Egypt: Return of the Fuloul [I] Print Email Category: Friday column Published on Friday, 23 August 2013 05:00 Written by Adamu Adamu adamuadamu@dailytrust Hits: 269 For Egyptians, the Arab Spring has since turned into a Siberian winter, and then suddenly, and most improbably, into extreme tropical summer dog days. The revolution has effectively been reversed in Egypt - now, it is time for delivering the killer-punch. Yesterday former President Hosni Mubarak was released from prison and placed under house arrest. The release looks like the definitive repudiation of the Arab Spring by Egyptians - or at least by the West on their behalf. But what went wrong? Have the people of the Middle East already forgotten all their pain? Is some sophisticated and grand conspiracy at work to see the Islam-based experiment fail? Or is it still that well-known ineptitude of the Arab World of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, as Abba Eban said of them? It is often lost on those intent on estab-lishing rule according to the dictates of Islam that the effort will need a level of erudition in Islamic theology more profound than the smattering chit-chat of the Western-educated. In addition to having this erudition, they must work to make the majority in society want and demand that system of rule, and create a sufficient number of people ready to fight to protect it; and then ensure that the minority have no fear of living under it. This, unfortunately, is a step that is most often overlooked; and, so far, in Egypt, it has proved difficult for Islamists in Egypt to worry about doing all that, especially the last one. But in a situation where ideas have to compete for people’s allegiance, Islamists must learn to sell Islam as an alternative ideology to the people. They shouldn’t assume or take anything for granted. Even as a democrat, Mursi didn’t give the impression that he understood or had accepted the need for political pluralism, and nor did he give any indication that he was ready to carry everybody along. This attitude is nothing new to anyone sure of his certainties. No doubt, neither mere commitment to Islam - no matter how high the degree - nor honesty of purpose, each on its own, is sufficient as a qualification to run a modern government or successfully oppose one. In addition, one needed some measure of sophistication and the possession of the appropriate knowledge and skill - and a plan, and perhaps a counter plan. He was utterly without any inkling of the kind of street wisdom required to survive in the no-man’s-land of governance, without having come of age in either the theory or practice of political correctness, with the result that he mostly proceeded as if propelled by the precipitate impetuosity of an Islamic zealot going off at half cock in clearly uncharted territory. Whenever he made any concessions, it would be too little too late and ineffective for his purposes. In order to avoid a coup against his government, for instance, Mursi decided to please the Americans by retaining the unpopular Camp David Treaty with Israel. This didn’t stop the Americans from giving the order, Saudi Arabia footing the bill and the army toppling a popularly elected leader to the applause of democracy-loving West, led by the United States. And when democracy came, they all faltered. The series of elections after the Arab Spring have established beyond any doubt that the Ikhwan, whose Justice and Development Party has won three straight elections, has substantial public support. The opposition to the Ikhwan comprising of parties and tendencies that would not be averse to the return of President Mubarak - nationalists of the Nasser mould, neoliberals and leftists and surprisingly even the Salafis and godmother Saudi Arabia - have all turned to the military to put obstacles on the path of democracy and finally topple the president. And even before they struck, the military regime had assurances of the full backing of the US and Israel, on behalf of whom and for whose benefit, all this tragedy is being played out; many members of the EU; and the full moral, spiritual and financial backing of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait. Days before General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled Mursi he had consulted Israeli officials, and asked them what potential threat Hamas could seek to cause as it might act in solidarity with Mursi, they assured him that Hamas was under total surveillance. According to Roni Daniel, an Israeli military analyst who spoke on Israel’s TV Channel 2 on July 14, Israel asked General Sisi to demolish the Rafah tunnels, which he promptly did. And Mohamed El-Baradei, the man whose credentials they are now trying to build by making him resign in anger at the killings so that he could serve them after the departure of Sisi, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice to seek Israeli help to get international support for the coup. You see, that is why President Barack Obama dared not call it a coup; and that is why the West has so far refused to do anything tangible to help the situation. But Mursi was in no position to help himself; and the only direction from which he could have got lessons had been blocked by the sectarian blinkers which, in its decision to back Syrian rebels, Ikhwan wore. One of the first acts of the new leaders in Tehran after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran was to set up the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The logic behind this was simple enough: the troops of the Shah that were shooting at demonstrators asking for an Islamic republic shouldn’t be trusted to protect the resulting republic. The tenacious presence of the Ulama on the scene and the creation of the Guards Corps frustrated the attempts by America to topple the new Islamic order - from the aborted attempt by General Robert Hyser in January 1979, a month to the victory of the revolution to the abortive attempt by the CIA-inspired coup masterminded by Sadeq Qutbzadeh, onetime spokesman of the revolution. Admittedly, the Egyptian chapter of the Arab Spring that the Ikhwan led - or exploited - was not a revolution in the truest sense of the word, and Mursi might not have had the power to introduce such wholesale changes. But he could at least have brought the army, the police and the security services under the control of Ikhwan loyalists, especially at the time he sacked General Hussein Tantawi when the popularity of the uprising and the support for the new situation was still high. He didn’t. He could have done this by appointing a civilian Ikhwani defence minister to bring the military under civil control. That he didn’t do this made it possible for the uniformed forces to disobey all orders from the political executives. It was a display of the powerlessness of Mursi that his own defence minister would give him a 48-hour notice of a coup d’état—and then go ahead to carry it out, as the Ikhwan helplessly watched. But to be sure, Mursi didn’t fail as a result of his incredible naivety for tolerating the remnants [the fuloul] of the Mubarak era, or because of not coming of age alone; clearly, he was sabotaged - by the security forces which refused to maintain public order because he had failed to bring them under control; by electricity workers’ deliberate blackouts as a backlash against his anti-unionism; by the members of the fuloul who control oil supplies and created artificial fuel lines throughout Egypt; and, most importantly, ignorant of the conduct and cost of governance, Mursi made election promises he couldn’t fulfil. Now, Ikhwan is being projected as a failure and it will be difficult if not impossible for any of its chapters to replicate what the Egyptians have done. If nothing, and if money can buy it, the Saudis will see to it that they don’t. And the fate of the entire Ikhwan fraternity has probably now been sealed by this ineptitude of its Egyptian progenitor. Now the hostile spotlight is on its sister branches from Tunisia to the Gulf. Going by what we have seen in the past several weeks, it is probably not far-fetched to say that Ikhwan will probably never come of age even in the next one hundred years. And it is not because they have dabbled in politics; for, indeed, there is political Islam; not least because there is nothing like apolitical Islam, despite all the effort by Saudi Arabia and the Americans to manufacture and popularise one. What we oppose is not political Islam but politicised Islam - the type of disaster created by some of the most corrupt among the political class in Nigeria and elsewhere in their attempt to cash in on the popular appeal of religion for support and to put their corruption and other inequities beyond question or probe. And in all this drama, as always—painfully and unfortunately—we find Saudi Arabia busy funding all battles against any manifestation of Islam in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. It funded all US wars against Iraq, both Desert Shield to kick Iraq out of Kuwait and Desert Storm to break the Iraqi power that they themselves had created. Prior to that, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had funded Iraq in its war against the Islamic Republic of Iran; and if they could justify that with the perverted logic that it was a fight against Shi’ism, what reason could they now give for fighting against the Ikhwan al-Muslimun, a hundred per cent of whose members are Sunni?
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 09:09:49 +0000
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