Dr Aly El Kabbani*
Roger Hardy**
Dr Mohammad Ghanim ***
Wednesday, 27th June 2012
Chairman: Today’s programme is about Egypt: the counter revolution versus the people. It is not just the events unfolding in Egypt which are of interest to anyone who has been following what has been going on for the past 18 months in the Middle East.
What started as the so-called spring has really changed into something quite different where people are evidently not achieving what they perhaps wanted with the debacle taking place in Libya but there is a hopeful sign with what is happening in Tunisia and with the elections in Egypt. There is an ongoing struggle in Bahrain where the double standards are playing out quite wonderfully.
Today there was a headline in Heratz the Jerusalem newspaper which says: Egyptian elections the will of half a nation. In all democracies, and if you look at the French elections which took place recently only about 51 percent of the people voted for Mr Hollande in the second round. There has been a similar result in Egypt but the newspaper in Jerusalem is reporting that half the people are against the victor. I can see the narrative building up in Egypt where it is going to be portrayed as an election victory for the activists in the Islamic circles where the liberals, the leftists, the Christian copts did not vote for the president. This is an interesting observation.
There is also the role of the military itself. If you look at a few of the Muslim countries where you have supposedly democratic elections or democratically elected leaders, Pakistan, Turkey an Egypt, the military is very powerful and plays a hand as and when desired.
Dr Aly El Kabbani: I would like to thank you for the invitation. The last time I was invited here I talked about the counter revolution and I was
accused and attacked by one of the honourable guests in the audience who said that I was exaggerating and giving the counter revolution a size bigger than they actually have. I remember Dr Shehabi came to my defence and said ‘no’ the counter revolution elements exist in Egypt and we have to realize that they will try to do their best to counter the revolution.
What happened in the Arab revolutions in Tunisia and then in Egypt was a big surprise. As Tony Blair said today in the Evening Standard it was unforeseeable. No one expected the Arab uprisings and revolutions and they did not think that it would happen in their lifetimes because the American and Western interests in the area created a client state where they dictate their order and those puppets in power execute the orders they receive from their masters.
I want to show that while the counter revolution elements were shocked and were in a state of coma at the time when the revolution happen like any patient in a coma he needs time to wake up. So who helped these counter revolutionary elements the time to get out of their coma? I would argue that it is the military council because they said they would stay in power for six months and then they would give power to the elected civilians authorities. These six months went on for one year and six months and we are still counting.
This gave the counter revolutionary elements locally, regionally and internationally the time to re-organise themselves. The revolution in Egypt made great achievements and on top of these great achievements was getting rid of the dictator which had stayed in power for 30 years. And it broke the wall of fear. But cancerous network of the old regime was still there and controlling all aspects of life. One of these was the propaganda machine which is referred to as the national media – press and television.
So these people when they got out of their shock and the coma they started to realize that they would lose all their privileges and benefits because they lived as parasites for the last six decades and they were their masters voice.
The second establishment was the security, intelligence and police force. Of course they tried to create a situation of instability and lack of security to let the normal Egyptian people look to the old regime because they are afraid about their assets and their property, their assets, their homes etc.
So deliberately they created a state of instability and lack of security and we know that they opened jails for the criminals to go out and loot the houses. They disappeared into the streets and created chaos and a complete lack of security.
And then we go after that the local governorates and all that were helping the elements of the old regime. This was very clear in the campaign of general Ahmed Shafiq. The worse situation was the judicial establishment because all the Egyptians believed it was independent and honest in its rulings across Egypt.
But the high courts and the constitutional courts are infiltrated by the security forces of Mubarak. The heads of these establishments were chosen by Mubarak and the legal people everywhere in the world can find loopholes to help and serve their political masters. In this case their political masters were the military council. So they used all the legal tricks in the book and found all the loopholes and kept them to use them at the right time.
I am arguing that the military council elongated this period for the second purpose which is for them to stay in power and to abort the revolution helping the elements of the counter revolution. They wanted to give time to the elements of the counter revolution to reorganize themselves. They also wanted to give time to the political parties in Egypt to have their differences in the open. So at the time of the revolution they were all united and they were all one body and they all talked with one voice. But we know political parties have got their own ideologies, their own agenda and their own interests and when these come in the field then disagreements will happen and disunity will be the result. So they worked very hard to allow the time and to bring this or that political party nearer to them to create jealously and to create competition between the different political parties.
The most important factor is that the normal Egyptian people are suffering from revolution fatigue. Normal people, rebel, uprise and revolt but they want to go back to their normal life to be able to earn their money and feed their children. So elongating the period will let those people isolate themselves from the revolution – or so military council hopes.
They used the propaganda machine to create side issues and to let the Egyptian people go away from the main targets and goals of the revolution by asking if the system of elections was constitutional or non constitutional. As a military council they put the system in place and one would imagine that they are not amateurs. They have experts advising them on legal and constitutional issues.
The other thing is that now we are in the revolution stage so the revolution laws supersede any other existing laws, especially they have a frozen constitution. They are talking about drafting a new constitution. So how can a frozen constitution be a reference for high court judges and constitutional judges to rule accordingly?
So it was a policy of wasting time to create a clear atmosphere for them to be able to implement their rule. When the revolution happened the people were saying that the military council supported the revolution. Actually the revolution in Egypt surprised the military council but it came at the right time for them. They had their differences with the old corrupt regime about the succession file, they did not agree on the biological son succeeding his father. They wanted the son from the military establishment to succeed the father. So it is not that they were against the dictatorship of Mubarak or the corruption of the regime or against all their bad policies which retarded Egypt in all aspects of life. They just disagreed about who should succeed him. Of course they wanted a military figure.
The second point was that some of the corrupt people around Mubarak and his son challenged the military establishment by supporting Mubarak in the media and in other aspects. So they want to get rid of those also. They were planning to do that. But the revolution came for them to achieve their two goals. And once they were achieved they took their hands off the revolution as it would reduce them down to size and they do not want that.
It is their policy to waste time and to absorb the anger of the Egyptian people after they found out about the corruption and the looting of the wealth of the Egyptian people. They staged another court play about trying Mubarak and his interior minister and his two sons in court. Six months passed wasting time, effort and money. Mubarak was condemned to a life sentence along with his minister of the interior but all those who implemented the orders of Mubarak to kill more than 800 Egyptians were acquitted. Eight hundred people, peaceful demonstrators were killed, cold bloodedly murdered. The court accused Mubarak and his interior minister of giving the order and acquitted six of the aides of the interior minister who implemented those orders. And then they come in a farcical way through the propaganda machine and say we all have to respect the court ruling.
The people of Egypt expect justice and justice should be applied and as we all know seen to be applied. So if justice is not applied no one should accept such a ruling. The crime is there, the criminals or the accused are there and either they are innocent and you find the culprits. If you consider Mubarak and his interior minister the culprits those who implemented the orders should be punished. The purpose of the military council is to acquit all the officers. We can just get a scapegoat president and his interior minister. But you are safe and you can stay in your jobs.
The next thing is dropping the corruption case against the two sons of Mubarak because of the statute of limitations. This is a bigger joke because the prosecutor general should know the law and he should not file the case if the statute of limitations has already passed. Also the prosecutor in the court should know that. And the judge should drop the case and not keep the poor sons in jail for more than six months if the case has to be dropped. But as I said it is all a comic play to absorb the anger of the people. The two sons were probably put in jail to avoid revenge from the Egyptian people. Not only the two sons but also Hussain Salim the business manager of the ousted president.
So the outcome is corrupt ministers and sons of ministers can loot the wealth the Egyptian people but because of the statute of limitations they will be acquitted and they can go out and enjoy their wealth. That is what the Egyptian people can see from the military council because it has got its hands in all these issues.
On 17th June we see a blunt and ugly military coup using the constitutional court to allow one of the remnants of the old regime to stay in the presidential run off. I don’t like the terminology of remnants. Remnants means that the regime has gone but you still have the old regime and they are represented in Ahmed Shafiq fighting the elections and the apparatus of the state is helping him in his campaign. Busses are moving the electors to the station, they are giving them water, they are giving each one money. I don’t want to go into the rumors of £150 but in the countryside people will not go in this heat to vote for Ahmed Shafiq for free. We know that in Egypt.
At the same time the constitutional court has got cases filed for more than 15 years and they have not seen a judgment. They ruled that the election law was unconstitutional. Okay this is a constitutional opinion, a legal opinion but the court goes not have the right or the authority to implement that ruling. And they knew that. So they went to the military council and said now its your role, you implement it. So the military council implemented it. If we go to the constitutional court they will say that constitutionally they have no right to implement that ruling.
Who has the right? The people are sovereign. This parliament has been chosen and elected freely and transparently by the people so it should go back to the people to judge the advice of the constitutional court which ruled that one-third of the members of parliament have been elected unconstitutionally. So the problem is about one-third – not the whole.
Another thing is that you don’t dissolve the current parliament even if it was unconstitutional and even if the law was not legal which I argue is not true, until you elect another parliament because the interests of the Libyan people should be upper most in the judges of the constitutional court.
What is better? To keep an elected parliament or to create a constitutional and political vacuum? So at least keep that parliament until we have a new parliament. But then again the whole chaos is done on purpose to get rid of the parliament. The military council wanted their man in power but if they can’t have their man in power they want the man coming deprived of any power. This is what they have done to Dr Mohammed Mursi. He does not have a parliament to go to and ask support for against the military council. So now we have in Egypt an elected president without authority and without power overseen by a military council which has been appointed by the dictator and the ousted president.
The Muslim Brotherhood have to rely on the revolutionary youth of Egypt because they got their legitimacy from the revolution and not from the council. They have to keep struggling until they achieve the three demands. One of the demands has been achieved through a court which has ruled that arrest of civilians by the military police and the military intelligence is unconstitutional. So we have got rid of one, we have to get rid of the two until we get rid of the military council and start a new democracy in Egypt.
Roger Hardy: It is nice to be back here. It is a room where I have witnessed some very lively debates and have taken part in them. I share the
general tone of Dr Kabani’s remarks. I say this as someone who was exhilarated by the Al Tahir revolution. It was something extraordinary. I think that what was happening in Egypt was far more important than what was happening anywhere else which is not to say that what was happening elsewhere – in Tunisia, in Yemen and subsequently in Libya was not important. But Egypt with its weight is unique in the Arab world. The sound the echo of the fall of Hosni Mubarak was as dramatic as the fall of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad in 2003 with the all important distinction that the people themselves had overthrown the ruler. The Egyptian people had overthrown Hosni Mubarak.
When my long time friend Hussein Araia wrote a very pessimistic piece in the New York Review of Books a piece he wrote with Robert Maley I thought he was too pessimistic. Most of what he said has been borne out by events. You have to struggle to find reasons for optimism in the situation right now. What we have witnessed in the last few days is essentially the death of the Egyptian revolution and it is going to be very hard for the revolution to regain its momentum.
In my analysis of the situation I shall look at three of the main actors in the drama and in a curious way when I come to the end it seems to me they have at least one thing in common. I will hold fire on this. There are three extremely different actors – two internal and one external.
I am going to argue that they have one characteristic in common in their approach to this situation.
Let us begin with the military who are at the center of the stage whether we like it or not. The Egyptian military has asserted its dominance in the last few days in the most unsubtle fashion. It has asserted two thing simultaneously: its dominance of the political game and the complete lack of accountability in the political game. So the military has not shown its mockery for the will of the people in a subtle way – implicitly. It has been very in your face.
The ballot boxes had scarcely closed when they came up with their series of measures which nullified the will of the people in very important respects. And then we have this extraordinary sense of anticipation waiting to see, as I would put it, whether they would dare to give the presidency to Mr Shafiq or whether they would out of the goodness of their hearts acknowledge the victory of Mohammed Mursi while essentially having deprived him of most of this powers.
The military is principally responsible. It is not the only party responsible but it is overwhelmingly responsible for the mishandling of the transition in Egypt. Other people may have made their mistakes. I will refer to at least one of these parties in a moment. When friends say to me thee military are really smart and they have a strategy I give them a funny look.
The military has zigged and zagged. Their policy has been reactive and not proactive. They do something and then they reverse it. They do something and a large number of people take to the streets so they modify what they have done or they reverse what they have done. They are clearly looking over their shoulder at what the Obama administration may or may not say, what it might want or not want. They have not shown the kind of coherence that would justify the term strategy. Do the have interests? You bet. Do they have preferences? Certainly. But they don’t have a coherent strategy as a way of achieving and harnessing these interests. The military does not have a strategy but at the same time it has made itself the dominant player.
The second factor that I want to look at are the Islamists. Do they have strategy. The Muslim Brotherhood has without doubt, been one of the main beneficiaries of the Egyptian Revolution. Many Egyptians, whether they like the brotherhood or hate the brotherhood will say politically speaking that they are the main beneficiaries of the revolution. I would confine myself to saying that they are one of the main beneficiaries of the revolution and I would put it that way for reasons that I hope will become apparent in a moment.
Their success is not without its constraints. This would be true even if the military had not done what they did in the past few days. What do I mean? Let us look at the degree of success first. I don’t think we can take this away from the Muslim Brotherhood. They have shown time and time again since Tahir Square their ability to bring large numbers of people out onto the street. They have shown the degree of mobilization and grass roots organization which they possess and which nobody else has in Egypt.
They don’t have to pay $150 to get people out onto the streets from villages and towns. People are motivated to come out from the suburbs of Cairo and the main towns and from many of the provincial area of Egypt.
The Brotherhood has made mistakes and for the sake of time I will focus on one mistake. Once they go installed in parliament – the parliament that is now considered null and void but which has existed for several months since those first free and fair elections. Once comfortably installed in the sense that they had a lot of seats the brotherhood sought to dominate the process of drafting a new constitution. They did so in a way that alienated not only a large number of MPs outside the brotherhood but it also alienated a large number of Egyptians. They were deemed to be flexing their muscles in an unacceptable way. There appeared to be a contradiction between this and the more modest language they used prior to the elections. They said they would not go for the presidential elections and then they went for the presidential elections. “We will go for a national unity government, we are speaking the language of national unity.” What document is more important in national unity than drafting the constitution. Do you want the big family of Egyptians, the Copts, the women, the young including the young revolutionaries, people on the left, weak though they may be compared with the old Egyptian left of decades goneby. Or do you want to dominate the constitution making with your own MPs and therefore arose all sorts of fears and apprehensions on the part of the others?
The Islamists now find themselves a year and a half on in a rather paradoxical position. They have scored a great success at the ballot box but they find themselves constrained most obviously by the military and the way that the military has neutered the presidency and taken away many of the powers of the presidency. But the constraints that the brother hood have been under have been there for many months before the military acted in this soft coup, whatever you want to call it. Why?
What constrains them and what will continue constraining them in my judgment is the nature of the situation itself. I will put it very briefly because of time. This Egyptian revolution, this would-be revolution was not essentially about religion. It was about getting rid of the dictatorship. I don’t mean that religion is not an issue and that it is not important. I mean it is not the reason for which people went to Tahrir Square. I think the Muslim Brotherhood understand this very well. It was not their show in the beginning. It became their show. They have to acknowledge whether they like it or not (and I am not making a judgment, I don’t know whether they like it or not) that they have to work with others because that is the nature of the new situation.
This is not Iran in 1979 and it is definitely not Algeria at the beginning of the 1990s with the FIS. It is not for a whole host of reasons. We have to ignore a whole lot of hysterical Western commentary which we are still getting, I am sorry to say. This is a new game and this new game has rules by which the brotherhood has to play. Sadly the rules of the game are being rigged as they go along by the military, they are not static. But the situation is essentially a nationalist one. It is a great nationalist sense of grievance against the old regime. Among the many challenges the Brotherhood has to face, and again I would say this is a constraint.
What do the majority of Egyptians want from the new president Mohammed Mursi? They want jobs, they want security, they want law and order and they want it now. Not promises in three months time or in six months time. The economy is in dire straits, the tourists have gone away, the foreign investors have gone away. This is what the Egyptians want and this would be a huge test for anyone coming in – whoever won the presidential elections. I think the brotherhood are shrewd enough to understand what I would call this heavy burden of expectation on their shoulders.
Let me very briefly go to the third actor that has not come into the picture very much. That is the Obama administration. I mention them as an external player partly because I was in Washington when all this began at the beginning of last year. I watched what seemed to be the fumbling of the Obama administration to come to terms with what was happening in Egypt.
What happened was the Barack Obama was always one to give a rhetorical response to a world crisis. He gave a speech, then another speech and a good deal of rhetorical support to the notion of democracy in Egypt. He put himself out on a limb in terms of what he said he wanted. He has found himself repeatedly embarrassed by what has happened on the ground in Egypt. This is the way I would put it – by the limits to the leverage that he has.
When I say this I am very conscious that I have long-standing discussions, sometimes debates with friends from the Middle East, Arabs and Iranians. Where they see Western conspiracies I see cock ups. There have been conspiracies in the past – let us not go into them. But I see the Arab spring – let us use this term whether we like it or not. I see the West as being essentially an onlooker as the Arab spring unfolds. Many of you will disagree with me on this. I do not meant that the West has no levers to pull. I mean they have few levers to pull and when they pull them it does not necessarily work and achieve the effect that you want.
The lever they pulled was burning the telephone lines between Washington and Cairo to their allies in the Egyptian military. Get rid of the dictator and don’t kill your own people. Really simple. Did it have some effect. Is that it? Is that one $1.3bn a year since Camp David has bought America? It ain’t much in my judgment. They paid all the money and that is the military amount of the aid. In my view these three players, the military, the Islamists and the Obama administration in Washington all have their interests, they all have their preferences – not one of them has a strategy.
Dr Mohammad Abdul Wahid Ghanim: We need to move forward with the Arab spring because we have been marching backwards. I would like to take a different approach. I believe that for almost any subject we have to start with the general concept and then move to the specific.
The geographical position of Egypt in relation to Africa, the Middle East and Europe – its frontier with Palestine – Israel and the relationship with the United States. You have to put those together. Egypt has a history of thousands of years in the region. There is a mystery about the nation which built the pyramids and this mystery has an importance and can create an inroad into Egypt. Egypt is in the heart of the Middle East where the other element is religion. Religion in Egypt has a huge significance and there is a relationship between Christians and Muslims. In Egypt it is a simple relationship because we believe in Jesus. In one way this conflict is simplistic. But in Christianity there is a church whereas in Islam there is no church. Secularism in Europe versus the church. In politics in Egypt we talk about the Islamists, the liberals, the secularists. How they all come to the general political arena is very complex.
I will also highlight the issue of the state as a state. The state has been under the rule of the British for a while. But what about the concept of the state. In the Muslim Brotherhood we believe in the comprehensive understanding of Islam. I find the entity of the state has a different definition. In Islam you have the entity of nations. We don’t mind the entity of the state but when the entity of the state comes into the account of the entity of the nation that is the negative aspect. When the national security of the Egyptian state comes as a burden to a country like Palestine that is not a good sign. It is not a positive feature of the state. All this effects directly or indirectly what happened in Egypt.
We believe that fate is in God’s hands and it is a factor in all human activity whether we like it or not. If we are uncertain or it is unknown we have to believe it exists. Whatever analysis you are going to apply you have to know that the will of the human is limited. The main power which affects the fate of human society is the will of God.
Certainly as we live in this life everything works according to some sort of order. I believe as a Muslim this world goes in order. Whether this order is about the physical properties feature and how they work together. Human and non human society work in perfect order within the laws and regulations. When we study Allah we should take into account the general rules of controlling humans in society Maybe we have different sets of rules but as Muslims we get these rules from the Qu’ran and Sunnah.
Let us go to the different revolutions. I will not provide much analysis. I will give an example. There is a ship at sea. When the sea is calm that was Egypt. And the people who ran the ship thought that the clam is forever although they have abused the people inside the ship to the maximum. But they never felt there was any danger to the ship. There were other factors – maybe the wind, maybe hurricanes or which nobody was aware. That is an accumulation as a result of the abuse of the will of the people.
Maybe you will say the people in the ship have no power whatsoever. Even the people when they are upset they create energy and with this energy reaches an certain level they become affected more strongly then anything we know. Many factors came out of the will of the people. When the people reached that critical mass, that critical energy then the revolution comes naturally. And that is again one of the social rules which is fixed. Any nation can take as much abuse as the law of society can take but after that the energy bursts and everything changes.
No one in history gives up power or privilege voluntarily. The state tried to say that Mubarak was in control but he was not in control. The revolution happened. The physical rule is that every action has a reaction. We had a huge revolution but it had a reaction. When you see the abuse of power, the nepotism, favoritism, unequal opportunity, poverty and health and education beyond the minimum standard this has a huge effect. When people break the fear barrier you cannot control them. You have to respect them.
Mubarak has gone but he was the head of the system. If you go the structure it does not have ahead without a body. It does have a structure. But the structure remains. Getting rid of the structure is not as easy as getting rid of the person. That requires a long time. Egypt started with a successful revolution getting rid of the head of the state or the landmark figure and it started another phase. You could call it the transmission period. Human beings do not change over night because it is a multi structure and those multi structures are connected. If you try to adjust the economic structure you have got a social and political structure to go with it. That structure will remain.
You have a complete juristic vacuum because the dictator does not like a good constitution and a good judicial system and these are part of manipulating power. Economically there are a lot of monopolies. It is very difficult for those who control the means of production overnight. They will be part of the counter revolution.
We have passed through a good deal of the transition period. Now we have a president and we are about to elect people to draft the constitution. It takes a bit longer to describe the position of the army. I think we are moving in the right direction for Egypt and for the whole region.
* Dr Aly El Kabbani is a Journalist and a Political analyst on Middle East affairs. He was working from 1978 to 1981 Journalist with Al-Hawadeth magazine, a weekly socio-political Pan Arab magazine. From January 1982 to June 1983 he was working with ”2000 Magazine”, a monthly futuristic magazine. From July 1983 to 1990 he was the General manager of the ”Islamic Press Agency”, publishing 5 different magazines. From 1991 to date: Free Lance Journalist and Political analyst on Middle East affairs on TV and Radio.
**Roger Hardy is a visiting researcher at London School of Economics, has been a Middle East and Islamic affairs analyst with the BBC World Service for over twenty years. He has made a series of radio programmes about Muslims in the Middle East, Europe and south Asia, and is a regular contributor to the Economist, International Affairs and the New Statesman.
***Dr Mohammad Abdul Wahid Ghanim is a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. He studied at the University of Cairo and obtained a BSc degree in Economics. He holds a PhD degree in Islamic Economics at Lampeter University in Wales. Dr Ghanim is the author of many articles on Islamic economics and practical obstacles in modern world. He is also the author of a book on “Prohibition of Usury in Quran and Prophet’s tradition”, and a study under publishing on the concept of money in Islam. Dr Ghanim is well-placed to offer a new look at the on-going political developments in Egypt.
