Tag: Egypt
Oy veh, Egypt
The facts are reasonably clear: the army is attacking demonstrators who want to remove it from power. The demonstrators, focused for the last couple of days on the cabinet office that houses the army’s recently appointed civilian but retrograde government, lack nonviolent discipline. Somehow the notion has grown that hurling stones and Molotov cocktails is consistent with nonviolence. It isn’t. It incites responses in kind (but amplified in severity) from the security forces and limits the number of people who will join in street protests. The protesters may not cause a lot of harm to the soldiers, but they are doing serious damage to their cause. A lot of Egyptians either support the army or just want the disorder to stop.
Stepping back from daily events, the main political tug of war is between the Muslim Brotherhood (now represented politically by the Freedom and Justice Party, or FJP) and the military. The FJP is doing well in Egypt’s ongoing parliamentary elections. But it will likely need allies to get over 50% of the seats and in any event won’t want to try to govern on its own. It will find coalition partners either among the more extreme Islamists (the Salafists are also doing well, though not as well as originally imagined) or among the non-Islamists. But the non-Islamists are fractious. Some will even prefer to keep the army in power–or at least use it to limit the sway of the Islamists–rather than ally with the the FJP.
The Americans are leaning on the army to transfer power to civilians as soon as possible. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is no doubt responding that they would like to do so but cannot in an atmosphere of disorder that extremists the Americans don’t like might exploit. When the complicated elections conclude in mid-January, the FJP–disciplined and well-organized–will offer itself as the logical and democratically validated alternative. But the parliament whose majority the FJP is likely to lead will have few powers–the main one is to choose a committee that will write a new constitution. Whether the army will allow it to do even that without severe constraints is not clear. Presidential elections are due by next July.
Egypt will be fortunate to get that far without further upheavals. There is no guarantee the revolution of 2011 will end in a democracy. The demonstrators made a profound errorentrusting their fate to the army, which is using its power to preserve is prerogatives and limit Islamist gains. As distasteful as it may be, the best bet for non-Islamists now is to throw in their lot with the Islamists, aiming to establish a truly democratic framework that will enable them eventually to gain power after a period of Islamist rule. But I know from the Middle East Institute conference session at which Esraa Abdel Fattah, one of the originators of the April 6 Movement that sparked Egypt’s revolution, spoke last month how deep the distrust and distaste for the Islamists is.
I don’t envy the difficult choices that Egyptians now have to make. The euphoria of deposing Hosni Mubarak has long since evaporated. They are now engaged in a long, hard slog that has no better than even odds of coming out in a truly democratic direction. Even in the best of circumstances, that will take years more to create. Meanwhile the economy is deteriorating, religious and other social divisions are exacerbating, and extremists are recruiting. The country desperately needs improved leadership, more money and a healthy dose of common sense. It is unlikely to get any of those in time.
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What threatens the United States?
The Council on Foreign Relations published its Preventive Priorities Survey for 2012 last week. What does it tell us about the threats the United States faces in this second decade of the 21st century?
Looking at the ten Tier 1 contingencies “that directly threaten the U.S. homeland, are likely to trigger U.S. military involvement because of treaty commitments, or threaten the supplies of critical U.S. strategic resources,” only three are defined as military threats:
- a major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces
- an Iranian nuclear crisis (e.g., surprise advances in nuclear weapons/delivery capability, Israeli response)
- a U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation, triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counterterror operations
Two others might also involve a military threat, though the first is more likely from a terrorist source:
- a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally
- a severe North Korean crisis (e.g., armed provocations, internal political instability, advances in nuclear weapons/ICBM capability)
The remaining five involve mainly non-military contingencies:
- a highly disruptive cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, electrical power, gas and oil, water supply, banking and finance, transportation, and emergency services)
- a significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States
- severe internal instability in Pakistan, triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attacks
- political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies
- intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that leads to the collapse of the euro, triggering a double-dip U.S. recession and further limiting budgetary resources
Five of the Tier 2 contingencies “that affect countries of strategic importance to the United States but that do not involve a mutual-defense treaty commitment” are also at least partly military in character, though they don’t necessarily involve U.S. forces:
- a severe Indo-Pak crisis that carries risk of military escalation, triggered by major terror attack
- rising tension/naval incident in the eastern Mediterranean Sea between Turkey and Israel
- a major erosion of security and governance gains in Afghanistan with intensification of insurgency or terror attacks
- a South China Sea armed confrontation over competing territorial claims
- a mass casualty attack on Israel
But Tier 2 also involves predominantly non-military threats to U.S. interests, albeit with potential for military consequences:
- political instability in Egypt with wider regional implications
- an outbreak of widespread civil violence in Syria, with potential outside intervention
- an outbreak of widespread civil violence in Yemen
- rising sectarian tensions and renewed violence in Iraq
- growing instability in Bahrain that spurs further Saudi and/or Iranian military action
Likewise Tier 3 contingencies “that could have severe/widespread humanitarian consequences but in countries of limited strategic importance to the United States” include military threats to U.S. interests:
- military conflict between Sudan and South Sudan
- increased conflict in Somalia, with continued outside intervention
- renewed military conflict between Russia and Georgia
- an outbreak of military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, possibly over Nagorno Karabakh
And some non-military threats:
- heightened political instability and sectarian violence in Nigeria
- political instability in Venezuela surrounding the October 2012 elections or post-Chavez succession
- political instability in Kenya surrounding the August 2012 elections
- an intensification of political instability and violence in Libya
- violent election-related instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- political instability/resurgent ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan
I don’t mean to suggest in any way that the military is irrelevant to these “non-military” threats. But it is not the only tool needed to meet these contingencies, or even to meet the military ones. And if you begin thinking about preventive action, which is what the CFR unit that publishes this material does, there are clearly major non-military dimensions to what is needed to meet even the threats that take primarily military form.
And for those who read this blog because it publishes sometimes on the Balkans, please note: the region are nowhere to be seen on this list of 30 priorities for the United States.
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Next week’s “peace picks”
1. Looking to the Future of Pakistan
Event Information
When
Monday, December 05, 2011
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Where
Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map
Email: events@brookings.edu
Phone: 202.797.6105
RELATED CONTENT
Out of the Nuclear Loop
Stephen P. Cohen
The New York Times
February 16, 2004
Armageddon in Islamabad
Bruce Riedel
The National Interest
July/August 2009
The Pakistan Time Bomb
Stephen P. Cohen
The Washington Post
July 3, 2007
2:00 PM — Opening Remarks
Stephen P. Cohen
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, 21st Century Defense Initiative
2:10 PM — Panel 1 – Paradoxical Pakistan
Moderator: Teresita C. Schaffer
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, 21st Century Defense Initiative
C. Christine Fair
Assistant Professor
Georgetown University
William Milam
Senior Scholar
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Shuja Nawaz
Director, South Asia Center
The Atlantic Council
Moeed Yusuf
South Asia Adviser
U.S. Institute of Peace
3:10 PM — Panel 2 – Pakistan: Where To?
Moderator: John R. Schmidt
Professorial Lecturer
The George Washington University
Pamela Constable
Staff Writer
The Washington Post
Bruce Riedel
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy
Marvin Weinbaum
Scholar-in-Residence
Middle East Institute
Joshua T. White
Ph.D. Candidate
Johns Hopkins University, SAIS
2. Which Way Forward for Egypt?
New America Foundation
Washington, DC 20036
Egypt’s first parliamentary elections since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak began on November 28th. The vote for the People’s Assembly will stretch over six weeks into January 2012.
An outpouring of enthusiastic voters has for the moment raised a note of optimism in Egypt. Yet following days of mass protest over the military’s continued rule, state violence, and deepening political and social polarization, it appears that Egypt’s transition will be long and rocky.
Join us for a conversation co-hosted by the Egyptian American Rule of Law Association about the election’s impact, transitional prospects, and implications for the wider MENA region and U.S. foreign policy.
A light lunch will be served.
Participants
Featured Speakers
Randa Fahmy
Vice President, Egyptian American Rule of Law Association
Nathan Brown
Professor, Political Science & International Affairs, George Washington University
Nonresident Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Michael Wahid Hanna
Fellow, The Century Foundation (will have just returned from Egypt)
Moderator
Leila Hilal
Co-Director, Middle East Task Force
New America Foundation
3. Islamist Terrorism and Democracy in the Middle East
A Book Launch for a USIP-funded study by Katerina Dalacoura
Wednesday, December 7 from 3:00-4:30
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Choate Room
1779 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC 20036
The putative relationship between political repression and terrorism remains a matter of active debate in scholarly and policymaking circles. Based on investigations into individual Islamist movements and the political environments in which they operate, this study assesses whether the emergence of Islamist terrorism is linked to the absence of political participation and repression.
The U.S. Institute of Peace is pleased to sponsor an in-depth discussion with Dalacoura centered on her recently-published work.
Funded by a grant from USIP, the volume draws on a series of case studies that include al Qa’eda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Groupe Islamique Armé, Gamaa Islamiyya, the Jordanian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhoods, the Tunisian Nahda Movement, the Turkish Justice and Development Party, and Iranian Islamist movements.
“Drawing on her deep knowledge of Middle East politics, Dalacoura powerfully challenges past assumptions about a simple link between democratic deficits and the spread of Islamist terrorism,” said Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Conceptually rigorous, empirically rich, incisive and searching, this is a major study.”
Speakers
- Daniel Brumberg, Chair
U.S. Institute of Peace - Katerina Dalacoura, Author
London School of Economics and Political Science - Dafna Rand
Department of State - Eric Goldstein
Human Rights Watch
4. The Arab Spring: Implications for US Policy and Interests
A publication launch and discussion featuring
Allen Keiswetter
Charles Dunne
Amb. Art Hughes
Thursday, December 8, 2011
12:00pm-1:30pm
SEIU Building, Room 2600
2nd Floor
1800 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
*Please note that this event is not being held at MEI. An ID is required for entrance into the building.*
Thursday, December 8, 2011
9:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Grand Ballroom, 3rd Floor
Marvin Center, 800 21st Street, NW
To mark International Human Rights Day 2011, George Washington University, the UN Global Compact US Network, and the US Institute of Peace will host a one day conference on the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. These principles, approved by the UN Human Rights Council in June, are designed to help business monitor its human rights impact. These guidelines clarified both the human rights responsibilities of states and firms and made them clear and actionable. Our speakers, representing business, civil society, the US Government, and academia, will focus on practical approaches to implementing the Guiding Principles (the GPs).
9:00-9:10 – Welcoming Remarks
Stephen C. Smith, Professor of Economics and International Affairs; Director, Institute for International Economic Policy, GW
Dave Berdish, Manager of Sustainable Business Development, Ford Motor Company
9:10-9:45 – “Why Firms Should Advance Human Rights: Manpower’s Approach”
David Arkless, President, Corporate and Government Affairs, ManpowerGroup
9:45-11:15 – Panel 1 – “Addressing the Problems of Slavery and Human Trafficking”
Brenda Schultz, Manager of Responsible Business, Carlson Hotels Worldwide Samir Goswami, Director of Corporate Responsibility, Rule of Law, Lexis Nexis
Jean Baderscheider, Vice President, Global Procurement, Exxon Mobil
Indika Samarawickreme, Executive Director, Free the Slaves
Moderator:
Pamela Passman, President and CEO, CREATe
11:15-11:30 – Coffee Break
11:30-1:00 – Panel 2 – “How Business Should Operate in Conflict Zones”
Bennett Freeman, Senior Vice President for Social research and Policy, Calvert Group
Charlotte Wolff, Corporate Responsibility Manager, Arcellor Mittal
Olav Ljosne, Regional Director of Communications, Africa, Shell Corporation
Moderator:
Raymond Gilpin, Director, Center for Sustainable Economies, U.S. Institute of Peace
1:00-2:15 – Luncheon Keynote
Ursula Wynhoven, General Counsel, UN Global Compact
Gerald Pachoud, Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary General, UN and former Senior Advisor, Special Representative on Business and Human Rights
2:15-3:45 – Panel 3: General Implementation of the Guiding Principles Is it difficult to get buy in? Is it costly? What recommendations or roadblocks have you found?
Mark Nordstrom, Senior Labor & Employment Counsel, General Electric
Dave Berdish, Manager of Sustainable Business
Brenda Erskine, Director of Stakeholder and Community Relationships, Suncor
Meg Roggensack, Senior Advisor for Business and Human Rights, Human Rights First
Moderator:
Susan Aaronson, Associate Research Professor of International Affairs, GW
3:45-4:30 – General Discussion: What should policymakers do to encourage adoption of the GPs?
RSVP at: http://tiny.cc/guidingprinciples
Sponsored by Institute for International Economic Policy, U.S. Institute for Peace, U.N. Global Compact, and the U.S. Network
- Start: Friday, December 9, 2011 4:30 PM
End: Friday, December 9, 2011 6:00 - You are cordially invited to a book lecture with author Daniel R. Green for his new book
The Valley’s Edge: A Year with the Pashtuns in the Heartland of the Taliban Friday, December 9
4:30 PMThe Institute of World Politics
1521 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036 - Please RSVP to kbridges@iwp.edu.This event is sponsored by IWP’s Center for Culture and Security.
About the author
Daniel R. Green is a Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is pursuing a PhD in political science at the George Washington University. For his work in Afghanistan in 2005-2006, he received the U.S. Department of State’s Superior Honor Award, the U.S. Army’s Superior Civilian Honor Award, and a personal letter of commendation from then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace. He has also received the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Exceptional Public Service Award and in 2007 served with the U.S. military in Fallujah, Iraq. He lives in Washington, D.C.
About the book
In this gripping, firsthand account, Daniel Green tells the story of U.S. efforts to oust the Taliban insurgency from the desolate southern Afghan province of Uruzgan. Nestled between the Hindu Kush mountains and the sprawling wasteland of the Margow and Khash Deserts, Uruzgan is a microcosm of U.S. efforts to prevent Afghanistan from falling to the Taliban insurgency and Islamic radicalism.
Green, who served in Uruzgan from 2005 to 2006 as a U.S. Department of State political adviser to a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), reveals how unrealistic expectations, a superficial understanding of the Afghans, and a lack of resources contributed to the Taliban’s resurgence in the area. He discusses the PRT’s good-governance efforts, its reconstruction and development projects, the violence of the insurgency, and the PRT’s attempts to manage its complex relationship with the local warlord cum governor of the province.
Upon returning to Afghanistan in 2009 with the U.S. military and while working at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul until 2010, Green discovered that although many improvements had been made since he had last served in the country, the problems he had experienced in Uruzgan continued despite the transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.
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Even bad elections may beat none at all
While some worry that an “undemocratic party” will win Egypt’s parliamentary elections and others worry about violence and irregularities in presidential and parliamentary elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), it appears that the voting in both countries Monday and Tuesday went off unexpectedly well.
That is a low bar. There were lots of problems of course–names missing from voter rolls, missing, confusing and inaccurate ballots, campaigning too near polling places, paying for votes–but violence was relatively minor and people were clearly enjoying the opportunity to register their preferences. We of course have to await the considered judgment of observers, and there are several more rounds to go, but it is looking as if this first phase of elections in Egypt will be credible. DRC is less certain. Four opposition presidential candidates have already rejected the results, but Kabila’s main opponent, Etienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba, has not yet spoken. He seems still to harbor hopes of winning.
If it happens, something like credible elections in these two countries would be excellent news, whoever wins.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt certainly advocates things I find distasteful, including applications of sharia that are blatant violations of human rights. But that does not really make them undemocratic. It wasn’t so long ago in the United States that politicians regularly advocated segregation, which we now recognize as a blatant human rights violation. I shouldn’t even mention capital punishment.
DRC President Joseph Kabila, who is likely to win the first-past-the-post contest in DRC for a second term, is also not my kind of guy. In office for 10 years, he has not managed to move DRC from its unenviable position at the very bottom of the development scale. But what counts now is not the results but the process, which for the first time is being administered by the DRCers themselves. If the population believes the election was even remotely acceptable, that would be a big step forward.
I’m not keen on elections as a way of solving problems. Egypt will have just as many next week as it had last week, as will DRC. But as a marker of change, and an opportunity for citizens to participate and express their preferences, elections have virtue. Just look at Burma: its grossly unfree and unfair elections in 2010 have opened the door to reforms that were unthinkable only a few years before. Even bad elections may beat none at all.
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Showing up is half an election
Egypt’s first post-Mubarak election, run according to astoundingly complex rules, looks as if it passed its first test today: a lot of people showed up. There will surely be lots of reports of abuses and improprieties, and there are several more rounds to go in the effort to choose members of a parliament whose only clear responsibility is to choose a committee to write a new constitution. But the big turnout will validate the decision of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to proceed despite continuing protests against military rule and complaints about the electoral system. Many Egyptians don’t like the instability that deprives the country of foreign tourists and weakens an already struggling economy. They voted with their feet today.
One tweep opined before the election: “…losing an election is far more politically advantageous than boycotting them.” Unfortunately, some of our dear democratic friends in Egypt seem to have decided the opposite. Even if they did not boycott, they spent far too much time and energy trying to get people to demonstrations in Tahrir square against the military’s blatant efforts to insulate itself from civilian control rather than getting out the vote and trying to make the elections go their way.
Their fear is that the military is establishing a regime in which it will remain above and apart from civilian authority, unaccountable and protective of its privileges. Many of the most determined demonstrators also fear that remnants of Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) or the Muslim Brotherhood’s newly organized Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) will do well in the elections. That will almost surely be the case for the FJP, which has the advantage of a well-ensconced infrastructure, great discipline and a history of determined opposition to a regime that fell less than a year ago.
It is difficult to say you are in favor of pushing the military out of power and at the same time oppose the elections that are a prerequisite for pushing the military out of power. It is time for secularist democrats to realize that organization and coherence count. They are unlikely to win big in any event, but they would surely do better if they focused more on grassroots organizing and less on challenging the SCAF in the piazza. That will be especially important for the presidential elections next year, where fortunately the main protagonists appear to be from the moderate middle of the political spectrum.
Democracy is a long-term game: showing up is half an election, but an election is just a moment in a decade-long transition. The important thing is to put in place a mechanism that people regard as legitimate and useful, one that can be used many times in the future. It will be great for Egypt if these elections lead in that direction.
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All the action is not in the streets
The streets are dangerous in both Egypt and Syria.
In Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has named a new civilian prime minister and intends to proceed with the first round of parliamentary elections next Tuesday. While there is talk of boycotting among secularists, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists intend to participate. As the violence of the last week ebbs, Tahrir square has been filling, but odds are that SCAF will have its way and elections will proceed. It is starting to look as if the secularists will be the big losers. Might they have done better to devote more time and energy to organizing their voters and less to occupying Tahrir?
The Arab League has issued an ultimatum to Damascus demanding admission of international observers. Failure to do so will supposedly lead to vigorous travel, trade, investment and other sanctions. The Bashar al Assad regime seems determined to continue its crackdown, which is still killing dozens of demonstrators every day, principally in Homs yesterday. The Arab League, not known for taking decisive action, needs to be ready to make good on its bluff.
Military action in Syria, despite French blague, still seems to me not just far off but nigh on impossible. Moscow is still blocking action in the UN Security Council, the Arab League is not asking for it, the Americans don’t want to think about it, and the Europeans are not going to do it on their own. The best bet for the Syrians is still nonviolent protest, though it may be better to focus on boycotts, general strikes and work stoppages rather than putting large numbers of people in the now very dangerous streets.
Revolution is an emotional business. Often the headiest experiences are in mass rallies. But there are other ways to protest, and the ballot box should not be ignored. All the action is not in the streets.
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