The gloom in Washington must be deepening.
Egypt is careering away from the alliance with the
United States - and the bitter truth cannot be
hidden or obfuscated anymore.
This is not
how Washington expected the "right side of
history" to play out. The Arab Spring has borne a
strange fruit in Egypt - a pure breed, unlike the
hybrids in Tunisia, Libya or Yemen.
Consider the following. President Barack
Obama was one of the first statesmen to greet
Mohammed Morsi on his election victory in May.
Obama broke protocol and phoned to congratulate him,
signifying the anxiety in
Washington to have a splendid chemistry with him.
Then, Obama wrote a letter to Morsi and he
deputed Deputy Secretary of State William Burns to
fly to Cairo and deliver it in person. Burns was
followed to Cairo by Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, again for an audience with Morsi. That,
in turn, was followed by the visit to Cairo by
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. All this, within
the first month of Morsi's presidency.
Panetta came back to Washington greatly
pleased that the Egyptian military leadership,
which has been the anchor sheet of the US regional
strategy and the custodian of the US' interests in
Egypt, and Morsi were not only getting alone fine
but they even had a common agenda.
The
rest is history. Within days or weeks of Panetta's
optimism, Morsi unceremoniously sent the military
back to the barracks from the corridors of
political power. Washington had no choice but to
put a brave face on it, almost spreading a canard
that Morsi consulted the Obama administration
before cracking down on the Egyptian military.
However, in the weekend, the truth is out.
The US may be facing across a huge setback to its
robust efforts to influence Morsi's presidency.
The letter that Burns carried a month ago
apparently contained an invitation from Obama to
Morsi to visit Washington.
And Morsi is
instead travelling to China and Iran.
This
was announced on the Egyptian president's official
website on Sunday. Morsi is apparently combining
the visits to China and Iran. It seems he will pay
a three-day visit to China next Monday at the
invitation of President Hu Jintao and from Beijing
he proposes to travel to Tehran on Thursday to
attend the summit meeting of the Non-Aligned
Movement.
Beijing is yet to announce a
visit by Morsi. The government-owned China Daily,
in fact, featured a commentary on Monday
exclusively titled "Morsi's visit to Iran could
reshape political landscape", which pointedly
sidestepped any suggestion that the Egyptian
president's itinerary would include Beijing as
well.
However, Egypt's flagship newspaper
Al-Ahram has reported that Morsi and Hu "plan to
discuss crucial issues facing the Arab world, such
as the Syrian situation and the Palestinian
question. The two presidents will also discuss
ways of enhancing commercial exchange between
their respective countries, in addition to
increasing Chinese investment in Egypt."
Al-Ahram summed up: "The two visits may
mark changes in Egypt's foreign policy, given that
both countries [China and Iran] have tense
relations with the United States, to whom Egypt
has been a loyal ally, especially under the rule
of ousted president Hosni Mubarak."
Nobody's poodle Indeed, the
Middle East is waking up to the fact that the
Americans are in the dog house in Cairo. Without
doubt, this decision bears the stamp of the Muslim
Brotherhood. What are the calculations?
First, Brothers know that this will go
down extremely well with the public mood in Egypt,
which is vehemently demanding a new foreign policy
orientation that jettisons the Mubarak-era
partnership with the US and Israel and a return to
the country's independent foreign policy.
Second, Morsi does not want to depend too
heavily on the dole-outs by the International
Monetary Fund and/or the wealthy Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) states, which he is hard-pressed to
accept while knowing that they come with political
strings attached.
The International
Monetary Fund is dictating tough terms for a
US$3.2 billion loan for Egypt. The Jeddah-based
Islamic Development Bank agreed to give Egypt $2.5
billion in financing. Qatar is depositing $2
billion in the Central Bank of Egypt aimed at
alleviating Egypt's foreign exchange shortage.
Last year in May, Saudi Arabia announced aid to
Egypt totaling $4 billion in "soft loans, deposits
and grants". A US-led struggle was keenly underway
to buy off Egypt's soul.
Conceivably,
Morsi eyes China as a potential investor in the
Egyptian economy because Beijing attaches no
strings to economic cooperation and plays
generally by the market rules, attuned to the
neo-liberal policies that Morsi would be largely
pursuing. The point is, Brothers know pretty well
that the GCC countries - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia - but especially Saudi Arabia,
view them intrinsically with distaste and disquiet
as posing an existential danger to their
authoritarian regimes. Saudi Arabia, in
particular, has had a troubled relationship with
the Brotherhood.
The late Crown Prince
Nayef used brutal methods to suppress the
activities of the Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia. The
Saudi establishment daily Asharq Al-Awasat
displayed its antipathy toward Morsi as recently
as Saturday, when in a signed article the daily's
senior editor Osman Mirghani wrote,
The blow that Mursi struck [at the
military], allowing him to seize power, was
completely unforeseen, not just on the part of
the SCAF leadership, but for the Egyptian people
as a whole ... These decisions were akin to a
coup d'etat ... Brotherhood has attempted to
dominate the political arena since they hijacked
the revolution and rode the revolutionary wave
into government, despite the fact that they
joined this revolution quite late ...
Brotherhood has sought to undermine all other
parties and therefore purposely refused to
cooperate or coordinate with them during the
transitional period prior to the elections.
'Egypt is now being governed by
declarations and "constitutional" decisions that
are issued by a president who has far more
powers than Mubarak ever did ... If some people
are saying that Mursi ... has liberated himself
and the presidency from the army's custody and
intervention, then the question that must be
asked here is: will this be followed by Mursi
liberating himself from the Brotherhood, which
seems to be present in all his decisions and
measures?"
It is useful to bear in
mind that this sharp criticism appeared within a
month of Morsi's visit to Riyadh at the invitation
of King Abdullah and within two days of the
extraordinary summit of the Organization of
Islamic Conference (OIC) in Jeddah, which Morsi
attended.
The narrative has been that
Morsi while addressing the OIC summit called for
"regime change" in Syria - implying that Egypt is
a dutiful camp follower of the line set by Saudi
Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. But in actuality, Morsi
snubbed the troika by proposing a solution to the
Syrian crisis by forming a Contact Group
comprising Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Egypt,
which could mediate a Syrian dialogue and
reconciliation leading to peaceful political
transition in an atmosphere free of violence.
Handshake across Arabia Of
course, Morsi's inclusion of Iran in the proposed
Contact Group amounted to a snub to Saudi Arabia,
which hosted the OIC summit. Then, there was the
body language, which counts heavily in intra-Arab
parleys. On the sidelines of the OIC summit, Morsi
exchanged handshakes and kisses with Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and spoke with him
amidst much manifest warmth.
Tehran
promptly welcomed Morsi's proposal, which in turn
prompted an appreciation by the Brotherhood in
Cairo that saw in Tehran's warm reaction an
unmistakable confirmation that Egypt is beginning
to regain some of the diplomatic and strategic
clout it once held in the region. A sort of mutual
admiration society formed between Cairo and Tehran
across the arid deserts of the Arabian Peninsula.
Three things emerged from Morsi's
performance at the OIC summit. First, Morsi
signaled that Egypt intended to pursue a foreign
policy that would be independent of Western or oil
Gulf countries' agendas. That is to say, Egypt
will not meekly follow their footsteps any more or
accept an inferior position.
Second, Egypt
does not see Turkey as a role model,
notwithstanding the high-decibel Western
propaganda ever since the Arab Spring appeared
that the Islamism of the kind that the present
government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan espouses is
what the doctor would also prescribe for the
ailing Middle East. Erdogan came back from a visit
to Cairo last year imagining he was a a rock star
for Egyptians, but Morsi apparently doesn't think
so.
Third, Morsi's decision to include
Iran as a partner in the search for peace in Syria
meant a rejection of the Western and Saudi-Turkish
approach. On the sidelines of the OIC summit,
Egyptian foreign minister Mohammed Amr also met
his Iranian counterpart Al Akbar Salehi to urge
that Tehran should assist in solving the Syrian
crisis.
Indeed, these are early days but
Morsi's decision to visit Iran (with which Egypt
doesn't have diplomatic relations) can only be
seen as a strategic move with profound
implications for regional security and global
politics. It needs some explanation.
For
one thing, Iran is the first Muslim country after
Saudi Arabia that Morsi will be visiting in the
Middle East. The Arab Street will take note that
Egypt's Brothers reject the notion (propagated by
Saudi Arabia and the West) of an Iran-led "Shi'ite
crescent" posing a threat to the Sunni communities
of the Muslim Middle East.
Clearly, Egypt
intends to normalize its relations with Iran,
whereas Mubarak's Egypt was awash with Manichean
fears of Iranian plots to destabilize it. Things
have changed. The deputy leader of the
Brotherhood, Mahmoud Ezzat, recently told
Associated Press, "The old regime used to turn any
of his [Mubarak's] rivals to a ghost. We
[Brotherhood] don't want to do like Mubarak and
exaggerate the fear of Iran."
From
Tehran's viewpoint, this comes as a diplomatic and
geopolitical breakthrough at a difficult time when
the P5+1-Iran talks are in an impasse. Simply put,
the Middle Eastern equations have been suddenly
thrown into a state of flux. It was all meant to
be a neat little logarithm of "Tehran's camp"
(Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas) versus the
"American camp" (Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and
Qatar). But Morsi is nonchalantly crisscrossing
that geopolitical barrier.
Could a big
shake-up of regional politics be under way? At a
minimum, the kaleidoscope is shifting and all of a
sudden it seems that the situations in Syria,
Lebanon or Gaza might be fraught with new
possibilities. (By the way, Morsi made it clear at
the OIC summit that any focus on the Syrian crisis
should not detract attention from the Palestinian
problem, which is the core issue for the Muslim
world.)
The big question is what is
prompting Egypt's Brotherhood? The conventional
wisdom is that the Brothers are a cautious lot and
will take their own sweet time to reset the power
calculus in Cairo, leave alone tamper with the
compass of Egypt's foreign policy. But through the
past eight-day period, a different picture of the
Brothers has begun emerging. What explains it?
No return to Mubarak era In
retrospect, Morsi's crackdown on the military a
week ago was a pre-emptive coup. The Brothers
estimated that their best bet would be to ride the
wave of high expectations in the public opinion
favoring fundamental changes in national policies
and that any delay and procrastination in doing so
would result in the military gaining the upper
hand and turning the tables politically on Morsi's
leadership.
Equally, the Brothers harbor
distrust of the US' role and its real intentions
toward Morsi's leadership. It is useful to
remember that the Brotherhood (and Hamas)
pointedly accused Israel's Mossad of being
responsible for the terrorist strike in Sinai on
August 5.
What made the Brothers come to
this conclusion is unclear, but Sinai has been a
lawless land for decades and it is inconceivable
that Israeli intelligence paid no attention to the
Islamist militant groups present there. In fact,
what really happened on August 5 remains anybody's
guess and it needs a willing suspension of
disbelief to accept that the Bedouins could mount
such a highly professional operation.
Besides, something else was jarring. The
terrorist strike in Sinai followed Morsi's
meetings with the Hamas leadership in Cairo and
his decision to partially ease the restrictions at
the Rafah crossing (which of course made a mockery
of Israel's "blockade" of Gaza.
Be that as
it may, the attack in Sinai came even as the US
was piling pressure on Morsi to optimally
resuscitate the Mubarak-era security and military
tie-ups between Cairo, Washington and Tel Aviv.
Both Clinton and Panetta tried hard to persuade
Morsi to recapture the spirit of the tripartite
US-Egypt-Israel security cooperation over Sinai.
But the Brothers would see that any such
reversion to Mubarak-era policies towards Israel
would be deeply resented by the Egyptian public -
Islamists and "secularists alike - and in turn
discredit the Brotherhood and erode the
credibility of Morsi's presidency - in sum, it
will be suicidal politically. The Brothers would
also know that any configuration of Egypt's
regional strategies with the locus resting on
terrorism would preclude all possibilities of any
creative policy rethink on Gaza.
In sum,
Morsi's decision to open a line to Beijing and
Tehran needs to be weighed against a big backdrop.
The Brothers apprehend a US-Israeli plan to
destabilize Morsi's government if it doesn't fall
in line with Washington's diktat. Therefore, they
are looking for ways and means to whittle down the
current level of Egypt's over-dependence on the US
and its Persian-Gulf allies by diversifying the
country's external relationships and adding
countervailing partnerships that would help
enhance the country's strategic autonomy.
Next week promises to be a defining moment
in Middle Eastern politics and inter-Arab
alignments when Morsi travels to Beijing and
Tehran. With Egypt drifting away, the US' regional
strategies are in great disarray. The immediate
question will be what is gained, after all, by
conquering Damascus with such mindless brutal
violence and bestiality if Cairo and Baghdad have
already been lost.
Ambassador M K
Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included
the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and
Turkey.
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