We could have defeated the Brotherhood on our own.

“This is what the Muslim Brotherhood boils down to,” Fahmy told me. “They don’t have a project—it’s empty, flaky, vacuous.” The Brotherhood could have been defeated with time, Fahmy felt; calling in the military was a premature, and ultimately more reckless, choice. “I still believe that the Army takeover was the wrong thing to do,” he said. “We didn’t need the Army to do this for us. We could have defeated the Brotherhood on our own.” Joshua Hersh´s text in the The New Yorker in full can be read here. This is AUC history professor Khaled Fahmy´s view and i share it , in the sense that Egypt would have been much better off had not SCAF decided to oust President Morsi. In my view the MB and the Presidency was so weakend on 30 June , that it would have payed the political prize for it at the ballot box had only the then opposition and the Army held their guns.. We are now crawling nearer and nearer the political system we had on the eve of Jan25. The security state seems to be back. No real politics. The state of the media in terms of restrictions and (un)freedom and in terms of following in the footsteps of the state (read Army)reminds of the mood in America just after 9/11.. The killings can never be justified , forgiven or forgotten. Just as Mubarak lost his legitimacy on 28 of February 2011, Morsi on 22 November 2012 , so did Sisi and company on August 14 , in my view even before that. The fact is that during the 62 days since Morsi´s ousting, there has been more killed than during the 18 days of al Tahrir in January-February 2011. The current regime are doing the same mistake as the two previous ones. Aiming for "Winner takes all" strategy. Excluding at least 1/3 of the population. Instead of a constitution of "Consensus" that the then opposition had on top of their agenda , while still belonging to the opposition". Now when they have the chance , they opt for the same strategy as they accused Morsi for , the winner takes all scenario... It will come back to haunt them , and not only for the constitution. For more on how Khaled Fahmy views 3 July: How do you describe what happened on 3 July? KF: I can’t give a clear answer, but what I can say is that we had an overpowering move by the people. It sent a clear message to the regime that "your legitimacy has fallen." This is a very hard message because those who were in power were elected; their legitimacy was built upon the ballot box. What the message implied is that the legitimacy of a regime couldn’t be merely reduced to a set of formal electoral procedures. The legitimacy of this regime fell because it violated the constitution and the state institutions, eventually building resistance against them. The huge political vacuum, as the regime lost the support of the institutions of the state, signaled the army to take action to save the entity of the state. The hard question now is on the legitimacy of the army’s intervention. If we took 'legitimacy' in its literal and lawful terms, this would be considered a coup d’état. However, if we questioned this procedural understanding of legitimacy, taking into account the profound message the people sent, then a new legitimacy has been constituted. We can say that the army had to move and bow to the popular will. The legitimacy of this intervention derived from the will of the people. This raises another question: Will this army bow to the demands of the people or will it take advantage of the current political vacuum to impose its own agenda? I’m aware that the army did not only move to defend the national security and freedoms but also to defend its own interests and aims. The challenge we face now is how to insist on our demand to have the right to control and observe all of the state institutions, including the military and the presidency, but this is still unmarked territory. Joshua Hersh´s text in the The New Yorker in full can be read here.

ICG Report on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt´s political landscape

A new International Crisis Group paper on how to bring about, and further the integration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the official political system is out today.

Egypt’s Muslim Brothers: Confrontation or Integration? looks at the possibilities for integration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the political system of Egypt, as part of a reform of the same system. I´ve just recieved it and haven´t had any time to read through it yet, but wanted to share the link to the report, and i´ll try to comment on it further , later. It can be found in it´s entirety here( 24 pages PDF). For those of you who feels that you don´t have the time for the full report, the executive summary and recommendations, and the press release could offer an alternative. Here is an AFP-wire on the report.

Instant Response from the MB

The Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Guide Muhammed Habib has this view on the recomendations of the ICG towards the MB concerning Women and Copts:

Habib responded to the recommendation that advises the group to alter its position on the role of women and non-Muslims in public life saying, “there should be no distinction based on religion or sex in public life. The only criterion is efficiency.”

As to whether the Muslim Brotherhood will review its stance in the party platform on the nomination of women and Copts to presidency, Habib said “we have reached this opinion by consensus, and it should be noted that it is not binding. Anyone can freely nominate him/herself to presidency and the final decision is that of the people. Also we have no problem at all in listening to others’ views on that issue provided they have a solid argument.”

Regarding the MB’s stance towards Christian minorities, he said the MB is keen on the Copts’ vivid participation in political and social life.

“Our Coptic brothers must be engaged in political life because they are an essential part of the Egyptian society who should fully take part in Egypt’s reform and development.”

It sounds nice, but what does it really mean? What is the MB view on this, you have taken a consensus decision, but it´s binding? Once too often you are deliberately vague in my view.

The Muslim Brotherhood had a fantastic opportunity to show people that they believe in a fully pluralistic and democratic society, and to show that they once and for all had laid the politics of symbolics behind them, instead they gave us a platform that showed us that the old guard still rules undisputed. Instead of showing tolerance and the spirit of real national unity, all they could muster was conservatism and more of the same old melody. Let´s face it, as long as people see them self as Muslims and Christians first and Egyptians second, there isn´t going to be a Coptic President , no matter how qualified, but it would mean a great deal as a symbolic gesture for Copts to hear Mahdi Akef or Muhammed Habib state it loud and clear that they believe in equal and inclusive citizen rights without restrictions.

For women it´s not a matter of symbolic gestures, i hope that at least one woman will run for the Presidential office in 2011 and that we will have a lady as President by 2023, maybe i´m naivé, but regardless of that, women´s participation in politics will become routine in the next 20 years or so, and i could easily see Makarem al Deiri, Jehan Al-Halafawy or represetatives of the Ikhwan blogging generation Zaraá Khairat al Shater and Khadija Hassan Malek running both for parliament and for the office of President in the future, that is if you allow them, None of these personalities is less qualified to run than any of the 88 members of parlaiment that currently serve the parliament for the Ikhwan.

Khaled Hamza ordered to be released by State Security prosecution

The New Cairo State Security prosecution has ordered journalist and editor in Chief of the English language website Ikhwhanweb.com to be released. This hopefully means that both Khaled Hamza and Abdul-Jalil al Sharnouby, who holds the same position with the Arabic language website ikhwanonline.com and was freed on bail four days ago , could resume their respective work soon.

Khaled Hamza was arrested on February 20th this year.

This comes just hours after the harsh verdicts of 25 leading Muslim Brothers, at the end of a yearlong military trial at Hikestep.

UPDATE: Khaled Hamza has been released.

Khairat al Shater and Hassan Malek receives seven years prison sentences

The military trial at Hikestep has been a Kafkaesque nightmare that´s been going on for 12 months finally came to an end today.Unfortunately with an outcome that couldn´t have been a complete surprise to anyone who has been following this trial, whose final session had already been postponed twice.

25 of the 40 Muslim Brotherhood members got prison terms of between 10 years and three years. The number three in rank in the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat al Shater, and Hassan Malek received seven years prison terms. The two of them also got their property confiscated. Seven others got 10 years terms in absentia and 16 others was handed down terms of 18 months to five years. 15 were acquitted. Reuters have slightly different numbers in this report. The details of the verdicts was not clear at this point in time.


According to MB defense lawyer Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud, the judge made a hit and run appearence when issuing the rulling, not bothering to brief the MB lawyers who were waiting outside the courtroom, just like the families, human rights organizations and journalists, they were not allowed to be present in the court room during the final session, continuing the same pattern that has been the rule during this yearlong trial.
There were 34 arrests in connection to today´s verdict at Hikestep. Three journalists were briefly detained and then released, as were two sons of MB businessman Hassan Malek, their sister Khadigha was beaten by security personell according to her own account. The security measures taken to stop any manifestation in support of the detainess in connection to the final session.

The rulling is likely to be appealed by the defense, as a 2007 change in the judicial system open up for appeals on procedurial matters regarding military courts.

Human Rights organizations has repeatedly critized military trials of civilians, and today was no exception to that rule. Amnesty International called the verdicts ¨a perversion of justice¨

A presentation of the convicted can be found here.

More to follow Tomorrow.

Hamzawy/Herzallah paper on local elections

The Carnegie endowment has a new policy outlook paper out on the recent local elections in Egypt, written by AmrHamzawy and Mohammed Herzallah. It´s called Egypt’s Local Elections Farce: Causes and Consequences. I want to provide you with the link now, and hopefully comment on it later. The paper can be found here(10 pages pdf).

There is much to say about the elections, not the result in itself, but the way the election process was obstructed prior to election day. The significance of this election compared to previous elections of the 52600 seats on local councils that was up for grabs last Tuesday was in the neccesity after the constitutional amendments in March 2007 for any independent presidential candidate to be able to compete in the future presidential elections( the next one in 2011) to have the endorsement from , both the upper(majlis ash Shura) and lower(majlis ash Shaáb) houses of parliament as well as support from at least 10 members of local councils in 14 of 26 different Governates.

This backdoor to the Precidency is today the only chance for an organization like the Muslim Brotherhood to be able to field a candidate in the presidential elections for the forseeable future. For that reason it was in my view the wrong decision by the Ikhwan to boycott the elections. Yes it´s true that they wouldn´t have a chance to achieve that goal with the 20 candidates they would have been allowed to field in the end, compared to the 7000-10000 that they were planning to participate with in the first place, or the 500 or so that actually managed to register their names, but was overruled by the authourities anyway. but to boycott and to openly ask people to boycott the elections , in a election with somewhere in between 5-10 percent voter turnout does not constitute an effective approach to the problem. Furthermore they are letting their constituency of voters who proved so loyal to them in 2005, down. People who climbed ladders and qued for hours , despite the prescence of security forces whom tried it´s best to obstruct likely ikhwan woters from casting their wote, images very vividly remembered in our collective memory, but for some reason that is beyond my comprehension overlooked or not comnsidered important enough to reconnect with by the Muslim Brotherhood itself.

The weapon of electoral boycott should only be used as a last resort , and could only be useful as a concerted effort by the opposition in it´s entirety in my view. It´s something that the opposition has used much too often in the past, to the point of it being counterproductive. In this case it´s even impossible to meassure the effect of the boycott. You don´t stand a chance of using the moral card of democracy if you are giving up on whatever limited avenues to participate that is open to you.

The approach should have been to compete in thoce electoral precincts that was opened to Ikhwan candidates, and hope for MB mobilization to work it´s magic, while after the election fight the legal battle as to whether the election was free and fare or as Hamzawy/Herzallah argues on the contrary a farce.

These are the key points in the paper:

Key points:

• Current social and political unrest in Egypt is not the consequence of reform driven activism like that of 2004 and 2005, but a reaction to worsening economic conditions by independent and discordant activists. The regime’s repressive response—using security forces and various coercive methods to preempt or smother strikes—has failed to stabilize the street. The decentralized nature of these protests makes it more difficult for the regime to contain them, but also prevents the formation of a cohesive opposition movement with clear objectives.
• The regime has consistently failed to resolve the problems of relentless inflation, high unemployment, and crippled welfare system in the country. Minor steps taken by the government continue to fall short of the comprehensive social and economic reform needed.
• The Egyptian regime’s return to authoritarian methods impairs organized political opposition in the country, which in turn erodes the prospects of sustainable national and political recovery. But opposition forces are also partly responsible for their present condition. Their lack of credibility and discipline has undermined their ability to establish a reliable opposition front.
• The Brotherhood’s last-minute boycott of the local elections revealed the movement’s lack of consistency in its strategic thinking. The Brotherhood’s decision to boycott these elections conspicuously contradicts its previous commitment to advancing reform through political participation at all costs.

Reflecting on the Brotherhood’s boycott, the authors strike a cautionary note on the consequences.

“To the degree that the movement intended to retaliate for the regime’s flagrant actions, its decision may not pay off. After all, keeping the Muslim Brotherhood out of the local councils was the intention of the ruling establishment in the first place. What’s more, the movement is setting a dangerous precedent that the regime will certainly keep in mind: through sufficient political persecution and repression, the authorities can count on the Brotherhood to take itself voluntarily out the political equation,” they conclude

Khairat al Shater military trial verdict tomorrow?

On another related matter, another chapter in the hikestep nightmare will be written today. The military trial of Khairat al Shater and his 39 co-defandats will supposedly recieve their verdict today. Lets hope for the best. In a couple of hours we will hopefully know. For the time being one could perhaps find a small , but very limited joy in the fact that Abdul-Jaleel al-Sharnoubi, the editor in Chief of the Arabic language Ikwhanonline website was freed on bail four days ago.

Issam al Aryan op-ed on the Local Elections

The Muslim Brotherhood´s leading middle generation leader and head of the Political Bureau, Issam al Aryan has an op-ed in Forward on the Local Elections on Tuesday, April 8th.

We get to follow a MB candidate who is trying to run for a seat in the village Qawekeyya in the Delta. Muhamamed Shawkat al Malt, a 50 year old lawyer and blogger is one of several thousand candidates who tried to register their candidacy, but were ignored or turned down by the authorities, and like many he has filed a court appeal to make it on the ballot. An endeaouvor likely to be ignored and be in vain when the local elections is held on Tuesday. Read the full article by Fleishman/el Hennawy in today´s LA Times here.

In another development the Muslim Brotherhood decided on Thursday to give their moral support to the organizers of the General strike called for Sunday, 6th of April.

"We are with the strike as a means of expression and peaceful protest in the face of the despotic and suppressive actions of the executive authority,"

The 24 000 workers of Mahalla al Kubra´Misr Spinning and Weaving Company is striking on Sunday in protest of low wages.This has been a focal point of labour strikes for well over a year.

Kifayya is also organizing a demonstration in support of the workers in Giza on the same day.

April issue of Arab Reform Bulletin

The new April issue of the Arab Reform Bulletin is out. It contains an article by Khalil al Anani on the upcoming Local Elections in Egypt, set for April 8th. The article is a well worth read and is called - Egypt: Local Elections…the End of the Democratic Spring.

I have only one argument with the article, and that is it´s title, the Democratic spring has been over for quite a while. For me it ended on the day of the referendum to open up for multi-candidate Presidential elections. When NDP payed thugs attacked women on the stairs of the Journalists union.. For both the NDP and the Americans everything´s was over by February 06 when first the Muslim Brotherhood made such a strong showing in the Parliamentary elections, even though the interior ministry used all resources possible after the first part of the elections. When Hamas won the elections in Palestine, the game was over, and now we are back to Authocratic winter, with the latest chapter being the prelude to the local elections on Tuesday 8th. Last Tuesday´s demonstrations by the brotherhood in Tanta , Zagazig, Damanhour and Alexandria is just another page. What is sad, is to see that so little co-ordinating is made by the opposition. But luckily the boycott´s that seemed to be an integral part of almost every Egyptian election cycle seems to be a thing of the past. Examples from around the world has been positive. The latest examples of the power an electorate can have is of course Kenya and Zimbabwe, but that means that people will have to be much more active politically and register and cast their vote. How to break the political and electoral apathy is a question that is still far away from being answered.

The other topics in this issue:


Women’s Political Participation in the Gulf: A Conversation with Activists Fatin Bundagji (Saudi Arabia), Rola Dashti (Kuwait), and Munira Fakhro (Bahrain)

United States: The Bush Administration’s Budget and Democracy in the Arab World
Stephen McInerney

Europe/Arab States: Whither Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Union?
George Joffé

Morocco: Is the Electoral System Unfair?
Michael Meyer-Resende

Muslim Brotherhood Military trial verdict postponed once again

The verdict of the 40 Muslim Brotherhood members facing military trial has been postponed yet again. The next session is set for April 15th.

The 40 members of the MB who stand trial, among them the businessman Khairat al Shater , third in rank in the organization was originally tried for terrorism and money laundry, charges that is said to have been withdrawn, and which could have given up to 15 years imprisonment. The two charges that the prosecution are still pursuing is the normal charge these days, belonging to a banned group,meaning they could face up to a five years prison sentence. The Muslim Brotherhood is banned as an organization since 1954. The other charge was specifically aimed at Khairat al Shater and fellow businessman Hassan Malak for leading companies on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Today´s postponement is not the first, on the 26th of February the verdict was supposed to be handled down, but the military judge chose to wait instead. The trial itself is fast approaching it´s first anniversary, it began in late April last year.

Khairat al Shater´s ordeal started in mid-December when he and 16 others were taken from their homes in a pre-dawnn arrest in what has become the familiar routine to so many Ikhwan members and their families lately. Although having been ordered released on January 29th by a Cairo Criminal Court in lack of evidence, the 17 were rearrested on the spot. A week later President Mubarak ordered the the 17 plus an additional 23 alleged members to be tried by the Huckstep Military trial. Of the 40 seven were to be tried In what was a unprecedented court verdict, a Cairo administrative court called the President´s order invalid, but the Government appealed and the verdict was overruled yet again by the Cairo Supreme Court.

This is the first time a Muslim Brotherhood case has been tried in a military court since 2001. Human Rights organizations, local and international alike has voiced critique against trying civilians in military courts, as well as not providing enough guarantees for a fair trial. Observers has been locked out from court proceedings from day one.

White House Flip-Flops on Egypt

Yesterday, the White House issued a statement on the current wave of arrests during the registration for the upcoming local elections were 52600 seats on 4500 local councils are up for grabs.

The local council elections has for long been overlooked by the opposition , due to to the lack of influence the councils have, it´s also seen as too costly for most opposition parties. Many parties don´t have a well organized party structure outside of the big cities. For the independent canddates , all this changed in 2005 when law 76 of the constitution regulating Presidential elections made the glory of independent Presidential wannabees dependent on support from 250 members of two chambers of parliament and the local councils combined.This was strengthened further in 2007, making it extremely tough to compete as an independent candidate, using the pretext to help build strong parties.

The last day of registration for candidates wishing to participate in the local elections, postponed since 2006 and now scheduled for April 8th, is today. During the 10 day registration period arrests have been made on a daily basis in practically every Governate in the country of people presumed as potential candidates in the elections , or as key to election organization for the group. This on top of arrests made in February brings the total number of arrests at about 700 according to there own estimates. All of the arrested belongs to one group. The group had thought to contest every local council with up to 7000 members supposed to participate, but so far only 60 people have managed to register.

This is what White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino had to say about it yesterday:

"We are concerned by a continuing campaign of arrests in Egypt of individuals who are opponents of the current governing party and are involved in the upcoming local elections," she said. "The people of Egypt should be permitted to choose freely among competing candidates. We call on the government of Egypt to cease any actions that would compromise the ability of the Egyptian people to fully exercise their internationally recognized human rights and to participate in a free and fair election."

This is all good, if not for the fact that the Secretary of State was in Egypt on the first day of the registration period, a day pretty much the same as every day during the last 10 days. That particular day saw up to 95 arrests, including people being arrested while walking to the registration office.

And how did the Secretary of State react to this? Did she perhaps talk on this matter with his Excellency Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit, or discuss it during their chaired press conference? No.

This is what she did!

She waived the 100 million Dollars in military aid that the U.S Congress withheld, due to lack of progress on among other things keeping the Gaza border secure and human rights.

This is the motive for the decision in her own words:

"I have exercised on behalf of the United States the waiver in terms of Egyptian assistance ... The Bush administration sought to have that flexibility. We believe that this relationship with Egypt is an important one and that the waiver was the right thing to do,"

Of course this was done for the benefit of getting Egypt to ¨work harder¨ on ensuring the safety on the border. Probably in ways that resembles the poetic words of the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak:

¨And while Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak denied on Israeli public radio that there was "at this stage the least accord on a ceasefire" he spelled out the country's conditions for a formal truce: "The firing of rockets and other terrorist attacks must end and smuggling of arms from Egypt must be reduced in a draconian fashion."¨

And by the way Ms Perino, the group of individuals that you talked about are all part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

As an extra treat with the compliments from State Department, i throw in the chapter on Egypt from their Human Rights Report, fresh off the presses, published just two days ago.