HOW EGYPT WILL SHAKE THE WORL

POSTED BY STEVE COLL

In late 1991, amid the worldwide wave of elections that followed the end of the Cold War, Algeria’s military-backed government held a national vote and very reluctantly invited a coalition of previously repressed Islamists to take part. That coalition, the Islamic Salvation Front, showed strength in the election’s first round. The Army and its secular-nationalist allies in politics feared that the Islamists might win outright, so they cancelled the final vote, cracked down on the Islamists, and ignited a civil war that lasted a decade and claimed tens of thousands of lives. Ultimately, the military won that war.

When the history of recent democratic or pluralistic aspiration in North Africa is written, Egypt’s chapter since 2011 may be remembered similarly, with the exception that its military did not cancel an election but instead allowed the Islamists to rule for a haphazard year before repressing them again.

Last weekend, Cairo was the scene of a bloodbath that recalled the patterns of political violence across North Africa during the nineteen-nineties. At least five dozen protesters aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood died as they took to the streets to defend their ousted leader, President Mohammed Morsi, who remains in detention and may now face charges of subversion or treason. Initial reports suggest that the violence in Cairo was heavily one-sided, and that shooters aligned with the Egyptian military gunned down unarmed demonstrators deliberately. If these reports prove to be true, the shootings presumably were intended to make clear to the Brotherhood’s cadres that the era of competitive politics by free assembly in Egypt is coming to an end.

A civil war in Egypt on the devastating scale of Algeria’s seems highly unlikely, but it is surely conceivable that an armed resistance linked to the Brotherhood will emerge from this summer’s events. Historically, Egypt’s Islamist cadres, even at their most potent, have lacked the arms, the leadership, the terrain, and the internal and international networks that would enable them to challenge the U.S.-equipped and U.S.-funded Egyptian military full on. The country’s Islamist opposition is split between the Brotherhood and looser networks of Salafis, a division that limits the potential of any insurgency that either faction might mount. Yet a return to generation-spanning, uncompromising struggle in Egypt—some of it brutal and violent—now appears much more likely.

Egypt’s initial revolution, against President Hosni Mubarak, in 2011, rippled far and wide, stimulating revolts and citizen activism across the Arab world and elsewhere. The recent crackdown on the Brotherhood will have effects, too. Here are some very rough notes—provocations, really—about what some of those might be:

More terrorism. The Egyptian military’s brutal crackdown on Islamists before and after the assassination of Anwar Sadat, in 1981, spawned radical spinoffs from the Brotherhood which were determined to resist the military violently. Islamic Group cells gunned down tourists for shock effect, in order to undermine Egypt’s economy. Islamic Jihad terrorists such as Ayman al-Zawahiri emerged from this milieu and sought refuge in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they conceived of Al Qaeda. In the nineties, too, Egyptian terrorists drew from transnational Sunni radical preaching and arms-smuggling networks—some of them funded by an obscure, rich Saudi exiled in Sudan, named Osama bin Laden. New Brotherhood spinoffs inside Egypt could also seek help from Sunni radical or terrorist groups in Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and Libya. Wherever they turn, we should expect a wave of domestic terrorism inside Egypt in the next few years, mounted by individuals and small groups that have been radicalized by events like last weekend’s shootings.

More political space for Israel. Egypt’s military will be desperate for international legitimacy and leverage in the next few years, given its rapidly growing record of bad conduct. Quiet, reliable coöperation with Israel on the issues of the so-called “Camp David regime,” Gaza, and the threat from Iran is an obvious strategy for Egypt’s generals—it’s worked in the past. The aim of Egypt’s military and its civilian allies will be to keep American arms and International Monetary Fund credits coming their way. As in the Cold War, the price for the U.S.’s acquiescence will be, at a minimum, security coöperation between Israel and Egypt. This may be reinforced by a deep-pocketed, undeclared partner: Saudi Arabia’s royal family, which fears and despises the Muslim Brotherhood as much as Egypt’s men in khaki do. Israel already benefits from its common interest with Saudi Arabia and the smaller Persian Gulf states, based on a shared fear of Iran; the reassertion of power by Egypt’s military over the Brotherhood will only reinforce that unacknowledged alliance.

More trouble for Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan. Has Islamist political power obtained through the ballot box now crested in the Middle East? Will Egypt’s counter-revolution inspire Turkey’s fragmented, avowedly secular military—which once dominated the country’s politics, via coup-making—to reorganize and reassert itself? Could the military do so if it tried? The street protests against Erdogan’s moderately Islamist government this spring and summer arose from local circumstances and can’t easily be compared to Egypt’s popular wave of protests against Mohammed Morsi’s Presidency. In his decade in office, Erdogan has revived Turkey’s economy and its influence. Yet the recent events in Egypt will surely stir and tempt Atatürk’s heirs in the opposition.

A new era for anti-Islamist politics in the Arab world? What, if anything, will unite the Brotherhood’s opponents in Egypt in the years ahead, other than political and economic opportunism? Will any new ideology emerge—one based on nationalism, or propagating some theory of economic modernization or of the separation of religion and state—to sustain the struggle against Islamists? General Pervez Musharraf, in Pakistan, tried a version of Davos-friendly secular modernism after the September 11th attacks; it turned out to be hollow, and he was soon routed by both Islamist and liberal opponents. In the Arab world, Nasserism and Baathism are long dead. The kings who rule from Kuwait to Jordan to Morocco—and keep the Islamists sidelined—look shaky and anachronistic. In places like Tunisia, the anti-Islamist opposition is made up of old socialists, opportunists, and trade unionists, all struggling to connect with that country’s young, online, globally aware population. What ideas will mark the next wave of secular or nationalistic Arab politics, or simply provide a plausible veneer for Arab militaries as they send the Brotherhood’s leaders back to prison?

Tahrir Square’s youth protests at their most inspiring augured a new era of politics and pluralism that promised a break with the past; sadly, the trajectory of politics now is ceaselessly backward.