committee members, including liberals and secularists, also have reportedly withdrawn—Ed.] They claim the Islamists have rigged the process in order to turn Egypt into an “emirate” based on sharia, or Islamic law.…
No doubt the process by which the commission was formed was deeply flawed. In the recent elections, Islamists, hiding in coalitions with secular parties, collected 46 percent of the vote—but thanks to a peculiar electoral law won two-thirds of the National Assembly’s seats. Thus, Islamists claim 70 percent of the seats allocated to parliamentarians on the constitutional commission. They also want two-thirds of seats reserved for nonparliamentarians.
The maneuver is so brazen that even some Islamist groups find it hard to swallow. One party, al-Isalah al-Islamiyah (Islamic Authenticity), has walked out.… Further undermining the commission’s credibility is the fact that Egypt’s best-known constitutionalists, such as Atef al-Banna and Ahmad Kamal Abulmagd, haven’t been included. The union that represents Egypt’s judges and jurists calls the commission a travesty.…
The Muslim Brotherhood clearly is trying to pull off a constitutional coup d’etat, but the best way to counter it isn’t a boycott. That would narrow the options to a sharia-based “emirate” or prolonged military rule.… Secular parties’ decision to prepare an alternative draft constitution could help people understand that there are two visions of Egypt.…
The Brotherhood and its allies must be prevented from rushing the process in the hope that an ill-informed public will swallow whatever witches’ brew they dish out through the commission.… Four issues are central: 1. Sovereign power—Islamists claim that all power emanates from Allah. Egyptian democrats insist that political power belongs to the people; 2. Is Egypt an “Arab” state or a nation with a more complex identity of which Arabness (uruba) is a part?; 3. Should Egypt have a state religion, namely Islam? At least 83 percent of Egyptians see themselves as Muslims.…; 4. The legal equality of citizens, regardless of gender. Because Arabic is a gendered language, despots have always used the masculine case to deprive female citizens of rights.
In Egypt today, it would be impossible to impose a constitution that rejects sharia. But a constitution exclusively based on sharia…is a recipe for discord and the collapse of the democratic dream.
OBAMA’S RENEWAL OF EGYPT AID
SENDS REGION A DANGEROUS SIGNAL
Jonathan S. Tobin
Contentions, March 16, 2012
President Obama faces a difficult task in trying to influence events in post-revolutionary Egypt. With its military rulers brutally abusing the human rights of their people and a rising tide of Islamism threatening to drag the most populous Arab nation into a morass of fundamentalism and violent conflict, maintaining the U.S. relationship with Egypt is inherently problematic. But as he did during the last days of the Mubarak regime last year, the president may have just managed to make a bad situation worse.
On the heels of the Egyptians’ attempt to imprison Americans seeking to promote democracy, Obama has directed the State Department to exercise a national security waiver that will enable $1.3 billion in military assistance to once again flow to Cairo despite legislation linking the aid directly to human rights concerns. It is believed the waiver was payment to the Egyptian military for its decision to allow seven Americans to leave the country [last] month. The ransom might have seemed reasonable to their families (especially because the father of one of those in peril was Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood). But the move will disillusion Egyptian democrats as well as send a signal to both the military and the Islamist majority in the new parliament that not only is Obama not interested in human rights but that the U.S. is willing to bow to blackmail.
Egypt has gotten billions in aid since the early 1980s, largely as a bribe intended to both keep the country out of the Soviet orbit and to preserve the peace treaty it signed with Israel in 1979. But with Egypt now moving away from an ice-cold peace with Israel to a situation barely distinguishable from belligerence, the same criteria no longer should apply to the annual grant of U.S. largesse. For too long, the aid was rightly seen by the Egyptian people as merely a baksheesh payment to Mubarak and his cronies that did nothing to better their lives. In continuing this practice now that a new group hostile to American interests has replaced the dictator, Obama has not only demonstrated his contempt for ordinary Egyptians but also told the Middle East it is the Brotherhood and not America that is the “strong horse” in the region.
If the United States is truly going to use its $1.3 billion present to the Egyptian military as leverage over the country, then it might have been advisable to employ it as more than a ransom payment. Egypt has opened up its border with Gaza, relieving the isolation of the Hamas government of the strip. The military has embraced the Muslim Brotherhood in an uneasy alliance rather than seeking to work with secular liberals. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to envision Egypt as either a bulwark against fundamentalism or a force for peace in the region.
By throwing away its one bargaining chip, the administration has lost its ability to have any impact on the situation. While it is reasonable to argue that a complete cutoff of aid would deprive Washington of any ability to influence Egypt’s rulers, by not even waiting until after a new presidential election is held to replace Mubarak, Obama has made it clear that both the generals and the Brotherhood will have a free hand in the coming months no matter what they do.…
THE VERY MODEL OF A MODERN MUSLIM BROTHER
Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2012
In Egypt’s upcoming presidential election, there are three main contenders. One is a septuagenarian dinosaur who served a decade as foreign minister in Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. Another was quoted in 2004 by Ikhwanonline—the website of the Muslim Brotherhood—calling for “Arab and Muslim peoples to prepare for Jihad, and boycott all forms of dealing with the Zionist-American enemy and the states that support it.” And then there’s the third guy, who’s the real hardliner.
Welcome to Arab democracy, post-Arab Spring. That third guy is Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, a telegenic Salafist who admires Iran, wants to abolish the peace treaty with Israel, end trade with the West, and have women work at home. The Weekly Standard carried an instructive piece about him in September, warning that he had a good shot at winning the presidency. On Sunday, the New York Times got around to taking note of him, too, apparently since the State Department has also come around to thinking he could win.
Which brings us back around to candidate No. 2. He’s Khairat Al Shater, a multimillionaire businessman who was the Muslim Brotherhood’s deputy head and de facto CFO until last week, when he resigned the Brotherhood (with its blessings) to run for president. Though the Brotherhood had pledged not to field a candidate, it’s doing so anyway out of frustration with the reluctance of Egypt’s military rulers to cede effective power more quickly. And that’s fine with the Obama administration, partly as a hedge against a possible Abu Ismail victory, partly because they’re OK with him.
Mr. Shater, the Times reports, “is in regular contact with the American ambassador, Anne Patterson, as well as the executives of many American companies here, and United States officials have praised his moderation as well as his intelligence and effectiveness.” About Mr. Shater’s intelligence and effectiveness, there’s little debate. But as the quote from Ikhwanonline suggests, “moderation”—except perhaps in the broader company he keeps—is another matter.
So, on the subject of Israel, Mr. Shater noted that the killing of Hamas’s [founder] Ahmed Yassin was “a heinous crime corresponding to the perfidious nature of the Zionist enemy.” As for negotiating with Israel, he called it “mindless”: “The only way” to deal with the Jewish state, he insisted, “is jihad.” He faulted “the enemies of Islam” for trying to “distort and remove [jihad] from the hearts and minds and souls of Muslims.” He blasted the U.S. for preventing “the Islamic nation in its entirety” from eliminating “the usurper Zionist enemy.”
Of course that’s just Israel, and what else is a leading Muslim Brother supposed to say? Still, given that the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty is a cornerstone to U.S. policy in the Mideast, it might at least call into question the wisdom of the U.S. becoming comfortable with a Shater presidency.
Then there’s Mr. Shater’s ideas about governance in general, spelled out in a lengthy talk he gave last year in Alexandria about the history, philosophy, methods and ambitions of the Brotherhood.… A few sentences in Mr. Shater’s talk will come as music to Western ears: He calls for an independent judiciary, rule of law, economic development and the peaceful rotation of power.
But that has to be understood in the context of Mr. Shater’s broader aims: “Restoring Islam in its all-encompassing conception; subjugating people to God; instituting the religion of God; the Islamization of life.” His notion of an ideal citizen is a cadre: “Every individual in the Society should be…a walking Quran.…” More important…he is adamant that the Brotherhood’s goals must remain fixed and unyielding. “No one can come and say, ‘let’s change the overall mission’.… No one can say, ‘forget about obedience, discipline and structures’.… All of these are constants that represent the fundamental framework [and] method…of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is not open for developing or change.”
What Mr. Shater is advocating, in other words, is the creation of flexible democratic political structures within the rigid framework of a quasi-totalitarian society.… And like all totalitarian visions, it even comes with its own Guardians of Virtue: “The Revolution,” he says, “needs to become perpetual,” with a core group of “one or two million” to safeguard the revolution from its enemies. In the old Soviet Union, that job was done by the KGB. In Iran today, it’s the IRGC.
Is this vision of a regime really compatible with American values and interests? People in the Obama administration seem to think so. Hang on, wasn’t there a third candidate? Amr Moussa, dinosaur, is looking better all the time.
EGYPT-ISRAEL PEACE: 33 YEARS LATER
David M. Weinberg
Israel Hayom, March 29, 2012
Thirty-three years ago this week, on the White House lawn to the cheers of thousands, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat signed the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
Will the peace treaty survive the current upheavals in Egypt? That was the question posed earlier this week to a panel of experts from the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, who convened at Jerusalem’s Menachem Begin Heritage Center. Assessments ranged from mild to downright pessimistic.
Dr. Liad Porat of the Begin-Sadat Center says that Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Leader Dr. Mohammed Badi regularly speaks about the evils of Israel, and teaches that Jews and Israelis can never be trusted. Badi’s disciples will do everything possible in every international forum to make Israel’s life difficult, Porat says. Nevertheless, the Brotherhood has been cautious, Porat points out, and won’t necessarily abrogate the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty even if the Islamists in parliament gain control over Egypt’s foreign and defense policies (which are currently still controlled by the military).
Professor Hillel Frisch is even more sanguine, arguing that Egypt’s dire economic situation will prevent the leadership from embarking on a military build up or a war with Israel. Frisch notes that Egypt’s foreign currency reserves have fallen from $120 billion to $60 billion in the past year alone; GDP growth is down from five percent to one percent; and there are major shortages in some basic commodities. Clearly, Egypt cannot afford to spend billions on its military or risk a war.…
Begin-Sadat Center director Professor Efraim Inbar agreed with Porat that the Brotherhood has been cautious and with Frisch that there is a low probability of war with Egypt at any time in the foreseeable future. But, Inbar warned, the Islamist leaders of Egypt are new and inexperienced in foreign and defense matters, and may be prone to mistakes. They view the demilitarization of Sinai, for example, as a national insult, and some Brotherhood leaders are agitating to change this. For Israel, this would be a red line, Inbar said. The demilitarization of Sinai is the very linchpin of the peace treaty! Additionally, the continued “Somalia-ization” of Sinai—the peninsula is becoming a lawless free-fire zone for terrorist groups of all types—could also trip Israel into war in the Sinai and with Egypt too, Inbar warns.
Taking a broader look around the Mediterranean basin, Inbar cautions that the Mediterranean is in danger of becoming an Islamic sea. Islamic-oriented governments have come to power, or threaten to come to power, in Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Sinai, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, Inbar points out. Inbar counsels caution and patience for Israel. Jerusalem should do nothing to exacerbate an already flammable situation, he says, while quietly re-building its defenses in the south of the country.…
Israeli Ambassador to Egypt Yitzhak Levanon, who was spirited out of our Cairo embassy six months ago as rioters ransacked the premises, notes with sadness that the peace with Egypt can only be expected to get colder and colder. He checked, he says, and unlike Israel, no government or public organization in Egypt is holding even the smallest panel discussion or ceremony to mark the Egypt-Israel treaty anniversary this week. How sad.
LAWLESSNESS AND TERROR: THE BEDUIN KINGDOM OF SINAI
Zvi Mazel
Jerusalem Post, March 28, 2012
Some 300,000 Beduin live in the vast Sinai peninsula—nearly three times the size of Israel—and more than a quarter of them still lead a nomadic existence. The country is difficult of access, harsh, mostly mountainous and desert wilderness. Egypt has been finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its authority there.…
Beduin tribes who settled [in Sinai] hundreds of years ago lived according to their own traditions and enjoyed a relative autonomy, mainly left alone by the central government. They have their own judicial system based on ancient customs and traditions which ensure the homogeneity of their society.… Even today, the uneasy coexistence between the Egyptian and Beduin judicial systems goes on.
When Sinai was under Israeli rule—from the Six Day War in 1967 to the evacuation of Sinai in 1982 according to the peace treaty—it laid down the basis of a tourist infrastructure which was later developed by Egypt and which turned the peninsula into one of the main sources of foreign currency. Israeli authorities enjoyed good relations with the Beduin and tried to improve their lot.
Once returned to Egypt, there was greater attention paid to the peninsula…[as] its tourist potential was being recognized. Efforts were made to develop the northern part of Sinai while new tourist infrastructure was built in the south. Special regulations were passed to prevent foreigners—i.e. Israelis—from purchasing land. The Beduin, however, were not part of that economic boom.
The new hotels in Sharm e-Sheikh and along the Eastern coast were staffed by thousands of employees recruited in Cairo; El Arish vacation resorts were built for the wealthy. Meanwhile the Beduin kept on tending their flocks and doing the most menials jobs; they had to turn to protests, sometimes violent, to get their villages linked to the electricity grid and obtain a steady water supply.
Resentment against Egypt’s central government, especially the ministry of the interior, the police and security services built up and soon boiled over. Extremist Islamist organizations found a fertile ground among disgruntled Beduin, who founded a jihadist group which came to be known as “Tawhid and Jihad,” leading to terror attacks on Sharm e-Sheikh and Taba in 2004 and 2005, after which thousands were arrested.…
Ordinary Beduin started banding together to hold protests and demand not only the release of their parents but more social justice; they wanted low cost housing and scholarships for their children; they also wanted the lands where they had been living or roaming for hundreds of years to be registered in their names. In 2007 the governor of North Sinai promised that action would be taken on all those issues, but little if anything was done.
Meanwhile, radical Islamist movements were pouring money into the peninsula, ensuring greater and greater collaboration with the Beduin. Smuggling in and out of Gaza brought it more and more revenues, while drugs and African immigrants were being introduced illegally into Israel.… It is probably largely thanks to the Beduin that arms and missiles from Sudan—and now from Libya—flowed and keep on flowing into the Gaza strip.
Beduin groups grew stronger and bolder. Under cover of the anti-Mubarak demonstrations in January 2011 they conducted a daring raid on the al-Marg jail north of Cairo and freed Hamas leader Iman Nofel and the head of the Hezbollah cell in Egypt, Sami Shehab. The raiders were equipped with state of the art weapons and drove modern vehicles. This extremely complex operation could not have been planned and executed without the combined help of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
With the fall of Mubarak there was a general relaxation of law and order throughout Egypt, but nowhere as badly as in Sinai. Fearing for their lives secret agents and regular security people melted away. Last July Beduin attacked a police station in El Arish in broad daylight. Another group declared it was setting up an Islamic Emirate in North Sinai.… The pipeline bringing gas to Jordan and to Israel has been sabotaged 13 times—so far.
Sinai is turning into a terror stronghold.… Last August a terror attack on Road 12 left eight Israeli dead.… Israel watches with growing concern as the peninsula is turning into a lawless territory used by Hamas and other jihad organizations to plan and carry out attacks against its southern border. It could—and will—probably get worse when the Muslim Brothers form the next government.…
(Zvi Mazel is a former Israeli Ambassador to Egypt
and a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.)
