12 - 18 May 2005
Issue No. 742
Front Page
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
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
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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
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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.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/742/eg5.htm
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