Foreign Policy In Focus

President Morsi is caught between the IMF, with its demand for austerity measures, and protestors.

When an important leader of the political opposition hints that a military coup might be preferable to the current chaos, and when a major financial organization proposes an economic program certain to spark a social explosion, something is afoot. Is Egypt being primed for a coup?

It is hard to draw any other conclusion given the demands the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is making on the government of President Mohamed Morsi: regressive taxes, massive cuts in fuel subsidies, and hard-edged austerity measures whose weight will overwhelmingly fall on Egypt’s poor.

“Austerity measures at a time of political instability are simply unfeasible in Egypt,” says Tarek Radwan of the Washington-based Atlantic Council. “He [Morsi] is already facing civil disobedience in the streets, protests on a weekly, if not daily basis, clashes between protestors and security—he does not want to worsen the situation.”

The “situation” consists of widespread police strikes, particularly in the industrial city of Port Said, but also including parts of Cairo and the heavily populated Nile Delta. The police in Sharqiya have even refused to protect Morsi’s house. At its height the strike spread to half of Egypt’s 27 administrative governorates.

Microbus drivers, angered at rising diesel prices and fuel shortages, blocked roads leading into Cairo, setting off massive traffic jams. Farmers in the Delta joined them, refusing to ship crops and shutting down farm machinery.

Added to the tense political situation are rapidly shrinking foreign currency reserves, an economy that is dead in the water, and an unemployment rate that has risen to 13.5 percent, and close to 25 percent for Egyptians aged 15 to 29. The number of Egyptians living below the poverty line has increased from 20 percent in 2010 to 25 percent today. And tourism, which contributes 11 percent of the gross domestic product, has tanked.

Morsi’s Islamist government appears increasingly isolated, although the Muslim Brotherhood is still the best organized political force in Egypt. Reaching out to the opposition, however, is not its strong point. Morsi was elected with only 52 percent of the vote, and most observers think that support has eroded in the face of economic crisis and political instability. The government managed to ram through an Islamist constitution, but only 33 percent of the voters went to the polls. The government had planned on elections sometime between April and June, but a court recently overturned that decision.

The Morsi government has increasingly resorted to the use of force against opponents, including police tactics similar to those used by the Mubarak government. The government Attorney General recently caused an uproar by asking for “civilians” to arrest “lawbreakers.” The opposition charges that the call is cover for the Morsi government to set up militias dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The plagues being visited upon Egypt may not be of Biblical proportions, but they are serious enough to destabilize the biggest Arab country in the Middle East. They certainly threaten the gains of the January 2011 revolution that overthrew the autocratic and corrupt government of Hosni Mubarak and sent the powerful Egyptian army back to the barracks.

They may not stay there long.

Opposition leader Essam Al-Islambouli of the National Salvation Front told Al-Ahram Weekly,  “Today, we don’t just have a convoluted political process, but we are also facing confused and disturbing economic challenges, and we are seeing the threat of citizens bearing arms against each other. We might be reaching a point at which it will become inevitable for the Armed Forces to step in.”

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of Egypt’s Constitutional Party and founding member of the opposition National Salvation Front, told Ahram Online that while he doesn’t “hope the military takes over,” it would be better to be ruled by the military than by Islamic militias.

The Muslim Brotherhood does have a paramilitary wing called the “Hawks” that surfaced in 2006 during demonstrations at Al-Azhar University, and one rumor is that the MB has as many as 5,000 soldiers. There is also a reputed pledge by Hamas to send fighters from Gaza to support the MB. But it is very unlikely that the Brotherhood has anywhere near 5,000 armed men, and Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar denied that the Palestinian organization intends to interfere in Egypt, calling the rumor nothing more than an attempt to smear Hamas. Indeed, relations between Hamas and the Morsi government have recently cooled.

The puzzling thing about the IMF’s demands is that they fly in the face of a recent study by the organization’s chief economist Oliver Banchard, which found spending cuts and taxes hikes only make recessions worse. Stimulus spending are far more effective in restarting an economy.

The Morsi government was hoping the international lending organization would front it $4.8 billion to pull Egypt through the current crisis, but Cairo has delayed asking for the loan, in large part because it is afraid of what the reaction would be. Cutting fuel subsidies would fall heavily on the poor, who use kerosene for cooking. However, without the IMF loan, loans from the U.S. and the European Union will be put on hold as well.

The Morsi government’s fear is well founded. Egypt has long been a difficult country to govern without the consent of its people unless rulers can call on a powerful army. Its population of 83 million is concentrated in a few urban areas, the Delta, the narrow strip of land bordering the Nile, and several cities in the Canal Zone.

That concentration makes demonstrations formidable, as the Mubarak government found out in 2011. The Morsi government recently discovered that fact when it sentenced 21 soccer fans to death for their part in a 2012 riot in Port Said that killed 74 people. Port Said exploded at the verdict.

With the police overwhelmed—and on strike—Morsi was forced to call in the Egyptian Army to confront the rioters, but military commanders were less than happy at being caught between the demonstrators and the government. “The Egyptian armed forces is a combat institution not a security institution,” grumbled Gen. Ahmed Wasfi, head of the Army division sent into Port Said. “No one can imagine the Army replacing the Interior Ministry.”

Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi warned the Morsi government not to try and “brotherhoodise” the military, and also hinted darkly that the continued unrest could bring about a possible “collapse of the state.” It was a sobering statement from an institution that has intervened on other occasions in Egypt, including during the 1952 coup/ revolution that put Gamal Abdel Nasser into power.

As long as Mubarak controlled the army, he could rule Egypt. When the army stepped back in 2011, the government fell.

It is an old story. Ancient Egypt was one of the few areas in the Roman Empire that required two full legions just to keep the peace. And the Romans found that when Egyptians got riled, it was best to back off and cut a deal. Cleopatra used the power of Egypt’s population to hold off Roman rule for more than two decades. It is a force that no government can afford to take lightly.

It is no secret that the U.S. is not overly enthusiastic about the Morsi government. During his recent visit, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry offered aid—and a modest $250 million at that—but only if the government instituted “painful” austerity measures and kept Cairo’s foreign policy consistent with Washington’s. The U.S. has the most powerful voice in the IMF—it outvotes Japan, Germany and France combined—and the fact that the lending organization demands essentially parallel those made by Kerry is hardly coincidence.

The oil-rich monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the U.S.’s major allies in the Middle East, have been telling Washington “We told you so” about Islamic governments, and GCC member Qatar, which initially pledged $4.3 billion in aid, has yet to make good on it. Qatar and other GCC nations have also reneged on an economic assistance package. 

Morsi’s government is hardly radical. Its economic policies reflect its urban professional roots, and what MB business leader Hassan Malek calls “capitalism with attention to the poor,” a pledge that will be hard to reconcile with the IMF’s formula.

But Egypt has adopted a foreign policy that is not always in perfect alignment with Washington, including re-establishing relations with Iran and sharpening the criticism of Israel for its occupation of the West Bank and Golan Heights.

The U.S. has traditionally been more comfortable with authoritarian governments in the Middle East than democratic or Islamic ones, and it has influence with the Egyptian military through its $1.3 billion in yearly aid.

Are the statements by Egypt’s opposition concerning the possibility of a military takeover simply a political maneuver aimed at forcing the Morsi government to be more inclusive, or are they laying a foundation for a coup? Loose talk about an Army takeover in Egypt is a little like hand feeding a crocodile: a good way to lose a body part.

Why is the IMF ignoring its own findings on austerity to push a program that can only ignite massive resistance? And why is the U.S. piling on?

Egypt is looking at a summer of higher food prices, rising unemployment, blackouts, fuel shortages, and growing political unrest. If the country were a chessboard, it looks like a lot of pieces are lining up for an assault on the king.

For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.

In the void left by the government's utter lack of action, citizens are stepping forward to protect women at demonstrations.

The prevalence of sexual terrorism in Cairo—emerging prominently in international media late last month—continues to cast a shadow over protestors and activists marching on Tahrir Square and other popular protest sites. It has become a polarizing issue of its own amid continuing protests against the government.

Russ Wellen earlier this month implicated Egypt's large percentage of jobless, frustrated youth as contributing significantly to the problem, observing that “these crimes can be classified as fallout from not only the Egyptian government's repressive policies, but its failure to improve the economy.” And indeed, groups of these oppressed, resentful men often linger in the square. One such nameless youth bluntly told Aleem Maqbool of the BBC when asked about the increase of sexual assaults in the square, “We are depressed, we can't find jobs and money, what do you expect?”

The answer varies widely depending on whom you ask.

Take Ahmad Mahmoud Abdullah, a radical Salafist sheikh known as “Abu Islam,” who was arrested for “defamation of religion” for his controversial remarks regarding the presence of women in Tahrir Square. According to him, it is halal (permissible) to rape female protestors and that these women “have no shame, no fear and not even feminism [sic].”

If only the culture of victim blaming these female protestors ended with one delusional man—but it seems it is only considered “defamation of religion” to victim blame if you are not a part of the government.

The Shura Council Human Rights Committee—part of Egypt's upper house of Parliament—in a press conference went so far as to claim that these rampant sexual assaults are, essentially, not the Interior Ministry's problem. Rana Muhammad Taha of The Daily News Egypt provides a disturbing round-up of these statements from the committee:

“Women should not mingle with men during protests,” said Reda Al-Hefnawy, Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) member. “How can the Ministry of Interior be tasked with protecting a lady who stands among a group of men?”
…
“A woman who joins protests among thugs and street inhabitants should protect herself before asking the Ministry of Interior to offer her protection,” said Adel Afifi, a prominent board member of the Salafi Party Al-Asala.
…
“The woman bears the offence when she chooses to protest in places filled with thugs,” said Salafi Al-Nour Party member Salah Abdel Salam.

At the same session, a female Muslim Brotherhood MP suggested that these women “think twice” before demonstrating “so as not to become prey to sexual offenders and armed thugs who commit rape.”

The Muslim Brotherhood—the ruling Islamist party in Parliament—has also been implicated in orchestrating these sexual assaults particularly against Tahrir Square, a “symbol” of the revolution—and indeed, their response thus far has not laid such accusations to rest. During the human rights committee session, Brotherhood MPs were using the sexual attacks as justification to push anti-protest legislation. As Vivian Salama of The Daily Beast reports, the absurdity of the government’s response is not lost on women’s organizations in Egypt:

“What does our government do? Instead of implementing laws that make sexual assault a crime, they are making the publicity of these attacks a crime,” said Nancy Omar … spokeswoman of Egyptian Women; Red Line, a group of volunteers from various political factions united to defend the rights of women. “And then they question our motives for going to these protests—how silly!”

In the void left by the government’s utter lack of action, such non-profit organizations and volunteer groups have instead stepped up to the plate to protect, assist, and defend victims of these attacks. Some police common protest areas, moving quickly to save women who could get caught in “circles of hell,” groups of men who violently swarm victims in horrifically organized tiers. Others help shepherd women to hospitals and help pay the costs, or offer free self-defense courses as a preventative measure.

It is tragic that the impetus to enforce basic human rights has fallen on the shoulders of civilians. One can only hope that these volunteers and activists can mitigate this ongoing trend of violence against women during Egypt’s upheaval—especially since in the face of government apathy and a culture of rampant victim blaming, they are the only buffer left to safeguard women’s political voices.

Leslie Garvey is an intern at Foreign Policy in Focus.

Two years after the Lara Logan assault, women continue to be attacked at protests in Tahrir Square.

Remember the Tahrir Square attack on Lara Logan two years ago while she was covering the demonstrations for CBS News? It seems that women -- even protestors -- continue to be sexually assaulted. At the Egypt Independent, Tom Dale writes:

A woman was sexually assaulted with a bladed weapon on Friday night, leaving cuts on her genitals, in central Cairo, in the midst of what was purportedly a revolutionary demonstration. … She was one among at least 19 women sexually assaulted in and around Tahrir Square on Friday night, according to accounts collated by Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment, an activist group. … There were other attacks involving bladed weapons. Six women required medical attention. No doubt there were more assaults, uncounted.

To experience the sheer horror of one of these attacks second-hand,  read this account at the Nazra for Feminist Studies website. Meanwhile, Dale again:

It is neither my place nor my wish to draw conclusions about "the revolution" from all this: I do not believe that is possible or wise. But I can say that as the familiar chants resonated in the square, the demands for justice, a new government and new constitution, I felt a little sick.

"Tahrir Square," he writes, "is both a place in which people both demand dignity for themselves and, in some cases, violently strip it from others. … It is not inevitable that Egypt's revolutionary street politics be undercut by a current of rape."

Still, there's a certain inevitability to the emergence of mob mentality. Especially with all the unemployed -- and thus un-marriageable -- young men in Egypt. Ideally, the perpetrators would be singled out and subjected to some form (not fatal!) of "revolutionary justice." Still, these crimes can be classified as fallout from not only the Egyptian government's repressive policies, but its failure to improve the economy. At Time, Tony Karon elaborates on Egypt's foundering economy.

Youth unemployment, one of the key drivers of the revolutionary upsurge in 2011, continues to grow, with official figures revealing that 25% of economically active [not sure what that means -- RW] people ages 25 to 29, and 41% of those ages 19 to 24, are jobless.

Karon again: "President Mohamed Morsi's plans to save Egypt’s sinking economy hinge on" -- stop me if you've heard this one before --

… a $5 billion loan from the IMF [which] can be accessed only on the condition of implementing austerity measures that will bring a sharp spike in the economic pain suffered by millions of impoverished households.

In any event, male Egyptian protesters would do well to remember it's not their sisters who are oppressing them. Diverting resources to policing their own while at the same time fighting the Egyptian government only slows the advance of their cause and diminishes its integrity.

When Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi announced his constitutional declaration last November granting himself unchecked powers, as well as announcing his intentions to go ahead with plans of enacting an Islamist-backed constitution, he was in effect undermining his own legitimacy in the eyes of those who oppose him. Meanwhile, the Egyptian opposition of secularists, nationalists, women groups, minority groups and those who just hate the Muslim Brotherhood went back to Tahrir Square demanding to have their way or no way. As a result both sides entrenched in their respective positions and engaged in a war of elimination, which led the economy to go from bad to worse and sharply polarizing and dividing the Egyptian society.

President Morsi was elected fair and square in the only democratic election Egyptians ever experienced in the modern era, and he deserves to have his chance at governing. That said, however, he should not treat this as a license to undermine the very democracy Egyptians, had sought for decades.

At the same time the Egyptian opposition groups are trying to wrest power from Morsi by forcing him to cancel his controversial decrees that pertain to the constitutional referendum scheduled to take place this coming Saturday. But the manner through which the opposition groups are fighting this battle especially by appealing to foreign powers to intervene on their side is troubling. This kind of divisive political warfare resulted in pushing president Morsi and with him the Muslim Brotherhood into a bunker mentality and equally ready for a drawn-out, yet unnecessary, fight.

The core problem in Egypt is that no one seems to be interested in giving democracy a chance or the time to work or even willing to accept the idea that in a democracy winners and losers can still work together. What's happening in Egypt today is that every group, whether the governing Muslim Brotherhood party or the opposition of all colors and persuasions, are engaged in a zero-sum game or winner take all.

President Morsi is mainly accused of being more interested in consolidating his and the Muslim Brotherhood powers at the expense of others and acting as if he was elected for forty not four years and behaving as if his name is Mohamad Hosni not Mohamad Morsi.

Adding to the problem is that Arab political culture, Egypt included, is still authoritarian and dictatorial despite the trappings of democracy in the post Arab Spring era. This is because politics in the Arab World revolves around the “charismatic leader” who should save the nation even though he often times ends up destroying it. The Arab world needs good presidents, not Messiahs.

Ali Younes is a writer and analyst based in Washington D.C. He can be reached at: aliyounes98@gmail.com and on Twitter at @clearali.

Cross-posted from Foreign Policy Special Project Right Web's Militarist Monitor.

Egypt’s path toward democracy has been neither steady nor assured since its uprising last year. However, as the country prepares for a presidential election campaign—which follows on the heels of its Islamist-dominated parliamentary elections several months ago—it finally appears set to install its first-ever fully democratically elected government.

But the neoconservatives, purportedly champions of democracy and human rights, are finding this turn of events hard to swallow. For example, Jonathan Tobin, editor of the “Contentions” blog at Commentary magazine, is incensed about the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to nominate a candidate despite its earlier pledge abstain from the race—and he finds the Obama administration somehow at fault. Noting that the administration has quietly backed the Brotherhood’s candidate over a more extreme Salafist nominee (who now appears to have eligibility issues), Tobin writes that “this U.S. tilt toward the Brotherhood is just the latest of a series of inept moves that has destroyed American influence in Egypt.”

He adds, “Should the Brotherhood candidate for president succeed, it would create a dangerous situation in which this Islamist party would control both the executive and the parliament. This would place intolerable pressure on the army—which remains the sole force in the country that could act as a check on the Islamists—to back down and allow the Brotherhood untrammeled power.”

Echoing the charges of former GOP candidate Michele Bachmann and the previously marginal Rick Santorum, Tobin flatly declares, “Obama abandoned Hosni Mubarak last year. With our embassy now backing the Brotherhood, secularists and the army must assume the president means to ditch them, too.”

In a subsequent post, Tobin sums up his critiques of the Obama administration’s Egypt policy in a rambling series of accusations: “It refused to promote democracy or human rights while Hosni Mubarak still ruled,” he writes, “but then compounded that error by quickly dumping Mubarak. It repeated that pattern by seeking to attack the military government that succeeded Mubarak and then appeased them by continuing the aid in the face of provocations. Now, it has put its chips on the Brotherhood even though there is still a chance it can be stopped.”

Tobin doesn’t explain how a more U.S.-friendly democracy would have emerged under the aegis of a U.S.-backed dictatorship, nor does he see the apparent contradiction in knocking the Obama administration for “dumping” Mubarak even as his own publication frequently complains about Russia’s continued support for the autocratic Bashar al-Assad in Syria. One could be forgiven, moreover, for suspecting that Tobin is advocating the subjugation of a nation of 80 million people for the sake of Israel’s subjective sense of security.

The substance of Tobin’s critique ultimately has less to do with the Obama administration’s choice of candidate, which is clearly a bid for what must seem to Washington as the safest bet, but rather with the administration’s apparent acquiescence to the likely choice of Egyptian voters. What Tobin calls the Brotherhood’s bid for “untrammeled power” is really just its decision to field a candidate for a democratic election—something that less interventionist commentators would concede is any party’s right in an emerging democracy—and he laments that the country’s unelected military leaders should be constrained to share power with an elected civilian faction he finds distasteful. 

Tobin’s dirge for military rule illuminates the ongoing confusion on the neoconservative right about how best to respond to democratic uprisings in a region governed for decades by U.S.-backed autocrats—a divide that dates back to Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s 1970s-era thesis that right-wing “authoritarian” governments are more amenable to democratic reform than left-wing “totalitarian” states. While the likes of Tobin, Frank Gaffney, and Caroline Glick have made pleas for the region’s anciens regimes (and while FDD's Andrew McCarthy has accused the Obama administration of "rain[ing] down a billion-and-a-half more American taxpayer dollars" on the Brotherhood in the form of aid to Egypt) , former Bush administration neocons like Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad have imprudently suggested that the uprisings somehow vindicate the Bush administration’s “freedom agenda” of democratization by force.

If Tobin is so concerned about U.S. “influence” in Egypt, he might do well to reconsider whether turning its back on Egypt’s broadly backed political forces and advocating a return to a loathed military dictatorship is the best way forward.

Peter Certo is an editorial assistant at the Institute of Policy Studies as well as IPS Special Project Right Web.