Polarization

Last night’s massacre in Cairo has disputed origins, but the effect is all too clear:  polarization.  The Muslim Brotherhood will harden its stance against any “interim” government appointed by former chief justice (now acting president) Adly Mansour.  The Salafist Nour party, which had previously indicated it was willing to play in the military’s political game, is now opting out.  Commentators will worry about civil war, or Egypt following Syria’s path.

I suspect the real danger is less organized military conflict and more chaotic breakdown.  Egypt is on the best of days a difficult country to govern.  Now its foreign reserves are dwindling, government revenue is collapsing, and subsidized commodities are growing scarce.  Tourism has already evaporated.  The mostly poor and at best semi-literate population is not going to be patient with anyone in power.  They want bread, if not butter.

The great danger now is that the military’s coup and interim government will fail as miserably as President Morsi did, just as the previous military takeover in February 2011 failed during its less than 1.5 year stay in power, leading to Morsi’s election.  This would taint the liberal/secularist and moderate Islamist political forces that have supported the coup.  It could even bring the Muslim Brotherhood back to power in elections that the international community will push for within a year.

The best way forward at this point is whatever will end the violence and continuing polarization.  It is hard to see a substitute for the military somehow reaching out to the Nour party and the Brotherhood to gain at least grudging support, if only from a few individuals.  The Brotherhood’s current claim that the interim government is illegitimate, if maintained, will encourage at least some of its adherents as well as more radical cadres to take up arms.  It appears the army, which is better at flyovers than crowd control, will give them ample excuse to do so.

The notion that massive presence in the streets in support of the military’s takeover will be an antidote to the Brotherhood’s resistance is not sustainable.  The vast majority of Egyptians need to work every day to make ends meet.  The “party of the couch” has now spent a week or more in one Tahrir or another.  It won’t last forever.

What Egypt needs at this point is a Nelson Mandela and an F.W. de Klerk:  widely acknowledged leaders who can bridge the divides and help the country find a nonviolent path to a more democratic future.  That’s a tall order.  No doubt there are people on both sides who would like to nominate themselves for these roles.  The question will be whether they can maintain the backing of their constituents and convince their antagonists of their sincerity.  I’m not seeing through the fog of daily events who might do the necessary.

In the absence of such leaders, violence is the likely outcome.  That won’t be good for Egypt.  Nor for the United States.

PS:  For a fine-grained look at the impact of the coup on the Islamist part of the political spectrum, see Will McCants, who thinks the Salafis and jihadis are the big winners.