Articles with the Tag Egypt

The symbosis between Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood

Real Life Revolutions, Tony Blair
Published on

Jack Shenker in the Guardian on how Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood have entered into symbiosis, each needing the other to legitimise itself:

The group was formed in 1928 and is still officially outlawed. Hundreds of Brotherhood members have been jailed in periodic crackdowns, yet it is from the existence of the Brotherhood, and the regime’s perceived ability to suppress its influence, that Mubarak has derived much of his legitimacy in international circles.

This, combined with the fact that the Brotherhood’s current leadership has often devoted more of its energies to “dawa”, or social evangelism, than overtly political projects, has led many analysts to accuse it of a symbiotic relationship with the government it claims to resist. At crucial moments of popular public tension with the Mubarak regime in recent years, such as the killing of three people in the Delta town of El Mahalla El Kubra in April 2008, and during an attempted general strike one year later, the Brotherhood has opted to take a relatively non-combative stand towards the authorities.

“The Mubarak regime was adept at inflating the influence of the Brotherhood and painting them as a threat to Egyptian society and to the west,” said Anani. “It was the pretext for Mubarak’s rule, and it was a lie. I think that if Egypt held free and fair elections tomorrow the Brotherhood would not get a majority; it would enjoy a significant presence in parliament, but the overall makeup of seats would be pluralistic.”

Alex takes speculation a bit further and wonders who exactly managed to flood Cairo with Mubarak supporters when his own party couldn’t:

This does, by the way, make you – or me, at least – wonder exactly which organisation was able to put a significant mob on the streets at the drop of a hat, when the NDP had spectacularly failed to mobilise any sign of mass support for days on end. Military dictatorships with religious stylings are far from unknown – that was, after all, the fix Jaruzelski tried to impose on Poland after 1981, mixing more Catholicism and nationalism in with his communism but keeping the security state more in place than ever. And I can well imagine someone – someone, quintessentially, like Tony Blair – hailing cooperation between an Islamist movement and Central Security as being just the kind of faith-based initiative that contributes, helpfully, to shared norms for the new reality. As usual with Blair, it’s the secular left that is his real enemy.

Turning point in Egypt

Real Life Revolutions
Published on

Note the megalomaniac subtext to Blair’s comments: “You people out there don’t realise how good Mubarak is. I do because I’m in on the inside track. So, believe me, I know he’s a good guy. And that’s all you need to know. Take my word for it, because I’m one of the important guys in the world. You’re not. You don’t know as much as me.”
— Michael Rosen.

Egypt the day after Mubarak’s counter attack is in flux. The revolution has not been crushed, the pro-democracy forces have managed to beat back Mubarak’s hired goons and the army remains passive, but it all hangs in the balance: either the thugs are able to crush the protests in the next couple of days or there will be a genuine revolution in Egypt. The situation as we’ve seen in Tunesia, where Ben Ali fled, but his regime remained largely intact and is only grudgingly sharing power with the protestors, no longer seems an option in Egypt. As Jamie says:

And it’ll have to end now. A couple of days ago it was pretty clear that if they put Husni on a plane then the policy status quo could stay basically unchanged; that the removal of Mubarrak would carry enough of a symbolic charge to preserve most of the power of the local overclass, though of course things would have to become more inclusive. I thought that was the strategy: make Husni, or his absence, the change we can believe in, and yay reform. But not now. How can you hope to have an even partially fair election in nine months with the power structure that caused today’s carnage still basically in control?

The thing about revolutions is that they extend the realm of the possible. A month ago the protests we saw last week were impossible, the idea that prodemocracy protestors could win the battle against the police and state security unthinkable, the suggestion that the army would remain neutral in such a situation laughable. But it all happened, as people threw off their fears and discovered their own strength. Doesn’t mean the revolution cannot be repressed anymore, but if it is suppressed it will need Tianamen Square levels of repression, deliberate massacres and years of torture and brutality. Not impossible, but this price may be too high for Egypt’s ruling classes to pay. Egypt has reached a turning point and I think Jamie is right to say a compromise solution is no longer possible.

Meanwhile, the essential live updates to watch on Egypt remain The Guardian’s liveblog as well as Al-Jazeera.

“Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability”

Real Life Revolutions, Tony Blair
Published on

Tony Blair does not want democracy, whisky, sexy:

Tony Blair has described Hosni Mubarak, the beleaguered Egyptian leader, as “immensely courageous and a force for good” and warned against a rush to elections that could bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

The former prime minister, now an envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, praised Mubarak over his role in the negotiations and said the west was right to back him despite his authoritarian regime because he had maintained peace with Israel.

But that view is likely to anger many Egyptians who believe they have had to endure decades of dictatorship because the US put Israel’s interests ahead of their freedom.

Forget the Egyptians, who was the fucker who decided Blair needed a platform to put his repulsive views forward? Saddam Hussein must be rolling in his grave, wondered what Mubarak has that he had not.

And the arseholes move in

Real Life Revolutions, Video
Published on



D-Squared was right. From Al-Jazeera:

Meanwhile, another Al Jazeera correspondent said men on horseback and camels had ploughed into the crowds, as army personnel stood by.

At least six riders were dragged from their beasts, beaten with sticks by the protesters and taken away with blood streaming down their faces.

One of them was dragged away unconscious, with large blood stains on the ground at the site of the clash.

The worst of the fighting was just outside the world famous Egyptian Museum, which was targeted by looters last week.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent added that several a group of pro-government protesters took over army vehicles. They also took control of a nearby building and used the rooftop to throw concrete blocks, stones, and other objects.

Soldiers surrounding the square took cover from flying stones, and the windows of at least one army truck were broken. Some troops stood on tanks and appealed for calm but did not otherwise intervene.

Many of the pro-Mubarak supporters raised slogans like “Thirty Years of Stability, Nine Days of Anarchy”.

Satisfying to see those fuckers on horses being dragged down and hurt, but it shows the desparation of the Mubarak regime that it would try and hire thugs to suppress the revolution. As Lenny said, The ruling class never does anything for itself; counter-revolutions always depend on coopting middle and working class people. There are plenty of numbnuts wanting to break heads for five dollars a day.

Arseholes

Real Life Revolutions
Published on

Daniel Davies, in his usual inimicable style, gets to the real reason the Egyptian army is playing nice with the protestors:

Numbers make a difference. An invading army can take over a city quite quickly; partly because an invading foreign army can usually be reasonably sure that all the guns are pointing in the same direction, partly because an invading army has physical momentum and has worked out ahead of time where it is marching to, but mainly because the population of an invaded city are usually not on the streets in anything like the numbers seen in Egyptian cities. Even a tank[1] is surprisingly little protection once it has stopped moving[2] and is surrounded by a mob. I saw pictures on the news yesterday of a tank crew sitting around at the edge of a square in Cairo – I have never in my life seen the crew of a tank looking so small and vulnerable. People are still talking about the army as if it was in control of the situation and for the moment at least, it just isn’t.

He also has the solution: Mubarak should’ve gotten the arseholes on side:

Basically, what you need is a large population who are a few rungs up from the bottom of society, who aren’t interested in freedom and who hate young people. In other words, arseholes. Arseholes, considered as a strategic entity, have the one useful characteristic that is the only useful characteristic in the context of an Egyptian-style popular uprising – there are fucking millions of them.

In the midst of an excellent analysis of why the protestors would be insane to accept Mubarak’s proposal to stay in power but not stand re-election again, Jonathan Wright provides evidence that Mubarak may have belately started to implement Davies’ suggestions:

A very disturbing trend which has surfaced in the last 24 hours is the appearance of pro-Mubarak supporters in close proximity to where the protest movement has gathered. Television stations reported on Tuesday evening that some of those pro-Mubarak supporters attacked protesters on the margins of the 100,000-strong march in Alexandria. I heard a noisy group of them in Kasr al-Aini Street just south of Tahrir Square in the early hours of Wednesday morning but I was reluctant to investigate because of rumours about their aggressive behaviour. Some of these pro-Mubarak gangs could be armed and dangerous. Some members of the protest movement would inevitably respond in kind, leading to gang warfare and even something akin to civil war. This is a very dangerous trend, carrying the potential for large-scale bloodshed. The trend suggests some regime elements are willing to fight for their privileges and will not easily accept defeat.

We’d like to think that authoritarian regimes like Mubarak’s only depend on the support of a small elite and brutal repression, but this is wrong. Plenty of people are willing to trade freedom for material gains (and you can’t always blame them either). In any revolution therfeore there’s always a sizeable portion of the middle classes, plus some priviledged parts of the working classes who stand to lose more from freedom than they will gain. Success or failure in any revolution is based in large part on keeping those elements at home cowering in front of the televisions screens, rather than on the streets.