Fighting for turf
Where is the Muslim Brotherhood/Egyptian government dynamic
heading?
Omayma
Abdel-Latif looks into a long-troubled relationship on the brink
of a major confrontation over reform
 Click to view
caption |
The scope and significance of the recent
agitation for change will probably depend on how three key players
-- the state, the Brotherhood and the new secular reform movements
-- will interact; right: Akef at the press conference calling for
the release of Brotherhood detainees
|
The photographs on the walls of the Muslim Brotherhood's Al-Malek
Al-Saleh Street headquarters, north of Cairo, may help explain the
recent escalation in the conflict between the Egyptian government and
the outlawed group. The shots were taken during recent demonstrations
organised by the Brotherhood in Cairo and other Egyptian governorates,
and feature captions such as "Freedom is the only path to political
reform", and "We want real political reform".
The Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mohamed Mehdi Akef, called the
demonstrations "symbolic". Others have termed the rallies -- which
managed to amass thousands of supporters -- a message of defiance. If
anything, the fact that the group managed to bypass ironfisted security
procedures to successfully organise three pro-reform demonstrations in
less than a week was nothing if not unexpected.
Akef, however, said the government should not have been too
surprised. He disclosed that the group had approached security officials
nearly three weeks ago for permission to hold the demonstrations. "We
asked them to find a place for us to hold our pro-reform rallies and
freely express the public's demands. They did not respond." Striking out
on its own, the group managed to hold demonstrations in Cairo and more
than 10 other governorates last Wednesday. On Friday, the same scenario
took place, while on Sunday nearly 3,000 women took part in a rally in
Alexandria to protest against the detention of hundreds of Brotherhood
members.
The surge in the group's street-based activism, however, has come at
a price, with hundreds of its members and sympathisers rounded up by the
police. While an Interior Ministry statement put the number of detainees
at 200, the group claimed that at least 2,000 people were taken into
custody. The arrest of Essam El-Erian, an outspoken member of the
group's Maktab Al-Irshad (guidance bureau), was a particular
blow. El- Erian's lawyer was quoted by the press as saying his client
had told interrogators that he would be running for president. The news
caused an uproar, with Akef saying the group had no knowledge of
El-Erian's intentions. The charges against El-Erian include being a
member of an outlawed group that seeks to overthrow the regime. The
death of group member Tareq Mahdi Ghannam, blamed on a harsh security
response to a rally in Mansoura, was also a major loss for the
Brotherhood.
The protests and arrests have raised questions about the fate of an
already troubled relationship with the state. The timing, just as the
government finds itself under tremendous pressure from civil and
political forces to move towards real reform, and coinciding with the
emergence of a nationalist pro-reform movement, has inspired a flurry of
questions about where the escalation might end up.
The Brotherhood demonstrations were seen as a radical shift in the
group's thinking, a clear break from its long-standing tradition (and
conscious choice) of avoiding direct confrontation with the state during
Hosni Mubarak's rule. Although that strategy served to protect the
group, despite the occasionally harsh security strike, it also catalysed
a peculiar relationship whose core element was mistrust. Today, the
regime sees the group as seeking to take advantage of an improved
democratic climate -- coloured by international pressure for reform --
as a means of gaining power. Other detractors take this argument
further, suggesting that if the Brotherhood did end up coming to power,
they would change the rules of the game, throwing democracy out the
window.
When such scenarios are put to the group's senior leaders, their
routine response is that the Brotherhood is not seeking power, just
their legitimate political rights. Brotherhood sources also speak openly
of having "a channel for dialogue" with the security apparatus; one of
the reasons the group decided to go ahead with its protests, Akef said,
was a "feeling that security officials were showing [greater]
understanding of our demands for political reform. We thought they were
also looking out for Egypt's interests, but when we approached them with
our request to organise rallies, they simply turned on us."
One Brotherhood source said there are factions within the regime that
are hostile to the group, who end up manipulating the security apparatus
into clamping down on all pro-reform activists. "I know for a fact that
some parts of the regime understand our aspirations, but there are
others who are very hostile," Akef said.
The escalation may have reached its peak when Brotherhood sources
were quoted by independent daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm on
Sunday as saying that high-ranking security officials had threatened "to
squash the group", if it did not stop taking its demands to the
streets.
Deputy supreme guide Mohamed Habib and others in the Brotherhood,
however, do not see a major confrontation on the way. Habib told Al-
Ahram Weekly on Monday that the group rejects the idea of a
confrontation "outright. It is not on our agenda, simply because it does
not serve my cause. We want to express our views in the most civilised
and peaceful way possible. Our agenda is reformist, not confrontational,
but the security response has always been hostile."
There are growing fears, however, that the first victims of the
escalation will be none other than the nascent reform movement itself.
In fact, some interpret the Brotherhood's moves as an attempt to hijack
the newly founded reform movement, and claim the street for itself.
Wahid Abdel- Meguid of Al-Ahram's Centre for Strategic Studies said the
group's actions were a reflection of what he described as "a sense of
exaggerated power" that drives the aloof manner in which the Brotherhood
deals with other political forces.
Abdel-Meguid's view is echoed by Abdel- Halim Qandeel, a founding
member of the Egyptian Movement for Change, also known as Kifaya
(Enough). "They feel they are a very influential group that wants to,
and can, run the process of change without embracing other political and
civil forces," Qandeel told the Weekly.
He said the Brotherhood, encouraged by Kifaya 's breaking of
the street demonstration taboo, decided to make themselves more visible
as well. At the same time, Qandeel dismissed claims that the two groups
were fighting over turf. "The last thing we want is a fight over who
owns the street, or who has the ability to mobilise it better. The only
thing that matters is that more and more people realise that they have a
right to protest for their rights."
In Qandeel's view, a qualitative shift in the relationship between
his group and the Brotherhood took place during a demonstration at the
Press Syndicate on Sunday, when the two groups joined ranks to protest
against the detention of hundreds of Brotherhood members, calling out
unifying slogans like, "One movement, one hand."
This unity seemed to take on a life of its own just two days later,
on Tuesday, when an earlier call by Akef for civil disobedience as a
reform pressure tactic, re-emerged in a Kifaya statement as a
potential next step in their continuing protests against the status
quo.
