August 19, 2013
Who Do They Think They are Kidding?
Egypt During the Reign of the Lunatics
by MOHAMED MALIK and MOHAMAD OMAR
Giza.
Following our last dispatch from Giza on 14th August, after being brutally
evicted from our protest camp in Nahda Square in front of Cairo University, our
group proceeded to join the protest at Mostafa Mahmoud square near the Zamalek
Sports Stadium.
Unfortunately this area, known as Mohandseen, is a wealthy of area Cairo where
the shop owners, residents and businesses are pro-army and anti-Morsi. Just to
remind you, Cairo along with the areas to the north immediately surrounding
Cairo were the areas which brought a majority for the army’s candidate in the
presidential elections, Aḥmad Shafiq.
Mohandseen would have been one of the zones where the army had an overwhelming
majority, because many of those that benefit most from the patronage system
that is the Egyptian state live there, whilst the army lies at the apex of this
food chain.
The political conflict in Egypt is roughly-speaking between the haves and the
have-nots, although it is incorrect to say that the pro-Morsi camp is the just
‘the poor’, for we all own our own businesses. It’s just that we struggle under
the red tape and the formal and ‘informal’ taxes imposed on us by the
bureaucrats, and are more or less condemned to an eternity of being struggling
SME’s under the current system. Nothing gets done without kick-backs.
It’s hardly surprising that the beneficiaries of this patronage system hate the
Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi, because its so-called ‘Nahda’ (Renaissance)
manifesto was very simple: it intended to ‘clean up’ the state and reduce
corruption, as its central policy plank for increasing business, jobs, and
growth.
It’s also not surprising that one of the residents of Mohandseen shouted at us
from his balcony, when we left al-Nahda Square in Giza and walked towards
Mohamed Mahmoud Square, and asked us whether we had been well and truly
‘barbecued’, given the 6 am onslaught of bulldozers and armoured personnel
carriers crrying flame throwers
Unfortunately once at Mohammed Mahmoud we came under intense fire, and two of
our colleagues were shot. Mohamed Osman died from bullet wounds to his head and
chest. Muhannad Ramadan survived a shot to the head, but lost sight in both
eyes and will likely be affected by brain damage. Those that saved Muhannad’s
life were overworked doctors from the Muslim Brotherhood who always work for
free. We had to retreat that day and go home.
It is rather unfortunate that many reports call our demonstrations ‘Muslim
Brotherhood’ protests, because when we last did a count at al-Nahda square of
the proportion of Muslim Brothers there, they came to about 20-25%. This is in
fact a representative proportion across all protesters at the moment.
Furthermore, for well over a month now, the protests have been managed by The
National Alliance in support of Legitimacy (Shar‘iyya): N. B Shar‘iyya or
legitimacy is not Shari‘a or Islamic law. This National Alliance, which for
instance has announced 9 demonstrations for today, the 19th August, includes
elements of the 6th April movement, and the whole of The Front for National
Conscience. The Front for National Conscience is headed by ex-diplomat Ibrahim
Yusri, who was ambassador for Egypt in Algeria during the political crisis of
1991-2 over the role of theFront Islamique du Salut (FIS) in political, and
talks here to al-Jazeera Arabic of his experience at that time and his strong
opposition to the removal of Morsi as duly elected president and to the
annulment of the legally binding constitution.
Yusri is very critical of any political ‘accomodation’, the oft-touted idea of
a policy of ‘inclusiveness’ which Morsi is criticised for not following, and
insists on the method of the ballot box as the only objective method for
democracy. And this is our view, and why we are in the streets from the outset.
So yes, we are Morsi supporters, but we are not all Muslim Brothers. Morsi in
fact did the impossible, in acquiring the legitimacy of the ballot box for the
majority in Egypt through his single-minded dedication.
Morsi came to power having tasted the harsh hand of the Egyptian state. He had
been in jail for defending the independence of the judiciary under Mubarak, and
when he came to power, he abided by the law and allowed his enemies total
freedom of speech. If certain measures were taken to stop courtiers of the
ex-President from directly insulting the Prophet, this was no disabling of free
speech, but a measure intended to maintain the peace and to try and prevent the
very divisiveness and confrontation that these insults were in fact intended to
generate. Morsi, unlike Sissi, never closed down TV stations that opposed him,
however virulent their attacks.
Given his experience, Morsi was under no illusion as to the possible outcome of
his rule. His one and only goal would have been to create an elected
representative government in Egypt, and everything else would have taken second
place to this primary aim. His 22nd November 2012 decree, which he rescinded on
8th December 2012 and which gave him emergency powers, became the subject of a
massive attack by the Egyptian media, calling it the main ‘disaster’ of his
rule. But this was clearly only the case because Morsi had achieved what he
wanted to achieve, which was an electoral law and a Senate, and this was
exactly what the owners of the Egyptian media, the beneficiaries of the
Egyptian patronage system, had wanted to avoid.
These achievements would have allowed the election of a new Parliament, the old
one having been cancelled (unnecessarily) by the Constitutional Court staffed
entirely with courtiers of the ex-President, and this could have been achieved
by July 2013, if the coup hadn’t happened.
But the coup was still too late. Morsi had achieved his aims – legitimacy for
the majority of the Egyptian people in 5 different elections, Parliamentary,
Constitutional and Presidential, in all of which he had, to the fury of the old
régime, managed to achieve a majority for his manifesto. What Morsi has done
will go down in history as one of the major turning points in Middle-Eastern
history. Political Islam, which has traditionally been a one-dimensional
creedal culture, has now been repositioned in the wider consciousness in terms
of democratic legitimacy.
This is entirely against the interests of a military régime that has, since
1973, built its power and reputation, not on fighting wars to protect its
people, but on running a protection racket.
Morsi’s main goal has thus been achieved, and the military have consequently
gone berserk: the reign of the lunatics has begun.
After going home, on Friday 16th August, we joined the ‘Day of Rage’ march
through Ramses square. Once again the march was ambushed and hundreds of people
were killed, and once again the intensity of the fire, from rooftops,
helicopters, and side streets meant that we had to go home. But a great of
people who were trapped in Ramses Square rushed to the protection of the nearby
Fatah Mosque. Hundreds of people were trapped there and came under siege by the
‘baltagiyya’ and the police for 13 hours.
The ‘baltagiyya’ you will remember are the criminals on parole that were the
creation of Omar Suleiman’s torture cells, who were used against the protesters
of the original 25th January 2011 protests, and who acquired special notoriety
on the 2nd February the day of the ‘Battle of the Camel’. These same
‘baltagiyya’ became the shock troops of the anti-Morsi protests on June 30th in
Tahrir square.
The ‘baltagiyya’ are useful, because they do anything the police want them to
do, and they keep the army mostly out of the fray. They are also dispensable,
and unexplainably end up as ‘casualties of Islamist shooters’. They and plain
clothes police also give foreign reporters the chance to write that Morsi
supporters are terrorists and carry guns.
But a new lunacy seized the police and the army who took over from the
‘baltagiyya’ in the case of the siege of the Fatah Mosque, for a major
‘photo-op’, when it was announced that there was incoming fire from the mosque,
and that ‘terrorists’ were trapped inside. Hazem al-Beblawi, the prime
minister, a septuagenarian in his second childhood, came on TV to announce this
and State Media flashed a caption saying ‘Egypt Fights Terrorism’. See the
picture below:
The reports came that the terrorists had positioned a sniper in the minaret of
the mosque, shooting at the police and the army. The problem with the report
was that, as Abdul Wahid Ashour, Editor-in-Chief of the MENA (Middle east and
North Africa) News Agency, later tweeted, the entrance to the minaret was from
the outside, and there was no way the protesters trapped inside could have come
out to go onto the minaret. See picture of tweet below:
Ashour exclaims at the end of his revelation: liars and idiots! Still, Ramses
Street was jam packed with armoured personnel carriers, National Guard and
soldiers in a scene reminiscent of the final minutes of a Blues Brothers film.
At the same time a spate of attacks on churches were reported. Islamists were
apparently going mad with anger and taking it out on Christians, all the usual
NGO suspects immediately issued all the usual demands for the Egyptian
government to crack down on inciters of religious hatred. Everybody had
forgotten that the ex-Mubarak Minister of Interior, Habib al-Adly, had been in
jail suspected of engineering the Al-Qiddisin Church bombing on 1st January
2011, which he had blamed on ‘the army of Islam’ (yet another incarnation of
the ‘baltagiyya’). In the case of the current church attacks however, it
happens that a local vicar at a church in al-Minya, said quite clearly that the
‘baltagiyya’ and the police were the ones responsible for the attacks and the
fires started by the throwing of Molotov cocktails.
Meanwhile Nobel Peace Laureate Obama believes that the situation is ‘complex’,
but that the protection money needs to go on being paid, to ensure stability in
the region. The problem is that Sissi is demented, and his subalterns, those
that are not ‘detained’ for insubordination, are mentally retarded. With
friends like these, you don’t need enemies.
The other problem is that we’re going to continue to demonstrate and protest.
We owe it to Mohamed Osman, Muhannad Ramadan, Esam Sayyed another colleague of
ours whom we learned on Facebook has died at Raba’a al-Adawiyya, as well as all
the other dead and wounded
Mohamed Malik(weaver) can be reached at [email protected].
Mohamad Omar(surgeon), can be reached at [email protected]).
Also contributing to this report: Badr Mohamad Badr (teacher), Yasser Mahran
(lawyer), Ahmad Abdel-Ghafar (businessman) Hossam Elzomor (journalist), Sayed
Khamis (teacher), Mohamad Gheith (pharmacist),others whom we thank have helped
in the redaction of this article
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/19/egypt-during-the-reign-of-the-lunatics/
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