{"id":33632,"date":"2012-01-13T11:30:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T11:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2012\/01\/egypt-sightings-of-the-egyptian-deep-state\/"},"modified":"2012-01-13T11:30:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T11:30:55","slug":"egypt-sightings-of-the-egyptian-deep-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2012\/01\/13\/egypt-sightings-of-the-egyptian-deep-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt: Sightings of the Egyptian Deep State"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

\"Fahamu<\/a><\/p>\n

Issandr El Amrani<\/p>\n

12 January 2012<\/p>\n

\n

opinion<\/p>\n

With months of violence and political turbulence in Egypt, it is the hybrid military-civilian deep state and its manipulations that could be the greatest cause for worry.<\/p>\n

The turbulence that has hit Egypt since mid-November seems, at first glance, mostly a testament to the poor performance of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in handling the transition away from the rule of Husni Mubarak. Having assumed power on February 10, the SCAF moved quickly to attain the stamp of popular legitimacy through a March 19 referendum on constitutional amendments. Since then, however, the conclave of generals has stumbled over the flawed logic of its own plan for the transition, as well as ad hoc decision making and a high-handed, dismissive attitude toward the new politics of the country. The SCAF’s plan, in brief, was to engineer a restoration of civilian rule that shielded the army’s political and economic prerogatives from civilian oversight, and perhaps bolstered those roles, yielding a system not unlike the “deep state” that prevailed for decades in Turkey. Such was the system in Egypt, in fact, under Mubarak.<\/p>\n

As a return to civilian government looms, with Parliament set to reopen and presidential elections scheduled for no later than July 2012, the SCAF is no closer to securing such behind-the-scenes dominance for the military and is much further from winning popular consent to that arrangement. Indeed, for much of the political class and a not inconsequential slice of public opinion, the violence of the early winter has reduced the military’s moral authority to a level unseen since its defeat at Israel’s hands in 1967.<\/p>\n

In some respects, this delegitimization is not unlike the erosion of Mubarak’s authority over the 2000s: Just as the deposed president, once deemed untouchable, became the butt of activist and media scorn from late 2004 onward, the military now finds itself subjected to unprecedented criticism and scrutiny. The difference is that the SCAF’s fall from grace is occurring at an accelerated pace, propelled by the new faith in participatory politics unleashed by the January uprising and the army’s own bungling.<\/p>\n

Fateful Triangle<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the eyes of some, the protest movement and the political class share blame with the SCAF for the stalling of the post-Mubarak transition – the former for taking to the streets without a clearer long-term agenda, the latter for failing to elaborate a coherent counterpoint to SCAF’s misadministration. Instead of working together, politicians of all stripes engaged in time-wasting arguments about the identity of Egypt, eventually turning to the SCAF for arbitration.<\/p>\n

Egypt’s largest and closest-knit political party force, the Muslim Brothers, cozied up to the generals, who were comforted by the Brothers’ supposed ability to control the streets. The Brothers, officially outlawed under Mubarak and his predecessors, obtained a degree of “normalization,” as well as a transition plan that favored them. An Islamist intellectual luminary, the former judge Tariq al-Bishri, chaired the commission tasked with redrafting the six constitutional articles for the March 19 referendum. This body included no representatives of secular parties or revolutionary youth groups, and only one politician, the Brothers’ former MP from Alexandria, Subhi Salih. The Brothers and other Islamists campaigned for the amendments’ approval, at times presenting a “yes” vote as a religious duty. After 79 percent of voters said “yes,” the amended clauses were incorporated into a 62-article “constitutional declaration” that was simply decreed by the SCAF. But the Brothers were attracted by the generals’ blueprint putting parliamentary elections first – ahead of a completely new constitution that would allocate Parliament’s powers – because their superior numbers and organization made them most likely to succeed.<\/p>\n

Secular politicians, for their part, strove in vain to get the SCAF’s imprimatur upon the outlines of a new constitution. Some of them, particularly the newly registered parties that chose to recruit from the ranks of the formerly ruling National Democratic Party, now defunct, sought the tacit backing of the ancien r\u00e9gime.<\/p>\n

Formation of this Islamist-SCAF-secularist triangle naturally redounded to the generals’ benefit. The ruling brass positioned themselves as umpires of what was, for the most part, a non-dispute over how such terms as “Islamic” and “civil” ought to figure in the definition of the post-Mubarak polity. The secularists had fallen into the Islamists’ trap of debates over identity, where they could never win, rather than respond to the public’s demands for social justice, prosperity, and law and order.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the politicians lent little succor to the protest movement – a motley crew of liberal youths, seasoned radicals and many thousands of unaffiliated sympathizers for whom the January uprising is an indelible memory. Those activists who reject formal politics or wish to work independently found themselves the target of reinvigorated security services; a state media machine that painted them as troublemakers and, increasingly, traitors; and the SCAF-led project to promote “stability” over “chaos” and “sectoral (fi’awi) demands,” code for supposedly parochial concerns whose expression was detrimental to national progress.<\/p>\n

Already in mid-February, several activists were sent before military tribunals, which offer no possibility of appeal. The SCAF also continued to field civilian security services under the hated Emergency Law in place since 1981. In the autumn, other provisions of this law have been invoked, such as the prohibition upon public gatherings of more than five persons. The murder rap facing the blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah is only one of the ludicrous charges thrown at well-known protesters.<\/p>\n

Dark Clouds Over Cairo<\/strong><\/p>\n

The military’s claim to be guardian of the revolution has been weakening since soon after Mubarak was toppled. The SCAF was slow to arrest kingpins of the old regime, and its military police maltreated protesters in March and April, as with the infamous “virginity tests” of women. The protest movement’s mounting dissatisfaction culminated in the reoccupation of Tahrir Square in July. Another turning point was the October 9 confrontation at the state broadcasting headquarters, known as Maspero, in which 25 protesters for Coptic rights died at the hands of army troops. (The SCAF claims that an unknown number of soldiers were also killed; Abdel Fattah is accused of murder in this connection.) If many Egyptians accepted that these deaths resulted from panic among the soldiers, the SCAF’s grip on public sympathy has slipped badly amid the clashes of November and December.<\/p>\n

Unlike previous instances, Maspero and a few others excepted, the most recent confrontations – in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez – have been very bloody, claiming at least 57 lives and wounding over 1,500. The clashes began on November 19, the day after a peaceful “million-man march” in Tahrir Square, led by Islamist groups but also attracting significant secular participation. The protesters focused their ire on “supra-constitutional principles” drafted by then Deputy Prime Minister ‘Ali al-Salmi, an attempt to predetermine basic tenets of a new constitution as well as rules for the composition of the future constitutional assembly. Among the proposed measures: guaranteed secrecy for the military budget and SCAF authority to impose its own constituent assembly should the body appointed by Parliament fail to agree upon a draft national charter. The day of protest against the army’s power grab passed without incident.<\/p>\n

The decision by salafi groups and the Muslim Brothers to back the November 18 demonstration marked the Islamist forces’ first public break with the SCAF. Coming less than two weeks before the start of parliamentary elections, it was an important challenge to the military. The Islamists were confident in their electoral chances, however, and it is premature to declare a divorce between them and the army. The Brothers have resorted to protest only on rare occasion: Indeed, for most of the transition period, their cadre have stood aside, a decision many frequenters of Tahrir Square see as evidence of a deal with the SCAF. Strengthening this analysis is the fact that the Brothers, as well as salafis, largely withdrew from Tahrir at 6 pm on November 18, leaving other activists behind. By the next morning, only a few hundred diehards stayed with the small encampment of families of victims of the January uprising. The families had set up their tents several weeks previous to demand investigations into the deaths of their loved ones and delivery of the promised compensation.<\/p>\n

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Issandr El Amrani 12 January 2012 opinion With months of violence and political turbulence in Egypt, it is the hybrid military-civilian deep state and its manipulations that could be the greatest cause for worry. The turbulence that has hit Egypt since mid-November seems, at first glance, mostly a testament to the poor performance of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in handling the transition away from the rule of Husni Mubarak. Having assumed power on February 10, the SCAF moved quickly to attain the stamp of popular legitimacy through a March 19 referendum on constitutional amendments. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\nEgypt: Sightings of the Egyptian Deep State - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2012\/01\/13\/egypt-sightings-of-the-egyptian-deep-state\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Egypt: Sightings of the Egyptian Deep State - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Issandr El Amrani 12 January 2012 opinion With months of violence and political turbulence in Egypt, it is the hybrid military-civilian deep state and its manipulations that could be the greatest cause for worry. 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