Category: Egypt

Two forms of lethal polarization: Egypt and Turkey

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By Richard Falk

There is a temptation to suggest that political life in Turkey and Egypt are both being victimized by a similar deepening of polarization between Islamic and secular orientations, and to some extent this is true, but it is also misleading. Turkey continues to be victimized by such a polarization, especially during the eleven years that the Justice & Development Party (AKP) has governed the country, and arguably more so in the last period.

In Egypt, so describing the polarization is far less descriptive of the far more lethal form of unfolding that its political cleavage has taken. It has become an overt struggle for the control of the political destiny of the country being waged between the Egyptian armed forces and the Muslim Brotherhood, the two organized political forces capable of projecting their influence throughout the entire country, including rural areas. This bitter struggle in Egypt engages religious orientations on both sides, and even the military leadership and upper echelons of the armed forces are observant Muslims, and in some cases extremely devout adherents of Salafi belief and practice.

In effect, at this point, there is not a distinctly secular side that can be associated with post-coup Egyptian leadership under the caretaker aegis of the armed forces, although clearly most of the liberal secular urban elite and many of the left activists sided with the military moves, at least initially. Recent reports suggest more and more defections, although the price for making such a change of heart public can be high. Read More »

Does Saudi Arabia want a nuclear bomb?

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By Jonathan Power

The negotiations between Iran and the West have not yet produced a deal. At the same time the BBC’s Mark Urban, a defence correspondent, has unearthed a worrying connection between Iran moving towards the nuclear bomb threshold and a Saudi Arabian decision to produce a nuclear bomb with Pakistani help. “Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons’ projects and believes it could obtain nuclear bombs at will”, he says.

This meshes with what I wrote in my column 20 years ago that the only way to explain Saudi Arabia’s purchase from China of CSS-2 ballistic missiles was that it was preparing to develop a nuclear arsenal if one day the security situation demanded it.

The Chinese missiles have a capacity to carry nuclear weapons. They are too inaccurate to be of use as conventional weapons. They are an insurance against Iran developing nuclear weapons and also have the additional purpose of providing a balance to Israel’s armoury of some 200 nuclear weapons.

The Saudis have recently completed a new base with missile launch rails aligned with Iran and Israel. According to the BBC, there is some evidence that the Pakistanis might have already set aside a number of warheads for delivery to Saudi Arabia.Read More »

The Middle East – heading where?

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By Johan Galtung

Washington DC

It’s anybody’s guess. But something is going on.

Look at the two strongest actors: Israel and the USA. Israel autistically locked into becoming the region’s military champion, not only by its overwhelming military destructive power but by cutting all neighbors down to a size commensurable with Israel, and divided by their own conflicts. With the help of their instrument, US military might, Israel has had success of sorts with Iraq, Libya, maybe Syria; and Egypt back to normal as military dictatorship benefiting from most of the Camp David rewards. Goodbye, Arab Spring.

What is left is Iran, too big to exist, also too big to fail; with Israel doing its best to make the Geneva conference fail. No worry about Syria peace; the Islamists have announced they will not participate in peace talks. They go for a win, amply armed by the USA, with Israel backup.

Israel’s goal: to eliminate any threat, singly or combined, from Arab-Muslim neighbors–far beyond the wrongly termed “Israel-Palestine conflict”–and to expand. Next Eastern border: the Jordan River, by annexation, the goal of a key Likud group (Washington Post, 6 Nov 13). Next: the old mandate, the Jordan-Iraq border? Genesis 15:18, Nile-Euphrates? For legitimation and theory: see Isaiah 2:4-5.Read More »

Time for new beginnings in the Middle East

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By Farhang Jahanpour

Momentous changes are afoot in the Middle East. The Arab uprisings have not yet run their course, the Egyptian revolution has not yet ended, terrorist atrocities in Iraq have intensified, the carnage in Syria still continues, and there seems to be no end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Yet, in the midst of all these scenes of doom and gloom there are some positive developments that may change the face of the Middle East for many decades to come. President Obama’s opening to Iran and the election of a moderate Iranian president who wants to reciprocate the American gesture of goodwill provides a glimmer of hope that after 34 years of estrangement, the two countries may reconcile their differences and open a new chapter in their relations.

However, just the slim prospect of a US-Iranian rapprochement has created a backlash among many people who are stuck in the past and who look at any change with dread. There are many powerful voices both in the United States and Iran that are trying to prevent better relations between the two countries.

In addition to domestic opposition in Iran and the United States, many countries in the Middle East have also reacted with alarm to the possible end of a hostile Iran that they can demonize as a boogeyman. Israel and her powerful friends in the Congress and in US think tanks and the media have launched a massive campaign to prevent any possible end to hostilities. The leaders from the powerful pro-Israeli lobbies, from the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, AIPAC, the Anti Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, took part in an extraordinary White House meeting on Tuesday 28 October to warn the president against rapprochement with Iran. Read More »

The spreading wings of Islamophobia in Egypt

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By Richard Falk

The Orwellian features of the military takeover in Egypt have received attention, although the use of language to evade unwanted truth continues because incentives to do so persist. For this reason, Washington has remained unwilling to call what happened in Egypt on July 3rd as a coup, despite its unmistakable character. The nature of Egypt’s coup has daily become more and more evident.

It is now clear that not only was the takeover properly described as coup, but it has turned out to be a particularly bloody coup that is now being reinforced by a total lockdown of opposition forces and democratic options, including even dissenting opinions.Read More »

Egypt: Polarization and genocide

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By Richard Falk

In these morbid days, there are some home truths that are worth reflecting upon.

What Happened to Tahrir Square?

In retrospect, ‘’the January 25th Revolution’ in Egypt is ‘a revolution’ that never was, which has now been superseded by ‘a counter-revolution’ that was never possible. Why? The dislodging of a Mubarak dynasty in 2011 did not even achieve ‘regime change’ much less initiate a transformative political process. There was no revolution to counter. Even more modest hopes for political reform and humane governance were doomed from the start, or at the latest, when Ahmet Shafik, the overtly fulool candidate of the discredited Mubarak regime polled almost 50% of the vote in the presidential election runoff against Mohamed Morsi in June 2012.

What then was Tahrir Square?

Part project (getting rid of Mubarak and sons), part fantasy (hoping that the carnivalistic unity of the moment would evolve into a process of democratic state-building), part delusional experiment (believing that the established order of Mubarak elites and their secular opponents would be willing to rebuild a more legitimate political and economic order even if it meant that they would be transferring significant power and status to the Muslim Brotherhood).

The 2011 turn to ‘democracy’ in Egypt always contained a partially hidden condition: the Muslim Brotherhood was welcome to participate in an electoral process so long as its support was not so great as to give it a majoritarian mandate. Read More »

Washington and the Egyptian tragedy

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By Stephen Zunes

The vast majority of Egyptians killed since the coup have been unarmed protesters struck down with American-made weapons by soldiers transported in American-made vehicles provided by the American taxpayer.

As in El Salvador, Nicaragua, East Timor, Angola, Lebanon, and Gaza in previous years, the massive killing of civilians in Egypt is being done with U.S.-provided weapons by a U.S.-backed government. As a result, the Obama administration and Congress are morally culpable for the unfolding tragedy. While the apparent decision to suspend some military aid to Egypt is certainly welcome, the role the United States has been playing has, on balance, made matters worse.

As with many of these other cases, elements of the Egyptian opposition have contributed to the bloodshed and bear some responsibility. Continue reading at Foreign Policy In Focus

Democracy must quickly be returned to Egypt

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By Jonathan Power

The military’s crackdown in Egypt was foolish. Democracy is not. Without democracy there is no way of arbitrating the clash of interests, the demands and beliefs in this gravely disturbed society.

The military/civilian government, instead of resolving to break the back of the Muslim Brotherhood and thus, counter-productively, drive it underground, should speed ahead with a fast re-write of those clauses of the constitution that offend liberals and secularists – on the role of women and the place of shari’a law – and then immediately call an election open to all.

All this could and should be done within three months at the most. It is highly unlikely that the Brotherhood would win this time but if they did they should be allowed their victory – as long as they promise the present interim government not to use their position to re-create the kind of rule that was the undoing of the deposed president, Muhammad Morsi.Read More »

Egypt – perspectives and useful links

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TFF PressInfo
August 19, 2013

For the discerning journalists, editors and citizens

Tragically, Egypt seems to be descending into chaos and new cycles of violence. To have access to unbiased research and comments by experienced scholars is imperative for understanding what’s going on and why. That’s what the Transnational Foundation continues to provide.

1. Can Europe, the United States and international organizations do something without making it all worse and, if so, what? It is indeed too little too late to just issue lame condemnations or cancelling a military exercise as the U.S. has done.

2. Western government as well as a series of near-governmental media used the standard formulation in Iraq, Libya and Syria that “the dictator is killing his own” as an argument for both moral outrage and discussions about possible military intervention.

In the case of Egypt, we hear nothing of the sort. But isn’t that exactly what the military in Egypt that ousted the democratically elected president through a coup is doing? One is reminded of the terrible events in 1991 in Algeria that also did not attract much moral condemnation – and also hit an Islamic-Islamist political movement.

3. There is the media propensity toRead More »

The Failure of democracy in the Middle East

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By Farhang Jahanpour

The terrible events in Egypt, especially the massacre of thousands of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, have not only marked the failure of Arab Uprisings, especially in the most important and the most populous Arab country, they have also revealed the lukewarm attitude and even the hypocrisy of many people in the democratic West towards the whole concept of democracy and representative government.

First of all, it is important to point out that democracy is not the same as majority rule. Many Middle Eastern rulers, including former Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi, the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and right-wing Israeli politicians, believe in a winner-take-all philosophy and imagine that just because a group or a party has received the largest number of votes in an election it is entitled to rule the way that it wants and ignore the wishes of many other sections of society.

Iranian rulers often speak of Islamic democracy and argue that as the majority of Iranians are Muslims, the government must be based on Islamic law, the Shari’a, while many right-wing Israeli politicians want Israel to be an exclusively Jewish state. Other governments that have come to power after having won an election believe that achieving a majority in the election entitles them to rule as they wish.

Of course, here we are not dealing with many governments that are in power on the basis of hereditary monarchy, coup d’états or military rule. Majority rule is only one essential element of democracy, but it basically means nothing without a number of other prerequisites. Read More »