Egypt's ostensibly
inexperienced president Mohammed Morsi
accomplished nothing short of a coup d'etat on
Sunday when he replaced the men who were widely
seen as Egypt's rulers - Field Marshal Mohammed
Hussein Tantawi and Lieutenant general Sami Anan,
among others - and shredded the latest
constitutional amendment issued by the Supreme
Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).
The
SCAF, its rule undercut by the collapse of
authority in the Sinai peninsula and by last
week's cross-border terror attack (which cost the
lives of 16 soldiers and caught the Egyptians
unprepared despite a "detailed intelligence
warning"), conceded. However, it is uncertain what
its true motives and intentions are, as is the
precise magnitude, in practical terms, of the
Muslim Brotherhood's spectacular victory. Many
eyes, both in the region
and farther away, are
fixed on Egypt as the intrigue unfolds.
It
remains unclear what exactly transpired in the
days and hours prior to Sunday afternoon's
surprise announcement. The fact that General Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi, Tantawi's replacement as defense
minister and army chief, is nearly two decades
younger than him has raised the possibility of an
internal army coup. The sharp generational divide
in the army's higher echelon and the unwillingness
of the older generals to share some of their power
with younger colleagues has been a liability for
the SCAF since the ouster of former Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak, himself an octogenarian
air force general.
As Shadi Hamid from the
Brookings Doha Center wrote on his Twitter
account, "What we saw today in Egypt increasingly
seems like a mix of a civilian counter-coup and a
coordinated coup within the military itself."
Despite rumors of an impending army coup
against Morsi, which may have something to do with
his actions, for at least a couple of weeks now
there were signs that the power of Tantawi and the
SCAF was waning. For example, the military
remained strangely silent during a number of
debates surrounding the drafting of the new
Egyptian constitution, despite having given itself
authority over the constituent assembly with the
amendment which Morsi just abrogated.
Also, the previously assertive Tantawi
demonstrated some servility in the wake of the
Sinai attack, when he fired his intelligence chief
and several other generals at the request of
Morsi. Regardless of whether his failure to
respond more forcefully to the president's early
overtures sealed his fate, as some analysts claim,
it was clear that something was amiss.
On
the ground, something is clearly wrong with the
military campaign against Sinai terrorists. The
government claims to have captured "the Bin Laden
of Sinai" and to have killed at least 20 militants
in air strikes last week. Recent reports, however,
question the veracity of all of these claims. [1]
Meanwhile, in response to several deaths which
occurred subsequently in the course of the
military campaign, Sinai militants assassinated a
tribal sheikh and his son. [2] By most accounts,
the loss of government control in Sinai has
progressed so far that the army will have an
extremely hard time reasserting its authority.
Moreover, the economy of Egypt is also
faltering, with traditional sources of income such
as tourism slashed by the unrest and almost daily
riots over the shortage of essential products.
Clearly, Morsi and the Muslim Brother face an
extremely daunting task of managing the country.
These issues, alongside the unpopularity
of the military's older leadership, may have
something to do with the SCAF's unusual
acquiescence to Morsi's schemes. After all, the
Muslim Brotherhood could make an excellent
scapegoat in the event of an economic collapse and
a breakdown of social order in Egypt.
As
the influential US-based intelligence analysis
organization Stratfor wrote recently, "While Morsi
may have achieved a symbolic victory in removing
long-serving members of the former Mubarak regime
from their military posts, the military had its
own reasons for going along with the moves -
reasons that are intended to increase, not reduce,
the military's influence over the civilian
government."
To be sure, Morsi and the
Muslim Brotherhood won a major victory.
Ironically, as many have pointed out, Morsi's
power now is akin to or, in theory, even greater
than that of Mubarak at his height. The prominent
Egyptian secular leader Mohammed ElBaradei wrote
in a tweet on Monday, "With military stripped of
legislative authority & in absence of
parliament, president holds imperial powers.
Transitional mess continues."
For now,
Morsi's program appears to measure up in ambition
to the challenges ahead of him. Whether his goals
are ultimately to safeguard the revolution, as his
supporters claim, or to promote democracy, as some
Western observers have argued, is much less
certain. A harsh campaign against independent
media who have been critical of the president and
the Brotherhood has been taking place for several
weeks now.
Furthermore, at the same time
as he sacked Tantawi and Anan (and reshuffled the
top army brass), Morsi appointed also a new vice
president, the respected senior judge Mahmoud
Mekki. This step was widely interpreted as an
attempt to counter the uncooperative judiciary,
which has sided with the SCAF on several occasions
in the last year and is perceived as a relic from
the Mubarak regime. As Marc Lynch wrote in Foreign
Policy, "[Mekki's appointment] could be seen as
another … bold move in institutional combat, by
potentially co-opting or intimidating the
judiciary." [3]
It remains to be seen
whether the army holds in store surprises of its
own. Certainly, while support for the Muslim
Brotherhood was clearly visible on the Egyptian
streets following Sunday's events, Morsi's daring
has also won him and the Brotherhood some new
resentment. Elements of the secular opposition and
of the army, not to mention the Copts and other
minorities, may now have acquired a common enemy.
The maneuver also provoked mixed reactions
among the international community. The United
States half-heartedly acknowledged that "We had
expected expected President Morsi at some point to
coordinate changes in the military leadership,"
even though American leaders claimed they, too,
were caught by surprise. According to the
Washington Post analyst David Ignatius, the US
endorsed the reshuffle "warily." [4]
Given
that the US has a strong influence with the
Egyptian military and is believed to have played
an active role in the ouster of Mubarak, the
recent visits in Cairo of US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta ought to raise some suspicions. While no
hard evidence currently links the visits to the
coup, Tantawi ostensibly started to lose his voice
roughly at the same time.
Countries in the
Persian Gulf have been even more overtly
supportive. Qatar, for example, announced that it
would lend Egypt US$2 billion just as Morsi
announced the reshuffle.
Israel, on the
other hand, is quietly reeling, both because of
the departure of several generals with whom it had
enjoyed good working relations and because of the
ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood. "The damage
caused to Egypt's pro-West and secular military
may eventually jeopardize the peace treaty with
Israel," the Israeli journalist Alex Fishman wrote
in the daily Yediot Ahronot.
Over in Gaza,
Hamas is in an awkward situation since the
Egyptian authorities have reportedly requested
several of its operatives to be extradited in
connection to last week's terror attack. While a
decisive Muslim Brotherhood victory in Egypt would
likely be immensely beneficial for it in the long
term, right now the movement is in a lot of hot
water and has been reduced to complaining that it
is being treated as unjustly as back when Mubarak
was in charge.
For now, however, while
Morsi and the Brotherhood have won a major battle
against the political influence of the military,
they still have not won the war. In a country
which is experiencing as much flux as Egypt, even
a daring coup d'etat may not have a very clear
impact.
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