On January 25, 2011 mass demonstrations began in Cairo and Alexandria, leading to the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February and the transfer of power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) headed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. The military brass suspended the Constitution and disbanded parliament but promised to hold new parliamentary and presidential elections and hand over power to civilians in the summer of 2012.
Was it a revolution?
The current Egyptian authorities – the military leadership and the government they appointed – have described the past year’s events as the Great Revolution of the Egyptian People and designated January 25 a national holiday.
I can’t entirely agree with this assessment. To be sure, the popular protests on Tahrir Square, provoked by Mubarak’s 30-year rule and the country’s difficult socioeconomic conditions, have done away with the country’s last pharaoh, as Egyptians jokingly called all of their rulers. However, power in Egypt did not go to the protesters but was taken by the military junta consisting of Mubarak’s stooges, led by his former defense minister. In effect, power in Egypt has not yet changed hands, although the process of democratization has definitely started, as evidenced by the legalization of the country’s true political opposition – the Muslim Brotherhood and even more radical Islamist movements and groups.
The military has kept one key promise – to hold parliamentary elections. The election process, which began several months ago, is not yet over. So far the lower chamber of parliament has been elected, and it is already clear that the Islamists won by a landslide. Some of them are moderate Islamists – the Party of Freedom and Justice representing the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood (42.8% of all votes) – while others are radical – the Nour Party (24.7% of votes), uniting Salafis, who advocate the “original” Islam “unspoiled by civilization.”
Egypt’s old liberal and leftwing parties, that were legal under Nasser and Mubarak, have gained a little over 30% put together. In the near future the elected parties will form a new parliament. The brass expect it to write a new Constitution and pass new laws defining the powers of the future president, his term and the election mechanism. A new president is supposed to be elected before June 30, 2012 but nobody in Egypt can guarantee this.
Teetering economy
The Egyptian economy is going through hard times. Its tourist sector has seen a decline of millions of tourists and billions of dollars in revenue. Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri has said that Cairo has not received the financial aid promised by the world community after the downfall of the Mubarak regime (the G8 has pledged $35 billion and the Gulf monarchies $10.5 billion for the Arab Spring countries).
Moreover, in the past year the new authorities spent $16 billion or half of the reserves stockpiled under Mubarak. Foreign investment has been close to zero. If this situation persists for another year the Egyptian economy will collapse.
Islamists or the brass?
Egypt is now in a unique situation. The military cannot rule the country in the old way, but the victorious Islamists are not ready to take power, as they have yet to agree on a single presidential candidate. The brass understands that any “non-military democracy” will put an end not only to their rule but also to the idea of Egypt as a secular state. They don’t have much choice. They can strike an alliance with the Islamists and preserve their constitutional right to independent decision-making in the event of political emergencies as in Turkey. They can leave the political scene, or overturn the elections and drive the Islamists back underground, like the Algerians did 20 years ago.
The Algerian scenario is absolutely unacceptable for Egypt if only because the overwhelming majority of Egyptians really support the Islamists. This is only natural. One third of the population is illiterate and live below the poverty line, and it was the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the state that gave material and medical support to the poorest Egyptians through a network run out of local mosques.
Sixty years of harassment by three dictators – Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak – have also made the Islamists more popular. Today, the Islamists have a real chance of taking revenge but they have no experience of running a state and their parties are not united.
The moderate wing of the Muslim Brotherhood understands that economic recovery and the prosperity of their nation of 80 million depend on foreign investment and tourism, and that these are impossible without close economic and military cooperation with the West and guarantees of security and comfort to visiting foreigners.
Now they will have to fight against the obscurants from the Nour Party (which,, ironically, means “the Party of Light”) who seek to impose Sharia law and the Islamic dress code on foreign tourists. Now the Muslim Brotherhood will have to strike a balance of interests and find a compromise between secular and religious principles – between democracy and Islam, between the national interest and their own ideology.
Egypt’s future place in world politics
During the last 60 years Egypt’s relations with superpowers were the main source of contention in foreign policy between Islamists and the military leadership. Nasser placed his bet on the Soviet Union, whereas Sadat and Mubarak curried favor with the Americans.
Mubarak derived his biggest advantage from this cooperation. During his rule Cairo became the main political venue for inter-Arab discussions and Arab talks with the West. The Islamists demanded abrogation or revision of the Camp David accords signed in 1978 by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin with the mediation of U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Under these accords, Egypt was supposed to regain gradually the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsular but lost the right to keep its own armed forces there (they were replaced by UN observers).
However, the Islamists neglect the financial aspect of these accords. According to a secret protocol, the United States pledged to pay Israel $3.5 billion annually in military aid; the relevant sum for Egypt was $1.5 billion. Later this sum was brought to $2.2 billion. This is the price that the United States has paid for peace between Egypt and Israel up to now. Is the Egyptian army ready to turn its back on this source of funding?
The recent attack on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo and the anti-American sentiment expressed on Tahrir Square have raised many questions not only in Israel but also in the main non-regional players in the Middle East – the United States and Western Europe.
They would welcome the Turkish model in Egypt in which power belongs to the civilian president and prime minister but the military has a big say if political tensions run too high.
Now the ball is in the court of the newly elected Islamic parliament.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
