Arab Spring dies in grim Cairo

The bloodbath on Egypt's streets is not just a humanitarian tragedy. If it continues unchecked, it may complete an arc of instability which already runs from Iraq through Syria and Lebanon, stretching as far as Libya.

Yet such a doomsday scenario is still preventable through the inner strengths of Egypt's own society. Meanwhile, just about the worst thing foreign governments can do is to resort to what United States President Barack Obama once dismissed as "the satisfying purity of indignation", the temptation to act out of frustration by punishing Egypt's military rulers just to satisfy the West's guilty conscience rather than help the Arab world's biggest nation.

Today's Egypt cannot be seen in binary terms, as some clear-cut confrontation between forces of "good" and "evil". For there are few angels in such situations and all protagonists bear responsibility for the political deadlock, the subsequent violence and the shocking death toll.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the movement which only two years ago was Egypt's most popular political force as well as an inspiration throughout the Middle East, proved itself a total, unmitigated failure in government. Instead of forging a broad political coalition which would have helped it share responsibility for the tough decisions that had to be taken, the Brotherhood avoided those decisions and alienated everyone. Paradoxically, it tried to suck up to the Egyptian military, the institution which had no interest in reaching any accommodation with Islamists.

The Brotherhood waited 70 years to gain power but then lost it in just a year, not so much because the movement's leaders lacked government experience but because they made the wrong policy choices. Incompetence is treatable; stupidity is often incurable.

But the urban middle classes and many of Egypt's educated youth who poured into the streets to welcome the coup were also wrong to believe that the military was capable of restoring stability by partially reinstating the old order while still allowing a new one to be created.

That was always a pipedream. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his colleagues may have no interest in staying in power for long, but they are determined to retain influence and crush the Brotherhood for at least another generation. Violence and bloodshed are not just by-products of this agenda - they are its critical ingredients.

Bloodshed's new dynamic

Whichever path Egypt takes in the near future, one conclusion is unavoidable: it's impossible to return to the heady days of the 2011 revolution when everything was theoretically feasible, for the violence has created its own new narrative and political dynamic.

The Brotherhood has already erased memories of the year of its awful governance, and now sees everything as "martyrdom", a fight between Islam and non-believers. The military has neatly shed its odour of corruption and links to previous authoritarian regimes to emerge as supposed defenders of democracy.

The traditional monarchies of the Gulf cannot hide their glee at what they believe is the end of the "Arab Spring" revolutions. And quite a few foreign leaders who never believed that Arabs can change the way they are governed also feel vindicated in their preconceptions. Either way, the 2011 revolution is dead, and Egypt's immediate prospects look grim.

Still, this is precisely the time for all those who wish Egypt well to keep their cool. Although the situation is bad, Egypt's condition is hardly as bad as Syria's where the slaughter has exceeded 100,000 people or Iraq, where 3,500 people have been killed this year alone in sectarian violence. Nor is it inevitable that Egypt will plunge into civil war.

At first glance, the similarities between Egypt and Algeria, another Arab country where the crushing of a popular Islamic party back in the 1990s led to a vicious and prolonged civil war, seem compelling. The sectarian divide is as strong in Egypt today as it was during Algeria's so-called "black decade". And in both countries, movements which combined political Islam with demands for social justice were robbed of their electoral victories by long-entrenched military establishments seeking to defend their perks and status.

Egypt is not Algeria

Yet these are just the sort of superficial similarities between countries which lull analysts into making what invariably turn out to be wrong predictions. The differences between Algeria in the 1990s and Egypt today are far more significant. To start with, the Algerian Islamists were never allowed to rule; they were crushed after winning an electoral landslide but before assuming power, so they benefited from an image as "the best government Algeria never had", and that encouraged many to fight for their cause. In Egypt, however, fighting for deposed president Muhamad Mursi is not the standard fare of revolutionary romantics.

Furthermore, the Egyptian military has spent decades following the Brotherhood's activities and infiltrating its ranks. Unlike the Algerian generals who initially did not know who they were confronting, the Egyptian army command has plenty of information about its opponents.

The Egyptian military also has plenty of practice: it crushed the Muslim Brotherhood with violence not dissimilar to today back in 1965.

It did it again in 1981, after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, and again during the mid-1990s, when an astonishing 100,000 Brotherhood members were detained. On all occasions, observers confidently predicted civil wars and revolutions, and neither came to pass.

That's not to say that matters couldn't be different this time. Plenty of weapons can be smuggled from neighbouring Libya. There are also battle-hardened Egyptian extremists coming back from Afghanistan and Syria, so the dangers of terrorism are much higher. Nonetheless, the Brotherhood's current strategy, which is to barricade large numbers of its supporters in various mosques in the hope of staging "last stand" heroic showdowns with the authorities, is precisely what the military is configured to handle. It is noticeable that, in an army of conscripts, there have been no known cases of desertion or refusal to open fire on demonstrators. In short, the Egyptian military is in better control of the country than most outsiders assume.

Limited Western influence

Partly because of this, the US and European governments are discovering that their ability to influence events is very limited. It's absurd to believe that the withdrawal of the US$1.3 billion (S$1.6 billion) a year which Washington grants the Egyptian military - a quarter of which immediately goes back to America in one contract with Lockheed Martin, the US aircraft manufacturer - would persuade the generals in Cairo to desist from doing what they believe to be is in their national interest.

Besides, it is not obvious that Western governments have any idea what political solution could avert further violence in Egypt, even if someone in Cairo is prepared to listen. As professor of international relations Stephen Walt at Harvard University remarked in a recent blog for Foreign Policy magazine, "if the Egyptians can't figure out how to construct a workable polity, do you think national security adviser Susan Rice or Secretary of State John Kerry could?"

Frustrated, some Western politicians are thinking of slapping economic penalties on Egypt just to register their disapproval. Yet that's a council of despair which will not only fail to achieve concrete objectives, but may also miss out on future opportunities to give Egypt a real nudge.

Sooner rather than later, Egypt's generals will have to tackle the country's rapidly deteriorating economic situation. That will require some domestic political dialogue, perhaps with splinter elements of the Brotherhood. It will also require new financial credits from the International Monetary Fund which should be made conditional on progress on a road map to a new Constitution and return to civilian rule.

That should silence recent dire predictions from some Western analysts that Islamic parties in the Middle East will no longer seek power through peaceful means, after having tried the ballot box and failed. These predictions are both nonsense and racist slurs: just as Christians and members of other faiths experienced centuries of political setbacks but still persevered in trying to establish successful and peaceful societies, there is absolutely no reason why Islamic parties in the Middle East should not continue doing the same.

So today's Egyptian tragedy could yet turn out to be just a historic blip.

jonathan.eyal@gmail.com

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