Violence in Egypt                             Photo courtesy

Egypt, Arab’s most populous nation, is at war against itself. The exhilaration that followed the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 seems very distant now. The current crisis has now passed the alarming stage and entered the critical stage, and Egypt will implode if nothing is done to resolve the rising bloodshed in the country.

From the outset, the plan to depose the government of Mohamed Morsi through a military putsch was always bound to backfire. The risk of violent escalation was always likely in a divided country where one side declined to be ruled by the Brotherhood, while the Brotherhood itself appeared apathetic to political pluralism. Far from marking the closing chapter, the popular coup ushered in a period of strife that could drag the country towards civil war. The coup was not only wrong, it was also a tactical mistake. The current violence has served to unite Egypt’s various Islamist factions—some of which had previously rejected the Brothers almost as keenly as secular Egyptians did. The Brother’s ineptitude and abuse of power is now disappearing under a mantle of injustice and suffering. At worst, the spectre of Algeria looms: the army there prevented Islamists from taking office after they won the first round of an election in 1991, and as many as 200,000 died in the decade-long bloodbath that ensued.

Egypt is currently at cross-roads. The military might believe that a ‘might-is-right’ approach can return the country to the status quo ante of the Mubarak era, but the revolutionary dynamics have made that unfeasible. The problem is that neither side can claim outright victory. The roots of the Brotherhood are too embedded in many parts of Egyptian life that the notion that the 1928 political organisation can simply be dissolved by a coup is nonsensical—nothing is more absurd. Indeed, plans to formally crush the Brotherhood – portrayed universally as ‘terrorist’ in the official media – appear to spell an end to even slim hopes for political dialogue or manoeuvre that might resolve the current impasse.

The brutal attack on the Brotherhood’s protest sit-in, hard-on-the-heels of an earlier massacre of supporters of the ousted Morsi, has left hundreds dead (including the son of Mohamed Badje, the Brotherhood’s leader) and nearly 3,000 injured. The violence has since spread to other cities, including Alexandria and Suez. A score of churches were burned by angry Islamists. The government declared a curfew in some provinces and a month-long state of emergency across the country. The last time that happened, when Hosni Mubarak took over as president following the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, the state of emergency remained in force for three decades. These new deaths fuelled a grimly confrontational mood and brought into stark relief the fast-fading hopes for the future of the 2011 revolution that had come to symbolise the Arab spring. Indeed, talk of an Egyptian civil war is no longer outlandish. If anyone required a metaphor for the current state of emergency in Egypt over the past weeks, it was provided by the video footage of men jumping from one of the Nile bridges 40 feet on to concrete to avoid gunfire.

For a disciplined political organisation that has survived and thrived through eight decades of persecution, it was inevitable that the Brotherhood will react with an equal measure of bloodshed. The recent violence at the al-Fath mosque, and the proposal to outlaw the Brotherhood, are both more likely to further complicate and deepen the current division in the country than to herald the beginning of an end to Egypt’s crisis. Plans for the legal dissolution of the Brotherhood is likely to force it back underground and justify a crackdown that would return it to its position as a banned yet tolerated political organisation during the days of deposed president Hosni Mubarak and his predecessors.

Although it was argued that the military coup might pave the way for the ‘restoration of democracy’ to Egypt, the reality on ground is that it dealt the coup de grâce to what was a deeply flawed but still recognisably democratic period of transition, ushering in a period of horrific massacres followed by the re-imposition of Egypt’s notorious emergency law allowing military detention and undermining due process in the judiciary. Every opportunity offered to the Egyptian military to step back from the planned coup was jettisoned. Almost daily calls directly from the US Secretary of defence Chuck Hagel to General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to abandon a bloody crackdown were rejected as was the offer of a political strategy to break the deadlock, paradoxically accepted by the leadership of the Brotherhood.

This is not to say that the Brotherhood is without blame. Although it was a victim of a military putsch, its modus operandi over the past two years in its pursuit of its own factional interest have alienated large numbers of potential allies. Also, since the coup, the Brotherhood has actively sought to validate its victimhood by treading a dangerous path that can only further arouse, rather than douse, violent confrontation. The Brotherhood shows no sign of backing down and has urged its supporters to continue taking to the streets. According to a statement released by the organisation: ‘Our rejection of the coup regime has become an Islamic, national and ethical obligation that we can never abandon.’ Each Islamist challenge is likely to strengthen those in the army arguing for further suppression.

This aside, the international community must take a part of the blame for the recent crimes in Egypt. Despite the glaring evidence of continuing and rampant human rights abuses by the Egyptian security forces, which has raged on over the past two years, they have been allowed to act with impunity to the point they felt able to plot and launch a coup. The army’s violence since then has been disastrous. When it shot scores of people on July 8th, it drew a baleful lesson from the tepid Western response: that it could get away with it. Following the bloody coup, the United States, Egypt’s major military ally, which provides $1.3bn yearly in largely military aid, has seemed utterly unwilling to call recent events what they most clearly are—a military coup. This imperviousness on the part of the US is largely due to the fact that calling a coup a coup carries legal obligations, not least the suspension of that military aid.

One of the key factors underpinning the current Egyptian crisis is the continuing economic crisis unleashed by the revolution, which has led many to ostensibly believe that the coup may usher in a period of economic stability. Poignantly, it did not. The generals’ major mistake was to ignore the chief lesson of the Arab spring, namely that ordinary people yearn for dignity and reject the apparatus of a police state; they want better lives, decent jobs and some basic freedoms. In their reduced state, Egypt’s Islamists still make up 30% or so of the population. Thus, the generals cannot suppress them without also depriving millions of other Egyptians of the freedom that they crave.

Moreover, in the light of recent happenings, Egypt has been increasingly treated as a pariah state. Denmark recently announced that it was suspending its aid to Egypt. Last month the IMF abandoned negotiations over a $4.8bn loan. All this comes in addition to growing evidence that major foreign companies and investors are becoming increasingly wary of the restive situation in Egypt. Recently, Shell, General Motors, Electrolux and Toyota have shut down their plants, while major European tour companies have once again pulled back. It is important to recall that one of the important factors that persuaded the Army to turn against the former president, Hosni Mubarak, was the shutting down of large sectors of Egypt’s economy.

Without an urgent demilitarisation of Egypt’s politics and withdrawal of the army from the political process, the current crisis bedevilling Egypt is likely to continue with no end in sight. Only a return to a peaceful democratic transition can bring meaningful rewards for all Egyptians. Resolving the Egyptian crisis requires an inclusive and pluralistic political process that includes all parties, including keeping the Brotherhood on the political field to guarantee their political and civil rights.

There is also a need to release the over 1,000 Muslim Brotherhood members recently arrested. The two biggest organisations in Egypt are the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. Clearly leaders in both organisations must make every effort to end the bloodshed immediately, and justice will require that criminal charges be pressed on both sides. Finally, the international community must also intervene. The US should cancel joint military exercises due in September and withhold its next tranche of military aid until a civilian government has been elected and takes office. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries should not financially support the generals just because they share a mutual dislike of the Brotherhood. Perhaps, as so often in the past, Egypt will find a way to muddle through.

By Daniel E. Agbiboa

The author is a PhD scholar in the School of Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. His research interests are primarily in the field of conflict, security and development.