Category: Egypt

What Omar Suleiman’s Appointment as VP Means

29/1/2011

Imagine that sometime in 2007 turmoil had gripped Washington. Tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands of people rallied in the city packing the streets from the Capitol to the White House. Late one evening George W. Bush goes on TV, announcing that he has heard the people speak. Stability is the first priority, he says, but he acknowledges that real change is also necessary. Bush then announces that he is firing the entire cabinet. The next morning, with great fanfare, he begins the process of reform and rebuilding public trust by appointing a new chief of staff: Karl Rove.

Broadly speaking, this is what has happened in Cairo this morning. And just as the elevation of a trusted insider would not have done much to save a collapsing George W. Bush presidency in the situation I’ve just imagined, so the appointment of Omar Suleiman as Egypt’s new vice president can be seen mainly as a sign of how far removed Hosni Mubarak has become from what is happening in Cairo’s streets.

Put another way, Suleiman’s appointment is an indication that appeasing the protestors is not particularly high on Mubarak’s priority list. “Omar Suleiman in many ways is Hosni Mubarak’s comfort zone,” as Jon Alterman of CSIS aptly put it this morning on CNN.

Suleiman is Mubarak’s long-time intelligence chief. He is well-known in official Washington and among security officials and spymasters around the region. Among journalists, he is one of those shadowy, powerful figures of whom everyone has heard but whom practically no one has met. He is Egypt’s first vice president since Mubarak himself held the job back in 1981. Egypt’s constitution allows the President to appoint a Vice President, but Mubarak has always refused to do so, saying on more than one occasion that in all its history Egypt has had only one vice president who was loyal to his leader, and that VP’s name was “Mubarak”.

In a small but telling gesture, the official video of Sulieman being sworn-in that ran on Egyptian TV showed him wearing a coat and tie. When he finished taking his oath, however, he straightened up and saluted the President. Shortly thereafter it was announced that the new Prime Minister will be Ahmed Shafiq – like Mubarak himself a career Air Force officer who is now nominally a civilian (he has been serving as Minister of Civil Aviation). Sulieman and Shafiq’s appointments are both reminders that the military are Egypt’s real rulers, as they have been since Nasser and the Free Officers overthrew King Farouk in 1952. Faced with the first real threat to his power in decades, Air Vice Marshall Mubarak is surrounding himself with the only people he believes he can really trust: other senior military officers. That may be logical, from his perspective, but it indicates a worrisome degree of detachment from what is happening out in the streets.

Mubarak’s speech last night was very revealing. It indicated that he believes the uprising to be unrepresentative of society’s true attitudes (on MSNBC Chris Matthews likened it to Richard Nixon’s 1969 “silent majority” speech on Vietnam – a comparison I found surprisingly apt). It was mainly a law and order speech and, perhaps inevitably, tipped over into conspiracy-mongering. Mubarak referred to the protests as “part of a bigger plot” (he did not say by whom) to undermine Egypt’s stability, and seemed to indicate that security is his top priority. “I will not shy away from taking any decision that maintains the security of every Egyptian,” he said.

The parts of the speech that promised reform were also telling, albeit in a fairly disappointing way. Yes, he spoke of economic progress, democracy and political openness. But he did so using pretty much the same language I’ve heard him use in every speech since I first moved to Cairo in 1988. What Egyptian, listening to last night’s appearance, could honestly believe that anything is about to change?

If one were inclined to give Mubarak the benefit of the doubt just now, the most charitable thing to say would be that he apparently feels underappreciated. Don’t all those people out in the street know how hard he works for the People? There was a self-pitying bit near the beginning where he sought to remind everyone that he has given his life to public service.

Watching the pictures from Cairo and Alexandria, however, it is hard to imagine many people seeing things that way, or giving President Mubarak the benefit of the doubt just now.

Watching Egypt - Thoughts on the Military

28/1/2011

Events are moving very quickly in Cairo and it would be pointless to say anything definitive at this moment. Watching the uprising unfold on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez (and reportedly, away from TV cameras, in places like Minya and Asyut) it is important, I think, to put the role of the Egyptian military in context.

I have been hearing a lot of people speculate over the last few hours about the possibility of a military “take-over” in Egypt. These commentators miss a key point: the military already runs Egypt, and has done so since 1952 when the Free Officers, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, overthrew the country’s monarchy.

Under Nasser and Sadat (1952–1981) this was obvious. Army officers were the face of Nasser’s regime. This changed a bit under Sadat (particularly in the later years of his rule), but mainly in a cosmetic way. There might be more men in suits representing the country and running its ministries than had been the case under Nasser, but everyone understood that senior civilians took these leading roles only because the military found it convenient to let them do so.

Sadat himself (one of the original Free Officers) appeared publicly as a military man or a civilian according to whatever he thought the occasion required. When he was was assassinated on 6 October 1981 he was wearing his Field Marshall’s uniform as he reviewed a military parade. As the shots were fired his vice president – Hosni Mubarak – stood a few steps away wearing his own Air Vice Marshall’s uniform (i.e. head of the Air Force).

Mubarak was lightly wounded in that attack and formally became president a week later. It is to Mubarak’s credit that he has not been seen in uniform since that day on the reviewing stand, but the point is that he did not have to be. Everyone in the military knows that Mubarak is one of them.

Under Mubarak the military has retreated to the background. Civilians have long occupied all cabinet positions except the defense ministry. Technocrats run places like the electricity ministry while the foreign ministry and the internal security services are self-perpetuating bureaucracies drawn from particular strata of society (the well-educated middle class in the latter case, the old-money elite in the former).

But all of this takes place at the military’s sufferance. The military allows Mubarak to run things this way partly because they rightly see him as one of their own – and, thus, as someone who will keep the military’s interests foremost in his mind – and partly because their experience under Nasser and Sadat led Egypt’s soldiers to conclude that giving civilians nominal power within a system where they set the parameters was a far more efficient way to run things.

As a result, Egypt is not a military dictatorship in the sense that, say, Burma is today or that many Latin American countries were in the 1970s. But make no mistake, from behind the scenes it is run by its generals. They have trusted Mubarak and supported him for three decades because he is one of them. Should they decide to move him aside that will constitute an internal reshuffling, not a coup.

RIP Dr. Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid

5/7/2010

Sad news this evening of the death Monday of Dr. Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid, a professor at Cairo University whose mild deviations from Islamist orthodoxy led to a years of persecution and his eventual exile in Europe.

I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Nasr for The Washington Times in 1993. The article I wrote after that interview is attached below.

In retrospect, Dr. Nasr's persecution and the Egyptian government's collusion in it were harbingers of the path the country was headed down - a fact that most of us in the Western media did not quite grasp at the time.

I met Dr. Nasr a few more times after that interview - writing a short follow-up piece and quoting him in other articles over the next year. After leaving Egypt in October 1994 I did not see him again, though I am proud of the fact that I worked to get items about his ongoing troubles into CNN International's newscasts during the late 90s.

What I remember most from that first interview at Cairo University was how perplexed he was by what was happening, and his fears about what awaited him. He and his wife were not yet living behind locked doors with round-the-clock armed guards. Exile from Egypt was still several years in the future. But he seemed to know that these things were in the offing, and to be grimly resigned to them. It was left to his wife, Ebtehal, to express anger on behalf of both of them.

The Arab World has lost a great champion of intellectual freedom.

Rights groups eye Egypt's apostasy trial
Prof's marriage, maybe life, at stake

By Gordon Robison, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published November 4, 1993

CAIRO - In a development that many believe represents a threat to free expression, Egypt's secular court system is scheduled to receive a report today on whether a defendant in a civil suit is an apostate from Islam.

Today's trial session is the latest twist in an unprecedented divorce action brought by an Islamic lawyer who claims that Nasr Abu Zaid, a professor of Arabic at Cairo University, is an apostate.

Since Islamic law forbids marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man, the suit demands that the court dissolve Mr. Abu Zaid's marriage to Ebtehal Younis, a professor of French at the university.

At the trial's opening session in June, Mr. Zaid's writings were referred to Al-Azhar, a Cairo-based mosque and university that is one of the Muslim world's most important centers of theology and jurisprudence. The mosque's scholars were asked to determine whether Mr. Abu Zaid has, in fact, abandoned Islamic beliefs.

The case is being watched closely by human rights groups inside and outside Egypt. In a statement this year, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said the suit placed Mr. Abu Zaid's life in jeopardy. Islamic Law traditionally prescribes death as the penalty for apostasy.

"Of course I'm afraid for my life," said Mr. Abu Zaid, who began receiving death threats last spring. "I am afraid of this court case."

The trouble began late last year when Mr. Abu Zaid applied for promotion to a full professorship at Cairo University, where he has taught for the past 21 years.

The procedure for such applications is for three scholars to review all of the applicant's published work in the previous five years. Their recommendation is then passed on to a committee of 13 scholars, which is usually guided by the report of the three-person subcommittee.

Mr. Abu Zaid said that two of the people reviewing his work found him "highly deserving" of promotion while the third criticized him on religious grounds. The committee backed the lone dissenter.

"I thought I was in the hands of an academic committee, not a religious committee. Whatever criticism I have made was pointed to human thinking, not sacred texts," he said.

"My whole career is to study Islamic discourse, whether classical or modern," Mr. Abu Zaid said in a recent interview.

In doing so, he said he had sought to draw a distinction between those elements of Islamic tradition, such as the Koran, that are believed by Muslims to be of divine origin and those that represent human exposition of divine revelations.

Denied promotion, in effect, because of the potential controversy surrounding his writings, Mr. Abu Zaid filed suit. He then learned preachers around Cairo were denouncing him as a heretic and an apostate.

Such denunciations are particularly sensitive in Egypt because of last year's assassination of Farag Fouda, a secularist writer who had also been branded an apostate.

Many Egyptian intellectuals have charged that criticism of Mr. Fouda by preachers amounted to an official license for his assassination by religious militants.

In an interview this week, Mr. Abu Zaid, who calls himself "a secular Muslim," said he hoped Al-Azhar would somehow avoid rendering a judgment on his piety."

If Al-Azhar does interfere, I won't take it silently. . . . Maybe a lot of things in my writing should be explained," he said. "There might be misunderstandings, and I have the right to explain this.

"I'm married to a woman I love. She is not merely my wife, She is my colleague."

Mrs. Younis said of the Islamic fundamentalists who filed the divorce suit: "They can go to hell. I will never leave him."

More Reflections on the Cairo Speech

7/6/2009

Let me state at the outset that I liked the speech. It was thoughtful. It was careful. It hit the right notes. It changed the tone. That final point is crucial, because in assessing the reaction to President Barack Obama’s speech last Thursday at Cairo University one can separate out those who liked the speech from those who did not by asking this seemingly tangential question: over the last few years, has tone been an issue in American relations with the Muslim World? Might a change in tone be a useful starting place?

It was not surprising that some observers in the region dismissed the speech out of hand with calls for deeds first, words later. Hamas, in Gaza, and Iraq’s Moqtada al-Sadr both fell into this category, though even they appeared to have been impressed, albeit grudgingly, by the gesture. An array of articles in the American media charted the reactions of ordinary people from Casablanca to Calcutta who were politely dismissive of the President, welcoming his intentions but decrying his lack of policy specifics.

No one expected (or at least no one should have expected) Obama, in a single speech, to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, remake Iraq or completely alter the poisonous image of the United States that has built up throughout the Muslim World over the last seven years. But if you believe, as I do, that tone matters then it was difficult not to see the Cairo speech as an immensely successful starting point – only a gesture, perhaps, but a gesture heavy with symbolic value. Changing the tone of America’s discourse with the Muslim World had to be the first step in a long of rebuilding trust and influence.

A big part of that change in tone was the President’s acknowledgment that America’s history in the Middle East goes much further back than September 11, 2001 and that, sometimes, it has not reflected well on us. At a Washington DC party Friday night a State Department official grumbled to me about this part of the speech, wondering what purpose was served by reminding people of American failings. I replied that acknowledging the past is important because while most Americans have long forgotten, say, our stage-managed coup against Mossedeq or even our bait-and-switch reaction to the results of the 2006 Palestinian elections, few in the region have done so. Changing what we say is the first step to rebuilding America’s Middle Eastern credibility – but we must follow it up with changes to what we do, and we need to be better about doing what we say.

Obama’s election, his extraordinary personal story, his eloquence and, yes, even his middle name are all potent tools as America begins this rebuilding process. But they are only tools. It is appropriate to demand substance from this president as his policies toward the region evolve. It is equally important to appreciate the gesture he has made, and to acknowledge that rebuilding trust is going to have to be a two way street, and that it is going to take time. What we saw in Cairo Thursday was an excellent start.

Obama in Cairo - Initial Thoughts

4/6/2009

A thoughtful and measured reaction to President Obama's speech in Cairo earlier today is going to require a bit of time. That should be seen as a good thing - the President is a thoughtful and measured person. Here, however, are a few quick thoughts... with more to follow later.

A good initial take, however, can be found in this NYT blog post, consisting of quick reactions from Arab students in Egypt and Jordan. For a good summary of both the speech itself and of immediate reaction around the region take a look at this round-up from the BBC. Especially noteworthy is its report (sourced to AFP) that Hamas in Gaza gave the speech a guarded welcome, saying it showed "tangible change". In the nuanced world of Middle Eastern politics that represents a significant evolution in tone.

Unfortunate, if perhaps inevitable, is this analysis from Roger Simon at Politico. Simon is one of the most important analysts of the American political scene. By judging the speech almost entirely on the basis of which lines did or did not garner applause, however, he proves that a deep knowledge of American politics does not travel especially well.

Similarly, careful analysts should ignore reporting focused on the heavy security along Obama's motorcade route and the lack of adoring crowds. Some have treated this as evidence of a chilly reception. If US newspapers still took foreign coverage seriously, they would have local correspondents in Cairo who would know that the blocking off of a motorcade route hours in advance by police standing shoulder to shoulder along its entire length has long been standard procedure in Cairo for visits like this (as well as the rare occasions when President Hosni Mubarak ventures into the city center). In these instances the police are there to prevent crowds from forming. Even the sidewalks are closed to passing pedestrians.

Forward>>

What Omar Suleiman’s Appointment as VP Means

Watching Egypt - Thoughts on the Military

RIP Dr. Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid

More Reflections on the Cairo Speech

Obama in Cairo - Initial Thoughts

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