Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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the obama administration has placed all their marbles with the military and the reasons for doing that are getting clearer every day.
Quote:
Egypt's Democratic Mirage
How Cairo’s Authoritarian Regime Is Adapting to Preserve Itself
Joshua Stacher
JOSHUA STACHER is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kent State University. He is writing a book comparing authoritarianism in Egypt and Syria.
Despite the tenacity, optimism, and blood of the protesters massed in Tahrir Square, Egypt's democratic window has probably already closed.
Contrary to the dominant media narrative, over the last ten days the Egyptian state has not experienced a regime breakdown. The protests have certainly rocked the system and have put Mubarak on his heels, but at no time has the uprising seriously threatened Egypt's regime. Although many of the protesters, foreign governments, and analysts have concentrated on the personality of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, those surrounding the embattled president, who make up the wider Egyptian regime, have made sure the state's viability was never in question. This is because the country's central institution, the military, which historically has influenced policy and commands near-monopolistic economic interests, has never balked.
As the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party burned to the ground, NDP members chaotically appeared on TV with a pathetically incoherent message; meanwhile, the message from the ruling military elite was clear, united, fully supportive of Mubarak, and disciplined practically down to a man. Indeed, this discipline could be seen throughout the military ranks. Despite the fact that a general with a megaphone stated his solidarity with the protesters while other protesters painted "Down to Mubarak" on tanks across central Cairo, no acts of organizational fragmentation or dissent within the chain of command have occurred.
Since January 28, the Mubarak regime has sought to encircle the protesters. Egypt's governing elites have used different parts of the regime to serve as arsonist and firefighter. Due to the regime's role in both lighting the fire and extinguishing it, protesters were effectively forced to flee from one wing of the regime to another. This occurred on two levels: first, the regime targeted the protesters, using the police as its battering ram. During the first days of demonstrations, uniformed officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowds. Beginning on February 2, plain-clothes officers posing as Mubarak supporters -- some on horseback and camels -- carried whips and sticks to intimidate and injure those protesting against the system, teaching them a repressive lesson.
Although it is impossible to say that every single member of the "pro-Mubarak" crowd was in the security forces, enough of them had their credentials taken to illustrate an indisputable police presence. Moreover, the violence has been selective and targeted, not chaotic, as Mubarak has described. The disappearance of police officers on January 29, leaving the neighborhoods to criminal elements and neighborhood watch groups, and their reappearance 24 hours later suggest that they were acting on orders, rather than haphazardly dispersing and returning.
While the army kept order in the streets, the Interior Ministry and police were functioning as the regime's repressive arm, performing the dirty work of trying to force the protesters from Tahrir back into their homes.
The military's rank and file, who are deployed on the streets, became part of a different regime strategy. There is no doubt that solidarities developed between protesters and soldiers as fellow citizens, but the army's aloof neutrality underscores that its role on the sidelines was intentional. This was prominently on display when the "pro-Mubarak" demonstrators attacked antigovernment protesters in Tahrir on February 2. That the siege of a major city square took place over the course of 16 hours, leaving 13 dead and more than 1,200 wounded, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Health, suggests that the military's orders were conceived to cast its officers as potential saviors from the brutal violence.
This containment strategy has worked. By politically encircling the protesters, the regime prevented the conflict from extending beyond its grasp. With the protesters caught between regime-engineered violence and regime-manufactured safety, the cabinet generals remained firmly in control of the situation.
The generals that now man the cabinet also sought to wage a war on the non-protesting population, and they did so without firing a single shot. As the state framed the demonstrators as troublemakers, non-protesting Egyptians experienced the uprising's effects. Banks have been closed since January 27, ATMs have been emptied of their cash, and the prices of food and staples have slowly risen at a time when school is cancelled, offices are closed, and curfews are in effect. Similarly, the Internet and cellular networks were shut off and have been patchy at best since their return.
Although some of these citizens may have sympathized with the protesters initially, their mood appears to be shifting. People are tired of being cooped up in their apartments, made anxious as their stockpiles of food and money decrease, and they are ready for a sense of "normalcy" to return. Ironically, the normalcy they pine for resembles the police state so many tried to banish just thirteen days ago. This method of wearing down the non-protesting public seems just as strategic as the violence employed on those airing their grievances in the streets.
The story that the news media have largely crafted is that of the good protesters pitted against the bad Mubarak dictatorship. Despite the accurate reporting of incidents and often horrifying images, the fact that the Egyptian regime has played a good-cop, bad-cop routine to contain the situation remains lost in the din of 24-hour coverage. Despite many of the protesters pointing out this dynamic, such as Hossam el-Hamalawy and Mahmoud Salem, it has failed to take hold as the prevailing thread.
Nevertheless, as the crisis has deepened, the push for Mubarak's resignation has intensified. According to The New York Times, the Obama administration will seek to have Mubarak retire early instead of waiting until the September election. The United States has repeatedly insisted on an "orderly transition."
If those guiding the transition choose to direct it toward a democratic end, then it will have to include forces that are currently banned in the country, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and individuals who have been tortured or imprisoned, such as Ayman Nour. It will have to include the youth elements from the street organizing committees as well as the irrelevant figures that head the country's existing opposition parties. Managing such a transition from dictatorship to democracy is a massive challenge even in the best of times. The leader of the transition will therefore determine whether it results in a genuine democracy or continuous authoritarian rule. If that person is General Omar Suleiman, who was sworn in as vice president on January 30, the prospects for democracy are grim.
Suleiman is cut from the same undemocratic cloth as Mubarak. They have collaborated since 1993, and Suleiman shares many of Mubarak's policy preferences and his worldview. He is known for his skill as a negotiator and his disdain for the Muslim Brotherhood. Although the vice president may now seem a stabilizing force for the Egyptian state during a transition period, U.S. officials should consider that he might seek to stay in power long beyond September.
Indeed, some of Suleiman's earliest public statements since becoming vice president do not bode well for democracy. In fact, they sound eerily familiar. On February 2, the bloodiest day in Tahrir Square to date, Suleiman said the regime now refuses to negotiate until "the Egyptian street returns to normal." Sensing that the regime had the upper hand, Suleiman declared that a new constitution is out of the question in advance of the presidential election later this year and asserted that the unrest had been the result of "a conspiracy" directed by "foreign countries, the Muslim Brothers, and some parties." Lastly, echoing the paternalistic tone that Mubarak has employed for nearly 30 years, Suleiman recommended, "We will ask [protesters] to go home. And we'll ask their parents to ask them to go home." Hence, he effectively called out potential transition partners as traitors and children before pledging to conduct another presidential election under a desperately flawed constitution.
The protesters have been given an ambiguous choice about this transition. Go home and -- perhaps -- be invited to the negotiating table later, or continue protesting and be excluded from Suleiman's negotiations. Some independent figures, such as Amr Moussa and Nabil Fahmy, have broken ranks with the protesters and met with Suleiman. Given that many of these individuals held previous appointments in Mubarak's Egypt, protesters will likely be skeptical of their intentions as agents of change.
There is no doubt that the post-Mubarak era is afoot, but it is not necessarily a democratic one. The Egyptian military leaders that are governing the country seem content to leave Mubarak in his place so Suleiman can act as the sitting president. Indeed, even leading government officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have begun to direct their concerns to Suleiman's office. Hence, as the protesters in Tahrir Square -- and the non-protesters facing empty refrigerators and wallets at home -- have begun to feel the state's squeeze, the regime has so far maintained its ability to control how the conflict is unfolding.
When the uprising began in Egypt, many linked the events in Tunis and Cairo and declared that 2011 might be the Arab world's 1989. Instead, 2011 is showing just how durable and adaptable the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world truly are. Faced with real challenges and moments of potential breakdown, Egypt's military did not hesitate or even break a sweat. In fact, the regime remained cohesive throughout by pursuing a sophisticated strategy of unleashing violence upon the people and then saving them from it.
This latest adaptation of autocracy in the Arab world is more honest than its previous incarnations. Before the uprising in Egypt began, the military ruled from behind the curtain while elites, represented by public relations firms and buoyed by snappy slogans, initiated neoliberal economic policies throughout Egypt. In this latest rendering, with Suleiman at the helm, the state's objective of restoring a structure of rule by military managers is not even concealed. This sort of "orderly transition" in post-Mubarak Egypt is more likely to usher in a return to the repressive status quo than an era of widening popular participation.
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Egypt's Democratic Mirage | Foreign Affairs
another perspective on the same unfortunate situation, but one focused more on the ndp:
Quote:
The NDP is dead; long live the NDP?
Nabil Shawkat, Sunday 6 Feb 2011
We have killed our ruling party, and its ghost is coming back to haunt us
Mubarak is now out of the picture, perhaps by orders of his vice president. He is not going to be part of the future of this country. He will either leave Egypt in an “honourable” way, or just be pushed to the back to sign papers and rolled out on occasion to repeat a few well-rehearsed phrases. Mubarak is no more. His son is no more. His party is no more. But the spirit of his rule, the essence of his regime, and the methods of his era are far from over.
It is dangerous to kill a ruling party, because like the hydra of lore, ruling parties have many heads, far-reaching tentacles, and very deep pockets. I know the army has denounced any connection with the pro-Mubarak marauders, but the repudiation is far from being completely sincere. Only yesterday I walked by a security truck near the Italian Club in Bulak, north of Tahrir Square. Inside it, a plainclothes official was organising a small mob to attack or harass a certain person. I heard the order given while I was passing by, so I looked at the license plates. Sure enough, they were army plates.
For the past few days, the army was accusing unnamed people of wearing its uniforms to spread chaos. Perhaps this was a stolen army vehicle. But then again, perhaps it wasn’t.
The signs are already worrying. The prime minister, Ahmad Shafiq, appeared on television more than once, disassociating himself from the violence against demonstrators and saying that he did not give any orders to that effect. I believe him. And then again, I know that some orders have been given. For the marauders are just too organised to lack leadership.
Shafiq may have been telling the truth. But Omar Soliman, vice president and interim president-in-waiting, didn’t deign to come clean. In his first television interview, he gave the impression that he was running the country, that – if he wanted – he could tell Mubarak to go to his room and stay there. The same day, Christiane Amanpour interviewed the president, but without the benefit of a camera. Mubarak has been “grounded”, no longer allowed to play with the media in public.
Then Soliman uttered his first lie. He said that the Tahrir demonstrators, who practically brought him to at least transitional power, were being manipulated by “foreign agendas”. This was the first lie from a fresh regime, and it had the bitter taste of the deposed one. Soliman made the statement on Thursday, the same day that saw a witch hunt of foreign journalists in Cairo, with dozens beaten, arrested, and their cameras taken away or smashed. I was in Tahrir Square that day. I had my ID checked several times by disbanded internal security personnel guarding the pro-Mubarak marauders, and one of them volunteered the fact that they had “caught” a Jew in Tahrir Square.
“So what if they found fifty Jews?” I said. He didn’t answer. The day before, they discovered an Israeli engineer sitting at a coffeehouse in Port Said or Ismailia. This was supposed to be proof of something, damning evidence against the Tahrir protestors.
If it looks like the NDP, talks like the NDP, and walks like the NDP, perhaps it is the NDP. I know that our ruling party is charred, barred and bruised. It can no longer sport the glamorous “new look” of Gamal Mubarak or dance to the intricate choreography of Ahmad Ezz. But the NDP lives on.
In ancient Egypt, the period of mourning for the dead was 40 days. It was the period the dead need to travel from the world of the living to the underworld of eternity. The NDP has only been dead for a week or so, and its ghost is still running around like a chicken with its head cut off, shouting support for a president who is sulking in his bedroom, ranting against invisible “foreign agendas”, and giving orders from abandoned or donated army vehicles. If this goes beyond the 40 day period of mourning, then there is a chance that a new NDP is going to rise from the ashes and make us tremble once again.
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The NDP is dead; long live the NDP? - Opinion - Ahram Online
this is not some conspiratorially organized thing---the glennbeckian interpretation is the stuff for the know-nothing set.
rather, this is the way authoritarian continuity could be maintained across a popular revolt with the full collusion of the united states. no need to let this democracy business go too far---after all there are corporate interests and co-operative military sales and training relationships that are of great profit to lots of Important People within the visible oligarchy in egypt and the less visible one in the united states that runs the show---so there's no real problem with packaging up the democratic aspirations of the egyptian people and sending them back to jail, where they lived under mubarak...
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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