Egypts Tahrir Revolution 9781626373389

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Egypt’s Tahrir Revolution

Egypt’s Tahrir Revolution EDITED BY

Dan Tschirgi Walid Kazziha Sean F. McMahon

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2013 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2013 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Egypt's Tahrir revolution / edited by Dan Tschirgi, Walid Kazziha and Sean F. McMahon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58826-884-6 (alk. paper) 1. Egypt—History—Protests, 2011– 2. Egypt—Politics and government—1981– I. Tschirgi, Dan. II. Kazziha, Walid. III. McMahon, Sean F. DT107.87.E39 2012 962.05'6—dc23 2012028226 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

To Conchita, Nevine, and Kristine

Contents

1

Introduction Dan Tschirgi, Walid Kazziha, and Sean F. McMahon

1

Part 1 The Revolution in Egypt 2

What Went Wrong with Mubarak’s Regime? Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyid

11

3

Egypt Under Mubarak: A Family Affair Walid Kazziha

29

4

The Political Economy of Egypt’s Revolution Nadia Ramsis Farah

47

5

Youth Power and the Revolution Earl (Tim) Sullivan

67

6

Egyptian Women in Revolt: Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Roles Manar Shorbagy

7

Revolution Without Islamists? Sherine ElGhatit

89 109

Part 2 The Context of the Revolution 8

The Implosion of Political Patronage Regimes in the Middle East Ibrahim Elnur vii

131

viii

9

10

Contents

Egypt’s Social Forces, the State, and the Middle East Order Sean F. McMahon Egypt’s Uncertain Transition Ivan Ivekovic

151 173

Part 3 Implications of the Revolution 11

Two Peaceful Revolutions Compared: Egypt and East Germany Nadine Sika

191

12

Israel and the Tahrir Revolution Amr Yossef

211

13

The United States and the Tahrir Revolution Dan Tschirgi

233

Part 4 Conclusion 14

Egypt in the Balance Dan Tschirgi, Walid Kazziha, and Sean F. McMahon

List of Acronyms Bibliography The Contributors Index About the Book

257

265 267 275 279 287

1 Introduction Dan Tschirgi, Walid Kazziha, and Sean F. McMahon

In late 2012, Mohamad Morsi—the Muslim Brother elected as Egypt’s first post-Mubarak president—sought through presidential decree to elevate his office above the normal limits of judicial review. It was an explosive decision, one that precipitated a hostile reaction from all parts of Egypt’s public, save committed Islamists. Morsi’s move may have transformed the basis of conflict in Egypt, making it much less one between the remnants of Mubarak’s regime (the army and police) and the Egyptian masses, and much more a conflict between two poles of society: Islamists on one side and, on the other, everyone else. The situation at the end of 2012 contrasted sharply with the antigovernment ground swell that had been unleashed in Egypt on January 25, 2011, leaving in its wake prolonged political uncertainty. Within eighteen days, the thirty-year rule of Hosni Mubarak had ended, and a military council took control of the country. These milestone events were followed in March by a popular referendum that approved constitutional amendments as well as a process for reestablishing a viable government over the next year or so. Elections for the People’s Assembly—the lower house of Egypt’s parliament—were conducted from late November 2011 to January 10, 2012, giving Islamists a clear majority of the seats. By the end of February, the polls had yielded a similar result for parliament’s upper house, the Shura Council. The period since the events of January 25, 2011, has been one of virtually constant political tumult. It has also driven home two great lessons. The first is that when it comes to dealing with revolution as a social phenomenon, the inevitable initial question is a definitional one: What qualifies as a “revolution”? Social science broadly provides two 1

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categories of possible answers. One is rooted in classical Marxist thought, tracing its origins to Marx’s view of history as a materialistic process that ultimately underlies social reality and the concomitant need for social change that is rendered explicable by material contradictions. Proponents of this view are indebted to Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Gramsci, among others. The alternative view, both preceding Marx and further developed in his wake, denies the materialist “key” to historical change, and therefore accepts the possibility of cognitive sources of historical dynamics. Max Weber, and the tradition his work sparked, lie at the modern root of this trend. This view perceives social change as involving not only material disarticulation in the social fabric but also the possibility of evolutionary adjustments that may cumulatively produce change that is in essence “revolutionary.” The so-called Egyptian revolution of early 2011 caught all of this volume’s contributors unprepared. Associated in various ways with the daily life of the Department of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, we have witnessed for years, and in some cases decades, the debilitating impact of prolonged authoritarianism on the lives of young Egyptians. The oppressive environment generated by Egypt’s political system eventually affected virtually all aspects of the educational experience in Egypt. It is true, of course, that young people typically retain an irrepressible enthusiasm for life, but even that reality was no match for the daily grind of life in Mubarak’s Egypt. Among the first casualties claimed by the political climate as Mubarak’s rule degenerated into unabashed dictatorship were the optimism, spontaneity, hopefulness, and adventurous drive to experimentation that are typically associated with the young. Such qualities were well on their way to being overwhelmed by a pervasive fear of authority, a reflexive and unthinking conservatism, and a very low level of creative imagination. That they were not fully eclipsed by 2011 is something that in hindsight should have alerted us to the rage that exploded within Egypt’s younger generation on January 25. When the Tahrir Revolution erupted, we all cheered, but with shocked, almost unbelieving, surprise. Within eighteen days, it was over, or at least the fundamental, first objective of the regime’s opponents had been achieved: Hosni Mubarak resigned, and the young revolutionaries’ demand for true democratic change seemed to have advanced significantly as a result of this first step. For many of us, the iconic photograph that most captures the spirit of Tahrir is that of youths cleaning Tahrir Square after Mubarak had stepped down. When the photographer pointed out that Egypt’s revolu-

Introduction

3

tion was the first to have revolutionaries who tidied up after themselves, those in the picture reportedly explained that now they finally felt true ownership of the country. And this returns us to our original question: What is a social revolution? As a group, we have been unable to arrive at a consensus on a single definition. On the other hand, we have certainly identified some key hallmarks of a social revolution, including the following three features: 1. A social revolution marks a major change in the way a society is organized, and this, in turn, affects and is affected by both the structures and the values that characterized the old social order. 2. A social revolution is felt by most people in a society to mark a major change in the nature of their society. 3. A social revolution is a historical event, and, as such, will inevitably leave traces of its impact on the subsequent history of the affected society’s development. All these criteria require interpretation by the analyst, which is to say that none are objectively definable. What is more problematic is that the third criterion is obviously impossible to evaluate at any given moment. In short, then, the task of defining “revolution” remains in the realm of subjective judgment, with only some indefinable future to rely upon as a definitive agent. While the Marxist-inclined among us may stick to a vision demanding objective evidence of a revolution in materialist terms, the Weberians among us will be more flexible, accepting the possibility that history involves incremental change that may sometimes produce revolutionary transitions, and that the causes of this may be either material or cognitive, or some combination of both. In any case, the unity of our collective analyses lies in our shared assumption that history is, in the long run, dynamic. In this light, we clearly agree that Egypt experienced a movement toward “revolution” in the process of overthrowing the regime of Hosni Mubarak, but we can also just as clearly differ on the event’s immediate and future significance for both Egypt and the Arab world. In short, the second great lesson taught by the events of January 2011 and since is that a revolution’s “real” meaning will be seen differently by different people. The Egyptian revolution now appears to provide an interesting synthesis of the Marxist and Weberian models. On the one hand, the institutions and fabric of the Egyptian state and society have been changed. Mubarak, his family, and almost all of his immediate senior aides have

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been removed from power. Some of the major institutions that were closely associated with his regime have been undermined, displaced, or even eliminated. The clique of top businessmen mobilized by his younger son in preparation for his anticipated succession has suffered a serious setback. Suddenly, whole social categories of the long-marginalized Egyptian populace are moving rapidly to gain a place for themselves under the sun. The Salafi movement has emerged in strength to challenge other social and political parties as well as to pose a possibly lethal threat to Egypt’s ancient Coptic community. Last but not least, demands by various professional and labor groups continue to exert pressure on the declining economic and social order that Mubarak left behind. On the other hand, a great number of Egyptians are skeptical about these changes. They view them as insufficient and failing to provide the proper dynamics for the emergence of a new society. Mubarak is gone, but some of the pillars of his political system remain. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was replaced by President Morsi, but does not seem to be acting any differently. The authoritarian skills of the Mubarak era have been maintained. The old style of politics has been perpetuated. Increasing pressures on radical movements have been exercised, and the media have been subjected to the oppressive measures of the past. Government bureaucracy is still stifling the poor, and corruption has not receded. Some call for another revolution, while others demand that the path of the first one be corrected. Between these extremes, confusion prevails. Many continue to argue that Egypt should have promulgated a constitution prior to calling parliamentary elections. Until now, these groups still fear that the revolution will be hijacked by Islamists. Despite these differences, Egypt’s political life has acquired a welcome vibrancy. A majority of Egyptians were long isolated from the exercise of power and excluded from political discourse. Today, there are hardly any Egyptians who do not have an opinion about the country’s political situation. Whether these debates will yield practical results favoring the development of a vibrant society and a viable state, as well as a way out of the authoritarian impasse in which Egyptians found themselves in recent history, is a moot point. However, the signs indicate that Egyptians are returning to the realm of politics through their daily discussions and growing interest in their own political future. Political parties have mushroomed; among them are the good, the bad, and the ugly. Independent leaders with a strong sense of direction are emerging after having been almost totally eclipsed during the

Introduction

5

Mubarak era. Moreover, young men and women are no longer afraid to challenge the authority of the state and, if necessary, to put their lives on the line to defend their newly won freedoms. The debate surrounding the hijacking of Egypt’s January 2011 revolution is impassioned, and has serious consequences. Undeniably, changes have taken place, and there are still more to come. Mubarak has been removed and the barrier of fear has fallen, hopefully forever. Yet it is also true that some pillars of the old order have outlived the fall of the ancien régime, and have managed to sustain themselves in power. The SCAF did not represent a revolutionary movement, nor was it expected to become one. President Morsi was able to chase it from power with only one, hardly dramatic, confrontation. Thus, we saw the SCAF bowing to the pressures of politics. It has retracted some of the decisions it had taken and bowed to the power of the people. Left to its own devices, the SCAF would have monopolized power. But today’s reality is that Egypt is still living a process of revolutionary change with the potential to determine a limited professional role for its military. Since the January 2011 revolution, the political reactivation of Egyptian society has produced three major political blocs. First is the Islamist bloc, consisting mainly of the well-organized Muslim Brothers, the Salafis, and independent Muslim personalities. Second is the Liberal bloc, which includes the youth movement and some of the newly founded political parties that support liberal programs. The third bloc revolves around the SCAF, and includes constituencies attached to the bureaucracy and those in power. None of these blocs represents on its own a cohesive political movement unified organizationally in one single party. Each coheres largely as a defensive mechanism against the others. However, especially in the cases of the Islamists and the liberals, loose ideological linkages are also organizationally relevant. None of these political forces on its own is currently able to lead the country and define its future steps. The outcome of the interaction among them will set Egypt’s eventual political direction. The balance of power could shift if two blocs decide to join hands, but this has not yet happened. After January 2011, Egypt set itself on the course of completing its unfinished revolution, with the country remaining in the throes of a political process that could ultimately lead it to total change. For now, Cairo remains between Kerensky and Lenin, between the first Russian revolution and that of the Bolsheviks. In less dramatic but sober terms, Egypt is currently caught between Weber and Marx.

6

Egypt’s Tahrir Revolution

The Puzzle of Egypt’s Long-Term Future Trying to fathom the significance of Egypt’s revolution necessarily thrusts one into the thankless task of political divination. From some perspectives, the record of Egypt’s short post-revolutionary history seems to indicate that with the coming of the SCAF, Egypt actually experienced a counterrevolution rather than a “revolutionary moment.” In January and February 2011 the Egyptian state’s repressive apparatuses grew stronger when Mubarak transferred power to the SCAF, and in a wonderful—though some would say “confused”—instance of metaphorical symmetry, a favorite chant in Tahrir Square was “the army and the people are one hand.” Class oppression and exploitation were not eliminated in the aftermath of the revolution. They increased. Furthermore, none of the repressive state machinery was broken up. Its power was not diminished. In fact, as the extensive post-revolution use of military trials indicates, the reach of the repressive state apparatuses was extended, and their power was augmented after the revolutionary days of January–February 2011. In September, Human Rights Watch disclosed that more than 12,000 people had been tried before military tribunals since January. Strikingly, the monitoring group reported that this was “more than the total number of civilians who faced military trials during the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.”1 An additional element giving cause for concern as Egyptians prepared to elect their first post-revolution president in the summer of 2012 was the intense chauvinism that marked Egypt’s political life since Mubarak’s fall. From the early days of 2011, Tahrir Square—and indeed the entire country—were rife with nationalistic fervor. Supporters as well as opponents of the Mubarak regime were driven by nationalist sentiments, including the presumed menace posed by “foreign agents.” All discourses, even those articulated by Islamists, were nationalistic. Also, as was made abundantly clear the night the tanks rolled into Tahrir Square to be greeted with euphoria, anti-Mubarak protesters did not want to smash the state apparatus. They wanted to wrest control of the state apparatus from the Mubarak regime. From a Leninist perspective, the Egyptian insurrection sought to do a most unrevolutionary thing—allow a new class to govern with the old state machinery; not destroy the state, but transfer its proprietorship. The political upheaval of 2011 was therefore simultaneously both a superbly simple and direct phenomenon and an incredibly complex one. It was simple and direct in that the movement found unity in the almost unanimous desire to rid Egypt of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. It was far more

Introduction

7

complex in that it united Islamists, secular liberals, traditional elites, and others—all in a welter of fundamentally differing interests and ambitions. The whole affair begged the question of this disparate movement’s significance for Egypt’s future direction. We hope that analyses in this volume will shed welcome light on the processes that led to Egypt’s revolution as well as on that event’s overall significance.

Structure of the Book Part 1 covers the specific factors and dynamics that underpinned, and flowed from, the Egyptian revolution of January 2011. Part 2 covers the context of the revolution, exploring the broader historical and political environments. Part 3 covers the implications of the revolution, examining its significance for both theory-building and international affairs. Part 4 offers some preliminary conclusions regarding key questions related to the meaning and implications of Egypt’s 2011 political upheaval. Part 1 begins with a chapter by Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid, who raises the compelling question: What went wrong with Mubarak’s regime? His analysis uncovers a series of missteps, none of which were necessarily preordained, that led the former leader to his political doom. Picking up the same analytical query, Walid Kazziha asks a closely related question: How did a relatively harmonious political system, created and strengthened over the years by four successive presidents with military backgrounds, end up under the last of them in a revolution? Kazziha’s answer concentrates on the regime’s final few years and, particularly, on its experimentation with an unacknowledged, though real and disastrous, power-sharing arrangement between the elder Mubarak and his youngest son, Gamal. Sustaining the tight focus on Egypt’s 2011 revolution, the four remaining chapters in Part 1 take up detailed considerations of key causal elements that paved the way for the Mubarak regime’s demise. Nadia Ramsis Farah explores the underlying economic causes that were involved. Earl (Tim) Sullivan, making good use of decades of experience as an educator dealing with Egyptian young people, examines the pivotal role of “youth power” in the events of 2011. Manar Shorbagy deals with the role of women in Egypt’s recent revolution and its aftermath. Finally, Sherine ElGhatit examines the much discussed role of Islamists in the revolution, offering a welcome and reasonable discussion of this emotional subject.

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Egypt’s Tahrir Revolution

The three chapters of Part 2 provide an overview of the regional, social, and economic factors that shaped Egypt’s 2011 revolution. Ibrahim Elnur’s opening chapter explores the implosion of political patronage regimes in the Middle East, offering a penetrating analytical account of the Arab Spring of 2011 as forming the context for Egypt’s Tahrir Revolution. This is followed by Sean F. McMahon’s incisive Gramscian analysis, which offers a variety of insights into the revolutionary interplay among Egypt’s social forces and the regional order, as well as some rather startling, if controversial, predictions regarding Egypt’s post-revolutionary future. Last, Ivan Ivekovic confronts the issue of Egypt’s uncertain transition. Carefully teasing out the implications of the different domestic actors and interests involved in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary effort to determine the country’s trajectory, he presents a compelling picture that is solidly grounded in political economy. The three chapters of Part 3 analyze Egypt’s revolution in terms of broader issues, specifically its theoretical implications for the understanding of transitional politics in changes from authoritarian to participatory systems, as well as its practical implications for key international actors, such as the United States and Israel. Nadine Sika takes up the challenge of mining the Egyptian experience for theoretical insights by comparing the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak’s regime to the 1989 collapse of the East German government. Amr Yossef and Dan Tschirgi respectively focus on the revolution’s significance for Israel and the United States. In Part 4, the editors take up the challenge of directly confronting the most important questions raised by the tumultuous events of 2011–2012 for global politics, the discipline of political science, and the Egyptian people.

Note 1. See Human Rights Watch, “Egypt: Retry or Free 12,000 After Unfair Military Trials,” September 10, 2011, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/10 /egypt-retry-or-free-12000-after-unfair-military-trials.

Part 1 The Revolution in Egypt

2 What Went Wrong with Mubarak’s Regime? Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyid

Looking at the political scene in Egypt on the eve of Police Day on January 25, 2011, the date of the demonstration that several groups had called for on their Facebook and Twitter sites, nothing suggested that the country was about to embark on a revolution. Signs of massive discomfort, nevertheless, were not lacking. The Mubarak regime had already lost its legitimacy. Protest movements had been on the rise since 2004. Elections in the autumn of 2010 for the People’s Assembly, the lower house of parliament, had been a joke, delivering the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) a landslide victory with 97 percent of the seats. In terms of a ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court, this “victory” was due to electoral fraud that implicated no less than one-third of the deputies, who were all candidates of the NDP. The so-called Popular Campaign in Support of Gamal Mubarak as President did not really get off the ground, with no notable public figures joining it, and its posters were torn down in major cities. No one in the country, however, predicted the regime’s downfall. It was definitely an authoritarian regime, but it was not the most repressive in the Arab world. Many people in Egypt were poor and a large number of young people could not find work, but levels of unemployment and poverty were historically much higher in other Arab countries, particularly in Algeria and Morocco. 1 The economic and political situation in Egypt was not the worst in the Arab world. The country had in fact embarked on a process of economic and political liberalization since the mid-1970s, which had slowed somewhat in the

11

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The Revolution in Egypt

four years preceding the 2011 revolution. Nevertheless, Mubarak’s regime fell easily after eighteen days of massive protests. Much more repressive regimes in Libya, Yemen, and Syria resisted a similar fate over a much longer period of time. As of this writing, the Syrian regime is determined to crush a popular revolt by any means possible. Despite the difficulties caused by the regime’s shortage of legitimacy prior to January 25, 2011, it would be inaccurate to describe Egypt under Mubarak’s rule as a failed state. The rate of economic growth was slowing, but remained at 4.8 percent in 2010, with the central bank accumulating almost US$35 billion in reserves, and the country receiving 14 million tourists that year. The state of law and order was not perfect, but people felt safe enough to travel in the Delta, in Upper Egypt, in both the cities and the countryside. Even those young people who called for a big demonstration on January 25 did not envisage that they would trigger an explosion of popular discontent that would topple the regime in only eighteen days. Their demands on that first day of the revolution were limited to requesting that the government impose a minimum wage, end the state of emergency, accept the resignation of the interior minister, and limit presidential tenure to two terms.2 What accounts, then, for the relatively swift crumbling of the old order in eighteen days? What did the regime fail to do to guard against this end? And what did it unwittingly accomplish that accelerated its fall? In more general terms, why did the outcome of economic and political liberalization lead to the regime’s fall, rather than its endurance as expected by many experts on the durability of authoritarian governments in the Arab world?3 These are the questions that this chapter strives to answer. To formulate these questions this way does not necessarily imply a voluntaristic view of history and acceptance of the naive assumption that, had Mubarak enjoyed the advice of a shrewd politician, he would have avoided his ouster from office, or that leaders such as Bashar alAssad in Syria and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen were more farsighted. In fact, I argue that the fate of Mubarak’s regime was sealed by the working of objective forces in a way that could not have been foreseen by any of the actors involved in this recent episode of Egypt’s history. The outcome of the interaction among these forces was the unintended consequence of actions and decisions taken by Mubarak and his government. Senior officials of Mubarak’s regime thought that such actions would ensure the durability of their regime. History has proved, once again, that it is more cunning than they could ever have thought.

What Went Wrong with Mubarak’s Regime?

13

Possible causes of the fall of Mubarak’s regime can be divided into two categories. The first were accomplishments of the regime that actually proved fatal. Second were contextual conditions and errors of judgment. Mubarak’s regime could not foresee that its accomplishments would erode, rather than consolidate, its power. It could also not control events in the regional environment that encouraged protesters in Egypt to escalate their demands, from calls for the regime’s reformation to demands for its overthrow. On the other hand, the regime had a considerable margin of maneuver in terms of the political management of protest movements. Its leaders suffered from an overdose of selfconfidence that pushed them to embark on a strategy that aimed at arranging a family succession. The approach finally produced the exact opposite of what they wished. Let us examine the working of all these possible causes in some detail.

Successes That Eroded Popular Support for the Regime Amazingly enough, Mubarak’s regime could have taken pride in four areas of policy that, indirectly, contributed to its fall. Besides, it maintained a pattern of civil-military relations that proved, unintentionally, essential for the success of the revolution. The three areas of policy included expansion of education, a considerable degree of freedom of expression and assembly, and promotion of an Egyptian information highway. Complaints about the deteriorating quality of education are a common theme in public debate in Egypt. The complaints are justified when directed against most institutions, public and private. On the other hand, there is no denying that schooling made large strides during the thirty years of Mubarak’s rule. Many young Egyptians managed to obtain a relatively good-quality education, either through their own efforts or thanks to family support or private schools. The World Bank’s World Development Indicators of 2011 put the adult literacy rate in Egypt in 2009 at 66 percent, with average years of schooling ranging between nine for the poorest quintile and twelve for the richest quintile. The youth literacy rate stood at 88 percent (male) and 82 percent (female) jumping from 71 percent and 54 percent, respectively, in 1990.4 The January 2011 revolution was not initiated by the miserable masses that wanted food and shelter. Those who participated in the first demonstrations in Cairo and

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The Revolution in Egypt

major cities were mostly young middle-class people who had received university education. Leaders of the two most important Facebook groups that spearheaded the revolution, Wael Ghonim and Ahmed Maher of “We Are All Khaled Said” and the “Movement of the Youth of April 6” respectively, were graduates of engineering faculties, which admit only the highest achievers from Egypt’s secondary schools.5 Interestingly enough, the civil society groups and personalities who called for these demonstrations did not represent a single trade union or peasant association. The improvement in levels of education of the Egyptian people during the preceding three decades was partly due to efforts of Mubarak’s regime, which spent 12.6 percent of government revenue on education. Although seemingly impressive, this allocation was insufficient. Indeed, as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), Mubarak’s expenditure on education was 3.8 percent, lower than in Egypt’s education budget in 1981, the first year of Mubarak’s rule following the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar Sadat. Still, in absolute terms, the regime outspent its predecessors in allocating financial resources to improve the educational level of the majority of Egyptians. It must be added that Egyptian families spent almost as much to ensure better education for their children through private tutoring in various forms. According to the World Bank, household expenditure on private tutoring amounted to US$1.1 billion–$1.3 billion (7–9 billion Egyptian pounds), or close to 3.6 percent of GDP.6 Leading figures of Mubarak’s regime did not understand that the expansion of education could potentially become a threat to the survival of the regime. On the contrary, they kept highlighting dubious reports that Egypt was an educational model for other countries, and managed to elicit declarations from international organizations, such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), commending Egypt’s educational achievements and suggesting that the country could be a model for developing states.7 On the other hand, a visitor to any of Egypt’s public universities would have immediately realized that the government did not trust either students or their professors. The presence of riot-police lorries parked in front of the gates of major universities to guard against possible demonstrations of university students was a very familiar scene. Neither students nor university professors were allowed to freely elect their representatives in student bodies and university professors’ clubs. State security officers heavily supervised such elections. In January 2010 the Ministry of Social Solidarity, which is legally in charge of citizens’ associations, dissolved the elected council of

What Went Wrong with Mubarak’s Regime?

15

Cairo University’s professors’ club on flimsy charges. Cairo University professors were called to elect a new council. All members of the old council were not allowed to contest this election. Cairo University professors boycotted the election of the new council, and the election was won by a list of professors supported by the university administration and led by a member of the policy committee of the then-ruling National Democratic Party, headed by Gamal Mubarak. Heavy-handed government control over student bodies and university professors’ clubs was the rule in all universities. The government was confident that the situation in universities was under control, given that all presidents of universities and deans of faculties were directly or indirectly appointees of the government and worked closely with state security organs. A second area in which the policy of the regime was producing countereffects was that of freedom of expression and assembly. President Mubarak, who stood beside Anwar Sadat when the latter was assassinated on October 6, 1981, was convinced that a distinction should be made between law-abiding opposition using peaceful methods and the more radical opposition who were determined to use armed struggle in order to remove the regime. Upon assuming office, Mubarak carefully adopted a two-pronged approach in dealing with the opposition. The former was allowed to publish newspapers and enjoyed freedom of assembly, besides having a limited presence in parliament. The more radical opposition, mostly Islamist, was left for the security forces to handle. Thus the law-abiding opposition parties could publish newspapers. More recently, a number of privately owned newspapers were authorized and succeeded in attracting a larger readership than oppositionparty newspapers, which were increasingly perceived by the public as only playing their prescribed role of “loyal opposition.” Moreover, a number of private satellite television channels were given the permission to operate in the latter years of Mubarak’s rule, provided they did not transmit news bulletins. These channels ran talk shows that soon became very popular. The success of the talk shows as well as the wish to compete with Arab satellite television channels, particularly Al Jazeera, led the government to allow a certain margin of freedom to government-owned television channels, enabling anchors and their guests to criticize some government policies. Civil society groups, initially the Egyptian Movement for Change— known as Kefaya—challenged restrictions on freedom of assembly and managed to exercise this right by organizing demonstrations and carry-

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The Revolution in Egypt

ing out collective protest actions. This group, being mainly made up of middle-class individuals and involving well-known personalities, including journalists, film and theater actors, and university professors, was largely tolerated by the government, though on occasion its members were harshly harassed by security forces. Its demonstrations, attracting usually no more than a few hundred persons, would be cordoned by thousands of riot police, who would confine the demonstrators to well-known places, most famously the entrance to the lobby of the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo. Reports and articles in newspapers and television talk shows revealed corruption within the highest ranks of Mubarak’s regime. Media people who unmasked the true face of the corrupt, inefficient, and repressive regime could use rulings of the country’s judges, who had convicted “well-connected” businessmen as well as senior government officials of corruption. The image of a thoroughly corrupt regime was reinforced in best-selling novels and popular movies that became favorite topics of conversation. Such was the case of Alaa al-Aswani’s novel Yacoubian Building, which was made into a movie starring the very popular Adel Imam.8 Several of the movies directed by the late Yusuf Shahin and his assistants had the same impact. The Egyptian public therefore became aware of wide corruption among its rulers, of election rigging, and of the failure of the government to provide decent basic services to citizens, including drinking and irrigation water, electricity, and garbage collection. Ruling-party and government leaders realized the damage caused to the regime’s reputation by this exercise of freedom of expression and of assembly and tried to curb the exercise of these rights. Four editors of privately owned newspapers were sentenced to a few months in prison in 2010 but appealed the ruling, which was not enforced. Owners of private satellite television channels were warned against the continued employment of troublesome anchorpersons. Radical critics of the regime, such as Hamdy Kandil and Ibrahim Eissa, were told to discontinue their talk shows on public and private television channels. Other journalists and television anchors were advised to conform to the government line in whatever they might write or transmit. A businessman who headed the Neo-Wafd party bought a private newspaper. His first act as proprietor was to dismiss the editor-in-chief, known for his critical articles against the president and his family.9 Well-known critics of the regime were barred from participating in talk shows on public and private television channels. Security forces often harassed Kefaya and April 6 leaders.10

What Went Wrong with Mubarak’s Regime?

17

By 2011, it was already too late for these measures to produce any effect, except to underscore the hypocrisy of a regime claiming to be upholding freedom of expression and assembly while simultaneously muzzling newspapers and private television channels. These media, as well as civil society movements, had already awakened an educated public to the reality of Mubarak’s regime. The effectiveness of television talk shows was definitely far greater than that of independent newspapers, since, according to World Development Indicators, 96 percent of the population had television sets, but only 67 percent were literate in the mid-1990s. Literacy rates were much higher among young people, having risen to 85 percent in 2007.11 The third area in which the regime was successful but unwittingly offering new opportunities for countermobilization was its promotion of the use of computer and Internet facilities. Inspired by a modernist vision of Egypt’s future, and convinced of the usefulness of the computer, the regime adopted policies that helped young Egyptians to learn use of the computer and eased their access to the Internet. Computers were sold at relatively low prices. Businessmen were called upon to help schools and families to acquire computers. Computers and Internet facilities were introduced in schools and villages in all parts of the country. Hosni Mubarak, probably on the advice of his son Gamal, chose Ahmed Nazif, who had earlier proved to be very successful as minister of communications, to be prime minister of Egypt in 2004. At the age of fifty-six, Nazif became the youngest prime minister under both Sadat and Mubarak and did his best to promote the diffusion of information technology throughout the country. He preferred to exercise his functions as prime minister of Egypt from an office in Cairo’s “Smart Village,” which was created to be “Egypt’s Silicon Valley,” and attracted major information companies to invest in the country. As a result of these efforts, the number of people using computers and having access to Internet facilities increased rapidly. According to the Ministry of Communications, the number of Internet users in the country grew from 16.3 million in 2009 to 22.6 million in December 2010. The number of households having access to the Internet rose from nearly one-fourth of the population (24 percent) to slightly less than onethird (31 percent). This development also coincided with a massive expansion in the number of mobile-phone users to 66.9 million in 2010, an increase of 25 percent from 2009.12 Political activists were soon to discover the tremendous potential of the new information technology as a tool of mobilization, an alternative source of information, and a medium of coordination for their activities.

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The Revolution in Egypt

Kefaya and the Muslim Brotherhood were the first to discover these possibilities. The two had initially communicated with their members through text messages, particularly to inform them of dates and venues of planned demonstrations. Not being able to publish a newspaper, or having lost the license to publish one, Kefaya and the Brotherhood established Internet organs to communicate views and news to members and sympathizers. Other activists followed suit. News of the general strike that the April 6 Movement called for was disseminated through Facebook. The signatures of hundreds of thousands of Egyptians supporting the presidential candidacy of Mohamed el-Baradei were largely obtained through a website. By 2011, it was common for militant groups to diffuse their ideas through Facebook and Twitter. The Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said,” administered by Wael Ghonim, was one of the most successful, gaining a membership of almost 600,000 persons on the eve of the revolution. A fourth area of relative success from a political development perspective relates to civil-military relations. In fact, all heads of state in republican Egypt respected the large degree of autonomy the armed forces enjoyed vis-à-vis the country’s political leadership. Gamal Abdul Nasser allowed his first vice president, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, to operate the armed forces freely and completely on his own, until after the 1967 war. It is true that this autonomy proved disastrous for Egypt, as Amer was, by many accounts, not a very competent commander and surrounded himself with even less competent officers. The president was content to choose an army officer whom he trusted to serve as minister of defense and leave the day-to-day management of military affairs to that individual. The president, as supreme commander of the armed forces, definitely influenced the appointments of senior commanders in the different branches of the armed forces, but it did not seem that he concerned himself very much with the daily management of the military establishment. The president also had the chiefs of the different intelligence agencies reporting to him either directly or indirectly. One thing is certain: all senior commanders of Egypt’s armed forces were appointed to their posts on the basis of seniority as well as competence. Their loyalty to the president was generally taken for granted, given that all presidents of Egypt were careful to remove any senior commander of the armed forces who was perceived either to be very popular or to harbor political ambitions. The last officer falling into this category was Field Marshal Abdel Halim Abou Ghazala, removed from his post by Mubarak in 1989.

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In brief, the Egyptian armed forces met all four criteria of autonomy suggested by the late Samuel Huntington: complexity of structure, coherence of organization, adaptability to changing circumstances, and autonomy versus political authority and traditional groups. Compared to armed forces in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, Egypt’s armed forces are far more professional. Its commanders are not appointed on the basis of family or sectarian connections. 13 Even the Republican Guard, which has the task of protecting the president, is not under the command of the president himself, but rather under that of the minister of defense. It is true that President Mubarak sought to ensure the loyalty of senior commanders to his rule and, possibly, to his son’s presidential ambitions. It was rumored that in addition to their salaries, the president sent senior officers a monthly allowance. Opponents of the succession plans that could have taken Gamal Mubarak to the presidency of Egypt speculated that the armed forces might be the most formidable barrier to the realization of Gamal’s ambitions. They pinned their hopes on the fact that commanders of the armed forces managed not to take a public stand on this issue, neither approving it nor opposing it. After the January 2011 revolution, it was disclosed that they were planning to move against Gamal once he attempted to take practical steps to succeed his father.14 There were also press reports that Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi was unhappy with the privatization policies of Ahmed Nazif, the last prime minister under Mubarak. He publicly expressed these misgivings at a meeting of the Council of Ministers, commenting sarcastically on privatization plans and asking the prime minister to move to other issues on the agenda.15 The autonomy of Egypt’s armed forces enabled its commanders to keep their distance with Mubarak once the revolution broke out, and particularly when they were summoned to protect the regime following the complete disintegration of security forces on January 28, 2011. This autonomy gave them the option either to support Mubarak or to back a popular revolution. The outbreak of the popular revolution provided the opportunity they wanted to remove the supreme commander of the armed forces. They were careful enough to conceal their disenchantment with Mubarak’s regime until February 10, 2011, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces met for the first time without the presence of the president. Mubarak, it appears, continued to believe until that day that the military commanders remained loyal to him.

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The Revolution in Egypt

Where Mubarak Could Have Had a Choice Mubarak could have had a choice, but he opted for policies and measures that took his regime to a dead end. Warning signs had accumulated over the years, but he failed to realize their significance. The policy areas where the regime could theoretically have had several choices were four: the presidential ambitions of Gamal Mubarak; the conduct of local and national parliamentary elections; dealing with protest movements; and, finally, drawing lessons from the Tunisian revolution. The first of these was indeed the key to them all. One choice in this policy area determined choices in all others. The decision to move ahead with this succession scheme required the presence of a docile and malleable parliament through the rigging of elections, ignoring demands for political reform raised by protest movements, and dismissing the relevance for Egypt of what happened in Tunisia. This family succession scheme was never very popular in Egypt. Mubarak himself could not defend it publicly. Until his last month in office, he did not utter one word to convince public opinion that his son deserved to succeed him. Even when an unknown figure initiated the so-called Popular Campaign in Support of Gamal Mubarak, neither the president nor the senior leaders of the NDP or the government spoke out on the issue. They all knew that if Gamal Mubarak were to run for president, the government would ensure his victory and the governmentcontrolled media would do their best to make succession seem to be a popular demand. Actually, it was not difficult to see that the scheme did not enjoy much support, for as soon as early signs of the plan became visible, manifestations of opposition multiplied. The highly respected Mohamed Hassanein Heykal, former editor-in-chief of al-Ahram and confidant of the late President Gamal Abdul Nasser, gave a lecture at the American University in Cairo in which he warned against such a prospect.16 AlArabi, the weekly paper of the Nasserite Party, launched a campaign against the scheme. The Kefaya movement arose in December 2004, specifically targeting the ambitions of the son, as well as the father’s determination to remain in office. Ayman Nour’s inspired National Campaign Against Family Succession joined Kefaya six years later.17 Despite such warning signs, Gamal Mubarak’s march to succeed his father proceeded unabashed after 2000, when he was appointed to the general secretariat of the NDP. Two years later, Gamal assumed the post of secretary-general of the policy committee of the National Democratic Party and, together with three others, occupied the post of assistant

What Went Wrong with Mubarak’s Regime?

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secretary-general of the party. In his capacity as head of the policy committee, Gamal could summon all cabinet members, including the prime minister, to report on their activities and to stand accountable before him and members of the committee. His father, who was exercising his authority as leader of the NDP, had appointed him to this post. Gamal reportedly had a say in the choice of the cabinet, particularly that of Ahmed Nazif, who at the time (2004) was Gamal’s protégé.18 Mubarak must have realized that this succession plan was not receiving much support from the public. None of the regime’s prominent leaders could openly admit that there was such a plan. The president said that his son was only helping him carry out his duties. Gamal claimed that he was only interested in playing a public role but did not entertain presidential ambitions. Presumably, the two thought that this lack of enthusiasm on the public’s part could be overcome in time. Preparations for succession seemed to accelerate in the summer of 2010. A little-known member of the leftist Progressive Unionist Patriotic Rally started what was labeled as the Popular Campaign in Support of Gamal Mubarak.19 The campaign failed miserably. No public figure endorsed it, with the exception of Ibrahim Kamel,20 a prominent businessman who was heavily indebted to one of the state-owned banks. The only other well-known figure who took this position, though belatedly, was Sa‘d el-Din Ibrahim, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo.21 Ibrahim soon paid a high price for supporting Gamal Mubarak: he was completely ostracized by the country’s intellectual community.22 Gamal Mubarak’s presidential ambitions did not even meet with approval from the higher ranks of the NDP, or from members of the People’s Assembly. Both Safwat el-Sherif, the secretary-general of the party, and Ali el-Deen Hilal, the party’s assistant secretary-general for information, kept repeating that Hosni Mubarak was the only candidate of the party in the presidential elections scheduled for August 2011. Members of the People’s Assembly greeted Mubarak’s declaration that he would “continue serving the country so long as his heart beats” with a heated wave of applause. Hosni Mubarak grossly underestimated the force of opposition to the planned succession. He therefore allowed things to proceed normally, keeping his intentions about a sixth term unknown for as long as possible. The January 2011 revolution forced him to abandon this approach. But why did Mubarak agree to such a scheme in the first place, and why did he display such a willingness to betray the spirit of a republican regime?

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Not being a member of the group of army officers who overthrew the monarchy in 1952, Hosni Mubarak was less committed to the republican ideal than had been his two predecessors. Both the latter had been proud of the proclamation of the republic in June 1953, considering it a major achievement of the July 1952 revolution, which they had led. Moreover, by the twenty-first century, Hosni Mubarak could draw comfort from the fact that hereditary succession seemed to be a common practice of the Arab world’s “republican” regimes. It had already taken place in Syria in 2000. There were similar plans in Yemen and in Libya. Keeping the post of the president in the family seemed to be the best guarantee for maintaining the family’s wealth and privileges.

The People’s Assembly Elections of 2010 Mubarak continued to miss every opportunity to regain a measure of legitimacy for his regime. An opportunity came his way in the fall of 2010 with the People’s Assembly elections scheduled for that year. The harassment of Muslim Brothers months before the elections led observers to expect that the Brothers would not repeat their electoral victories of 2005, when they had won eighty-eight seats, almost 20 percent of all seats in the assembly.23 Rumors claimed that the ruling NDP had concluded a deal with the legally recognized political parties that would allow the latter to capture a considerable number of seats in return for playing the role of “loyal opposition” and rejecting all offers by the Brotherhood—legally banned but largely tolerated—to conclude an electoral alliance. These parties had won only seventeen seats in 2005, 20 percent of what the Muslim Brothers had obtained. The election ended with the NDP winning 496 seats out of 512, or 97 percent of all seats. The Muslim Brotherhood won no seats. With the exception of the Progressive Unionist Patriotic Rally, the open rigging and fraud that marred the 2010 elections caused the “loyal opposition” to withdraw officially from scheduled runoff elections. In the end, opposition parties won only sixteen seats. The illegal methods used by the administration led the Supreme Administrative Court to nullify the outcomes of elections for 184 seats. According to Article 187 of the 1971 constitution, the number of elected seats in the assembly should not be lower than 350. Had the rulings of the court been enforced, any meeting of the assembly would have constituted a flagrant violation of the constitution. However, the Higher Election Commission declined to give effect to the ruling of the Supreme

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Administrative Court. Both Mubarak and the election commission admitted that some violations occurred during these elections, but Mubarak claimed that the irregularities were not sufficiently widespread to cast doubt on the legality of NDP victories.24 Whether or not Mubarak knew what really happened in these elections, he was not the kind of leader who would run the risk of fair and free elections.25 He did not depart from a pattern inherited from his predecessor, Anwar Sadat. Sadat was not comfortable with the presence of 13 members of the parliament who opposed his peace treaty with Israel in 1979 out of a total membership of 350. Returning from Washington, D.C., where he signed that treaty, he ordered the dissolution of the three-year-old assembly and made sure that in the following election almost none of the 13 deputies would win a seat. 26 Mubarak clearly did not want to see any member of the Muslim Brothers in the People’s Assembly in 2010. His State Security Service police had already ensured that only little more than a handful of opposition candidates would find their way into the assembly.27 Mubarak and his close followers failed to understand that the great electoral fraud of 2010 would be almost the last nail in their regime’s coffin.

Dealing with Collective Protest The failure to abide by the rules of fair and free election produced waves of protests throughout the country. One would have expected President Mubarak and senior figures in his regime to draw lessons from these protests, but it did not occur to them that the best response would have been to alter their policies. In fact, the country had seen an unprecedented wave of collective protests since 2004. Some of these were driven by political demands, and led by civil society movements such as Kefaya, the April 6 Movement, and “We Are All Khaled Said,” or by political movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Most, however, were driven by economic grievances. The demands in such protests included higher wages, better working conditions, and improved government services, or alternatively the protests aimed at expressing opposition to specific government policies. There is no reliable record of these protests, but a number of human rights and trade union groups published accounts that relied mostly on Egyptian newspapers. Al-Ard is one of these groups. According to its records, the number of worker protests grew from a monthly average of

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fifteen in 2004 to twenty-six in 2006, sixty-six in 2007, and thirty-two in 2010. In 2007, more than 1 million workers were involved in 706 collective actions in twenty-three out of Egypt’s twenty-seven governorates.28 One of the most notable protests came in the form of two strikes by textile workers in the Delta town of Mahalla al-Kubra. The strikes came in two waves, the first of which was in 2006 and the second in 2008. The second protest coincided in April 2008 with a call by the April 6 Movement for a general strike in the country. The call for a strike was not echoed except in Mahalla al-Kubra, where it gave rise to violent clashes with the police. Apart from labor unrest, the regime had to face political protests as well. The best-known protest action comprised several marches and demonstrations in Alexandria condemning the death of the young Khaled Said under torture by the police in the summer of 2010. The Facebook group known as “We Are All Khaled Said” was launched to express indignation at police brutality. It called on people to join in condemning such acts by the police. Its call found a favorable response throughout the country and particularly in cyberspace as hundreds of thousands of young people joined this computerized movement. People in all walks of life took part in these protest actions, including not only workers and peasants but also government employees, university professors, judges, pharmacists, and even handicapped persons. The government responded in two ways. Protests driven by economic grievances were managed reluctantly through negotiations with striking workers and employees. On several occasions the government conceded to some of the protesters’ demands. The government also finally accepted the principle of independent trade unions and recognized a free trade union for employees of the real estate taxation authority. On the other hand, security forces would usually surround politically driven protests so that other citizens could be prevented from participating. With few people taking part in political protest, security officials felt that not much harm would be done to the regime if a few hundred persons were left to shout out their anger at the regime’s policies. Leaders of Mubarak’s regime calculated that economic protests would eventually decline when benefits of economic growth started to trickle down to the masses. They saw no real prospect that those who complained about the lack of political freedom would join ranks with those who were economically discontented. It was this belief—that Egyptians cared only about food prices and the cost of living—that

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caused regime officials to play down the importance of the Facebook and Twitter calls for demonstrations on January 25, 2011.

The Tunisian Demonstration Effect Several leaders of the January 2011 revolution have admitted that the Tunisian revolution instilled the hope that Egyptians could succeed in overthrowing an oppressive regime in the same way that Tunisians managed to get rid of an equally repressive regime. Both regimes had earlier seemed immune to any radical change.29 Even before January 25, Egyptians were moved by Mohamed Bouazizi’s act of setting himself on fire, which led to no fewer than four Egyptians attempting to imitate the Tunisian’s self-immolation in protest against Mubarak’s regime. The regime’s senior officials, undoubtedly including Mubarak himself, never drew the correct lesson from what had happened in Tunisia. They continued believing that Egypt was so different from Tunisia and that there was no chance of revolutionary contagion.

Conclusion The process of economic and political liberalization, initiated and interrupted by Anwar Sadat, and resumed under Hosni Mubarak, released social forces that could not be contained under the latter’s regime. On the other hand, the same process of liberalization empowered private entrepreneurial groups, some of whom sought to combine economic wealth with exclusive political power. In turn, that process allowed other groups of trade unionists and militants to join hands in order to challenge the state’s formal restrictions on freedom of assembly and association. Economic liberalization, while promising masses of people decent jobs and better living conditions, simply widened the divide between rich and poor, while failing to provide jobs to hundreds of thousands of graduates of high schools and universities. Nor were decent living conditions made available to millions of Egyptians who were living beneath the poverty line. Tensions generated by the unmet demands of these groups reached a critically dangerous point by 2010. Mubarak’s regime faced two choices: to proceed from liberalization to democratization by conceding to demands for genuine political reform, including ending the state of emergency and allowing free and

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The Revolution in Egypt

fair elections, or, to the contrary, to tighten its grip on civil society and political organizations. When faced by the massive mobilization of discontent on January 25, 2011, the regime decided to take up the second alternative, but it lacked the capacity to suppress the massive outpouring of protest throughout the country. The breakdown of the regime’s security apparatus before the popular revolt put Egypt’s fate in the hands of the armed forces. Army commanders saw no reason to bear the heavy responsibility of a bloody confrontation with the masses in order to protect a regime that was not only short on legitimacy but also violating republicanism, a basic principle of the July 1952 revolution that it claimed to honor.

Notes 1. World Bank, World Development Indicators 2009 (Washington, DC, 2009), pp. 56–57, 67–68. 2. “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com /elshaheeed.co.uk. 3. Steven Heydemann, “Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World,” Analysis Paper no. 13 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2007); Amr Hashem Rabi, ed., Thawrat Yanayir: Quera’a Awwaliyah and Ro’yah Mustaqbaliyyah [January Revolution: A Preliminary Reading and Future Prospects] (Cairo: al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies 2011); Oliver Schlumberger, Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008). 4. World Bank, World Development Indicators 2011 (Washington, DC, 2011), pp. 76–94. 5. Admission into Egyptian public universities is dependent on grades. Engineering faculties usually are assigned students who obtain the highest grades in national examinations. 6. World Bank, Egypt, Policy Note no. 2, “Making Egyptian Education Spending More Effective, July 2005,” http://www.mof.gov.eg/MOFGallerySource /English/policy-notes/Making%20Egyptian%20Education%20Spending%20More %20Effective%20%20July%202005.pdf. 7. Mona el-Baradei and Laila el-Baradei, Needs Assessment of the Education Sector in Egypt (December 2004), http://www.zef.de/fileadmin /webfiles/downloads/projects/el-mikawy/egypt_final_en.pdf. 8. Alaa al-Aswani, Imarat Ya’qubian [Yacoubian Building] (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2004). 9. Saif Nasrawi, “Wafd Party President Buys al-Dostour Newspaper,” alMasry al-Youm, August 23, 2010, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node /70155.

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10. Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, Human Rights Report 2009 (Cairo, 2009). 11. World Bank, World Development Indicators 2009 (Washington, DC, 2009), p. 92. 12. Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, “ICT Indicators in Brief,” April 2012, http://www.mcit.gov.eg/Indicators/indicators .aspx. 13. See General Authority of Government Press Affairs, Al-Qanoun Raqam 232 Lisanat 1959 fi Sha’n Shorout al-Khidmah wa Altarqiyah Lidobbat alQuwwat al-Musallaha [The Law on Conditions of Service and Promotion for Officers of Armed Forces], 1st rev. ed. (Cairo, 2004). 14. Mostafa Bakry, “Do’at al-Fawda” [Anarchy Advocates], al-Osboa, October 23, 2011, http://www.elaosboa.com/artsys00/ArticleDetails.aspx?AId =9777. 15. See the following articles by Mostafa Bakry: “Mo’amarah ‘ala alAqbat, Mo’amarah ‘ala Gaish, Mo’amarah ‘ala Misr, al-‘Adoww al-Mushtarak” [Conspiracy Against Copts, Conspiracy Against the Army, Conspiracy Against Egypt: The Common Enemy], al-Osboa, October 16, 2011, http://www .elaosboa.com/artsys00/ArticleDetails.aspx?AId=9478; “Scenario lam Yahdoth: Law Takhallah al-Gaish ‘an al-Soltah fi al-Marhala al-Enteqaliyyah” [Scenario That Did Not Happen: What Would Happen If the Army Were to Concede Power During the Transitional Phase], al-Osboa, October 9, 2011, http://www .elaosboa.com/artsys00/ArticleDetails.aspx?AId=9181, “Man wara’ al-Hamalah ‘ala al-Majlis al-‘Askari” [Who Is Behind the Campaign Against the Military Council], al-Osboa, October 4, 2011, http://www.elaosboa.com/artsys00 /ArticleDetails.aspx?AId=8917, “Heikal Yadoqqo Garas al-Enzar al-Akhir fi alMantiqah: Sykes-Picot Gadida fi al-Tariq” [Heikal Rings the Last Alarm Bell: A New Sykes-Picot Is on the Way], al-Osboa, September 27, 2011, http://www .elaosboa.com/artsys00/ArticleDetails.aspx?AId=8662. 16. Amira Howeidy, “A Chronology of Dissent,” al-Ahram, June 23–29, 2005, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/748/eg10.htm#2004. 17. Mustapha al-Sayyid, “Kefaya at a Crossroads,” in Nicholas S. Hopkins, ed., Political and Social Protest in Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2009), vol. 29. 18. Gamal Essam el-Din, “How Gamal Brought the Whole Mubarak House Down,” al-Ahram, April 15, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent /1/64/9988/Egypt/Politics-/How-Gamal-brought-the-whole-Mubarak-house -down.aspx. 19. Ahmed Ragab, “Magdy al-Kurdi Mu‘asses al-‘Itifal al-Sha’abi Lida’m Gamal Mubarak Lilriasa” [Magdy al-Kurdi Founder of the Popular Alliance for the Support of Gamal Mubarak’s Candidacy for the Presidency], al-Masry alYoum, October 27, 2010, p. 4. 20. Kamel was charged with being one of the organizers of the assault on protesters in Tahrir Square on February 2, 2011. On the eve of that assault, he appeared on a government television channel to call on the people to demonstrate in support of Hosni Mubarak.

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21. Professor Sa‘d el-Din was in trouble at the time, as many of Mubarak’s loyalists filed lawsuits against him accusing him of tarnishing Egypt’s image abroad by his critical writings on Mubarak’s regime. He perhaps thought that by signing a declaration in support of Gamal Mubarak’s candidacy to the post of president, these lawsuits would be withdrawn. 22. See Amb Nabil Fahmy’s criticism of Sa‘d el-Din Ibrahim (in Arabic) in al-Masry al-Youm, September 15, 2009, http://www.almasry-alyoum.com /article2.aspx?ArticleID=269736&IssueID=1894. 23. Saeed Shehata, “al-Intikhabat al-Barlamaniyya al-Misriyya” [The Egyptian Parliamentary Elections], 2007, http://arabsfordemocracy.org/uploads. 24. See the YouTube video of Mubarak’s December 19, 2010, speech in parliament, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpk9vJii3so. 25. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Egypt’s Elections Primer,” September 10, 2010, http://egyptelections.carnegieendowment.org /2010/09/10/egypt%E2%80%99s-elections-primer. 26. See “Legitimacy Cracks,” pp. 90–99, in Mohamed H. Heikal, Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat (New York: Random House, 1983). 27. International Parliamentary Union, http://www.ipu.org. 28. These reports can be viewed at the Ard Center’s website, http://www .awladelard.org. 29. Abdel-Fattah Sayyid, Thawrat al-Tahrir: Asraar wa Khafayah Thawrat al-Shabab [The Tahrir Revolution: Secrets and Hidden Aspects of the Youth Revolution] (Cairo: Dar al-Hayat, 2011), pp. 46–47.

3 Egypt Under Mubarak: A Family Affair Walid Kazziha

Throughout history the success or failure of revolutions has provoked intellectuals to search for explanations to satisfy their own curiosity or to learn lessons for the future. The recent Egyptian revolution was no exception to this general rule. Soon after the political eclipse of Hosni Mubarak and the elimination of his entourage from the public scene, Egyptian and foreign writers set their minds to trying to explain what went wrong in a country where the leadership defied change for so many years, and where the regime appeared to be too entrenched and too powerful to be overturned. Revolutions are often a product of numerous events that snowball into fully fledged eruptions that in turn lead to drastic changes in the political and social fabric of states and societies. One of the most difficult tasks for political analysts and activists alike is to determine whether a society has embarked on a revolutionary course of development, or is simply showing signs of resentment and resistance to a political order that is capable of sustaining itself, despite its unpopularity and lack of legitimacy. Until January 25, 2011, Egypt presented just such a difficult dilemma to those analysts trying to understand the direction the country was taking, and to the political activists who were attempting to influence the course of change in society. For many observers of the Egyptian political scene, Cairo seemed at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century to be ready for change, but at the same time it appeared to lack the political will to move against the authoritarian regime of Mubarak, except for a hand-

29

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ful of small organizations and groups that were by no means a match for the might of the brutal machine of the Ministry of Interior. Even though I have lived and worked in Egypt for close to four decades, and have followed the political scene at close range by virtue of my profession, the revolution came as a complete surprise to me just as it did to everyone else. As late as November 2010, two months before the revolution, I presented an academic paper on political succession in Egypt to one of the panels at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in which I referred to the activities of the opposition in Egypt as a political stirring and not a political movement. My conclusion was that this political stirring expressed itself mainly in the press, but had little reflection on the level of street politics or the transformation of the power structure. Reflecting on the consequences of such activity, I stated that it had the potential of becoming a political movement, but not at that time. I added that it could pave the way for the emergence of a more effective current that would be sustained eventually by structurally viable and popular organizations that might challenge the regime. However, at the time, I concluded that this political stirring was insufficient, reflecting a malaise operating predominantly within the confines of the press among an enlightened segment of Egyptian society that had no substantial power-base to force its agenda of reform. Consequently, this political stirring wavered between two poles: either a rejection of the existing political order and a refusal to abide by the rules it had set (as sought by Mohamed el-Baradei, the National Front Party, Kefaya, etc.), or an attempt to make the best of a bad situation by trying to take advantage of some loopholes in the system (as sought by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wafd party, the Tagammu party, etc.). That so many of those who were concerned with understanding Egypt’s future did not realize that they were on the verge of witnessing the outbreak of a revolutionary process was not due to lack of analytical skills, but rather to their inability to decipher three major unknowns in the Egyptian political and military equation. Hardly anyone had estimated the political weight and ability of the Egyptian youth to incite demonstrators to a point of becoming the main threat to the regime. Many of the young men and women who took to the streets of Cairo on January 25, 2011, were themselves utterly surprised by the great numbers of people who showed up in response to their call to demonstrate. Two young activists, Yaser Hiwari and Mohamed Taha, who were among the leading demonstrators in Tahrir Square, said in a local tele-

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vision interview that they did not expect such huge numbers of people to participate in the demonstrations. When asked for an explanation, unhesitatingly both of them responded: “Tunisia.”1 The second unknown was the army. No one claimed to know with any measure of certainty where the army would stand at the critical moment. The chief editor of the daily al-Masry al-Youm described the Egyptian army during the thirty years of Mubarak’s rule as a secretive closed box, about which no one knew anything.2 And third, only a handful of people thought that the success of the Tunisian revolution earlier in January 2011 could have an impact on Egypt, and serve as a catalyst for Egyptians to emulate their Arab neighbors.

Growing Malaise Meanwhile, apart from these unknowns, the basic long-term causes for an imminent eruption of some sort were often debated by journalists and writers inside and outside Egypt. Many thought that if Mubarak’s regime were to continue on the same track, change would become increasingly inevitable, but no one could tell when or how that change would occur. There were also those, perhaps a small minority, who had some hope in the ability of the regime to reform itself, and some of them at one time or another enlisted in the service of the president’s son, in the ranks of his policy committee in the National Democratic Party (NDP). However, by the end of 2010, all expectations were dashed when the state party disregarded all other political trends and parties in the country and took full control of Egypt’s key representative institutions at the local and national levels. The parliamentary elections in late November and early December returned the NDP with an absolute majority of some 95 percent of the seats, while the Muslim Brotherhood, which had held some eighty-eight seats in the preceding parliament, was reduced to only one seat in the new parliament. Press releases and human rights organizations reported flagrant fraudulent practices and government manipulation of the electoral process.3 There is no denying that on the eve of January 25, 2011, Egypt was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the political, social, and economic problems that the regime had nurtured over a period of some thirty years. Cairo had become a tired and tiring old city for its own inhabitants as well as its visitors. Yet the ruling elite, led by Mubarak and his youngest son, were oblivious to the agony of the poor, the needy, and

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the deprived. Similarly, the regime turned a blind eye to the mounting political resentment of young men and women who came from all walks of life, and whose hopes to achieve better futures for themselves and their countrymen were frustrated. For a long time, the stage had been set in Egypt for regime change, but no one seemed to know who would give the regime its final push. Mubarak had established an internal security machine that kept all political parties and movements under its supervision and exercised strict control by using all the coercive means at its disposal to suppress them. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were the best organized among opposition parties, and enjoyed a sizable following, were regularly intimidated. Their leaders were in and out of prison on a regular basis, and were continually harassed and humiliated whenever they carried out any political activity in public or private. The official spokesman of the Brotherhood had on several occasions told the media of how he always kept a small bag ready for trips to prison, just in case he was summoned for questioning by state security officers. When the moment of truth arrived, everyone was caught unprepared. In the days that followed January 25, Egypt learned that the power of the street was enormous, while the power of the state was, after all, not so invincible. This shift in power relationships was largely caused by immediate regional and domestic factors that suddenly erupted onto the political scene. However, there were also long-term elements that were brewing quietly within the Egyptian state and society, especially since the turn of the millennium. These made it impossible for the status quo to be perpetuated. It is easier to explain a revolution after it has happened than to predict it. With the benefit of hindsight it is possible today to examine some of the major turning points in Egypt’s recent history to determine how the beginning of the regime’s downfall was precipitated. What went wrong is still an open question in Egypt, and will remain so for some time to come. Still, it can be said that, in general, it is taken for granted that after thirty years of Mubarak’s rule, Egypt found itself in the grip of a severe political and social crisis. This nation of some 85 million people had for all practical purposes become the country of a select few. At the head of the pyramid stood Mubarak and his family, surrounded by a corrupt entourage of businessmen, government bureaucrats, foreign investors, and NDP officials. They were pillaging the country without inhibition and driving it into the depths of poverty, hunger, poor health, and ignorance. Politically, Egypt was turned into an izba (private

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farm) in which the monopolization of power in the hands of oligarchs and the circulation of political influence among a limited group of people for so many years had become scandalous. To add insult to injury, the regime was grooming Mubarak’s son Gamal to inherit his father’s role as president. Gamal, without any particular outstanding qualifications for such a job, utterly colorless, and lacking charisma, was launched on the path of power to succeed his father. In a sense, the move by the regime symbolized more than anything else the ruling elite’s obliviousness and the ruling family’s insensitivity toward the concerns and needs of Egypt’s citizens.

Mubarak: The Early Years Some Egyptian writers assert that the first two decades of Mubarak’s regime had redeeming features. In their view, it was only in the final ten years of his rule that things went sour. Salah Montasser, a longtime columnist for the well-known daily newspaper al-Ahram, recently wrote his first column in a rival publication, al-Masry al-Youm, in which he warned Egyptians not to judge the last thirty years of their history as lost. He urged them to realize that the first three terms (1981–1999) of Mubarak’s rule had seen commendable achievements. He admitted that in the latter part of the Mubarak era, the trend was one of steady decline.4 Similarly, the new secretary-general of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi, a distinguished career diplomat who served as a judge on the International Court of Justice, had this to say to a correspondent for the Washington Post: “I think the first 10 years of Mubarak regime were good. But the last period, with his son in power—since then, I haven’t been in the government.”5 A case can be made for the relative success of Mubarak’s rule during his early years in power. One of the first measures he took after the assassination of Anwar Sadat was to release from prison all those Egyptian political dignitaries and figures who had opposed his predecessor. It was a positive step that was greeted with a lot of optimism by the organized political community in Egypt and the public at large. Later on, unlike Sadat, he made a serious effort to mend Egypt’s relations with its immediate environment, the Arab world, after a rupture that had endured since Egypt signed the Camp David Accords. Egypt’s reintegration into the Arab fold was facilitated by its support for Iraq during the latter’s eight-year war with Iran. During those years, Cairo forged strong relationships with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf coun-

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tries that were keen to defend themselves against a potential threat from Iran. Economically and financially, Egypt benefited from that alliance by selling Iraq military hardware, paid for in part by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. At the same time, Iraq opened its doors to Egyptian workers, who flocked into the country to substitute for Iraqi young men who had been recruited into the army and then sent to the front. Furthermore, Mubarak enhanced his Arab image by receiving the Palestine Liberation Organization’s head, Yasser Arafat, after the latter’s withdrawal from Beirut on the heels of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. During the 1990s, Mubarak succeeded in defeating the militant Islamic groups and established for himself an international reputation as an ardent fighter against terrorism. He also improved Egypt’s political and economic fortunes following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Without hesitation, Mubarak snatched this golden opportunity and joined the ranks of the coalition forces under the auspices of the United States, sending 40,000 Egyptian troops to protect Saudi Arabia. After the defeat of Iraq, Mubarak was generously compensated for his services by the United States, Europe, and the Gulf Arab states. Consequently, Egypt received new investments, and almost 50 percent of its national debt was canceled.

Sharing Power Economically, the benefits that accrued to Egypt from Mubarak’s earlier years could have enabled the country to sustain a decent level of growth and economic development in the years to come. Unfortunately, the opportunity was lost. Increasing consumption by a rapidly growing population and a corrupt ruling elite whose appetite for conspicuous consumption had grown proportionately to Egypt’s earnings, in addition to the ill distribution of wealth, left the bulk of Egyptians struggling under severe economic deprivation. Eventually, this turned attention to Egypt’s public sector assets. The sale of those assets was heavily mired in rumors of corruption and abuse of power that had led to the elimination of the social and economic safety nets that had provided the poorer elements of Egyptian society with opportunities for work and essential social services. It turned out that Gamal Mubarak had contributed in no small measure to the final collapse of his father’s regime. Amr Moussa, the former secretary-general of the Arab League and onetime foreign minister of Egypt, has claimed that “the most flagrant violation of [Mubarak’s

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regime] was the issue of succession.” Moussa believed that, “had there been no revolution in January, it would have happened in May or June, when the regime would have announced the candidacy of . . . Gamal.”6 In fact, the beginning of the downfall of Mubarak could be traced back to the moment in 2000–2001 when Gamal was propelled into a position of political prominence in the ranks of the NDP. From that moment on, he became instrumental in expanding the influence of some of his business associates and cronies. Not only did these men capture key cabinet positions and take charge of the country’s economy by 2005, but they also spread corruption on a wide scale. Gamal Mubarak’s failure was not merely the result of his unpopularity among Egyptians, but also the result of his failure to handle those responsibilities that his father had entrusted to him. These areas of responsibility included the party, the economy, and the state apparatus. Excluded from Gamal’s purview were the sensitive areas of regime security and foreign policy, for these were left in the hands of the father. The failure of the young Gamal in properly managing these responsibilities meant that the regime lost the crucial bonds that could have linked it to the Egyptian masses. From that point on, the only relationship that could exist between the regime and the people had to be based on security measures and naked force. In the final analysis, in their pursuit of power and wealth, Gamal and his allies caused the partial failure of the state in performing some of its basic functions in society. As a result, the symptoms of a failed society began to set in rapidly in the form of political fragmentation. Specifically, Egypt increasingly suffered from social disintegration and the glaring absence of ethical values in the conduct of public affairs. The security of the regime became the first priority of the state, while society was left on its own to fend for itself. According to a regular columnist for al-Masry al-Youm, Ayman el-Guindi: “The people rebelled against everything. Against a failed system of education, against unemployment, against jobs which could not be won except through an intermediary, against government services which were not available without payment of bribes, against dirty towns and backward villages, against insecurity on the roads, against the plans to corrupt all the people.” 7 During the last decade of Mubarak’s rule, Gamal was introduced into the Egyptian political sphere to share power with his father on his father’s terms. While many Egyptians were debating whether Mubarak would relinquish his position to his son during his lifetime or stay in power and opt for a sixth term in office, Gamal was already slipping

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comfortably into the seat of power with the support of his family and business associates. He even traveled abroad on state visits to countries in Europe and North America to gain the blessings and secure the recognition of foreign powers and Western dignitaries in his bid to be the future president of Egypt. During the last decade of Mubarak’s rule, a de facto division emerged between two centers of power in Egypt. One was held tightly by the ailing father, while the other was left to the poor managerial skills of Gamal and his associates. Despite the fact that these two centers were never intended to act in contradiction to each other, the shortcomings of the latter eventually undermined the whole fabric of the regime and triggered the process of its downfall.

The First Egyptian Republic How did a relatively harmonious political system, created and consolidated over the years by four successive presidents with military backgrounds, end up at the hands of the last of them in a revolution? In response to this question, it is appropriate to examine briefly the evolution and development of the presidential institution in Egypt. For it was this particular institution that acted as the backbone of the system from 1952 until its collapse on February 11, 2011—the day Mubarak handed over his responsibilities to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). The first republic in Egypt was largely molded by the ambitions and impact of its three presidents, who occupied that position for relatively long periods of time. It was an authoritarian republic founded and promoted by Gamal Abdul Nasser and his two successors, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. Each of them conducted his political responsibilities differently. However, the total effect of their legacies increasingly produced a political system in which the man at the center accumulated enormous power and unprecedented influence by subordinating the state and the wealth of society to his own will.

Nasser and Sadat There is a consensus among observers of the Egyptian political scene that the system of government that Egypt adopted after 1952 was a presidential political system. It entitled the head of state to play a central

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role in the political life of his country. Egypt’s consecutive constitutions reflected this reality. According to some legal experts, 80 percent of the articles of the constitution that was promulgated in 1971 elaborated in detail the concentration of power in the hands of the president. Nasser founded the system and ruled by it, Sadat perpetuated it and took full advantage of it to introduce his new policies, and Mubarak perfected it by making the president’s office the source of all power in the country. Nasser’s charisma undoubtedly enhanced his political clout internally and allowed him to exercise great influence among his supporters in the Arab world. However, despite his political and personal appeal to the Egyptian and Arab masses, Nasser’s powers were on some occasions circumvented by others who worked with him. His defense minister and senior vice president, Abdel Hakim Amer, was one such figure. Amer wielded considerable influence, especially in the ranks of the army, and this at times enabled him to challenge his master. It required a disaster of the magnitude of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war to enable Nasser to remove, and finally eliminate, Amer. As Egypt’s leader, Nasser was not particularly concerned with details, leaving much of the day-to-day management of affairs to his lieutenants and appointees in the state and party apparatuses. Nasser was more interested in having a direct impact on the wider issues facing the country by personally setting Egypt’s ideological pace, defining its role in the region, and determining its policies toward other powers. Above all, Nasser became the main inspiration to Egyptians as they ventured outside their own borders to project Egypt’s power and influence in the Arab, African, and international arenas. There is evidence indicating that after 1967, Nasser attempted to concentrate more on the tedious internal issues of rebuilding Egypt’s army, reforming the country’s huge bureaucracy, and coping with the heavy weight of Egypt’s public sector, but time was not on his side. He died in September 1970, three years after Egypt’s defeat by Israel. Sadat’s tenure lasted for eleven years, until he was assassinated on October 6, 1981. Sadat’s first concern was to consolidate his position after Nasser’s death. He managed in his first year in office to eliminate the internal opposition he faced. In his second year he positioned himself to substitute the United States for the Soviet Union as Egypt’s superpower ally. In 1973, in coordination with Syria, he launched the October War, which gained him some internal credibility. Much of that credibility was lost when he decided to proceed on the course of a bilateral settlement with Israel. It was this last move that finally led to his assassination.

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Sadat’s style of leadership was very different from Nasser’s. He lacked the charisma of the latter, and was not very inspiring, except to some of his Western and Israeli audiences. He drew Egypt away from its Arab fold and turned it inward. At the same time, he tried to generate a new sense of direction among Egyptians in a way that was consistent with his commitment to the Western powers. He initiated the drive toward integrating Egypt’s economy into the global free market, sanctioned—with serious limitations—the formation of political parties other than the state-controlled party, and pursued a policy of deNasserization, going to the extent of allowing the revival of the Muslim Brotherhood, Nasser’s archenemy. In implementing his internal policies he relied heavily on the state bureaucracy, and left much to the discretion of his cabinet members and cronies. Sadat increasingly became more obsessed with world affairs, and specifically with US political and social celebrities. In contrast, Sadat seemed relatively unconcerned with Egyptian affairs. He appeared to be more interested in projecting an image of himself as a modern leader to his counterparts in the West. To his Egyptian audience, he occasionally posed on local channels, especially on his birthday, dressed in a gallabiyya (peasant attire) rather than his immaculate Pierre Cardin suits. Both Sadat and Nasser were pragmatic leaders who elaborated great visions for the future, but rarely combined them with strategic plans of action that would bring them into the realm of reality. In matters pertaining to the internal security of the regime, Nasser was more attentive to the threats he faced, while Sadat became too self-confident to pay attention to such vital matters. However, neither leader had the patience to give full consideration to the consequences of his policies. They left such matters to be handled by their close associates and by indifferent bureaucrats. Ultimately, one paid for this shortcoming by precipitating a national disaster, while the other paid with his life.

Mubarak’s Contribution In contrast to that of his predecessors, Mubarak’s leadership was characterized by a sharp sense of survival. During his thirty-year rule he was consistently cautious. Mubarak did not take risks. If given a choice between taking the slightest risk and inaction, he tended to opt for the latter. He perceived the appointment of a vice president as a potential political threat to himself and his son, so he refrained from nominating

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anyone to the post until a few days before his downfall, when he gave the post to his director of general intelligence. Mubarak’s uppermost concern was how to maintain power by keeping the vital threads of authority in his own hands, except in the last decade of his rule, when he surrendered some of these threads to his son Gamal. His concern for power was a strategic objective of the regime and became a central political imperative that was nonnegotiable. It required the president to be always on the alert, lest some elements of power slip into the wrong hands. Unlike his predecessors, Mubarak adhered to a hands-on approach, favoring direct involvement in the management of the country. However, his approach was not all-inclusive. He was deliberate and selective. For him there was no urgent matter that took precedence over the issue of the security of the regime, especially regarding its personnel and institutions. He emphasized this at the opening of the new parliamentary term in November 2007: “Egypt’s national security is my first responsibility. It is the defence of Egypt’s land and its sovereignty and the independence of its will and preservation of its stability and the security of its citizens.”8 In many ways, regime security was perceived to be synonymous with Egypt’s national interest. Under Mubarak, one could easily be substituted for the other. Regime security could not be left to others. Mubarak attended to it with vigilance and care. It was rumored that when the abortive 1995 attempt was made on his life in Addis Ababa, he immediately took charge and ordered his driver to turn back instead of proceeding forward so as to avoid encountering a possible second ambush. In the meantime, his personal security agents were left standing behind, perplexed and utterly confused by Mubarak’s sharp sense of personal security. In 1981, Mubarak inherited the leadership of a country that had a population of slightly over 41 million people. By the time he was deposed, thirty years later, the population was close to 85 million. Egypt’s social, economic, and demographic problems were enormous, but the concern of the man at the top remained regime security and the perpetuation of his authoritarian rule. In his effort to take control of the situation following the assassination of Sadat, he placed the country under a state of emergency. It remains in effect today. In the first two decades of Mubarak’s rule, his regime combated the rise of violent and militant Islamic movements, and succeeded in pacifying them, but the security measures he adopted were kept until his final day in power. He regularly invoked these repressive measures to counter the efforts of

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opposition political parties and youth movements that sought democratic reforms and demanded social and economic changes. Even pressure from the US Congress could not persuade Mubarak to end the state of emergency. He resisted all attempts from inside or outside Egypt to lift the emergency law.

The Security Establishment: The Hard Sector Under Mubarak, Egypt’s security apparatus consisted of several independent organizations that were directly linked to the office of the president of the republic and derived their mandate and authority from the president himself. First among those organizations was the army, which was formally placed under the command of the defense minister, who was a senior cabinet member. However, the president, as supreme commander of the armed forces, exercised his full prerogative by handpicking commanders of the various branches, including the heads of national security and military intelligence as well as the chief of staff. Most senior officers reported to the president directly without necessarily going through the official hierarchy of the army. They all served at the pleasure of the president, and their tenure in office (although generally subject to the rules and regulations of the military institution) depended upon the president, who had the final word in retaining or dismissing them from service. After 1967, the military in Egypt became more professionally oriented and less inclined toward political involvement. Under Mubarak, hardly any senior officer gained political prominence while in active service. The last of those who seemed to enjoy in his own right some popularity in the army was former minister of defense Abdel Halim Abou Ghazala, who was removed from his post in 1989 and then retired from public life until his death in September 2008. Consequently, many leading figures in the army, whether on active service or retired, preferred to take a self-effacing stand rather than draw the attention—and possible suspicion—of their commander-in-chief. For example, despite his close association with Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, head of general intelligence, became alarmed when asked if he could confirm the claim made by others that he was a candidate for the presidency. He was taken aback and quickly responded, “No. These are people who want me to have a difference with the president.”9 Mubarak similarly proceeded to take control of an equally important security organization, the Ministry of Interior and the State Security

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Service that was attached to it. Once more, as with his handling of top ranks in the military, Mubarak kept the significant command posts in the ministry directly linked to his office, and on important occasions he himself chaired meetings of the Highest Council of the Police Force. He held his ministers of interior to strict standards and was poised to dismiss them for the slightest failure in ensuring the security of the regime.

The Political and Economic Sphere: The Soft Sector In the first two decades of his rule, Mubarak not only was keen to supervise and control the legitimate forces of coercion in society—the army, the intelligence services, and the various branches of internal security— but also managed to extend his personal reach to include other major sources of influence and power. He kept most decisions on vital foreign policy issues under his constant supervision and direct control no matter how effective his foreign ministers may have been. In a sense he perceived foreign policy to be an integral part of regime security, which needed his personal involvement. It was too important a function to be left to career diplomats or state bureaucrats. In some cases he recruited trusted elements in the security establishment to conduct sensitive political negotiations. A case in point was his selection of Suleiman, head of general intelligence, to mediate on behalf of Egypt between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Mubarak also presided over the activities of a variety of key official institutions in Egypt. Thus he exercised direct influence over Egypt’s religious institutions by reserving for himself the right to appoint top religious dignitaries such as the rector of the Al Azhar mosque and the grand mufti of Egypt. He also appointed the director-general of the Administrative Monitoring Authority, which kept an eye on the financial and managerial violations of top government officials and brought charges against them whenever deemed necessary. According to Hasan Nafaa of Cairo University, the president had the final word in the selection and appointment of the top officials and heads of the national universities.10 He also confirmed the recommendations made by the ruling National Democratic Party and the Egyptian senate for the appointment of chairmen of the board and chief editors of the national newspapers. Above all, by chairing the NDP, he kept a close watch over the political activities of the various political organizations and parties in the country and wielded considerable influence over civil society and all aspects of the political and cultural life of Egyptians. Mubarak was

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heavily involved in the economic and financial policies of the state. He often supervised meetings of the inner cabinet regarding economic affairs, and sometimes personally allotted projects to individual Egyptian and Arab investors, including the sale of state land.

Division of Labor, Not Dual Power The gradual and deliberate entry of his son Gamal into the political and economic spheres of Egypt offered the president a good opportunity to unload some of his responsibilities in the soft sector. A pattern gradually emerged in which a division of labor between father and son began to crystallize. The former continued to control the security sector and foreign policy, while the latter turned his attention to the management of the economy, the party, and the cabinet, except for the ministries of interior, foreign policy, defense, and military industries. Gamal, with the help of an entourage selected from among the business community and some intellectuals and professionals, dug himself deeply into the central structure of the NDP by chairing the party’s policy committee. Coming from a nonmilitary background and lacking a substantial base of political support, Gamal Mubarak saw in the NDP his only channel for acquiring the political prestige and clout needed for launching himself in pursuit of the highest post in the country. While Egyptians were heatedly debating whether Mubarak would opt for a sixth term or concede the presidency to his son, Egypt was in reality witnessing a process of power distribution between father and son. By the end of Mubarak’s rule, two structures had clearly emerged. The first was a hard security sector, which was developed and nurtured by the president himself. The second was a soft civilian sector, one that had gradually been turned over to Gamal, who was encouraged to reorganize and shape it in the image he thought would best promote his ascension to the presidency. The two sectors were not mere political phenomena; both were well rooted in the national economy of Egypt and had a tremendous impact on the lives and well-being of ordinary Egyptians. The management of either of them carried with it a huge responsibility that required a great deal of experience, skill, and hard work. Hosni Mubarak was not only managing a security establishment, but also handling the sizable portion of Egypt’s economy that was attached to it. For one thing, it was wellknown that most of the aid that Egypt received from the United States was devoted to the military.

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On balance, one may speculate that a sizable portion of Egypt’s budget was devoted to the security establishment. On the other hand, the soft sector, which included trade, education, health, agriculture, public works and transportation, and provincial development, had been muddling through with growing problems partly due to limited resources, and partly due to corruption and the skewed distribution of wealth. The uneven allocation of resources created an imbalance between the hard and soft sectors of official concern. The former, presided over by Hosni Mubarak, progressively developed the efficiency that marked the security establishment. The latter, under the direction of Gamal Mubarak, increasingly reflected the limited skills of its overseer. While both sectors remained under the presidential palace’s supervision, the division of responsibilities within the palace itself helped further a sort of administrative schizophrenia within Egypt’s government. In the context of the succession issue, the ploy was actually designed as a calculated step to enable Gamal to acquire a political base from which to launch his eventual bid for the presidency. In fact, the gambit backfired and actually helped undermine the regime’s very survival.

Conclusion Scholars will long debate the various elements that brought about the downfall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. On the one hand, some will focus on the immediate causes for the failure of Egypt’s first republic. There is plenty of evidence to support the claim that the revolution was triggered by the regime’s glaring misuse of power in its effort to secure for the ruling party over 95 percent of the seats in parliament in 2010 elections. This was an event that alienated a wide range of Egypt’s politically minded classes. There is also significant evidence suggesting that the Tunisian revolution encouraged an increasing number of Egyptians to take to the streets and, once and for all, break the barrier of fear that the regime had instilled in their hearts and minds. Some may even refer to the new technologies that made it possible for the young generation of Egyptians to communicate with each other and plan collective actions, despite the watchful eyes of state security and the cautious advice of the old and wise. On the other hand, some researchers and analysts will be searching for those long-term elements that developed over a period of time to produce the political and economic preconditions for the regime’s even-

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tual collapse. This chapter has sought to identify the political and structural bases for the eruption of a revolutionary process in Egypt. By doing so, the more immediate causes of revolution have not been excluded, but rather placed within the context of that process. Mubarak inherited an authoritarian political system that was initially established and promoted by Nasser, and later by Sadat. However, once at the helm, Mubarak modified the constitution and restructured the state apparatus in order to concentrate power in his own hands. At the turn of the new century, his son Gamal was catapulted to a dominant position in the government party, as chairman of the NDP’s policy committee. Preparations were soon set in motion to enable the son to succeed his father. Meanwhile, Mubarak took steps to concede to Gamal most of his presidential responsibilities in the soft sector while retaining control of the security sector. In 2005, Gamal’s position was further reinforced by the formation of a new cabinet, which included eight businessmen who were his close associates. The erosion of the soft sector at the hands of Gamal and his corrupt entourage led to the partial failure of the state, especially in those areas that provided some economic and social cushioning for the majority of the poor in Egypt. While the security apparatus of the state remained efficient under the control of Mubarak, the soft sector totally failed to achieve its objectives. The prime minister, the finance minister, and NDP spokesmen including Gamal may have placed more money into the pockets of the rich and powerful, but for the bulk of Egyptians it was a thoroughgoing catastrophe. By the end of the decade, a semi–failed state had produced a failed society. Civil society organizations were unable to exercise any meaningful level of independence. The state had ensured that their social and financial activities were by law strictly dominated by the government. The backlash of the Egyptian street became increasingly inevitable. The detonators, in the form of fake elections and a revolution in Tunisia, provided the sparks that lit the fire and delivered the final blow to the regime. In the course of trying to cope with the challenge to his authority, Mubarak deployed the internal security forces. Despite their great numbers and training, they proved to be no match for the power of the people. On the eve of January 28, 2011, Mubarak’s security forces suffered a devastating defeat, one comparable to that which the Egyptian army had experienced in 1967 at the hands of a foreign power. Mounting evidence showed that as the masses of Egyptians persisted in their relent-

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less struggle against the central security forces, the latter caved in and finally dissolved. According to the testimony of senior officers, from January 25 to 28 the masses kept pouring into Tahrir Square as well as the centers of towns and villages all over the country. The result was that the security forces were eventually overwhelmed by the huge crowds. After four days of battling against the crowds, the regime’s forces were exhausted, demoralized, and out of ammunition and tear gas. Officers on the spot could not communicate with their headquarters due to depletion of the batteries in their handsets. The security forces retreated and then dispersed in disarray. So much money and so much effort had been spent by Mubarak on security to guarantee the perpetuation of his regime, but when the moment arrived, the fearless crowd proved to be invincible. Faced with the defeat of his internal security forces, Mubarak was left with only the country’s armed forces to salvage his regime. However, the military leadership was all too aware of the dangers, both to itself and the country, that would be entailed by a confrontation with the people. It agreed to step in to protect Egypt’s vital installations from destruction and pillaging by looters and convicts, but refrained from using its arms against the new popular forces unleashed by the revolution. As the moment of truth arrived and Mubarak was deposed, the army was left as the only viable institution of the Egyptian state. Today, it functions with some measure of popular consensus to carry the country through a transitional stage, until the process of reconstructing a new regime is completed.

Notes 1. Egyptian National TV, Channel One, February 28, 2011. 2. Magdy al-Gallad, “Asrar al-Sanduq al-Mughlaq (Part 2)” [Secrets of the Closed Box (2)], al-Masry al-Youm, May 12, 2011, p. 18. 3. Jack Shenker, “Egypt’s Rulers Tighten Grip amid Claims of Election Fraud and Intimidation,” Guardian, November 30, 2010, http://www.guardian .co.uk/world/2010/nov/30/Egypt-poll-electoral-fraud-claims. 4. Sala Montasser, “Shatb al-Tarikh” [Crossing Off History], al-Masry alYoum, May 3, 2011, p. 22. 5. Lally Weymouth, “George Washington Was Considered a Terrorist,” Slate, May 7, 2011, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners /2011/05/george_washington_was_considered_a_terrorist.html. 6. Ibid.; “Being a Terrorist Is Not a Stigma Forever,” Slate, May 9, 2011, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2011/05/being_a _terrorist_is_not_a_stigma_forever.html.

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7. Ayman el-Guindi, “Limdha Indala‘at al-Thura al-Nisriyya?” [Why Did the Egyptian Revolution Erupt?], al-Masry al-Youm, May 2, 2011, p. 17. 8. The full text of Mubarak’s speech appeared in al-Ahram, November 15, 2007. 9. Jihad al-Khuzen, “Ouyoun wa Athan” [Eyes and Ears], al-Hayat, September 16, 2010, p. 24. 10. Hassan Naf‘a, “Intiqa’ al-Qiyadot al-Jamiyya” [Selection of Universities’ Leaderships], al-Masry al-Youm, September 22, 2011, p. 5.

4 The Political Economy of Egypt’s Revolution Nadia Ramsis Farah

Less developed countries (LDCs), including Egypt, have passed through different stages of development since the end of World War II. The economic policies of the ruling regimes went through phases of populism, in which the state intervened directly in the economy to further development and achieve a certain degree of social justice, to phases of economic liberalization, in which the state withdrew from the economy, leaving to the market the distribution of income. This trend was accentuated by the emergence of a neoliberal theory that aimed at the destruction of the welfare state established in the advanced countries themselves after the economic crisis of 1929. Neoliberalism became the global norm and was imposed on the LDCs by the international financial institutions and Western donor countries. Neoliberalism resulted in a massive redistribution of income from the poor and the middle classes to the elites, a process that led to the emergence of neopopulist regimes, especially in Latin America. Neopopulism advocated the return of the state to an active role in the economy in order to achieve social equity. Most neopopulist regimes came into being in one of two ways: through elections in democratic regimes or through popular revolts in authoritarian systems. The January 25, 2011, revolution in Egypt can be characterized as a popular revolt against neoliberalism, corruption, and authoritarianism. The main slogan of the revolution was “Bread, Freedom, and Social Equality.” The Egyptian people on January 25 were demanding both democracy and social equity, two of the main features of neopopulism.

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This chapter attempts to identify the political and economic causes of the revolution and predict Egypt’s future. Is it feasible for Egypt to adopt policies leading to social equity and democracy simultaneously? What type of state could achieve both objectives?

Populism, Neoliberalism, and Neopopulism Populism is the result of political crises that occur when existing political and economic institutions are geared toward benefiting elites and it becomes obvious that those same institutions are unable to respond to popular economic demands. Populism means a state-led industrialization with a marked concern for a more equitable distribution of income, advocacy of a nonclass type of social evolution, and the establishment of a corporatist state where all social groups, except for the previous economic and political elites, are incorporated into the economic and political institutions. Populist regimes emerged in LDCs in the aftermath of independence. They were an outcome of massive nationalist movements aiming at both political and economic independence, the elimination of the political and economic elites who pursued policies that impoverished and marginalized the rest of society, and the implementation of economic policies aiming to ensure industrialization and a fair distribution of income. The nationalist movements were built on an alliance of the nationalist economic elites, the aspiring middle classes, workers and peasants, and the urban poor. This alliance advocated the role of the state in economic development through rapid industrialization. The state’s intervention extended to the control of national resources, the promotion of savings and investments, and the implementation of policies ensuring a fair distribution of income. To facilitate the state’s intervention in the economy, postcolonial regimes resorted to authoritarianism as a means to prevent the old elites from once again dominating the political and therefore the economic system. To ensure stability and sustainability, these regimes used inclusionary economic policies. An expanding public sector not only was a mechanism for capital accumulation and industrialization, but also was used to expand the middle classes and increase the industrial labor force. Land reform laws bound the peasantry to the new regimes and became a key aspect of the nationalist social coalition.

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Most populist regimes adopted a policy of import substitution, which is a protective approach based on internal industrialization, increasing customs on imports, or banning imported goods outright. In addition, these regimes sought to maintain the social base formed by the national alliance by resorting to radical measures such as land reform, the establishment of minimum wages, guaranteed employment, and free education and health care, as well as a system of price controls and subsidies. Protectionist policies had also been adopted by the advanced countries in the aftermath of the 1929 economic crisis that swept most industrialized economies, and these measures also influenced the political economies of postcolonial emerging states. While the advanced countries remained committed to the market system, the newly emerging states advocated an interventionist role for the state to fight either inflation or unemployment. The advanced countries also built a welfare state to alleviate the burden of unemployment, reduce poverty, and maintain political stability. By the 1970s such Keynesian policies came under attack. A neoliberal counterrevolution swept the advanced countries. This was especially true of Great Britain, under Margaret Thatcher, and the United States, under Ronald Reagan. The new policies now aimed at dismantling the welfare state and achieving the complete withdrawal of the state from the economy. An unfettered market economy was declared to be the sole mechanism for determining what to produce, how to produce it, and to whom the benefits of growth would accrue. In its extreme form, neoliberalism aimed at the dissolution of the welfare state. Policies intended to reduce income inequalities or alleviate poverty were said to distort the market mechanism and create an underclass of dependents on the state. Samuel Taylor Morison claimed that Hayekian theory justified this position by suggesting that social justice was meaningless. 1 Correct redistribution policies required knowledge of all the needs, preferences, and goals of all the people, an impossible task for any society. In the absence of such knowledge, government redistribution policies succeed only in circumventing the workings of the market mechanism without achieving the goals of equity. With globalization, neoliberalism was heralded as a global policy to be implemented regardless of the stage of economic development. All economies were to be integrated into the new international neoliberal economic system. This integration required a process of transformation

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from state-led development policies to a liberal economy ruled by the market mechanism and the private sector. Neoliberalism in effect declared the death of development theory. The world economy is and ought to be ruled by one economic policy: that of neoliberalism. The Washington Consensus, developed by the United States, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), established the rules of transformation for the less developed countries. Structural adjustment policies were imposed by the international financial institutions and donor countries on heavily indebted states to reduce the deficit of the balance of payments. This was designed to create a surplus that would allow these countries to repay their foreign obligations. Aid or further lending from Western countries and the international financial institutions hinged on the adoption of economic reform and structural adjustment by the less developed countries. The most important aspect of structural adjustment policies was the adoption of free market rules, but most significant was the withdrawal of the state from any activist role in the economy. Curbing government expenditure, the sale of public enterprises (privatization), the aligning of internal with international prices, the freezing of wages and salaries, the floating of exchange rates, the lifting of controls on capital movements, and the liberalization of foreign trade were the main elements of structural adjustment. In other words, all countries had to adopt the rules of neoliberalism to profit from the new global economy. The implementation of structural adjustment policies and neoliberalism was partly responsible for the dismal record of the LDCs. The liberalization and globalization of markets led to slower and unstable economic growth in the majority of LDCs in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. The only countries that succeeded in their development efforts and transformed their economies were those that adopted the concept of the developmental state, whereby the state intervened in the market through its association with the private sector to promote economic growth through a heavy focus on export-oriented industrialization. The developmental state in eastern and southern Asia escaped the fate of economic stagnation and pauperization that swept most LDCs. A backlash against neoliberalism emerged in many LDCs, especially in Latin America. In the 1990s, these countries were swept by mass social movements, especially representing the unemployed youth, workers, and all social segments who had been marginalized and were angered and frustrated by the ruling elites’ blind implementation of the neoliberal reforms demanded by the international financial institutions.

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Neopopulism emerged as a response to a prolonged economic crisis characterized by growing income inequalities, unemployment levels, and poverty. This state of affairs led to rapid mobilization of disaffected and marginalized social groups into a mass movement of protest against prevailing socioeconomic conditions. The disaffected were usually unorganized but came to form a critical mass articulating their grievances against an economic system that had largely been responsible for their marginalization.2 It was such a wave of mass demonstration that swept across the Middle East, including Egypt. The social demands were largely articulated by the youth and the unemployed, who realized that their hopes could not be satisfied by regimes that adopted neoliberalism as an ideology. The change in economic policies required a change in the political systems. The revolt of the disaffected was in essence a revolt against the neoliberal policies pursued in most third world countries. Contrary to the populism of the 1950s and the 1960s, which was usually associated with authoritarianism, neopopulism invoked democracy and accepted the idea of political competition. The calls for democracy reflected the realization that authoritarianism, as it had underlined historical populism, could also be used as a weapon by elites to disenfranchise and marginalize the middle classes and the poor. While the old populism was associated with authoritarian political regimes to prevent the old elites from taking over through parliamentary elections, neopopulism, especially in Latin America, followed a period of political liberalization and democratization. It also came to power in an international context very different from that of the 1950s and 1960s. The existing global system was largely based on the values of free markets, human rights, and democracy. Inward-looking strategies of development and authoritarianism could not survive in this global context. Neopopulist regimes were trying to forge a development model based on the free market and political democracy as well as on a system of social equality.

Populism, Neoliberalism, and Neopopulism in Egypt The main causes of the Egyptian revolt of January 25, 2011, were an unprecedented level of poverty, high income inequalities, and an authoritarian state that pursued exclusionary economic and political policies. The populist regime that emerged in Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s demanded social justice and was an outcome of social movements that

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pursued political and economic independence from Great Britain after Egypt had been colonized for seventy-two years. The revolution of July 23, 1952, achieved the withdrawal of British troops in 1954 and brought the power of the state to enact a development policy that sought rapid growth through import substitution industrialization, and the direct intervention of the state in controlling economic resources, the promotion of investments, and ensuring an equitable income distribution. The Nasserist populist state pursued inclusionary economic and exclusionary political policies. The state implemented import substitution policies and gave economic rights to peasants, workers, and the middle classes. It adopted industrialization policies that increased the numbers of workers and professionals. In addition to increasing economic opportunities for the majority, the government established a large welfare state that guaranteed free education and health care to all, as well as employment to high school and college graduates. Furthermore, it established a wide range of subsidies in addition to price controls. These policies led to minimum unemployment and inflation rates. Populist social equality was pursued through a redistribution of wealth in conjunction with these welfare-state measures. Prior to 1952, the Egyptian economy depended on agriculture. The very high concentration of agricultural land in the hands of the few created huge wealth disparities and prevented capital transfers from agriculture to the industrial sector. In order to free capital and improve social equity in agriculture, Gamal Abdul Nasser’s regime implemented a series of land reform laws in 1952, 1961, and 1969. The land reform of 1952 reduced the share of large landowners from 20 percent of total agricultural land to only 6 percent, and increased the share of the remaining 95 percent of all owners from 35 to 47 percent. By these measures, the Nasserist regime eliminated the economic base of the landed elites’ power and narrowed the unequal distribution of agricultural land.3 The historical populist regime’s policies resulted in the reduction of poverty and an increase in the share of national wealth going to wage earners. The percentage of poor families decreased from 35 percent in 1958–1959 to 27 percent in 1964–1965 for rural families, and from 30 percent to 28 percent for urban families. The share of wages in total income increased from 38 percent in 1950 to 50 percent in 1967–1968.4 After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Anwar Sadat gradually reoriented the economy from its populist path to a free market economy. However, many aspects of the welfare state were retained in order to appease the population. The same policies were implemented by Hosni Mubarak up to 1991. The period 1974–1991 achieved high economic growth rates,

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averaging an annual rate of 6–8 percent. However, this growth was a jobless growth. The rate of job destruction was higher than that of job creation. From 1974 to 1990, projects falling under the Open Door Policy (Law 43) employed less than 1.5 percent of the total work force in the whole period.5 Unemployment jumped from just over 2 percent in 1960 to 11 percent in 1986.6 Wage levels under the Open Door Policy deteriorated. The real wage per worker declined from US$70 in 1980 to only US$11 in 1991. This, of course, achieved a palpable reduction in the cost of labor.7 Mubarak resisted the implementation of structural adjustment policies until he was forced to adopt them in 1991. Ironically, these policies were tied to a major reduction of Egypt’s foreign debt. By 1991, Egypt’s foreign debt stood at US$49 billion.8 As a reward for Egypt’s participation in the Gulf War, foreign debt was reduced by 50 percent. The main condition for reducing the debt was Egypt’s adoption of World Bank and IMF policies of economic reform and structural adjustment. Implementation of these policies resulted in economic recession. Gross domestic product (GDP) decreased from US$90.4 billion in 2001 to US$84.2 billion in 2002 and US$71.5 billion in 2003, and then increased slightly to US$78.3 billion in 2004. The GDP growth rate improved from 3.2 percent in 2000–2001 to 4.9 percent in 2004–2005, 6.8 percent in 2005–2006, and 7.1 percent in 2006–2007. The GDP growth rate declined sharply after 2008 due to the US economic crisis and the inability of the Egyptian regime to sustain its high growth. GDP per capita declined from US$1,313 in 2002 to US$1,197 in 2003 and US$1,111 in 2004, and then rebounded slightly to US$1,296 in 2005.9 These policies also resulted in a reduction of both public and private investments, especially in manufacturing. The proportion of investments in manufacturing compared to total investments declined from 40 percent in 1967–1973 to 21.6 percent in 1990–1991, 9.6 percent in 1999–2000, and only 7.2 percent in 2003–2004.10 Average labor productivity reached 2.5 percent in 2002 and 7.1 percent in 2004, and then dropped to 2.4 percent in 2005. At the same time, the average annual rates of wage growth were negative or zero: –0.1 percent in 2001–2002 and 2002–2003, 0 percent in 2003–2004, and –0.6 percent in 2004– 2005.11 In 1997, the “share of wages in gross output reached 11.4% in public firms and only 7.6% in private firms.”12 Adding to the problems generated by economic reform and structural adjustment, the Egyptian government relinquished the people’s constitutional right of guaranteed employment. Unable to change the con-

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stitution, the government resorted to various measures to nullify that right. Some of these included reduction of the number of the newly employed people in either the public sector or the civil service, allowing workers in state-owned enterprises and the civil service to take long leaves of absence without pay, and opening the gates for either temporary or permanent labor migration. At the same time, the private sector failed to generate any significant employment opportunities. The cabinet of Ahmed Nazif (2004–2011) accelerated the pace of liberalization through various steps, such as privatization, floating exchange rates, and reducing income taxes and customs. Additionally, the government froze wages and salaries. This resulted in the control of the state by private business interests. These same elites enriched themselves by plundering the economy and by further marginalizing the middle classes and the poor. The results were accelerated privatization, even higher unemployment rates, and increased levels of poverty. The government used different privatization techniques. Twentynine public enterprise companies were sold to an anchor investor, thirty-eight by selling the majority of shares through the stock market, six by selling 50 percent of shares, ten by selling 40 percent of shares, and thirty-three by selling the total shares to employee shareholder associations. The government also sold six companies under liquidation and another twenty-seven companies as production assets. Twentyone companies and production units were leased on long-term contracts. The value of the sold companies from 1997 to 2003 reached US$1.92 billion.13 Privatization was accelerated from 2004 to 2010, during which a total of 379 state-owned enterprises were sold. The largest number of these enterprises, 313, constituted “total sales”—that is, the sale of the companies, their assets, and their lands. Another 63 companies were sold as joint ventures. The total earnings reached around US$9.3 billion.14 The privatization process was accompanied by corruption and nepotism. Industrial concerns were sold at a fraction of their value, labor rights were disregarded, and the new owners used many techniques to get rid of workers and to slash wages and benefits. Privatization added to labor insecurities and unemployment. Many workers were fired or pressured into early retirement.15 Government statistics placed the unemployment rate at 10 percent in the period 2000–2011. Unofficial estimates put the real unemployment rate at 25–30 percent. Unemployment among the young was much higher. The rate of unemployment for youth aged fifteen to twenty-five was 34 percent in 2005, and reached 16 percent for those aged twenty-

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five to thirty. Among the educated, unemployment in urban areas was much higher than in rural areas. It was also much higher for women than for men. Unemployment was highest for those who had a secondary education (62 percent), followed by university graduates (33 percent), and was least for those who had less than a secondary education (5 percent). Urban unemployment (12 percent) was higher than rural (7 percent), and female unemployment stood at 19 percent versus only 9 percent for males.16 One major effect of unemployment was a heightened poverty level. Poverty can be measured by different indicators. The most used indicator to measure extreme poverty is the percentage of the population having an income under a dollar a day; the second indicator of poverty is the percentage of the population living on less than two dollars a day. In Egypt, the percentage of the population living on less than a dollar a day decreased from 8 percent in 1990–1991 to 3 percent in 2004–2005; however, the percentage of population living on less than two dollars a day increased from 39 to 43 percent over the same period.17 Not only did poverty increase, but income inequalities also led to a deterioration of the standard of living for a large percentage of the population. The income share of the poorest 10 percent of the population in 2004–2005 was 44 percent total income, equal to their share in 1991, but the richest 10 percent of the population’s share was 28 percent in 2004–2005, up from 27 percent in 1991.18 The income share of the poorest 20 percent of the population in 2004–2005 was 9.0 percent, up from 8.7 percent in 1991. At the same time, the richest 20 percent of the population increased its share of income from 41.1 percent in 1991 to 41.5 percent in 2004–2005.19 The total share of wages and salaries compared to gross domestic product decreased from 49 percent in 1989 to only 30 percent in 2004–2005, a drastic decrease from the 50 percent share achieved in the 1960s. It was this decline that led almost all social groups, except for the elites, to the path of revolt.20 These factors led to an accelerated rate of strikes, sit-ins, and demonstrations. In 2006, 27,000 workers of Mahalla Textiles in Gharbia province staged a sit-in in response to the administration’s refusal to pay the workers an increase in salaries and incentives.21 In April 2007, a series of strikes demonstrated the spread of workers’ discontent. Mahalla struck once more, and rubbish collectors in Giza rioted and stormed the company headquarters because they were not paid their wages. In Alexandria, over 4,000 textile workers walked

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off their jobs after attempts to cut their wages. In Cairo, granary workers rioted because the government was attempting to divert grain supply from a state-owned company to a private firm.22 In December 2007, 3,000 tax collectors organized a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Finance in downtown Cairo, complaining that their salaries of US$60 a month had reduced them to utter poverty.23 The sitin in Cairo was accompanied by a sit-in of 55,000 tax collectors over the whole of Egypt. This resulted in the establishment of the first independent labor union, thereby challenging the official union that was recognized (and dominated) by the state. In 2008, the Mahalla workers again went on strike. In April 2009, on the eve of yet another strike, the police retaliated by occupying the Mahalla factories and arresting workers, leaders, and activists in both Mahalla and Cairo.24 Overall, from 2004 to 2008, it is estimated that more than 1.7 million workers engaged in more than 1,900 strikes and other forms of protest. The strikers demanded the reinstatement of workers who had been fired, an increase in wages, payment of back wages and bonuses, and the renationalization of privatized companies, as well as other things.25 Strikes, protests, and sit-ins were almost daily occurrences until the outbreak of the January 2011 revolution, when workers, civil servants, and others joined the youth who were demonstrating to oust the regime of Hosni Mubarak. The Mubarak regime responded to the string of massive strikes by conceding to some demands and by trying to put down the strikes by using the national security and police forces. Faced by the mounting wave of anger and protest, and in order to consolidate its grip on the economy, the regime strengthened its grip on the political system. Instead of using inclusionary policies to balance its extreme reliance on policies of economic exclusion, the National Democratic Party (controlled by the economic elites) rigged the 2010 People’s Assembly elections and “won” 97 percent of the seats. 26 At the same time, the state used harsh police measures to counter the increasing trend of sit-ins and demonstrations. Some of the major demands of the revolution were that privatization of the public sector be stopped, that concerns previously sold to private entrepreneurs be nationalized, that minimum wages in the governmental, public, and private sectors of the economy be increased, that prices be controlled, that a progressive tax rate be reinstituted instead of the flat rate adopted by the previous regime, that tenure be granted to all workers recruited on the basis of short-term contracts, and that a democratic system that would guarantee the rights of all workers and citizens be established.

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These demands echoed those raised in many Latin American countries that had been equally affected by neoliberal policies. This new development was called “neopopulism” to differentiate it from the old populism that rested essentially on authoritarianism. The question today is whether Egypt can change into a neopopulist state economically and a democratic state politically.

Neopopulism, Democracy, and Development Is it possible to achieve development, social equity, and democracy simultaneously? Until the 1980s, modernization theory assumed that the economy defined the political structure. The theory claimed that democracy corresponds to a mature capitalism based on industrialization. It was held that industrialization as the engine of growth would lead to social differentiation, urbanization, and a secular form of state resting on the philosophical premises of individualism and competition. All these elements are basic to liberal democracy, which was viewed as the outcome of economic development. In a similar fashion, Marxist and neo-Marxist theories contended that the economy is the dominant structure in any social formation. This structure determines the political structure. Therefore liberal democracy is an outcome of the stage of industrial capitalism. Developing countries that had not yet reached the stage of full industrialization lacked the prerequisites necessary for liberal democracy. Less developed countries should therefore pursue economic development first, in the hope that this would lead in time to political liberalization. The proponents of economic development argued that democracy in a developing country might lead to populist pressures in the form of heightened demands for immediate consumption, increased subsidies for both private consumption and business inputs, and protective trade policies that would negatively affect investments and growth. When a majority of the people are poor, the marginal propensity of a society to consume is very high; therefore, savings and investments are low. In a democracy, workers can unionize, increasing wages and thereby lowering profits and investments. In all cases, lower investments will lead to lower economic growth rates. Thus, democracy could also have a negative impact on development and economic growth. It might result in high inflation and slower economic growth because of unrestrained competition over resources and the development of deficit financing to cater to increased demands from all sectors of the economy.27

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However, with the spread of neoliberalism and democracy since the 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a new concept emerged linking democracy and economic development.28 This new concept claimed that democracy leads to economic development. In this view, the political structure is the dominant element and it determines the economic structure. Hence democracy becomes a global political system, notwithstanding the stage of economic development. Democracy was supposed to promote development by safeguarding property rights. In a capitalist economy, private individuals own economic resources and the state’s role is to protect this property by enforcing the rule of law. The protection of property rights is alleged to be conducive to economic accumulation and growth. However, this will only work if the regulations to protect private property rights are extended to large social groups and do not apply simply to small privileged groups or elites. Democracies are also believed to have better mechanisms for the allocation of resources for productive uses because democratic governments are accountable to their citizens. This assumes that authoritarian rulers, because they are not accountable to electorates, have no incentive to increase investment and total growth.29 Empirical studies have attempted to test the relationship between democracy and development. The main finding of these studies is that democracy cannot be sustained in countries with low per capita incomes, high income inequalities, low labor share of value-added in manufacturing (less than 25 percent), and very high poverty rates. The sustainability of democracy is also highly correlated with the level of education among the labor force.30 In a study of 150 countries for the period 1960–2000, Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini conclude that enacting economic liberalization ahead of political reforms usually leads to better economic performance and that the impact of political reform from authoritarianism to parliamentary democracy is negative.31 Other empirical studies show that the correlation between democracy and economic development is weak. In a study of 130 countries, Svante Ersson and Jan-Erik Lane conclude that the positive impact of democracy on economic development is rather tenuous.32 Regardless of the empirical studies, Western nations have adopted the neoliberal view of democracy. The West now ties demands for democratization to economic aid, stressing the need for political accountability, transparency, and participation. The World Bank and the IMF have taken the position that democracy and human rights are conducive to economic growth.

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After Egypt’s 2011 revolution, all active political forces claimed the need of democracy as a political system. But at the same time, there are increasing demands for jobs, income redistribution, increased wages and salaries, and price controls.

Prospects for Democracy, Development, and Social Equality in Egypt The youth who spearheaded the 2011 revolution were protesting the police brutality on Police Day, annually celebrated on January 25. Tahrir Square, at the center of downtown Cairo, became the focal point of the demonstrations. The demands increased exponentially after January 28, when police and national security forces attacked the demonstrators, brutally killing many of them. The youth demanded freedom, employment, and social justice. A mass of workers, civil servants, the poor, and the inhabitants of shantytowns joined the demonstrators and demanded that the Mubarak regime be removed. Labor protests erupted all over Egypt, and specifically in Cairo, with participants demanding improved wages and better working conditions. On February 5–8, 4,000 workers from Egypt’s national coal company staged protests in the industrial city of Helwan; at about the same time, workers from the national cement company protested their very low wages.33 On February 9, state electricity company workers launched demonstrations demanding the removal of the company’s director; public transportation workers called for strikes and demanded Mubarak’s removal from power; and museum workers staged a protest in front of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and demanded higher wages. In Suez, strikes involved the state textile, medical bottle manufacturing, sanitation, and ship repair companies. 34 Protesters’ demands included such things as the permanent appointment of workers on temporary contracts, changes of directors and other administrators, wage increases, and the end of corruption. After the collapse of the Mubarak regime on February 11, the protests among workers and civil servants escalated, paralyzing the nation’s economy. On February 13, thousands of state employees went on strike. Suez Canal workers, employees of the national bank, ambulance drivers, police, transportation workers, Egypt Air employees, and Cairo’s Opera House workers struck to lend weight to their demands for administrative changes and better pay.35

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By February 24, labor protests had expanded to many governorates. Mine workers in Baharia Oasis and employees of the Ministry of Religious Endowments asked for salary increases. In Port Said, hundreds of residents claimed their shares of lands allocated to college graduates under the Mubarak regime. In Beni Suef, new graduates, workers, and teachers demanded real and permanent job opportunities. They threatened to block the highway and set the Ministry of Education on fire if their demands were not met. In Alexandria, employees of the Medical Research Center of Alexandria University staged a protest calling for permanent contracts for temporary employees, higher wages, and administrative reforms. Also in Alexandria, protests were organized to complain about carbon emissions from a factory. In Suez, steelworkers blocked an important highway to force the leadership to meet their demands for better wages and employment conditions.36 These are just a sample of the strikes, sit-ins, and protests that enveloped Egypt after the fall of Mubarak. Even prior to the revolution, there was ample evidence that conditions had become intolerable for most Egyptians. As early as January 19, 2011, Egypt’s Independent Trade Unionists declared the following steps necessary for the country’s good: 1. Increase the minimum wage and pensions, narrow the gap between minimum and maximum wages, establish a system for unemployment benefits, and tie wages to prices. 2. Allow workers the right to establish their own independent unions. 3. Ensure that manual and clerical workers, peasant farmers, and professionals have job security and protection against firing by employers. Temporary workers should become permanent workers, and workers dismissed from state or private companies should be returned to their jobs. 4. Renationalize all privatized companies and end the privatization program. 5. Remove corrupt managers. 6. Curb the practice of hiring consultants who receive exorbitant salaries. 7. Impose price controls on all goods and services to fight inflation. 8. Guarantee the right of Egyptian workers to strike, organize sitins, and demonstrate peacefully. 9. Ensure that all workers have health insurance.

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10. Dissolve the government-sponsored Egyptian Trade Union Federation.37 The demands of the Independent Workers Federation were a perfect example of the populist pressures that might undermine development according to the proponents of modernization theory. An April 2011 poll conducted by the American International Republican Institute largely reflected the views of the federation. According to the institute’s findings, 81 percent of respondents described the economic situation as bad, 63 percent claimed that their household financial situation had worsened over the preceding year, and 80 percent expected that their household financial situation would improve during the following year. As well, 51 percent of respondents claimed that they were having trouble feeding themselves and their families and buying even the basic necessities for survival. Unemployment and security were singled out as the biggest problems facing Egypt as a whole, as identified by 63 and 53 percent of respondents respectively. Only 23 percent claimed that wages and salaries constituted the single biggest problem.38 Most respondents, 77 percent, expressed confidence that the current government will be able to address the main issues facing Egypt today. The majority, 64 percent, supported the revolution because of the low living standard and the lack of jobs, while only 19 percent supported the revolution because of the lack of democracy.39 This opinion poll reveals that most Egyptians are concerned with an economy that will provide them with jobs and ameliorate the low living standards of the majority. Can the post-revolutionary state satisfy these demands while at the same time following the same economic policies pursued by previous regimes (neoliberal policies)? Both Egypt and Tunisia resorted to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for new loans to cover their huge budget deficits in light of the economic instability and the increased demands by a vocal population who require economic improvement here and now. The current government is trying to placate the people’s demands while at the same time shying away from adopting a progressive tax system (the current tax is a flat tax of 20 percent, possibly to increase to 25 percent for those making more than 10 million Egyptian pounds [US$1.7 million] annually). The current government also hesitates to impose new taxes, such as a real estate tax or a tax on capital profits. Such measures were suggested by the interim military government but quickly led to the collapse of the stock market and were rejected by a

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substantial number of small investors. The military government also increased food subsidies, stopped plans to phase out energy subsidies, ended the privatization process, converted government temporary workers into permanent workers, and set a minimum wage of 700 Egyptian pounds (US$120) per month. Moreover, it is in the process of setting controls on high wages and salaries. The only alternative, then, seems to be deficit financing, which might lead to rampant inflation. The budget deficit was estimated at 10 percent of gross domestic product in 2010–2011 and the inflation rate was expected to reach 13 percent in 2010–2011. 40 Can the postrevolutionary state in this case maintain neoliberalism and political democracy, especially with the mounting trend of populist economic demands that threaten both development and democracy? A 2011 poll carried out by the Center for Political and Strategic Studies of the Ahram Foundation and published in the newspaper alAhram demonstrates that political democracy is a very low priority for most Egyptians. 41 Almost half of respondents, 48 percent, did not think a multiparty system would be beneficial and in fact would be harmful; only 27 thought such a system would have a positive impact. When asked which party would be approved by the people, 69 percent of respondents indicated that they did not trust any existing party. 42

The Post-Revolutionary State According to a majority of Egyptians, the post-revolutionary Egyptian state should pursue development, economic equity, and democracy. Can Egypt pursue development, income redistribution, and democracy simultaneously? In other words, will Egypt become a neopopulist state? A neopopulist state may be able to achieve all these targets if (1) it intervenes in the economy to promote development; (2) it narrows income and other social inequalities to satisfy the demands of the majority of Egyptians as demonstrated by the multiple polls to date; and (3) it allows and encourages Egyptians to participate in a democratic system built on a constitution that is drafted by all political forces and not only by the parliamentary majority.

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Notes 1. Samuel Taylor Morison, “A Hayekian Theory of Social Justice,” NYU Journal of Law and Liberty 1 (2005), http://law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public /@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_law_and_liberty/documents /documents/ecm_pro_060892.pdf. 2. Ignacio Walker, “Democracy and Populism in Latin America,” Working Paper no. 347, April 2008, http://kellogg.nd.edu/publications/workingpapers /WPS/347.pdf. 3. Nadia Ramsis Farah, “Political Regimes and Social Performance,” in Ayse Oncu, Caglar Keyder, and Saad Eddin Ibrahim, eds., Developmentalism and Beyond: Society and Politics in Egypt and Turkey (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1994), p. 144. 4. Ibid. 5. Hadi Salehi Esfahani, “The Experience of Foreign Investments in Egypt Under Infitah,” August 1993, http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~lebelp/CERAFRM 046Esfahani1993.pdf. 6. Naglaa el-Ehwany and Heba Nassar, Towards Decent Work in North Africa, vol. 1, Poverty, Employment, and Policy Making in Egypt: A Country Profile (Cairo: International Labour Organization Area Office, 2001), http:// www1.aucegypt.edu/src/wsite1/Pdfs/ILO-report.pdf. 7. Nadia Ramsis Farah, Egypt’s Political Economy: Power Relations in Development (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2009), p. 41. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., pp. 42–43. 10. Ministry of Planning statistics, http://www.mop.gov.eg/English/Economic indicators.htmlgdp.htm. 11. Ministry of Trade and Industry, Quarterly Report 1, no. 4 (January– March 2006), pp. 30, 83–85. 12. Lobna Abdellatif, “Egypt’s Manufacturing Sector: Factor Inputs and TFP over Half a Century” (Cairo: Economic Research Forum, September 2003), p. 18. 13. Farah, Egypt’s Political Economy, p. 45. 14. Ministry of Finance, Egyptian Economic Monitor 7, no. 2 (December 2010), p. 111. 15. Land Center for Human Rights, Labor Conditions in Egypt, Economic Social Rights Series no. 7 (Cairo, 1999). 16. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Egyptian Institute of National Planning, Egypt Human Development Report 2010, http://www.undp.org.eg/Portals/0/NHDR%202010%20english.pdf. 17. Ahmed el-Sayed el-Naggar, Liberal Economic Reform: A Comparative Study—Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, India, and the Czech Republic (Cairo: alAhram Political and Strategic Studies Center, 2011).

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18. Ibid., p. 97. 19. Ibid., p. 98. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. “Egypt: Strikes Continue Despite Clampdown,” April 12, 2007, http://libcom.org/news/egypt-strikes-continue-despite-clampdown-12042007. 23. Dan Murphy, “Egypt’s Economic Reform Meets Unprecedented Wave of Labor Resistance,” Christian Science Monitor, December 7, 2007, http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1207/p25s05-wome.html. 24. Atef Said, “Egyptian Labor Erupting,” Solidarity, September–October 2009, http://solidarity-us.org/node/2365. 25. “Egyptian Workers Protest Privatization,” al-Masry al-Youm, March 6, 2010, http://ekramibrahim.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/egyptian-workers-protest -privatization. 26. The NDP never managed to win more than 37 percent of the seats in previous elections. 27. Farah, Egypt’s Political Economy. 28. Elhai Khandakar and Constantine P. Danopoulos, “Democracy, Capitalism, and Development,” Journal of Security Sector Management 2, no. 2 (June 2004), http://www.ssronline.org./jofssm display.cfm?hc=pdf. 29. Farah, Egypt’s Political Economy. 30. Adam Przeworski, “Democracy and Economic Development,” in Edward D. Mansfield and Richard Sisson, eds., The Evolution of Political Knowledge (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004). 31. Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, “Democracy and Development: The Devil in the Details,” American Economic Review 96, no. 2 (May 2006). 32. Svante Ersson and J. Lane, “Democracy and Development: Statistical Exploration,” in Adrian Leftwich, ed., Democracy and Development: Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Polity, 1996). 33. Mai Elwakil and Louise Sarant, “Upper Egypt Joins the Revolution,”al-Masry al-Youm, August 2, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com /node/314514. 34. Maggie Michael and Torek El-Tablaury, “Strikes in Egypt Add to Pressure from Protests,” ABC News, February 10, 2011, http://www.asian tribune.ca/world/2969-strikes-in-egypt-add-to-pressure-from-protests.html. 35. Torek El Tablaury and Sarah El Deeb, “Labor Unrest, Protests Grow After Egypt’s Uprising,” Associated Press, February 14, 2011, http://www .signonsandiego.com/news/2011/feb/14/labor-unrest-protests-grow-after -egypts-uprising. 36. “Labor Protests Escalate Throughout Egypt,” al-Masry al-Youm, February 25, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/329969. 37. “Jan 25 Egyptian Independent Trade Unionists’ Declaration,” Arabawy, February 19, 2011, http://www.arabawy.org/2011/02/21/jan25 -egyworkers-egyptian-independent-trade-unionists-declaration.

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38. International Republican Institute, “Egyptian Public Opinion Survey, April 14–April 27” (Salem, MA: William and Associates, June 5, 2011), http://www.iri.org. 39. Ibid. 40. African Economic Outlook, Egypt 2011, http://www.africaneconomic outlook.org. 41. “In a Poll by the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies: SCAF Is the Most Important of State Institutions,” al-Ahram, August 24, 2011, p. 3. 42. Ibid.

5 Youth Power and the Revolution Earl (Tim) Sullivan

On January 25, 2011, a series of events began that in less than three weeks led to the downfall of the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, the former air force general who had led Egypt since Anwar Sadat was assassinated in October 1981. These events, collectively referred to here as the Tahrir Revolution, were largely peaceful, at least as far as most of the protesters were concerned. Most notable, young Egyptians—not the more senior and established opposition figures or political parties in Egypt’s political universe—instigated the revolution. Indeed, one of the identifying characteristics of the Tahrir Revolution is that most of those who initiated and led it were relatively young. In a society historically dominated by those with considerable seniority, how is it that most of the leaders of this popular revolution were under the age of forty, indeed even thirty? Generational changes are common in virtually all societies. In Egypt, those changes took a particular turn that enabled the younger generation to play the leading role in the Tahrir Revolution. This chapter explores those changes and speculates on how the process of generational change will continue to impact the evolution of politics in Egypt and, by extension, the rest of the Arab world. The roots of the Tahrir Revolution go back at least two decades. During this period, Egyptian society and the political environment experienced changes that eventually led to the successful and largely peaceful overthrow of the Mubarak regime. One of the changes was the growth of a substantial middle class who was reasonably well educated

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and increasingly motivated to make demands on the system, including demands related to expanded political participation. Another factor was a growing disenchantment with, and indeed disdain for, the country’s leaders and the governing generation because of their collective failure to solve the numerous social, economic, and political problems of Egypt and, to some degree, of the Arab world. Although I was not in Egypt during the events of January–February 2011, I had worked and lived in the country between 1973 and 2008, first as a political science faculty member and later as an academic administrator at the American University in Cairo. For more than three decades I witnessed the country change during the tumultuous, dramatic, and traumatic events that occurred in Egypt and the Middle East beginning in the 1970s and continuing into most of the first decade of the twenty-first century. In addition to teaching classes at the American University in Cairo, I was privileged to work very closely with students in two large organizations, the Cairo International Model United Nations (CIMUN) and the Cairo International Model Arab League (CIMAL). These two cocurricular student organizations, founded in 1989 and 1990 respectively, attracted students from numerous disciplines and backgrounds, and the conferences they hosted grew to involve several hundred students each year. Although many of the Egyptian students involved in these programs were from the American University in Cairo, students from other educational institutions, including Cairo University, Ain Shams University, Al Azhar University, and the Arab Academy in Alexandria, were also involved, as were students from several other Arab countries. My role as founding faculty adviser to these groups gave me insights into the changing attitudes of a diverse group of Egyptian and Arab students over more than two decades. Even after my tenure as faculty adviser, I maintained close contact with the students in both model organizations. While this chapter is documented with conventional sources, part of it is semiautobiographical, based on my observations and experiences of thirty-five years working and living in Egypt. As events unfolded in January and February 2011, I was able to follow what was happening via television, especially Al Jazeera, CNN International, and BBC, in addition to various newspapers and similar conventional sources. Less conventional perhaps, I was also able to follow events as they happened on Facebook and Twitter. One way the Egyptian government tried to control events was to close all Internet and mobile-phone service for a few days, but after these were restored I was able to obtain news from various participants in the events via

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e-mail and Facebook. In early May, I was in Egypt and discussed the earlier events and the aftermath with several people, many of whom had been active participants in the events in Tahrir Square.

Why Was Egypt “Ripe for Revolution” in 2011? Although few if any observers accurately predicted the Tahrir Revolution, the signs of an impending explosion of frustration and anger were obvious.1 Unemployment and underemployment, especially among young people, were very high. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), unemployment was 8.9 percent in 2007.2 The situation was exacerbated by the global recession that began in 2008 and unemployment became clearly much higher by 2011. Virtually all of this unemployment and underemployment were among the younger generation (under age thirty), who constituted roughly 25 percent of the total population by that time. Nearly two-thirds of people from the ages of eighteen to twenty-nine who had only a secondary school education were unemployed, and one-third of those who had a university degree were unable to find a job.3 Without a job, young people could not marry and had to continue living with their parents; this was only one of the many reasons why young people concluded that the future for them was bleak. Large numbers of people in Egypt had long before concluded that the political and economic system over which they had little or no influence or control had essentially failed to deliver on its promises. Democratic political systems establish and maintain legitimacy by representing the views of the citizens and by providing them with the basic goods and services they demand from their governments. Failure to deliver typically leads to political change via elections. Nondemocratic regimes, on the other hand, risk the loss of legitimacy if they fail to deliver on the promises the leaders make to the people even though they do not gain or hold power as the result of a democratic election. When Gamal Abdul Nasser and his colleagues in the Free Officers came to power in 1952, they promised many things to the people of Egypt, one of which was to substantially raise the overall level of prosperity and to restore the dignity of the country that had been lost when Egypt and other Arab states had been defeated and indeed humiliated in the war that led to Israel’s independence; but this did not happen. The Mubarak regime, as the heir to the Free Officers’ domination under Nasser and Anwar Sadat, had also failed to deliver on the promise of general well-

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being for the majority of the people of Egypt, although a substantial minority prospered considerably during the Mubarak era. As one seasoned observer of the Egyptian political scene noted in 2007: Legitimacy is palpably eroding in Mubarak’s Egypt. The regime has not bothered to develop and propagate a coherent and justificatory ideology. Its flagrant manipulation of the constitution and outright violation of laws have undermined any claim to structural-legal legitimacy. The steady deterioration of public services has corroded legitimacy based on performance. And the diminution of Egypt’s role in the region has rendered irrelevant claims to national grandeur as a basis for regime support.4

Although a fifth of the population was still classified as living below the poverty level in 2009, Egypt had experienced considerable economic growth, averaging 6 percent a year between 1981 and 1992, and 5 percent between 1998 and 2008. Even with population growth, economic gains per capita were considerable, averaging over 3 percent a year during most of the Mubarak era.5 One consequence of the growth was a considerable increase in the size of the middle class. There was also growth among the more affluent, and this upper stratum enjoyed wealth and privilege that could only be dreamed of by ordinary people. The benefits of growth were not distributed in anything approaching equality, and the gap between the rich and poor became more evident. Many of those who prospered the most in Mubarak’s Egypt increasingly flaunted their wealth and possessions. Luxury cars and sumptuous villas on the north coast and the Red Sea abounded, and in the early years of the twenty-first century the number of new luxury villas, many of which were built in gated communities hitherto virtually unknown in Egypt, sprouted up in many areas around Cairo, most conspicuously in the desert area east of Cairo labeled New Cairo. Even for those Egyptians whose lot was marginally better than before, because prosperity did in fact trickle down to some people, the highly conspicuous consumption of the super-wealthy made most Egyptians acutely aware of their relative deprivation. As social scientists have known for many years, a high degree of relative deprivation often precedes and indeed leads to popular rebellion.6 While the super-rich became even richer, ordinary middle-class Egyptians felt they were being left behind. As for the large numbers of those who were in the lower economic strata, they were very hard-pressed to get by on a day-to-day basis. Inflation, stimulated by a global increase in the prices of basic commodities and widespread unemployment and underemployment for young people, contributed significantly to the atmosphere of discontent

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and unrest. Workers in Egypt’s factories and industries were especially hard-hit by developments in the economy and many union members organized strikes, often without the support of the traditional leaders of the unions. To some degree they were able to show that demonstrations and other political actions were possible, although illegal, and that some success could be achieved. If nothing else, the numerous incidents of labor unrest that occurred in the early twenty-first century—particularly those at such enterprises as the industrial textile complexes in the Delta town of Mahalla al-Kubra—broke the barrier of fear that had kept many people from attempting to take steps to bring about real change. These strikes also gave some activists in their twenties and thirties practical experience in organizing and leading rebellious activity, experience that proved vital in the anti-Mubarak prodemocracy demonstrations of 2011. In addition to the numerous economic and social factors that made people willing to risk rebellion, there were numerous political factors that contributed to the growing sense of outrage that eventually manifested itself so dramatically in the Tahrir Revolution. The parliamentary elections of 2010 were especially farcical and the regime had become increasingly and visibly more brutal. The murder of the human rights activist, businessman, and blogger Khaled Said by the police in Alexandria is a telling example. The general sense of moral outrage at the obvious excesses of the regime and many of its supporters (such as steel magnate and National Democratic Party operative Ahmed Ezz and his well-known role in rigging the 2010 elections) meant that large numbers of ordinary Egyptians were willing, indeed eager, to take to the streets to protest against these injustices. Added to this was the prospect that President Hosni Mubarak might run for yet another term as president, or rig the election to ensure that his son Gamal would be elected. None of these grievances were new. However, a spark from events in another Arab country gave many Egyptians the belief that fundamental change was actually possible. On January 14, 2011, a popular uprising in Tunisia culminated with the largely peaceful overthrow of the regime of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Egyptian activists took heart: if it could happen in Tunisia, then regime change as a result of a peaceful popular movement was also possible in Egypt.7

The Tahrir Revolution The events that began on January 25, 2011, were not entirely spontaneous; there were clear signs well in advance that there would be demonstrations against the regime on that date, known in Egypt as

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Police Day to commemorate the role of Egyptian police in standing against the British in 1952. The symbolism was powerful. The police, once respected for their heroic role in Egypt’s nationalist movement, were reviled and delegitimized in the minds of most people as a result of having become an instrument designed to protect the regime and oppress the general population. The demonstrations, which eventually brought an end to the Mubarak era, were planned and coordinated by a coalition of a small number of organizations led by young Egyptians who represented a broad spectrum of the country’s opposition forces.8 In the week prior to the demonstrations, about thirty young “activists met in the decrepit headquarters of the Center for Socialist Studies in central Cairo to organize a mass demonstration against the repressive Egyptian regime.”9 They later “formed the Coalition of January 25 Youth to present a series of demands to the regime.”10 While it would not be accurate to call them the leaders of the Tahrir Revolution, as this “revolution” had no leaders in the usual sense of that word, they served as an informal organizing committee and to some degree as its representatives and spokespersons. Demonstrations took place in many locations throughout the country, but much of the focus was on the events in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Of the dozen or so individuals who emerged as representatives of those who gathered in the square, none were emissaries of traditional or legal political forces. Rather, they came from groups that either were technically illegal, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, or had emerged in recent years. All were in their twenties or thirties, and all had previous experience organizing demonstrations, strikes, or similar activities. None of the traditional political parties were involved in the basic organization of day-to-day events in Tahrir Square. While diverse from an ideological perspective, the organizers were from the burgeoning middle class and were committed to a more open and democratic Egypt. They were also united in their unrelenting opposition to the status quo and to the regime of President Mubarak. The Tahrir Revolution was urban, cosmopolitan, and middle-class, and the combination of these three features goes a long way toward explaining why it was nonviolent and democratic. Democracy means many things to many people, but virtually all versions of it involve some degree of majority rule. By this time in Egypt’s history, the majority of the population were under forty years old, so it is not too surprising that the young people who had the courage to turn out in such large numbers not only demanded the end of the Mubarak regime but also

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called for the end of the system established by the Free Officers and the institution of a new and much more democratic order. They were rebelling against an entire generation of patriarchs who had dominated the country for too long. Egypt is a highly patriarchal society, and the Mubarak regime was believed by most Egyptians to be a cardinal example of patriarchy gone particularly bad. In most societies, the use of technology and social media has become a characteristic way in which younger members of the society communicate. In the hands of the young Egyptians who stimulated the Tahrir Revolution, technology and social media played a major role in the process of organizing events. As one young revolutionary recalled: “To lobby support, the activists used Twitter and Facebook, targeting above all the 60 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people who are under the age of 25. A rap song was made and circulated, a video plea by the mother of Khaled Said recorded, and Facebook groups formed to encourage people to join the protest.”11 One of the most important Facebook pages was “Kulina Khaled Said” in Arabic and its companion site in English, “We Are All Khaled Said,” named after the young man who was murdered in Alexandria by Egyptian police. A key figure in setting this up and maintaining it was Wael Ghonim, a young Google executive in charge of marketing for the Middle East.12 This particular site proved to be a vital marketing asset for the revolution and for communicating messages to its supporters. In addition to the video mentioned in the preceding quote, there was a video broadcast on YouTube made by Asmaa Mahfouz, a young Egyptian woman and one of the founders of the April 6 Movement. She said she was going to demonstrate and she urged others, especially young Egyptian males, to join her in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011. Attendance was much larger than anyone originally expected, due in part to the multiple sophisticated methods of communication that were employed by the activists. Although the most widely covered demonstration was in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, similar activities occurred in many other cities, especially Alexandria, Port Said, and Suez. The government reacted to the demonstrations on January 25 with force, but this did not deter people from participating. In fact, the use of force actually encouraged others to join. Once the opening demonstrations were successful in articulating the demand for substantial change, including the end of Mubarak’s rule, attendance grew and individuals and groups who were not there on day one joined. “Riot police were everywhere, but the crowd outnumbered them. The demographic of the protesters had shifted too: from Tuesday’s [January 25] activist movement domi-

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nated by young upper middle-class Egyptians with Twitter accounts [it] had broadened to include masses of middle-class and lower middleclass people, even children. It had become a popular movement.”13

Not Just About Mubarak: Rebellion Against Patriarchy While ending the regime of President Mubarak was a principal objective of the Tahrir Revolution, there was much more at stake than simply getting rid of him. In many ways, patriarchy itself was a symbolic target. As is the case in many societies, not just those in the Arab and Muslim world, Egypt’s authority structure places senior males in a position of virtually unassailable privilege and authority. Although there are numerous exceptions to this, the overall pattern is that the opinion of males counts more than that of females, and age is more valued than youth. While a generation gap is commonplace in all societies, in recent years a particularly wide and growing chasm had become one of the most striking features of contemporary Egypt. As previously noted, young people had come to constitute a huge and growing percentage of the population, and unemployment and underemployment, especially among the younger job seekers, were alarmingly high. Even well-educated young Egyptians found it very difficult to find a decent job or to live life with dignity and optimism. The generation gap in contemporary Egypt is different from earlier intergenerational fissures in some interesting ways. Younger Egyptians are much more attuned to what is happening in the outside world than ever before, due largely to satellite television, which brings news and entertainment programs from various parts of the world into their homes and other places they frequent, and more recently due to the widespread use of mobile phones and the Internet. They also do not accept at face value the idea that their parents’ or grandparents’ generation always knows best, especially regarding politics. In fact, rather than deference and respect for their elders, they often show open disdain for the failure of earlier generations to solve the many problems that plague Arab and Egyptian society. Palestine is still under occupation, the Arab League seldom if ever does anything they can be proud of, and the various governments of the Arab world are, to varying degrees, regarded as tools of Western powers. In some cases, such as Libya, Arab regimes have been quite farcical. In short, the political aspirations of today’s cohort of Egyptians in their twenties and thirties differ substantially from those of earlier generations.

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Two anecdotes based on personal experience serve to illustrate how the generation that dominated events in Tahrir Square in 2011 began to develop these changing social mores and political beliefs. The first refers to people who are in the middle to upper middle classes; the second deals with women from lower down the socioeconomic strata. In the early 1990s I helped a group of idealistic Egyptian and Arab students at the American University in Cairo establish the Cairo International Model Arab League. Unlike other such simulation programs, CIMAL was a model for the Arab League rather than a model of the League. The distinction is important. They did not want to duplicate how the League works or fails to work; they wanted to create a forum that would enable them to rethink the whole enterprise, and to take up issues that the real organization did not actually address. They also created parts of the League that did not actually exist, such as a Model Arab Court of Justice. One especially interesting creation was the Arab-Arab Dialogue, a gathering of young Arabs who discussed and made recommendations for dealing with issues they thought were important; most, if not all, of the issues the Arab-Arab Dialogue took up had never been on the Arab League’s agenda. At that time, CIMAL, which organized an annual conference each November, held sessions on Friday in the headquarters of the Arab League. At one such meeting in the mid-1990s, one of the topics in the Arab-Arab Dialogue was female genital mutilation. I walked into the session, which was being conducted in various dialects of Arabic, to see how things were progressing and found that three officials from the League were auditing the discussion. One of them whom I had met earlier came over and asked if I understood what the students were saying. I indicated that I did and pointed out that the discussion reflected that the students understood the nuances of female genital mutilation and were exploring how best to deal with it. He rejoined his colleagues for a minute and then came back to stand next to me again. He then said, “This is the first time this has been discussed in this building. And it is about time.” Even at that early date these students were determined not to repeat the mistakes of earlier generations. Nor were they prepared to be silent regarding important issues their elders had neglected or simply learned to live with. Some of the students who were in that session were later to be found in Tahrir Square in January–February 2011, and their former colleagues from other Arab countries were cheering for them on Facebook and Twitter. Another anecdote illustrates the evolving behavior of young Egyptian women, particularly those for whom the meeting rooms of the

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Arab League would be just as foreign as the streets of Paris. Patriarchy takes many forms, and it often inhibits the behavior of young women much more than that of young men. One traditional male preserve has been the qahwah, the traditional coffee shop where customers, almost all of whom traditionally were men, would gather to drink coffee or tea, perhaps smoke shisha (flavored tobacco), watch television, play chess or tawla (backgammon), or simply read a newspaper or chat with friends. As any visitor to some areas of central Cairo will have observed, in the late 1990s women began to invade this arena and by the early years of the twenty-first century it was no longer unusual to see women, including young veiled women, sitting in street coffee shops (qahwah) smoking shisha and playing chess or tawla. Smoking shisha in a qahwah does not a revolution make, but it is a simple illustration that women, including women from the so-called popular classes, had violated traditional patriarchal norms with impunity. I recall a time in 2005 when I was on my way to have dinner with a friend and I walked by an area that included several traditional coffee shops, all crowded with young people, mostly in their twenties. While there were very few mixed-gender groups, young women constituted nearly half of the customers. Some senior males walking near me demonstrated disapproval with frowns and negative remarks, but the women no longer cared what they thought: by the early part of the new century, the older males in the society had lost the ability to always determine the social norms of behavior in many aspects of Egyptian life. Such anecdotes illustrate how the current generation of young urban Egyptians is not simply a younger version of the gerontocratic elite who has dominated the country for decades. Rebellion against patriarchy was expressed in the Tahrir Revolution in many ways. The most obvious was that it was organized and instigated by young people; none of the major figures who stimulated and directed events were members of the older generation. Most were no older than thirty. The organizers chose to organize peaceful demonstrations rather than work through existing political channels or via more conventional political activity.14 Most of the activists who organized the events of the Tahrir Revolution were upper-middle-class, secular, and well educated, and had the social, economic, and political means to become involved in the more established political organs. Why did the young people of Egypt organize demonstrations and other rebellious activities rather than try to effect change through the established political institutions and parties? One reason is simply that the legal opposition parties had been eviscerated by the regime and

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were regarded by most people as ineffective. As one of the activists put it: the elderly leaders of the opposition parties “are part of the system, part of the regime. . . . Mubarak was able to tame them.”15 Furthermore, as a result of the way the regime manipulated the parliamentary elections in 2010, elections themselves and the efforts of established figures to achieve “gradual reform from within the system was impossible. The old paradigm—of pushing for small openings from within—was roundly discredited. The call for civil disobedience and mass protest intensified.”16 Even if traditional political parties had retained some legitimacy in society at large, most young people would not have been likely to join them because political parties—and many labor unions—were not regarded as “youth-friendly.”17 They were led by senior figures, mostly male, and were in many ways as highly patriarchal and resistant to new ideas, and new leaders, as was the government of Egypt. They were widely perceived by young people as being part of the problem, not part of the solution. In their minds, the government had lost whatever legitimacy it had. The established political parties, and the senior leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, shared responsibility for the mess the country was in. Left with the choice of continued political inertia or rebellion, many young Egyptians headed for Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, to try to bring about substantial change through one of the few avenues left open to them. They took to the streets. This is not the first time in recent Egyptian history that young people have risen up in revolt against an authoritarian government. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the student movement organized protests and demonstrations demanding that the promises of the Free Officers be fulfilled. The students also demanded democracy and an end to the police state. 18 Although the student movement failed to achieve its goals, many of the activists of that period were once again in the streets in 2011, this time supporting their children. This is not the place for a detailed account of the events that took place in Egypt during January–February 2011, but it is necessary to mention a few incidents that were particularly telling. Between January 25 and February 11, several members of the established political elite were at pains to show that they supported the demonstrators. Put another way, senior figures followed the lead of the young people, and at no point in the process did the young people yield to the wishes of the established elite or permit the process to be taken over by others. They started out in charge and they remained in charge from January 25 until the resignation of Hosni Mubarak on February 12.

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Amr Moussa, the charismatic secretary-general of the Arab League, made it clear on January 26 that he sided with the demonstrators, and he was followed in this regard by Mohamed el-Baradei, the Nobel Prize–winning former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who returned to Egypt from Austria on January 27 and declared that he too supported the youthful activists in Tahrir Square. On January 31, Naguib Sawiris, a Copt and one of the richest and most dynamic businessmen in Egypt, joined the parade of supporters, as did many other prominent elder statesmen in the days to come. Later, various committees of self-appointed older “wise men” presented themselves to support the revolution, but it was clear that the elder generation of leaders was there to back the young activists, not to supplant them. Furthermore, anyone watching the live feeds from Cairo, such as those on Al Jazeera, CNN, or BBC, would have noticed the indignant boos and cries of outrage whenever President Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, or any other senior government figure made statements of a patriarchal or patronizing nature, for example telling people to go home to their parents, telling parents to get their children to behave, or referring to President Mubarak as a father figure. On January 27, Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who managed the “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook group, was detained by Egyptian police. On Monday, February 7, he was released from jail. Later in the day he appeared on Dream TV and talked about his experience. His highly emotional story of his detention, and his defense of the demonstrations, served as a very positive motivating force. While in detention, Ghonim was brought to the office of Mahmoud Wagdy, who had replaced the hated Habib el-Adly as interior minister. Part of the exchange between them reveals a great deal about the mind-set of the people involved on both sides of the Tahrir Revolution. At one point, Ghonim objected to the ubiquitous pictures of President Mubarak: “The president is employed by the people and you treat him in a way that has transformed him into a god, worshipped and obeyed by everyone. Why do you place this picture everywhere?” To which Wagdy responded: “Please be aware, Wael, this is a man who’s over eighty years old—old enough to be your grandfather. It is impolite for you to talk about him like that. The fact remains, he is the president of the republic and the leader of our nation.” Ghonim’s response sums up the attitude of his generation: “I told [Wagdy] that I respected my elders as long as the elders earned my respect, but that someone who does not respect his people does not deserve the respect of the people.”19

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On Tuesday, February 8, demonstrations continued reinvigorated and in greater numbers, due in large degree to the television appearance of Wael Ghonim. Vice President Omar Suleiman chose this moment to state that Egypt was not ready for democracy: his statement was greeted with jeers and calls for his resignation. On Wednesday, February 9, demonstrations continued and the Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement on its website in support of the demonstrations and in favor of “a civil, democratic state with an Islamic reference, where the people is the source of power and holder of sovereignty.”20 That day also witnessed a large number of strikes and protests by workers in many sectors throughout Egypt, bringing the economy to a virtual standstill. Once again, many of these labor demonstrations had an antipatriarchal flavor, fomented by younger workers protesting against the low wages, poor working conditions, and what they regarded as the unwarranted privileges of the more senior members of the work force. One clear example was a strike by young journalists who wrote for al-Ahram, Egypt’s leading public sector newspaper. There was also a no-confidence vote in a journalists’ union against Makram Mohamed Ahmed, a senior journalist who had served as President Mubarak’s speechwriter.21 On Thursday, February 10, as demonstrations continued throughout Egypt, there were widespread rumors that Mubarak would resign. When the rumors proved false, people reacted very negatively to the president’s speech. Typical of an aging patriarch, he spoke mainly about himself, and this in itself was clearly offensive to the approximately 1.5 million people who had turned out to demonstrate in central Cairo. On Friday, February 11, the Egyptian military finally stepped in and Vice President Suleiman announced at 6 P.M. that Hosni Mubarak had resigned as president. At 7 P.M. it was announced that parliament had been dissolved. This time, youth power prevailed.

Revolution in Progress Young Egyptian activists, fed up with the injustices of the established order, and having despaired of the failure of preceding generations to achieve progressive change, took to the streets, mobilized and motivated millions to eventually join them, and brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak. As remarkable as this was, much more remains to be done before Egypt becomes a stable and functioning democracy. While there are many good reasons to be pessimistic, on balance I emerged from

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observing and thinking about the Tahrir Revolution with more optimism than fear for the future. For the first time in several decades, many ordinary Egyptians now feel responsible for the future of the country. This is a big change, and this new sentiment is extremely unlikely to die. This was a process led by young people. The first big demonstrations were started by people who organized events by sending text messages and on Facebook and Twitter; they were not the absolute bottom of the socioeconomic strata; they could afford cell phones (which a high percentage of people have) but also could use Facebook and Twitter, which require additional skills. This was essentially a middle-class revolution, led by younger members of the middle class, a group who had grown considerably in recent years but who had been shut out of meaningful political participation by the gerontocratic Mubarak regime. A substantial and reasonably stable middle class is essential for the successful operation of a democratic political system. While Egypt’s middle class does not have a clear or homogeneous political profile, it contains significant segments who are attracted to liberal democracy, simply because that is in their economic and political interest. Additionally, many of those who gathered in Tahrir Square also indicate a strong preference for some form of a secular political system,22 although others find it hard to imagine a system that does not give pride of place to Islam, if only symbolically. This chapter has concentrated on events that took place in and around Tahrir Square in central Cairo in 2011. Activities that occurred elsewhere in the country during that time have been mentioned only in passing, and it is important to remember that as important as these events were, Tahrir Square is not Cairo and Cairo is not Egypt. While many of those who provided the impetus for the Tahrir Revolution were also trying to diminish Egypt’s domination by a patriarchal elite, it would be a mistake to assume that all of Egypt’s young people share this perspective on patriarchy. It would be an even bigger mistake to think that the negative aspects of patriarchy can be eliminated easily or quickly. Recent survey data show that the majority of Egypt’s youth agree with the basic tenets of patriarchal order, and give pride of place to males over females and to age over youth.23 Although women at times comprised up to one-third of the demonstrators in Tahrir Square, when women turned out to demonstrate on Women’s Day, they were harassed and subjected to jeers and derision from many if not most of the men who saw them. Even more striking was the way women were treated in

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subsequent demonstrations, and the cases of Samira Ibrahim and the anonymous woman who came to be known as the “Blue Bra Lady” are indicative of how little has changed in post-revolutionary Egypt regarding women. Samira Ibrahim, a young veiled woman, was taken from Tahrir Square by the army, stripped naked, and subjected to a “virginity test.” The “Blue Bra Lady” was stripped of her veil and gown and dragged through the square in full view of the television cameras, dressed only in a bright blue bra and jeans, which she had worn under her gown. Although the army later banned the degrading virginity tests, the message of how little regard the ruling junta has for women was clear.24 It is clear that Egypt still has a long way to go before anything resembling gender equality will be evident. This is one of many clouds obscuring the view of the future of democracy in Egypt. There are no straight lines in political life, certainly none in Egypt’s political ethos. The Mubarak era has ended, but the death throes will be longer than the folks who gathered in Tahrir Square would like, and much shorter than the established elites would prefer. As a longtime observer of Egypt, I have a sense that the Tahrir Revolution will eventually lead to some form of democracy with a distinctively Egyptian flavor, but the process of creating a democratic order will be prolonged, messy, and uncertain. One reason for this is that the Egyptian military is not likely to withdraw entirely from the political scene. The role of the army has been enhanced, once again. At first, people welcomed the appearance of the army on the streets, as it was more respected and not as feared as the internal security apparatus. That changed considerably as the military replicated the violence and repression of previous governments. Nevertheless, the military remains as the deal-maker and potential deal-breaker in Egyptian politics. Egypt’s military has been central to the political system since 1952, and its status was enhanced by the role it played in the Tahrir Revolution. In 2011 the military served as the ultimate guarantor of political order and, as the Mubarak era ended, there was a broad but not unanimous consensus that the military should take over temporarily. When it was announced on February 11 that President Mubarak had resigned and the military was in charge, celebrations broke out all over Egypt. The question that remains is: Having turned the country over to a democratically elected civilian leader, will the military stay in the barracks? Over the past several decades the Egyptian military has been transformed from a strictly military organization into one that also runs a vast military industrial complex of factories and many other businesses.

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It is in the economic interest of the military to protect and preserve this infrastructure. Therefore it is likely to oppose privatization of the public sector, especially the enterprises it operates. As long as the new regime cooperates with this basic objective, it is reasonable to expect that the Egyptian military will remain in the barracks, serve as the guarantor of order and the national interest, and cooperate in turn with the basic democratic objectives of the emerging middle class, of which the officer class is a major part.25 A large role for the military in society may be problematic, but it is not necessarily inimical to the functioning of a democratic political order. (Although the large military industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans about as he left office remains huge and problematic, it has not [yet] prevented the United States from functioning as a democracy.) Another reason for concern about Egypt’s future is the state of the economy. One clear consequence of the Tahrir Revolution is that the Egyptian economy will suffer for a long time. Tourism in particular has been damaged and this will hurt the hundreds of thousands of people employed in this sector for an indefinable period. It could take years before the tourism sector returns to its 2010 levels, and tourism is one of the largest single sources of income in Egypt. Also, roughly 40 percent of Egypt’s food is imported. As costs increase, the country will have less funding available to pay for the food. Aid has been promised from many sources, but some of the political strings that will be attached to the assistance, particularly from oil-rich conservative Arab states, may impede democracy rather than support it. A final cause for concern about the future of democracy in Egypt is that the new openness has led to a substantially greater role for Islamist forces, and there is fear that it may even give way to the eventual establishment of a radical Islamist regime. The strong showing of the Saudi-inspired and Sauni-funded Salafists in the parliamentary elections has complicated this issue. Prior to the Tahrir Revolution, the governing elites of Israel, Egypt, and Iran shared the opinion that a strong likelihood existed that political change in Egypt would result in the replacement of Mubarak’s regime by a radical Islamist government. However, any time that ruling elites in Egypt, Israel, and Iran agree on anything, independent observers should be highly skeptical. I do not believe that democracy and Islam are necessarily antithetical. The issue, however, is not actually about compatibility, or lack thereof, between Islam and democracy. On the other hand, there is a specific concern about the role the Muslim Brotherhood might play in the future. Can this highly patriarchal Islamist movement, dominated by

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elderly males, actually adapt to and actively support the basic principles of a democratic political system? The fact that young members of the Brotherhood, both male and female, have broken with the largely gerontocratic main institution over the pace and direction of the Tahrir Revolution indicates that there is hope that younger Muslim Brothers and Muslim Sisters may be able to function comfortably in a democratic order.26 It also suggests that they share my skepticism regarding the senior leaders of the Brotherhood. So far, no such generational gap has emerged among the Salafists. The Muslim Brotherhood has stated that it wants real democracy, but many Egyptian and foreign observers do not trust the Brothers and do not believe they are sincere about this, or that they are supportive of equality between men and women, or between Muslims and nonMuslims. It is clear that the dominant theme of demonstrations in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt in 2011 was a call for secular democratic government, and the majority of the young activists do not want to replace autocracy with theocracy. Although leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood have expressed support for the demonstrations and the demonstrators, and have stated that they want “Islamic democracy,”27 they have not clarified what Islamic democracy really entails. Will they accept a woman as president? Will they accept a truly free press?28 Will they accept a non-Muslim as president? Will they forbid or severely restrict the sale or consumption of alcohol? (This last issue not only is important for Egyptians who choose to consume alcohol, but also is vital for the success of the huge tourism sector in Egypt.) Will they support freedom of religion, including the freedom to change religion or to be nonreligious? As of this writing, the leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood have not clarified any of these issues. As for the much more radical Salafists who emerged on the political scene with such force in the wake of the Tahrir Revolution, their views on all of the issues related to the development of a functioning liberal democracy in Egypt are even more troubling. While the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists have earned the right to participate in the emerging political order in Egypt, it is highly questionable whether they will have a positive impact on the fate of democracy in Egypt.

Conclusion What is the future of youth power in Egypt and, by extension, the Arab world? As Egypt goes, so goes the Arab world? Egypt’s demographic

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and cultural centrality to the Arab and indeed Islamic world is obvious, and it is likely that what starts in Egypt will not be confined to its borders. As one of the young activists behind the events in Egypt in 2011 has stated: “Tunis is the force that pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the [Arab] world.”29 While the Tahrir Revolution has a clear “Made in Egypt” stamp on it, and will probably have a lasting impact on other countries in the Arab world, the exact dimensions of that impact are impossible to predict, especially at this early stage. However, the Arab reaction to the 1952 coup that brought Gamal Abdul Nasser and the Free Officers to power may serve as a guideline to what may happen this time. The Nasser revolution stimulated both Arab nationalism and Arab socialism and Egypt became one of the leading centers of the nonaligned movement during the Cold War. The Nasser revolution also produced political echoes in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and eventually Libya, while eliciting counterreactions in many other Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich states. If Egypt becomes a prosperous and functioning democracy, it will serve as an example of what is possible in the Arab/Islamic context. Similarly, if Egypt reverts to autocracy and a police state, or succumbs to theocracy, this too will have an impact on the Arab world, a disastrous one. One fear that relates to the military, the Brotherhood, and the Salafist groups is that all are highly patriarchal institutions. It is quite conceivable that the patriarchs in the military and Islamist groups will be very comfortable with each other, and attempt to make common cause against the demands of the youthful activists who banded together to end the Mubarak era. If so, it is highly likely that the streets will once again be filled with millions of people protesting against the military, the Islamists, and their collective betrayal of the Tahrir Revolution. It is still much too early to tell what kind of political order will eventually emerge in Egypt, but it is clear that events there will be watched with a mixture of trepidation and cautious enthusiasm in the Arab world. What happened in Tunisia and then in Egypt in 2011 has left an indelible stamp on the Arab mentality. It marked the entry into political life of a generation of young Arabs who will not be turned aside easily and whose thoughts about the future will have to be taken into consideration. Mona el-Naggar, an Egyptian journalist who covered the events of 2011 from the inside, put it this way: “not satisfied with having deposed a leader, Egyptians seek to negotiate a new contract with a state—which includes the military—that long dismissed them. If

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they can do so, the legacy of the square may be nothing less than a new vision of Arab society itself.”30 As a result of the Tahrir Revolution, it is likely that there will be a consensus among Egyptians and other Arabs that the “New Arab Order” will be one that seeks justice, protects the rights of citizens to participate in their governance, and rejects the legitimacy of the police state. This will be a compelling vision, and states that deny justice to their people and do not permit meaningful and substantive political activity by citizens will be challenged from the streets until they change. “The model, boiled down to its essence, is devastatingly simple: bring enough people into the streets and overwhelm the regime with sheer numbers.”31 If this can succeed in Egypt, it can, at least potentially, succeed elsewhere, with the possible and hopefully temporary exception of states whose leaders are quite prepared to slaughter their own people rather than yield. However, in most places the mere threat to go to the streets may be enough to accelerate the pace of change rather than risk revolt. As one of the Arab world’s most respected analysts has stated: “Arab citizenries will not put up with top-heavy security-anchored governments. They’ll resist these. How? It depends on the country. But it is clear that we have awoken a sleeping giant.”32 Since the events of the Tahrir Revolution, Egypt has been consumed by conflicts over a new constitution and the presidency, and struggles between the Islamists, the military, the young people who overthrew President Mubarak, and the newly organized political groups who want Egypt to become a liberal democracy and a secular state. While the ultimate outcome of all of these epic conflicts is unclear, one thing is apparent. Regardless of who serves as president, what party or group dominates parliament, what kind of document rises out of the murk of politics surrounding the efforts to create a new constitution, or what role the military plays, the struggle to ameliorate the most deleterious aspects of patriarchy will continue to be one of the defining features of public life in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world for the foreseeable future.

Notes 1. F. Gregory Gause III, “Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 4 (July–August 2011). 2. Heba Handoussa, Egypt Human Development Report 2010 (Cairo: Institute of National Planning and UN Development Programme, 2010), p. 268. 3. Ibid.

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4. Robert Springborg, “Protest Against a Hybrid State: Words Without Meaning?” in Nicholas S. Hopkins, ed., Political and Social Protest in Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2009), p. 17. 5. Handoussa, Egypt Human Development Report 2010, p. 252. 6. Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). 7. There are many statements from young activists that emphasize the importance of the Tunisian model. For example, see the interview of Ezraa Abdel Fattah, also known as “Facebook Girl,” in Cairo Review of Global Affairs 1 (2011), p. 75. 8. According to Imma Vitelli, an Italian journalist who covered the Tahrir Revolution extensively, some of the leading figures of the events in Tahrir Square were Zyad Elelaimy (Communist from the Movement for Justice and Freedom), Islam Lotfy (Muslim Brother), Mohamed Qassas (Muslim Brother), Abdulrahman Samir (Baradei campaign), Khaled Elsayed (revolutionary socialist), Mustafa Shawqy (leftist), Shady Harb (Democratic Front), Amr Salah Abdulrahman Fares (Independent liberal), Sally Toma (Democratic Front), Nasser Abdelhamid (Independent), Ahmed Maher (Independent and leader of the April 6 Movement). 9. Yasmine el-Rashidi, “Hosni Mubarak, the Plane Is Waiting,” New York Review of Books blog, January 26, 2011, p. 2, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs /nyrblog/2011/jan/26/hosni-mubarak-plane-waiting/. 10. Dina Shehata, “The Fall of the Pharaoh,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 3 (May–June 2011), p. 29. 11. El-Rashidi, “Hosni Mubarak, the Plane Is Waiting,” p. 2. 12. Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power: A Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). 13. Yasmine el-Rashidi, “Tomorrow, to Tahrir Again,” New York Review of Books blog, January 30, 2011, p. 3, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog /2011/jan/30/tomorrow-tahrir-again. 14. On the choice of nonviolence, see David D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger, “A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History,” New York Times, February 13, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/middleeast/14 egypt-tunisia-protests.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. 15. Islam Lofty, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Youth, quoted in David D. Kirkpatrick, “Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians Guide Revolt,” New York Times, February 9, 2011, p. 3, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10 /world/middleeast/10youth.html?pagewanted=all. 16. Shadi Hamid, “The Struggle for Middle East Democracy: Why the Arab Street Finally Revolted,” Cairo Review of Global Affairs 1 (2011), p. 24. 17. Handoussa, Egypt Human Development Report 2010, p. 113. 18. Ahmed Abdalla, The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt, 1923–1973 (London: Saqi, 1985). See also Marilyn Booth, “Exploding into the Seventies: Ahmed Fu’ad Nigm, Sheikh Imam, and the Aesthetics of a New Youth Politics,” in Hopkins, Political and Social Protest in Egypt. 19. Ghonim, Revolution 2.0, p. 251.

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20. As quoted in Jacob Høegilt, “Who’s Who in the New Egypt? A Mapping of Prominent Actors of Change,” Norwegian Peacebuilding Center, February 15, 2011, http://www.peacebuilding.no/Regions/Middle-East-and -North-Africa/Egypt/Publications/Who-s-who-in-the-new-Egypt-A-mapping -of-prominent-actors-of-change/(language)/eng-US. 21. Kareem Fahim and David D. Kirkpatrick, “Labor Actions in Egypt Boost Protests,” New York Times, February 9, 2011, pp. 3–4, http://www .nytimes.com/2011/02/10/world/middleeast/10egypt.html. 22. As the term “secular” is sometimes thought of as meaning atheist, many people now prefer to use the word “civil,” and call for a “civil state.” 23. Handoussa, Egypt Human Development Report 2010, p. 95. 24. Among the many articles on this topic, see David D. Kirkpatrick, “Egypt’s Women Find Power Still Hinges on Men,” New York Times, January 10, 2012, p. A1. 25. Paul Amar, “Why Egypt’s Progressives Win,” February 10, 2011, pp. 3–4, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112101030726228 .html. 26. Al-Masri al-Youm, Egypt’s leading independent newspaper, reported on February 10, 2011, that the wings of the Brotherhood that represented young members, both male and female, split with the main organization and indicated support for the more leftist April 6 Movement. 27. Essam el-Erian, “What the Muslim Brothers Want,” New York Times, February 9, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/opinion/10erian.html; “Rise of the Brothers,” interview with Essam el-Erian, Cairo Review of Global Affairs 1 (2011). 28. Magdi el-Galad, editor-in-chief of al-Masry al-Youm, Egypt’s leading independent newspaper, has stated: “If the Muslim Brotherhood succeeds in winning a lot of political power they will be a big threat to freedom of the press in Egypt.” Quoted in Romesh Ratnesar, “Egypt’s Old Media Revolution,” Bloomberg Businessweek, June 6–June 12, 2011, p. 66. 29. Walid Rashid, a member of the April 6 Movement, quoted in David D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger, “A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History,” New York Times, February 13, 2011, p. 2, http://www.nytimes.com /2011/02/14/world/middleeast/14egypt-tunisia-protests.html?pagewanted=all. 30. Mona el-Naggar, “The Legacy of 18 Days in Tahrir Square,” New York Times, February 19, 2011, p. 3, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/weekin review/20tahrir.html?pagewanted=all. 31. Shadi Hamid, “The Struggle for Middle East Democracy,” p. 25. 32. Ramy G. Khouri, “Region in Revolt,” interviewed by Scott MacLeod in Cairo Review of Global Affairs 1 (2011), p. 127.

6 Egyptian Women in Revolt: Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Roles Manar Shorbagy

What is going on is enough. I want to tell you if we still have some dignity we should go [to Tahrir Square] on the 25th. From now to the 25th of January, I shall circulate fliers in the streets. I won’t set myself on fire. If the government wants to set me on fire, let them do it. Men who say girls who demonstrate expose themselves to abuse and that it is traditionally unacceptable and religiously forbidden should have some dignity and manhood and just come and join us. I say to those who say the number of protesters is usually small or that nothing would come out of it, that you are the reason behind this. You are just the same as the corrupt people in this country. You are responsible for what happens to us in the streets because you stay in the comfort of your own home and simply read through Facebook. If you have some dignity and honor, if you are a human being and really deserve to be called a man, just come to protect me and protect all other girls. —Asmaa Mahfouz, from her January 18, 2011, YouTube video1

The power of the words of the twenty-six-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz comes not just from how much her face expresses anguish over what was happening in her country, but also from her brilliant use of conservative traditions against conservative men. The very idea that “women need the protection of men,” often used to confine women to the narrowest public space, is used in Mahfouz’s discourse and turned on its head. Here is a veiled young woman who appears by herself in the video, looks directly at the camera, and defiantly tells the whole world, in advance, including the Mubarak regime, that she will stand up and be

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heard. She uncompromisingly scolds passive Egyptian men and asks them to, yes, carry out their “responsibility to protect” her against the brutality of the Mubarak regime, when she goes down to protest. Mahfouz’s video was posted on January 18, 2011, exactly a week before the Tahrir Revolution. It soon traveled widely across the Internet, inspiring and encouraging Egyptians to go to Tahrir Square on January 25. The power of the video derives also from the fact that Mahfouz looks like all other Egyptian women who had been involved for years in the struggle against the Mubarak regime. At the time when she recorded this message, the now famous Mahfouz was hardly known beyond her Facebook viewers and activist and intellectual circles in Egypt. While a cofounder of the April 6 Movement, Mahfouz, like many other women who were involved in the national struggle, has not been involved in women’s organizations. She is simply a passionate young woman who increasingly found it humiliating to keep silent against a brutal, corrupt regime. She did not join already existing organizations, including women’s organizations; rather, she worked on creating new forms of action. Asmaa Mahfouz, however, is obviously an exceptionally courageous and charismatic young woman. But Egyptian women have always known that one does not have to be exceptional to make a difference. This chapter shows how the Egyptian revolution was the culmination of a long struggle against the Mubarak regime. It was a struggle that predated 2008’s Facebook generation. Ordinary women from all walks of life, from different classes and professions, have been heavily involved in this long struggle. It is not that those women “joined” the struggle. Women were, rather, at its forefront, sometimes as full partners, other times as initiators or leaders, and at still other times as irritants, instigators, and even protectors. Women in all those roles not only had to face the brutality of the regime but also had to struggle with Egypt’s conservative traditions and society. They were not intimidated, however, by either. The regime’s scare tactics did not deter women, for they learned to leverage their subordinate position in society and turn it into an active force on behalf of the national struggle for freedoms and rights. They have been creative in so many ways, and instead of working through women’s organizations, they created new modes of action. The story of women in Egypt is, however, the same sad conventional story of women everywhere. Full partners during the hard times, women have been largely sidelined when the time comes to share the

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power to shape the future. This was the fate of Egypt’s women, and setbacks became visible very soon after the revolution. This chapter also shows how women do not need women’s organizations in the traditional sense in order to sustain their powerful role in society, but rather a women’s movement. Ordinary strong and creative women, like those whose stories appear throughout this chapter, are the ones who must define and give character to such a movement. That movement is the only key to protecting women’s rights and achievements against setbacks.

Egypt Under Mubarak The first decade of the twenty-first century was a decade of rising anger and concern over the Mubarak regime’s handling of Egypt’s fortunes. The regime solely focused on high growth rates, seeking always to present a rosy picture of the economy. Macroeconomic indicators, however, were only a part of the full story. The gap between the rich and the poor increasingly widened, and 40 percent of Egyptians lived under the poverty line, marked by an income of less than two dollars a day. The majority of Egyptians suffered greatly because of the decline of real wages, the crumbling public services, and the massive systematic corruption that permeated the regime. For more than half a decade prior to the revolution, Egypt’s businessman-dominated cabinets developed policies clearly biased in favor of the upper classes. Moreover, the discourses of those businessmen, in both the government and the ruling party, clearly demonstrated how arrogantly disconnected from society they had become. Suffering Egyptians heard ludicrous claims about how well they were doing. Ahmed Ezz, the now jailed strongman of the ruling party and a multimillionaire businessman, told Egyptians that they were doing fine because 40 million cell phones were now in their hands. 2 Even Mubarak’s prime minister, Ahmed Nazif, who once said that Egyptians were not ready for democracy, told them that they must be doing great because there was an increase in the consumption of CocaCola!3 The situation in the political arena was no better than the economic situation. Government controlled the licensing of new political parties, locking many people out of “legitimate” politics. Because of an arsenal of restrictive laws, existing opposition parties were virtually locked into

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their headquarters, unable to communicate with the public. The consequences of the regime’s emasculating policies were easily visible. For years those political parties suffered from an increasingly diminishing membership, lack of operational funds, and internecine feuds. The Muslim Brotherhood, neither a political party nor a nongovernmental organization (NGO), was declared illegal by the regime. Paradoxically, this illegality actually liberated the organization from restrictions associated with governmental licensing. The illegality of the Brotherhood, however, had a specific flavor. Its members made public comments as “Muslim Brothers,” ran for parliament as “Independents,” and had their own well-known headquarters. The regime manipulated the Brotherhood on its own terms and to its own benefit. It chose when to crack down on Muslim Brothers and throw them in prison, and when to encourage them to act. The regime used the Brotherhood in this way to scare the West and Egyptian secularists. The mantra was that it was either the regime or the Brotherhood. In other words, secular Egyptians and the West, the argument went, had to choose between a corrupt police state under Mubarak and a religious state under the Muslim Brotherhood. Suffering from both a declining economy and a besieged political life, Egyptians also had to live with the bitter fact that Egypt’s global and regional standing had dramatically declined as the regime tied the country to the US regional project and accepted the humiliating role of a regional policeman for US and Israeli interests. The connection between the Egyptian internal decline and external dependence was not lost on Egyptians. Indeed, the invasion of Iraq aggravated the sense of Egypt’s vulnerability, and the absence of any meaningful opposition from within the system made it clear that direct action was the only option.

The Butterfly Effect The first spark of direct action came with the emergence of the Kefaya (Enough) movement.4 In the making since 2003 within the Egyptian Movement for Change, the formation of Kefaya was announced early in 2004. The founders of Kefaya were an ideologically diverse group of activists who were all intensely involved under a variety of banners in student movements in Egyptian universities throughout the 1970s. They continued to work together on a variety of issues. Thanks to their cooperation on issues like supporting the Palestinian cause and opposing

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Israeli occupation policies, a high level of trust was built among these ideologically divergent activists. The invasion of Iraq was a turning point that added a new element to the consensus emerging among those activists. They realized that the graver foreign aggression becomes, the more important national reform becomes. To these actors, political freedom became the key to effective resistance to the occupation of both Palestine and Iraq and the protection of Egypt itself from foreign aggression. The stage was set for the emergence of a new movement that encapsulated the emerging consensus and illustrated the new possibilities it revealed. Kefaya contributed much to the national struggle by redefining politics in Egypt. By taking to the streets without waiting for government permission—which was typically very hard to obtain in Egypt—Kefaya expanded what was admissible and opened up more public spaces.5 By including the word “change” in its title, it shifted the sands of the political terrain. The rules of the “reform” game, which the “loyal opposition” political parties were drawn to (and in which they drowned for years), no longer applied. Targeting Mubarak personally in its slogans proved an effective means to break taboos. In fact, the slogan “Kefaya” usefully captured the contribution of the Egyptian Movement for Change. Derived from the colloquial Egyptian lexicon, the slogan went beyond the fact that it was uniquely Egyptian and at the heart of Egypt’s popular culture. Concise yet expressive, the slogan was as fluid as the movement itself. It widely opened up the prospects of future action by the movement to address the issues of highest concern to average Egyptians. Ordinary people in Egypt had “had enough.” Under this powerful slogan, the Egyptian Movement for Change had been able to inspire and rally different groups and forces concerned with special issues. Copying the Kefaya mode of action, smaller and more intensely focused groups proliferated—Artists for Change, Youth for Change, Laborers for Change, Journalists for Change, and Lawyers for Change—all under the banner “Enough”—enough of unemployment, poverty, and corruption. “Enough” says it all. Women were full partners in all these groupings and the regime took note of their heavy presence.

The Targeting of Kefaya Women One of the early demonstrations of Kefaya was planned for May 25, 2005, the same day as the referendum on the constitutional amendments. Earlier that year, Mubarak had decided unilaterally to amend the article

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in Egypt’s constitution related to choosing the president. The amendment, Egyptians were told, was to allow multicandidate elections instead of the undemocratic three-stage process that ended with a referendum on a single candidate. However, the article was written in a way that made it impossible for any candidate, except for Mubarak and his son, to win the presidency.6 Kefaya protested the amendment once it became public, boycotted it, and called for a demonstration against both the amendment and the referendum. Once in front of the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo, and confronted by an overwhelming security presence, the demonstrators found themselves circled by a counterdemonstration whose members were chanting “Not Enough” and carrying pictures of Mubarak. The thugs hired by the ruling party sexually harassed and molested women activists and journalists and tore their clothes. The security personnel, who vastly outnumbered the Kefaya protesters, did not try to stop the assault, although they were clearly capable of doing so. Certainly, this virtual army of security police could have protected women, had they been ordered to do so. Instead, the police officers verbally harassed the women and let their subordinates physically beat them. 7 The Journalists Syndicate immediately issued a statement accusing the ruling-party leaders of “inciting and planning for the public sexual harassment of women including journalists.” 8 Immediately after this stunning event that shocked the nation, a candle-lighting demonstration was held by Kefaya as a sign of respect for the victimized women.9 During the same week, a group of ordinary women calling themselves the League of Egyptian Mothers issued a statement calling for a day of mourning to be held exactly a week after the incident. Those women issued a powerful statement explaining the idea and why it was important: “We the Egyptian mothers who dream of a better future for the nation and a better life for our children, call on all Egyptians to wear black on June 1st and just go about doing their usual business, whether going to work, or doing their daily errands. We call upon everyone who condemns what happens, even if not an activist, to simply dress in black on that day.”10 The statement explained that the Egyptian Mothers were “not a political movement,” and went on to add: “We are rather the voice of the silent majority of women; housewives and workers. . . . We realize today that the Interior Ministry crossed all red lines. Silence therefore is a crime and we must stand hand in hand to defend Egyptian girls and women and call for the resignation of the Minister of the Interior.”11

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“Women Are Here, Where Are the Men?” From 2005 onward, women were at the forefront of a wave of strikes and worker protests that swept the country. While high profits piled up for the political and economic elite, workers throughout Egypt were facing intolerable conditions. They suffered from a wave of corrupt privatization schemes and widespread layoffs, stagnant salaries and wages, widespread corruption, and rising inflation.12 For the first time since 1986, workers of Mahalla Textiles, the largest public textile company, struck on December 7, 2006. They went on a six-day strike, joined by 24,000 workers, to protest low wages, the obsolete machines they used, safety hazards, corruption, and the systematic destruction of the company to create the excuse for privatization. Women were at the forefront, taking the initiative. At least 3,000 women workers took the lead and called for the strike. Marching across the factory, they held signs that proclaimed: “Women Are Here, Where Are the Men?” Wedad Demerdash’s account is telling: “In the beginning men were standing by with their hands in their pockets. They were reluctant to join the strike and preferred someone else would act on their behalf. We walked with our fliers and started chanting. At that point, they could not but join us.”13

Scare Tactics Against Women Throughout the three consecutive Mahalla strikes, women workers participated in large numbers in the political action. When the managers attempted to abandon the deal concluded after the 2006 strike, workers went on yet another six-day strike in September 2007 and then again in April 2008. In Mahalla, women were not just initiators, agitators, and full partners. They were also leaders. Wedad Demerdash and Amal Said were among five workers who organized the strikes. Not only did women have to face the brutality of the security forces, but they also risked their jobs. However, they remained unintimidated and creative. For example, when the factory management tried to force women workers to abandon the strikes by shutting down the factory’s nursery, women defused the pressure by simply bringing their children along with them during the strikes.14 As with the Kefaya women, Demerdash and Said were both beaten, and Said’s veil was violently removed. When both went to the police

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station, the attending officer refused to file the official complaint required to open an investigation. Adding insult to injury, the company management arbitrarily forced them to move to other jobs.15 Demerdash, for example, suffered retaliation for her leading role in the strikes. Her salary was reduced by half and she was forced to leave her position of twenty-six years as a production worker to take a modest job in the factory’s library. Later, she was yet again demoted and given the choice of taking a cleaning job or being fired.16 She recalls the experience as follows: “I knew this was a psychological assault to break me. I refused to take the cleaning job and the half salary. For seven months, I went without pay. I had to sell my jewelry to support my family.”17 Not until two weeks after the revolution was the injustice corrected by a decree emanating from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). The Mahalla strikes, with the signature role for women in leadership and activist roles, were a success that paved the way for more protests and inspired other workers, professionals, and even public sector employees. Hundreds of protests took place throughout the country in the years before the revolution. Among the many protests in which women were always involved, an event in Mansura stands out. Only a few months after the Mahalla strikes, women from another textile factory in the city of Mansura—a factory in which they constituted over 75 percent of the work force—successfully organized a twomonth sit-in to prevent the management from shutting down the factory as a step toward imminent privatization. Women led the sit-in, paying a cost in emotional and physical discomfort. They spent nights in the factory, sleeping on the floors and persevering despite their responsibilities as wives and mothers. One participant later recalled her experience: “When we decided on the action, I had to stop breast-feeding my sixteen-month old child. His health deteriorated but now he is getting better. After all, I was doing it for his future.”18 Mahalla’s ripple effect went beyond inspiring workers and employees. It triggered an unprecedented national strike and highlighted the emergence of the young Internet activists. A call for a national strike on April 6, 2008, was widely circulated on Facebook and through text messages in support of the Mahalla strike held on the same day. The national strike was very successful thanks to the efforts and the campaign of the young activists, who were greatly helped by the backfiring of the regime’s tactics. Many people participated in the national strike in response to the youth campaign, but others took part under the influence of the regime’s countercampaign. While the national strike simply meant that people would stay home, the regime launched an all-out

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campaign threatening participants with dire consequences. Large numbers of people were scared that they might be arrested by mistake while going to work and chose to stay home and keep their children out of school. Cairo therefore was largely empty throughout the day; the regime inadvertently helped the activists achieve the very goal of the strike. Twenty-eight-year-old Ezraa Abdel Fattah was one of those who experienced the dire consequences. After she used Facebook through an Internet cafe to support the call for the national strike, the government located Ezraa. On April 6, she was detained and thrown in jail. Ezraa’s mother repeatedly appealed to the authorities, including Mubarak and his wife, until her daughter was released eighteen days later. Upon her release, Ezraa extended her thanks to the interior minister, praised the prison as a “five-star hotel,” repented for her support of the strike, and vowed never to join future strikes “no matter what happened.” Ezraa later recanted and joined the revolution.19 The national strike was the spark, therefore, around which the April 6 Movement was created in 2008. That same movement later became one of the groups who triggered the first political action of the revolution on January 25, 2011.

Women as Protectors While the April 2008 Mahalla strike was a major step toward the revolution, the successful thirteen-day sit-in by Real Estate Tax Agency workers in December 2007 was a microcosm of what would come in the January 25, 2011, revolution. “Without women, this sit-in would have never been successful,” said Kamal Abu Eita, the leader of the tax workers’ protest. “Their presence,” he explained, “was a guarantee that their male colleagues would not give up and leave.” 20 When the tax collectors’ grievances became intolerable, they protested in several locations, but to no avail. The tax collectors decided to take their protest to where the prime minister worked. They organized their sit-in in front of his office in downtown Cairo. For this sit-in, however, the women were not just instigators or agitators as in the Mahalla strike. They were also protectors. Again, women were creatively using the conservative culture to the benefit of the action. “We knew the police would, as usual, beat the men and chase them, and that would have meant the end of the sit-in,” explained Eman Mussa, one of the sit-in leaders. “Yet, we reckoned also, it is usually

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harder for them to brutalize women and create yet another scandal for themselves. So we [the women] located ourselves at the edges of the sitin from all corners, so that we were at the front lines directly facing those huge gatherings of police.”21 Mussa and her colleagues precisely anticipated the government’s plan. Aisha Abdel Hadi, the female work force minister, wanted to manipulate the sit-in’s conservative tactics to encourage women to leave so that force could be used. “She kept calling me and pleading, ‘Kamal, ask the women to go home, we don’t need a scandal,’” said Kamal Abu Eita. “When my women colleagues knew what was going on, they yelled at her over the phone and refused to leave,” he added.22 Women and men started the strike and remained together until the end. Hundreds of women employees traveled from other cities to join the sit-in. Women stayed overnight in the street throughout the sit-in on those cold winter nights.23 The veiled women employees among them, who comprised the majority of the participants, had no problem staying overnight with their male colleagues. Their families did not have a problem with that either.24 Failing to break the women’s spirit, the regime started using crueler tactics. When housewives living in nearby buildings volunteered to provide protesters with food, water, and toilet facilities, security forces stopped them. Moreover, police officers forced all the nearby gas stations and cafe shops not to allow protesters to use toilets. “We persevered though,” said Eman Mussa. “We stopped eating and drinking for three days. I was so dehydrated in this cold winter that my hands started bleeding.”25 In many ways, some of the most striking events of the January 25, 2011, revolution were clearly presaged by the Real Estate Tax Agency action. Just as the protesters in Tahrir Square did later, the tax collectors showed great political awareness and highly developed organizational skills, and insisted on nonviolence even in the face of police brutality. The leadership was decentralized and used creative tactics and slogans that surprised the regime. Moreover, just as the 2011 Tahrir protesters would later threaten to march on the presidential palace a day before Mubarak was finally ousted, the tax collectors threatened the same.

Doctors Without Rights Christian physician Mona Mina is the founder and leader of Doctors Without Rights. Established in 2008, the organization still struggles—

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even after the revolution—to improve the working conditions of public hospital doctors through better training, salaries, and pensions. “No, I am not nervous,” said the soft-spoken and diminutive Mina in 2008, commenting on the heavy presence of police forces during protests she organized and led. “We have met them so many times,” she explained, “that we have become like ‘friends’!”26 The strong and confident Mona Mina told me, however, that she would sometimes receive subtle warnings, though she had become accustomed to this tactic through her activist experience during her university years. 27 Mina is highly admired and trusted by her colleagues in her leadership position and greatly admired among professional women in general. Protesting the intolerable working conditions of public hospital physicians, who live on less than US$50 per month, Doctors Without Rights had little success during the Mubarak era. Mina, of course, was in Tahrir Square during the revolution. Three months later, Doctors Without Rights called for a general strike by doctors in all governorates to demand the rebuilding of the public health care system that had collapsed under Mubarak, and the improvement of working conditions affecting public doctors.28 Women of all classes were at the forefront of the struggle not only for rights and freedom, but also against the regime’s corruption and efforts to undermine the rule of law. In all those efforts, women were willing to pay the price for standing up to be heard. Many of them were exposed to severe punishment, torture, and even death. In the village of Sarrando, for example, an influential businessman colluded with some security officers to illegally claim land and evict the peasants who had for decades lived on and cultivated that land with clear legal rights. 29 Women were at the forefront of the resistance to this illegal scheme, which turned violent. A widow with four children, Sabreyya Al Jizaury was one such protester. She was not intimidated when her son was jailed to put pressure on her. 30 Nafissa Al Marakby, however, lost her life. She was among those who were taken into custody upon the confrontation. After being tortured for ten days, Nafissa was released and then rushed to the hospital. She died less than twentyfour hours later.31 On June 6, 2010, Egyptians woke up to horrible news. A twentyeight-year-old Alexandrian man had been beaten to death by the police. Two secret-service policemen had entered an Internet cafe late at night and asked Khaled Said to show his identification. When Said refused to show it to the nonuniformed agents, they pushed him out of the cafe and brutally beat him to death.

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Egypt’s authorities quickly denied this account of Khaled Said’s death. Officials issued a statement alleging that the young man had died of suffocation after swallowing a plastic narcotics container. Egyptians did not believe the official story. They had become accustomed to the regime’s common tactic of blaming and discrediting its victims. According to Said’s family, he was killed because he was about to release a video that showed some police officers dividing among themselves confiscated money and drugs.32 The next day, the pictures of the incredibly brutalized face and body of Said were all over the Internet, exposing the government’s lie. Hundreds of men and women immediately gathered around Said’s house and called for the ouster of Mubarak and his interior minister.33 Wael Ghonim, the Google executive in charge of marketing for the Middle East, started a new Facebook page, “We Are All Khaled Said,” which later became one of the most important elements that helped foment the revolution.34 Within a few days, Facebook and text messages were used to organize a massive silent protest. Hundreds of men and women, dressed in black, silently lined up across a stretch of several miles in the coastal city of Alexandria, with their backs to the busy street and their faces to the sea. Each protester held a Quran or Bible in honor of the young Khaled Said. These sober silent protests went on for several months, fueling both sadness and anger.35 Laila Marzouk, Said’s mother, was fully involved in these activities. During Ramadan of 2010,36 she invited 2,000 young men and women who were involved in the burgeoning protest movement to break their fast at Said’s house. The young men and women defiantly protested the police’s habitual brutality.37 Undeterred by the threat of police brutality against themselves, they continued their protests for months to come. After the revolution, Marzouk commiserated with the families of the young people who had been killed or injured by security forces. What happened to Khaled Said was not unique. This was not the first time an Egyptian had been tortured to death by the police. Said’s case, however, was one of the last blows that brought Egypt to revolt. Said was a typical upper-middle-class young man. His death profoundly shocked Egypt’s largely silent middle- and upper-middle-class families, who suddenly realized that their own children were also in jeopardy under the Mubarak regime. “None of us is safe,” as Asmaa Mahfouz put it in her powerful YouTube video. This sense of vulnerability made it harder than ever for those families to remain apolitical and silent.

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Women in the Revolution and Beyond As this review of the events that preceded the January 25, 2011, revolution shows, the revolution did not come out of nowhere. All these protests, together with others held against Mubarak’s scheme to arrange his son’s political succession, were in fact signs of a revolution in the making. The contributions of women at all stages were undeniable. Just one day before the revolution, Wedad Demerdash of Mahalla Textiles traveled to Cairo to meet the president. When guards at the presidential palace mockingly asked who she thought she was to be able to meet the president, she lectured them on her political rights. “I am an Egyptian citizen. I am the one who sent him here. I voted for him last time because he constantly talked about low-income people. Now I am here to know what is going on.”38 The next day, she was of course in Tahrir Square. Those who marched to Tahrir and other squares in Egypt looked like and acted just like Demerdash: simple, direct, and brave. They were ordinary Egyptian men and women whose creativity, perseverance, and sense of humor—even in the darkest moments—stunned the world. Women from all walks of life were there from the outset. When my colleagues and I watched a middle-aged woman, carrying a toddler and holding the hand of her other child, walking into Tahrir Square, we knew Mubarak’s days in power were numbered. At no point in the struggle for Egypt’s freedom did women take the role of followers. It was never the case that men took the initiative and women “joined.” Many women were killed or detained during the eighteen days of the revolution, and throughout this period twenty-eightyear-old Nawwara Negm was, for millions of Egyptians and Arabs, the voice of the revolution. She spoke for the youth in Tahrir Square. When the Mubarak regime cut off communications early during the revolution, Al Jazeera played a vital role by connecting Tahrir to the world. The veiled, outspoken Nawwara frequently explained via Al Jazeera what was happening in Tahrir. Protesters in other squares and cities across Egypt would tune in to keep abreast of the political action. Millions still remember Nawwara’s emotionally sobbing voice on Al Jazeera, minutes after Mubarak left office, proclaiming: “No more humiliation, no more injustice.” Just as is the conventional story in most places in such dire times, the women of Egypt were fully involved in the struggle and the price to be paid. But once the moment arrived for their fair share in building Egypt’s future, women were sidelined. In this respect, liberal progres-

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sive and Islamist Egyptian males are not different. After the revolution, not a single woman was chosen to participate on the committee to write the constitutional amendment. All the new governors who were selected were men, and no new women ministers joined the cabinet. When the young activists established several youth coalitions, few women were awarded leadership status. While certainly lamentable, two other setbacks in particular may help us understand the prospects for women after the revolution. Since Mubarak’s departure, a fierce attack has been waged on the family law that protects women, and the parliamentary quota for women, passed in 2010, has been repealed. Although the question has still not been resolved, the campaign to repeal the family laws passed under Mubarak was in full gear within a few months of the revolution. The law that provokes anger is the one stipulating that a divorced woman shall have the custody of her children until they reach fifteen years of age. At that age, a child is allowed to choose custody from either parent. During the first fifteen years of life, when a child is under the mother’s custody, the father is permitted to see the child for only three hours weekly, without a right to overnight custody. The mother also is the decisionmaker when it comes to the child’s education.39 After the revolution, fathers and conservative groups campaigned against the law, claiming it was unfair and destructive to both the children and the male parents. They labeled it the “Suzanne Mubarak law,” popularizing the impression that it should be eliminated because it reflected the Mubarak family’s political power. As of this writing, the fate of the law is not yet decided. But the parliamentary quota for women in parliament has already been repealed. For a decade, women’s organizations called on the regime to use affirmative action to boost the representation of women in parliament. They specifically demanded a quota, which would reserve a number of parliament seats for competitive electoral decision among women. In 2010, the regime changed the law to add sixty-four new parliamentary seats exclusively for women.40 When the quota was repealed by the SCAF after the revolution, women’s organizations that had lobbied hard for its approval protested loudly. The Egyptian Coalition for Civil Education and Women’s Participation issued a statement arguing that “while some political forces and women’s organizations do not agree with the way in which the Quota was used, the repeal thereof without creating other mechanisms that guarantee a fair and effective women’s participation brings Egyptian women back to point zero.”41

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It is true that the quota was one of the ploys of the Mubarak regime in preparation for the infamous 2010 elections. Courting the West by claiming to empower women, the regime used women to help advance its own goals. The real goal behind the change of the law was to add sixty-four more seats to the ruling party’s majority in the parliament of 2010. This particular parliament was supposed to make the decision regarding the candidacy of Mubarak’s son Gamal for the presidency in 2011. Through fraud, the party would actually decide which women would be “elected.” Even before the law was passed, a large debate took place. Many people, including women activists, exposed the scheme. For example, Kefaya activist Karima al-Hefnawy called for a boycott of the 2010 elections, including those for the women’s seats, “so that women would not contribute to the beautification of the ruling party’s despotic face.” Amina Naqqash, vice chairwoman of the leftist Tagammu party, was similarly against the quota.42 These two cases, that of the parliamentary quota and that of the family law, point to a new direction that is more helpful in advancing women’s rights after the revolution. Nongovernmental organizations that work for women’s rights have long adopted the approach of addressing authorities, rather than the public, in their struggle for equal rights. For this reason, while they have been successful in achieving some of their goals, such as enactment of a quota for women in parliament or amendment of family laws, NGO gains are not backed by a strong constituency that can preserve their achievements and prevent a return to “point zero.” While this authority-centered NGO approach may have been understandable under the authoritarian Mubarak regime, it is no longer an option in Egypt’s new, open environment. However, it seems that those organizations have not yet adapted to the change and are still using the same approach. After the revolution, the response of women’s organizations to measures they judge to be antiwomen has been the same as under Mubarak: statements condemning the action and “calling on” the SCAF and the cabinet to take remedial steps.43 Moreover, the elitist nature of these women-focused NGOs makes it impossible for them to take the lead in advancing women’s rights in the new Egypt. The elite leaders of those Western-financed organizations understand the complexities of women’s issues in Egypt, but have difficulty connecting with ordinary Egyptian women. In my interviews with women activists who have made a difference, all told me they had rarely been contacted by these elitist women’s organizations. When they were contacted, it was simply to invite them to Cairo-based symposiums to talk about the role of women in Egypt or

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to learn more “about what we are doing.”44 Many of the ordinary women expressed no interest in such symposiums. “This is not a priority for me,” said Mona Mina. “I leave that to other women. I don’t see myself as a woman and Christian in public life. Being a woman and a Christian are personal characteristics that, to me, should not matter in public life.”45 Interesting enough, some of the women I interviewed used the exact same words to describe their contact with women’s organizations: “They contact us, just like you now, to ask us questions about what we did.”46 Wedad Demerdash, however, told me, “Not until the very end and our names were published did they begin to contact us.”47 All interviewees confirmed that these women’s organizations provided neither legal nor financial support. In fact, Demerdash said that the only material support she received from women’s organizations was “an envelope with fifty Egyptian pounds inside [less than US$8] as transportation expenses from Mahalla to Cairo to attend one of the two symposiums they invited us to. The next time it was 20 pounds and a ball of Koshary to eat on the road.”48

Conclusion The Tahrir Revolution has made it clear that Egypt has exceptional women in large numbers. By their extraordinary behavior, Egyptian women have given themselves the opportunity to sustain a powerful role in society. Recent experience makes it equally clear that the traditional women’s organizations will be marginal to this effort. What is needed is an independent women’s movement. Ordinary strong and creative women like those who appear throughout this chapter are the ones who must define and give character to such a movement. While a movement is no guarantee that women’s achievements will be protected against setbacks, without such a movement this historic opportunity will surely be lost, however impressive the roles of individual women may have been.

Notes 1. A translated script as well as the YouTube video can be found on the Democracy Now! website, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/8/asmaa _mahfouz_the_youtube_video_that. 2. Alaa Shebl, “Ezz: Egyptians Live Comfortably with Cell Phones and Fancy Cars,” Sherouq Newspaper, July 28, 2009, p. 3.

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3. Manar Shorbagy, “Between the Nile Tap and Coca-Cola,” al-Masry alYoum, June 2, 2010, p. 2. 4. This expression was used by Ahmed Bahaa Shaaban, one of the key founders of Kefaya, to describe the effect of the movement. 5. Joseph R. Gusfield, “The Reflexivity of Social Movements: Collective Behavior and Mass Society Theory Revisited,” in Enrique Larana, Hank Johnston, and Joseph R. Gusfield, eds., New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). 6. A candidate for president, according to that article, needed the endorsement of at least 250 elected members of the People’s Assembly, the Shura Council (the upper house of parliament), and the local assemblies. At least sixty-five of those endorsements should come from members of the People’s Assembly, twenty-five from Shura Council members, and ten from each of the local assemblies of at least fourteen governorates. Given that Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), through rigged elections, dominated the two chambers of parliament and had overwhelming majorities in local assemblies across the country, only the NDP candidate had any chance to win those endorsements. 7. “Egyptian Security Arrests Activists and Media People,” Indymedia, June 1, 2005, http://www.beirut.indymedia.org/ar/2005/05/2682.shtml. 8. “What Happened in Cairo?” Indymedia, May 27, 2005, http://beirut .indymedia.org/ar/2005/05/2707.shtml. 9. Wahda Masrya, “Candlelighting Protest, Kefaya,” Ebn Masr, June 1, 2005, http://www.ebnmasr.net/forum/t28159.html. 10. “Tomorrow, June 1st, Egypt Wears Black,” League of Egyptian Mothers, May 31, 2005, http://beirut.indymedia.org/ar/2005/05/2704.shtml. 11. Ibid. 12. Frederik Ohsten and Francesco Merli, “The Victory of Mahalla Workers Expose the Weakness of Mubarak’s Regime,” International Marxist Tendency, October 4, 2007, http://www.marxist.com/egypt-victory-mahalla-workers0410 07.htm. 13. Author interview with Wedad Demerdash, September 4, 2011. 14. Essam Shaaban, “Why Do Mahalla Workers Strike?” al Hewar Al Mutamadden, February 28, 2007, http://www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp ?aid=89853. 15. “Mahalla Management Attempts to Fire Wedad Demerdash,” Tadamon Masr, November 2, 2009, http://www.tadamonmasr.worldpress.com/2009/11/02 /mahalla-4. 16. “Political Violence Against Women,” Maat Center for Peace, Development, and Human Rights, May 18, 2010, http://www.maatpeace.org/node/766. 17. Author interview with Wedad Demerdash, September 4, 2011. 18. Hesham Fund, “Mansura Workers in Fourth Week of Strike, May 23, 2007, http://www.e-socialist.net/node/4661. 19. See interview of Ezraa Abdel Fattah in al-Masry al-Youm, April 25, 2008, http://today.almasryalyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=102685. 20. Author interview with Kamal Abu Eita, September 10, 2011. 21. Author interview with Eman Mussa, September 26, 2011.

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22. Author interview with Kamal Abu Eita, September 14, 2011. 23. Samir Ghattas, “The Seven Lessons of the RETA Sit-In,” Center for Socialist Studies, http://www.e-socialist.net/node/1327. 24. Thirty-four-year-old Noha Morshed told me that her nine-year-old son told his colleagues that “my mother does this so that I can live better.” Author interview with Noha Morshed, September 10, 2011. 25. Author interview with Eman Mussa, September 2011. 26. “Doctors Without Rights: New Protest Movement in Egypt,” BBC News (Arabic), http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/hi/arabic/news/newsid_7306 000/7306102.stm. 27. Author interview with Mona Mina, September 25, 2011. 28. “Mona Mina: We Are 90% Successful in Governorates,” Dostor, May 11, 2010 http://www.dostor.org/politics/egypt/11/may/10/41775. 29. Fatma Ramadan, “The Real Culprit in Sarrando,” November 12, 2007, http://www.e-socialists.net/node/1071. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ismail Alexandrani, “Khaled Said Death or Killing?” Les Observateurs, June 15, 2011, http://www.observers.France24.com/ar/print /283722?. 33. Ibid. 34. Ghonim himself inspired millions when in front of television cameras he tearfully and highly emotionally mourned those who had died in the first few days of the revolution. 35. “Hundreds in Black Across the Kornich,” Sherouq, June 18, 2010, http://www.sherouqnews.com/contentData.aspx?id=250322. 36. Ramadan is the Muslim holy month, during which the faithful must fast each day from dawn to dusk. 37. “Human Rights Groups Denounce Police Brutality,” Masrawy, August 23, 2011 http://www.masrawy.com/news/egypt/politics/2010/august/23/khaled _rights.aspx. 38. Author interview with Wedad Demerdash, September 4, 2011. 39. Mayssa Fahmy, “Mufti Promises Fatwa on Parental Visits, Sherouq, April 18, 2011, http://www.sherouqnews.com/contentData.aspx?id=434884. 40. Fajr Alef, “Women Quota,” Egyptian Center for Women’s Priorities, http://www.mramcenter.com/page3.php?id=98scond=6. 41. “Ending the Quota System Without Alternatives Brings Us Back to Point Zero,” Statement by the Egyptian Coalition for Civil Education and Women’s Participation, Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, http://www.ecwr online.org/arabic/press%20/reless/index/html. 42. Ahmad Mahrus, “Women’s Quota Between Boycott and Participation,” Gateway, October 31, 2010, http://www.womengateway.com/arwe/Reporters /Egypt/ReportfromEgypt.htm. 43. See, for example, the statements on family laws, on establishing a legal committee to defend family laws, on exclusion of women from the committee established to amend the constitution, and on the Salafists, at http://www .ecwronline.org/arabic/press%20/reless/index/html, and the statement on the

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exclusion of women as governors, signed by ten women’s organizations, at http://www.nwcregypt.org/?p=5335. 44. Author interview with Eman Mussa, September 26, 2011. 45. Author interview with Mona Mina, September 25, 2011. 46. Both Wedad Demerdash and Eman Mussa, who don’t know each other, used the exact same phrase in my interviews with them. 47. Author interview with Wedad Demerdash, September 4, 2011. 48. Ibid. Koshary is a popular and cheap meal made of noodles and lentils.

7 Revolution Without Islamists? Sherine ElGhatit

When Egypt erupted in revolutionary upheaval on January 25, 2011, the Egyptian public knew exactly why. The list of causes is long, and no particular ideological framework was needed to explain or situate them. Government inefficiency, corruption, nepotism, clientelism, exaggerated wealth alongside crippling poverty, unemployment, the concentration of economic opportunity in a certain class, the decline in the nutritional value of food available to most Egyptians, the rising incidence of cancer among the children of the poor, the proliferation of both shantytowns and luxury compounds, the general waste of human talent, the punitive character of daily life due to traffic, pollution, overcrowding, the absence of political rights and freedoms, and most immediately, the risk of sectarian war conspired to mobilize Egyptians against a regime the longevity of which seemed interminable. The soon-to-be-deposed president, Hosni Mubarak, claimed the demonstrations were an Islamist plot to supplant the government, and warned of the serious consequences of internal chaos. The Egyptian public rejected this as an attempt to foil a genuinely political, nonreligious, nonsectarian demonstration of their will. Egyptians of almost all political stripes, though anxious, were eager to see Mubarak fall. This was the single most exciting and hopeful event that Egyptians had experienced in decades—arguably since Anwar Sadat made his 1977 trip to Jerusalem to court peace with Israel. For Egyptian youth, it was the only time they had experienced national pride. It was a redemptive moment for all Egyptians. Dignity and humanity were reclaimed.

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People suddenly felt ownership of their country; street-cleaning reflected the collective psychology. The dominant elements of this were a new sense of ownership and a desire to clean house. The general consensus among the public was that this was not an Islamist uprising; Islamists were not leading it, Islamic ideology did not color it, and the usual Islamist demands were not articulated in its slogans. The call for a secular state seemed to confirm the immediate absence of Islamist organizations leading it. A certain faction of Islamists affiliated with the Youth Coalition of the Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood Youth, was in fact among those who spearheaded the demonstrations, and contributed significantly with their tactical battlefield training to the success of the revolution. Nevertheless, they represented only a very small fraction of the revolutionary effort, in which youth from the entire political spectrum participated. Ordinary Egyptians, by a vast majority, outnumbered them. Individuals of every possible description brought their grievances to Tahrir Square and took a stand for freedom and democracy.

Prologue to Revolution Three events in the period immediately preceding the revolution were significant in triggering the January 25 uprising. The first was the outrageous parliamentary elections of November 2010. Voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, the barring of international observers, and questionable judicial supervision allowed Mubarak’s ruling party—the National Democratic Party—to win unprecedented majorities. The Muslim Brotherhood, which had done so well in the elections of 2005, winning 20 percent of total seats, was effectively barred from participation in the 2010 elections because its established “Independents” were rounded up and thrown into prison. The Brotherhood failed to win even a single seat. The second event was the razing by state security forces of a church under construction in Giza in December 2010, for allegedly being built without a proper permit. This triggered a mass demonstration and brought sectarian tensions to a new high. The third event was the bombing of the Saints Church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve, 2011, which threatened to plunge the country into a religious war. The police investigation was slow, the forensics were almost entirely lacking, and, finally, a man was falsely accused and tortured to death for a confession that was not forthcoming. The authorities claimed he was a foreign terrorist, as evidenced by his “Afghan face.” This insult to the

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collective intelligence of Egyptians only added to the injury. Crowds rioted in Alexandria and later in Cairo. If the razing of the Giza church polarized the people, the bombing of the Alexandria church unified Egyptians against the state. Many churches opened their doors to Egyptian Muslims, who joined Christmas celebrations in Cairo and in Alexandria in an uncommon show of solidarity. There was a general awareness that direct state violence, on the one hand, and a reluctance to prosecute cases of aggression against citizens, on the other, were problems common to all Egyptians. The symbol of the crescent hugging the cross spread like wildfire in the social media, on street corners, on clothes, and even in jewelry, a clear symbol of enduring commitment to national solidarity. Three key lessons were learned from these events. The first was that there was general consensus regarding the direct cause of the suffering of Egyptians. The second was that the fear of Muslims and Copts turning against each other in a confrontation with the state was unfounded. Finally, the relatively restrained police response to the Egyptian rioters on those occasions encouraged would-be revolutionaries to conclude that peaceful demonstration might be possible. For the Youth Coalition of the Revolution, these were important lessons to learn.

The Revolution It was clear to most observers that on January 25, 2011, established political opposition groups and their leaders were not in Tahrir Square. April 6 Movement leader Asmaa Mahfouz’s call to demonstrate, which had been broadcast on YouTube only one week prior, was answered by a core of students and young people 500 strong marching to Tahrir Square from Shubra. Meanwhile, another group of 200 people stood at the Mohamad Mahmoud mosque, a twenty-five-minute walk from Tahrir, serving as a decoy to divert the attention of the authorities. By the time they arrived in Tahrir, the group from Shubra had snowballed into over 15,000 people. As January 25 marked an official holiday (Police Day), people were available to join the protesters. This was one of the strengths of that day’s demonstrations. By the time the crowds met in Tahrir, the head count exceeded 20,000. Most of those who joined the march were not affiliated with any movement at all, and had not even seen the Facebook broadcast. They were ordinary Egyptians seeking strength in numbers to demonstrate, with much to demonstrate against.1

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The demonstrators in Tahrir Square on Tuesday, January 25, stayed until 1 A.M. Wednesday, when the police moved in, firing rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd, dispersing the bulk of the protesters. Later in the morning of January 26, not having received a response from the president and angered by the police attacks, the demonstrators returned. They were again dispersed. A call was issued for a million-man protest on Friday, January 28. People responded in droves. In the battle that ensued at Kasr el-Nil Bridge, security forces rammed a tidal wave of people, who were converging onto this access point to Tahrir Square from Zamalek and Giza, with armored trucks, brutally firing water cannons into the crowd and ruthlessly crushing the bodies of demonstrators who fell in their path. But the crowds did not disperse. They pressed on, passively resisting police attacks that employed rubber bullets, tear gas, and finally live ammunition as well as sniper fire. The army was mobilized and during the night the tanks rolled into Tahrir Square. On the day and night of the February 2 battle in Tahrir Square, Muslim Brotherhood Youth, well trained in tactical battlefield maneuvers, brought homemade firebombs into the square and organized its defense. Barricades were erected with pedestrian guardrails torn out of the pavement. But leadership in this battle did not morph into leadership of the revolution, which remained firmly secular, nonsectarian, and nonviolent. The youth continued to confront their attackers, touted by public media as supporters of the regime. Those of them who were captured were discovered to be hired thugs or security police in civilian clothes. The demonstrators kept up their resistance, thousands vowing not to quit Tahrir until Mubarak quit Egypt. During the day, after the army had been called in, one could walk to Tahrir Square in relative safety, passing through checkpoints and passing by the tanks. There was a bustle of activity in the square. All kinds of Egyptians were engaged in all kinds of activities. There were political discussions, personal narratives of suffering, and comedians staging mock television interviews with mock revolutionaries. There were amateur musicians strumming on cheap guitars and singing songs of revolution, not vehement or angry songs, but cynical and sarcastic, and funny, songs. There were people of all ages holding up placards, some sad, like “I cannot feed my children!” or “I cannot find work,” and some sarcastic, like “Do you know why Mubarak is over 80? He is not treated by Egyptian (public) health care” or “Talk to him in Hebrew, he does not understand Arabic”—a reference to the public belief that Mubarak had closer ties to Israel than to his own people. Captions such as “Mubarak,

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Go! I need to shower” or “. . . my arms are hurting from holding up this placard” reflected the Egyptian penchant for humor, even in adversity. Many were busy collecting contributions of food, water, tents, sheets, mats, blankets, disinfectants, and medicines brought in a trickle by individuals. Text messages and Facebook communicated what was needed to circles of friends. Twitter was used to publicize news to wider circles. There was no centralized logistical command, but little was in short supply for long, as volunteers collected, sorted, and distributed supplies where needed and text-messaged for more. There were vendors selling flags, and children waving them. There were barbers offering free shaves and haircuts, and enterprising cafe owners with electric kettles wired into lampposts selling hot tea and coffee. Cell phones and laptops were recharged in like fashion, with no reports of theft of items left recharging.2 The state insisted on blaming the “banned group” (the Muslim Brotherhood) for plotting the revolution in association with unspecified “foreign actors” aiding and abetting revolt. Although the Brotherhood was arguably the strongest challenger to the Mubarak regime, its illegal status as a political organization required it to accommodate to survive. The Muslim Brotherhood’s amazing performance in the 2005 parliamentary elections prompted the regime to clip its political wings in the run-up to the 2010 parliamentary elections, making it an “offer it could not refuse”: the cessation of all seditious political activity in return for the release of Brotherhood prisoners. Failure to comply would mean further rounds of arrests.3 The failure of the Brotherhood to gain any seats at all in the 2010 elections confirmed the resolve of the Mubarak regime to exclude the group from the political process. It also reaffirmed the danger to the Brotherhood of pushing for more inclusion. The Muslim Brotherhood had announced ahead of time that in deference to State Security Service orders, it would not participate in the demonstrations. Its members were instructed accordingly. Knowing that many of its youth members were also members of the April 6 Movement, strong warnings not to take part, on pain of expulsion from the Brotherhood, were issued. However, that did not stop the youthful revolutionaries. Many members of the Muslim Brotherhood Youth were in the crowds, some spearheading the marches.4 On January 27, the New York Times reported that the Muslim Brotherhood would take part in the protests.5 Weeks later, in March, the head count came in: on January 28 over 100,000 Muslim Brothers across the country, mostly youth, had participated in the uprising. This would indicate that at least 10 percent

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of the demonstrators were Muslim Brothers. Once involved, these youth knew that there was no turning back.6 Salafist leaders announced that they would not take part in a revolutionary demonstration. According to Salafist interpretation of Islamic law, revolution, even against an iniquitous government, is proscribed. It is quite possible that many of them were present in Tahrir Square, though not in recognizable garb and not calling for the creation of an Islamic state to supplant the regime. Members of Sufi groups, historically apolitical, appeared to remain aloof. If they were there, they too were difficult to recognize or single out in the crowd. With regard to Shiites, always flying below the radar out of fear of persecution and prejudice, the question did not even come up, a sad commentary on the state of civil protection afforded to citizens by Mubarak’s regime. Al Azhar, the seat of Sunni learning for a thousand years and the official state-affiliated Muslim clerical institution, refused to sanction participation in the demonstrations and continued to support the government until the will and determination of the demonstrators inspired many Azhari imams to appear in Tahrir Square in official clothing.7 The Coptic Church also refused to sanction participation in the revolutionary upheaval, but Coptic Egyptians, like their Muslim compatriots, filled the square. Images of Muslims and Copts taking turns holding prayers in the square, cordoned off not by velvet ropes or steel chains but by the bodies of their non–co-religionist compatriots holding hands in protective encirclement of those praying, demonstrated tolerance and trust. Prayer was simple, an act of piety in both groups, unmarred by religious crusading or political posturing. A seed that promised mutually beneficial, civil public interaction seemed to be sprouting in the square. As the army stood its ground, protecting the demonstrators and the security of the cities, various groups attempted to bring the demonstrating youth and the regime into an accommodation. All attempts failed. The demonstrators were adamant. Mubarak had to go. European and US heads of state declared that Mubarak should adhere to the will of his people. Not even the army could support him now.

Transitional Pact In a speech very early on the morning of January 29, Mubarak offered the following assessment: “these demonstrations and what we have seen before of demonstrations of dissent in the past few years could not have

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taken place except for the wide spaces of freedom of opinion and expression and the press and other freedoms which have been afforded by steps undertaken to reform in the interests of the people, and the unprecedented interaction among societal forces.”8 US agencies have been involved in democracy promotion in Egypt since the 1990s, exerting pressure to open up political spaces, liberalize the market, and open up the press and opposition papers in particular. It was recognized early on that democratization in Egypt might well mean the success of Islamist groups in a fair political contest. The concomitant risk of a “one man, one vote, one time” outcome was evident, but keeping the system closed in order to exclude Islamists was no longer tenable. The US foreign policy debate on democratization in the 1990s was divided on the issue of democratization in the Middle East between the followers of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis and the followers of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis. With the historical precedent of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria in 1992 and that of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority coming shortly thereafter, the Huntington group wanted to pursue a strict containment policy against political Islam. This option, of course, required the support of authoritarian states against Islamist oppositions. On the other hand, the Fukuyama group argued in favor of the inherent superiority of democracy and the necessity of promoting it universally in the interests of international security. The policy outcome of this view included democracy-promoting interventions, such as supporting the growth and proliferation of nongovernmental organizations, mass media, and the Internet, as well as investment in economic growth and education.9 As a result of the war in Iraq, another question emerged: Should democracy (in the Middle East) be pursued strategically, or only tactically as a means of furthering US security? Again, the idealists supported democratization as strategy, while the realists supported only tactical democratization. US policy in Egypt was a combination of both approaches. Egypt under Mubarak was an extremely important and reliable US ally, and any efforts to encourage democratization in Egypt were necessarily subordinated to the higher value of maintaining a stable and cooperative relationship with the ruling regime. The United States was very careful not to flaunt connections to actors such as the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in order to avoid antagonizing Mubarak and his regime. US policy was directed mainly at nurturing a developing civil society, that space between state and society where feedback mechanisms could be created in preparation for an eventual evolution toward democratic governance. Meanwhile, any contacts with certain

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“independent,” Muslim Brotherhood, members of the Egyptian parliament were kept very discrete. The Muslim Brotherhood was understood to be the most highly organized of the Islamist groups and had a brilliant track record of providing social services where the government had been remiss. It was also known to be more moderate than any of the other groups of Islamists. Perhaps the hope was not only to cultivate connections, but also to leverage those connections to mollify the leadership of the Brotherhood, and socialize its members in the values of democratic governance. If the United States ever dithered in its efforts to keep up contacts, the 2005 parliamentary elections were decisive in consolidating its approach: whether or not the Muslim Brotherhood was an officially recognized political party, a group that held 20 percent of the seats in parliament could not be ignored.10 It stands to reason that relations between the US government and the Muslim Brotherhood would have very quickly evolved substantively during the early days of Egypt’s revolutionary upheaval. On June 6, 2011, a senior US official openly declared that the United States would move toward closer contacts with Egyptian Islamists, noting that Washington had dealt with some members of the group since 2006 as parliamentarians.11 Unlike the case with the Palestine Liberation Organization some decades earlier, there was no legislation barring official US contact with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. The State Department’s decision authorized direct contacts between US officials and nonparliamentary officials of the Brotherhood as well.12 By the end of June 2011, Secretary of State Clinton announced that the United States had “limited contacts” with the Muslim Brotherhood.13 In the changing political landscape, she maintained that it was “in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to non-violence.”14 She added that, with the proviso that respect be ensured for minority rights and the rights of women, she would welcome a dialogue with those members of the Muslim Brotherhood who wished to talk. In another report, she said that the United States was continuing the approach of limited contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood that had existed on and off since 2006. Reengaging had become critical in preparation for the Egyptian elections scheduled for late 2011.15 The revolution in Egypt would otherwise have been a very alarming proposition for the United States, whose strategic position in the Middle East seemed to fall under considerable risk as a result of Egypt’s revolution. Much was at stake for the United States. First was access to the naval facilities in Alexandria and the air base in Cairo West, which are

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key components of the US military’s distribution system serving its military forces, and are therefore essential to the US war effort in Afghanistan. Second, unlimited overflight rights for US warplanes, as well as guaranteed transit for US warships through the Suez Canal, served the purposes of power projection in the Middle East, safeguarded Israel’s security, and reinforced the ability of the United States to contain Iran and maintain stability in the region. Therefore, it was in Washington’s interest to secure an advantageous end to the confrontation between the Mubarak regime and Egyptian society. Given Egyptian popular support of, and faith in, the military, the possibility that a negotiated pact that included the military would receive strong support was obvious.16 The population had interpreted the military’s position during the uprising as an expression of solidarity with the revolution. Most Egyptians did not consider that the military might have been acting to secure its own interests in surviving and in eliminating Gamal Mubarak from the line of succession. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), headed by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and army chief of staff General Sami Anan, were strong allies of the United States, with whom both men had had a long and mutually beneficial relationship. The level of trust, mutual understanding, and shared interests between the United States and the SCAF was high enough to make US involvement in a transitional process possible as well as plausible. The remaining challenge was to find an opposition force with enough experience and popular support to make it a feasible transition partner, one with which the US government could do business (commercial as well as political) in the future. Advisers from the United States descended on Egypt to find a solution.17 It is my contention that the solution they arrived at involved the conclusion of a pact between the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood. This pact involved a power-sharing deal between the two sides in which the military would command a transitional government to oversee the elections of a president and a parliament, and the writing of a constitution. Based on the high probability that the Muslim Brotherhood would defeat any other contender in a free election, it is my contention that the Brotherhood initially agreed to contest only the parliamentary elections, ceding the presidential elections to a chief executive favored by the military.18 As the military top brass could see that the sympathies of the officer corps were definitely with the revolution, to ask the army to turn against the people would have been suicidal. And since the military

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could not see a future for itself in the event of Mubarak’s death and the succession of heir-apparent Gamal Mubarak, the military would have welcomed the pact. With the promise of a share of the political pie, the Muslim Brotherhood would have been eager to make such a deal. Thus, with each of the three parties supporting the pact, the United States and the Egyptian military withdrew support from Mubarak. What made the Muslim Brotherhood the logical and perhaps the only partner in such a pact was the high level of organization and the degree of popular support it enjoyed. In the course of the two decades before the 2011 revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood had renounced violence as a means of arriving at political power, and had abandoned its early goal of establishing an Islamist state.19 Working at cultivating reform at the grassroots level instead and filling the gaps left by inefficient and corrupt government, it adopted a bottom-up strategy of Islamization.20 In the 1990s the group reevaluated its rejection of pluralism and started viewing secularists as potential allies against a common enemy. The group started working toward learning the rules of democratic engagement in a pluralist system. Rather than seeking to replace the state, immediately and violently, with an authentically Islamist state, the Brotherhood would work to re-Islamize the public and encourage it to vote eventually for an Islamist state. This was clear in the 2005 parliamentary elections when the Brotherhood supported candidates from other political groups (Tagammu and Wafdist Ghad and the Labor Party) and an independent Coptic candidate from Asyut, where Copts have especially difficult problems.21 The principles of democratic government suddenly became desirable for the Muslim Brotherhood: transparent government, free and fair elections, rotation of power, majority rule, freedom of choice, and human rights.22 By 2005, Amr Hamzawy could describe the meaning of democracy for Muslim Brotherhood centrists in the following words: “Universal citizenship, peaceful transfer of power, checks and balances, citizens participation, neutrality of public authorities re citizens, no distinction based on religion, ethnicity, civility of public sphere.” 23 The significance of this is that the Muslim Brotherhood had gradually transformed itself from a dogmatic, authoritarian-style party into a political group willing to play ball, more so perhaps than were the other opposition forces, which continued to play the game of politics by the rules of the old regime. These forces, being in the game already, did not have to struggle to redefine it. The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, was compelled to function underground and learn to rebound

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when defeated, go into hiding when hunted, and organize while in retreat for the next round. It also learned how to build bridges to other groups. The Brothers seemed gradually to realize that if they were to make any progress toward influencing political outcomes, they would need a loyal population base and also the ability to interact amicably with groups that opposed them. All this clearly made the Brotherhood the logical choice for partner of the military in a transitional pact. Theoretical work on transitional politics lends further support to the notion that Washington may have midwifed an accord that led to Egypt’s post-Mubarak regime resting for the moment on cooperation between the SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philip Schmitter underscored the possibility in a 1986 book on transitions from authoritarian rule.24 Their analysis points out that a pact is an explicit agreement, among a select group of actors, that aims at redefining the structure of political relations among them in order to adjust contradictions that have developed over time between the institutions of state and the structures of society. Pacts avert revolution by creating agreement among challengers and incumbents that the vital interests of the parties to the pact will be guaranteed in the process of transition and in the political regime that emerges as a result of it. At core, there is a commitment not to utilize their capacity to harm each other’s vital interests. Pacts cannot promise democracies, but they can promise a relatively less violent and less disruptive transfer of power in return for less punitive repercussions for the ousted parties. An “extrication pact” is a pact that involves an interlocutor, in this case very likely the United States, between a dominant power in the old regime and a less powerful challenger that is dominant in a revolutionary upheaval. An extrication pact is concluded to avoid a prolonged revolutionary struggle, which might destabilize the country and have uncertain results.25 When negotiations regarding the nature of institutions that are to prevail after the pact is concluded involve forces associated with the previous regime—as they would in this type of pact—institutional traces of the old regime are inevitable. This has been the case regarding the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt since February 11, 2011. The most notable features of the issue have revolved around the autonomy of the armed forces and the repressive and self-serving nature of the security regime.26 This is to be expected with an extrication pact, which is why this type of pact is not as stable as a regular pact negotiated among established actors in the political system without the need for interlocution.27 An extrication pact cannot guarantee movement

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forward on a path of transition if new groups constantly make an appearance on the political scene and add pressure to the democratizing state. This explains the constant appeals of the Muslim Brotherhood to the public not to increase its demands on the transitional government. It is also why the May 2011 demonstrations at the Ministry of Justice by Salafists, who were then joined by others in a renewed revolutionary fervor demanding that the military step down, were so threatening to the stability of the pact. It is only when the forces of the opposition that brought down the old regime negotiate exclusively among themselves (in this case, the various factions that participated in Tahrir Square) to shape the new institutions of the state, including first and foremost its constitution, that one can discuss a democratic transition.28 There is evidence strongly suggesting that the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood tried to do exactly that, at first. The constitutional amendments voted on in March 2011 were ordered by the SCAF in detail and drafted in their entirety by a group led by Justice Tarek elBishry, formerly of the Muslim Brotherhood, and legal expert Subhy Saleh, a current member of the Brotherhood. The theory argues that if such negotiations precede the election of a parliament, they take place in an unorganized political space and become the cause for more demonstrations and less order. This also proved true in Egypt: there was much scuffle about the amendments, especially on the point that they were resuscitating a defunct constitution and because they were not being drafted by elected representatives of the people. Theory says that if the various political parties and opposition forces that have emerged focus on the election of representatives to parliament to which they can take their debates, then a society can take productive steps to determine the shape of its own future with the legitimacy that a parliamentary mandate alone can lend the process. The Muslim Brotherhood maintained the position that the army did a great service to the nation by protecting protesters from the police during the revolution, and not interfering in the battles between the state thugs and the demonstrators. In that early period, the Muslim Brotherhood also repeatedly gave assurances that once the other institutions of state—the presidency and the parliament—were in working order, the army would withdraw to its barracks. Indeed, for nearly the first full year of the post-revolutionary period, the Brotherhood held that the army should be deferred to for as long as it took to achieve the required preconditions. Unfortunately for Egypt, the constitutional amendments passed in a hasty popular referendum in March 2011 are already being challenged on at least two points: the provision that no presidential candidate or his

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parents may hold a foreign nationality, and the provision that the Supreme Electoral Council’s decisions cannot be subjected to review. Furthermore, the Constituent Assembly selected by the parliament in March 2012 to draft a new constitution was rejected by all factions of the Egyptian public, including the Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayeb and the Holy Synod of the Coptic Church. Members of the assembly withdrew in protest over its disproportionate representation of Islamists and its failure to represent many interests in society. Parliamentary elections held on November 28, 2011, resulted in the expected overwhelming victory for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). The total percentage of seats held by Islamists of all stripes in the upper house, the Shura Council, was 83 percent. Thus, Egypt’s parliament is strongly Islamist, and the strongest parliamentary party, the FJP, clearly wants a parliamentary system. This is part of a long-term plan to consolidate its power. The military, on the other hand, favors a strong executive power separate from the parliament, and supports a presidential system. The sudden decision by the Muslim Brotherhood at the end of March 2012 to reverse itself and back the candidacy of millionaire businessman and leading Muslim Brother Mohammed Khairat el-Shater as the official presidential candidate of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party seemed explicable mainly in terms of political opportunism. Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, suspended from the Brotherhood’s guidance committee in May 2011 for deciding to run for president, and later expelled from the Brotherhood altogether, was quickly becoming a popular presidential candidate. The Salafists presented a candidate, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, who also commanded strong support. A Salafist win would have rolled back the dominant position the Brotherhood held in parliament. But the presentation by the Muslim Brotherhood of a presidential candidate, el-Shater, also very likely exacerbated the threatened demise of the fragile “extrication pact” with Egypt’s military rulers and therefore triggered the SCAF’s reaction. This came in mid-April 2012 with the decision to eliminate a total of ten candidates from the presidential elections. Prominently among these were the front-runners—the Brotherhood’s el-Shater, the Salafists’ Abu Ismail, and the former chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman. This reflected the impact of the crumbling “extrication pact.” The next lineup included, from the FJP, the politically bland Mohamad Morsi and, from the military, the colorless general Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister and apparently the military’s new favorite.

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By May 2012 the light at the end of the tunnel was receding. The flow of events as predicted by the theoretical construct of a successful “extrication pact” seemed blocked by the stubborn impasse that developed between the SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Islamists Since the Revolution While the Muslim Brotherhood remains preeminent among Egypt’s Islamist groups, other Islamist groups have formed in the post-revolutionary period in hopes of winning some degree of political power. Salafists, Sufis, and even Shiites all entered the fray, animated by the excitement of transition and given license by the demise of the Mubarak regime. They seemed to mature overnight, emulating the Muslim Brotherhood’s slogan of “civil state” and learning the rules, or at least the language, of the democratic game. The Freedom and Justice Party, the main political offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, sought diversity in its membership. Formed on February 21, 2011, with nearly 9,000 members, including women and Copts, the party is led by Mohamad Morsi with Essam el-Erian as second in command. The party created and led the Democratic Alliance of Egypt.29 Although the internal structure of the Muslim Brotherhood is less than democratic, the elections held on August 6, 2011, to determine the replacements on the Brotherhood’s guidance committee for those who left to become the leaders of the political-party offshoot were unprecedented. Traditionally, the principle of blind obedience to the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood was, and continues to be, paramount. The guidance committee, while officially designed to provide organizational coherence, remains the only decisionmaking authority in the Freedom and Justice Party. Within the committee there is no representation from different local districts or of different age groups or interests; thus there is little internal consensus. This was arguably the major factor that precipitated the factionalization of the party.30 The Muslim Brotherhood’s in-house elections of 2011 were no guarantee that there would be significant or enduring change in its standard operating procedures.31 The Wasat party, the brainchild of Mohamed Selim el-Awwa, Tarek el-Bishry, and the late Mohamad el-Messiri, together with a Muslim Brotherhood splinter group, was founded in 1994 and legally constituted in 2011. Wasat was conceived as a purely civil party with a vision derived from the best Islamic traditions of tolerance and mutual coex-

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istence between different religious, racial, and ethnic groups. Its principles include the rule of law, espousal of open society, and respect for the views of others. These have made the party popular with the intelligentsia and political elites, and although its electoral prospects seemed at first doubtful, it was able to secure ten seats in parliament, 2 percent of the total, in the November 2011 elections.32 For doctrinal reasons, Salafist groups waited until Mubarak had been toppled before vigorously pursuing a role in establishing the new political order. Their first appearance came in March 2011 when they demonstrated strongly in support of the proposed constitutional amendments. The Salafists can roughly be divided into two groups, al-Sunna al-Muhammadeya and al-Jamaat al-Islamiya, both of which have organized in the past under the mantra “Islam Is the Solution.” Technically, there is no Salafist model of state formation or parliamentary procedure, nor is there any conception of citizenship or separation of powers. The strongest concentrations of their supporters are found in Alexandria and Qalyoubiya. Their main political rivals are the Wafdists and the Nasserists. The Salafist al-Nour party won 107 parliamentary seats, 25 percent of the total, in the November 2011 elections. The Building and Development Party, another Salafist party, won 8 seats, 2 percent of the total. Asala won 3 seats.33 Sufis number 15 million in Egypt, and are found in over seventyfour Sufi orders. They have traditionally been socially and politically on the fringe. In return for promoting stability, affirming the legitimacy of the state, and acting as a counterbalance to the Islamists, the Mubarak regime protected Sufi shrines and provided them with state allowances. After the January 25, 2011, revolution, Sufi shrines were violated, and some were destroyed. Sufis had two political parties planned by the spring of 2011: the Social Tolerance Party and the Egyptian Liberation Party. The latter party was officially recognized in September 2012 and became part of Egypt’s Liberal bloc for only one month. It later contested the elections as part of the Completing the Revolution Alliance, winning one seat.34 Sufi leaders announced that they would field no candidate for president.35 At the beginning of May 2012, the shaikhs of the Executive Office of the Sufi Orders had yet to make a final decision, expected to be supported by their followers, on which presidential candidate to endorse. Their shortlist included two candidates: Ahmed Shafiq and Amr Moussa. They refused to support any of the Islamist candidates; their people, they said, did not trust them.36 Egypt’s Shiites have existed almost in hiding in a country whose Sunni majority are extremely judgmental of Shiite beliefs. Since the

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toppling of Mubarak, Shiites have been determined to gain the freedom of religious confession and practice they had been denied in the past. In August 2011, Ahmad Rassem al-Nafees announced the formation of the Unity and Freedom Party. The party’s agenda “revolves around freedom, unity, and justice and . . . supports calls for a civil state and religion-free politics”; its membership is open.37 Just ahead of parliamentary elections, the Egyptian Supreme Elections Committee rejected the party’s application for official recognition.

Conclusion This chapter has posed the question of whether the Tahrir Revolution of January 25, 2011, was, as it initially appeared to be, a revolution without Islamists. The answer is a simple, but resounding, no. This was not a revolution without Islamists; but on the other hand, it most definitely was not an Islamist revolution. The revolutionary tendency was arguably in gestation since the April 6, 2008, labor strikes in Mahalla al-Kubra, the impetus for the founding of the April 6 Movement. It built up momentum with the murder of Khaled Said at the hands of the State Security Service. The participants were young bloggers critical of the government and reaching out to each other in opposition. Wael Ghonim, founder of the “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook page, was a computer engineer with Google, hardly an Islamist. The members of the April 6 Movement were, if anything, leftist critics of the unequal economic opportunity and unequal distribution of wealth in the economy. The Facebook youth were concerned with both their economic future and their political and civil freedoms, which they clearly recognized as being intricately linked. It is noteworthy that in the aftermath of the revolution, the Youth Coalition of the Revolution has been completely sidelined.38 The labor movement has been unable to register a party, as the Law on Political Parties prohibits the founding of a party based on class affiliation.39 Only the Muslim Brotherhood Youth among them have actually formed a party, but they had no impact on the November 2011 parliamentary elections. At the end of the opening chapter of the revolution, it appears that the Islamists are ahead, the Youth have been sidelined, the Liberals have been stalled, and the Democratic Workers Party, the party formed by the workers of Mahalla Textiles and their intellectual supporters, is not even

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officially on the map.40 The Muslim Brotherhood dominates parliament and is in dire competition with its military partners. At this moment, Egypt’s immediate future remains murky. It is clear that the pact originally entered into is, true to theory, cracking under the pressure of the excessive number of groups that have entered the fray, and complicated the bilateral condominium between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. The first result was that the Muslim Brotherhood presented a presidential candidate clearly in contradiction to the hypothetical power-sharing agreement. The military’s response was to challenge the validity of the parliamentary elections, but hold the court decision in the drawer to be used if absolutely necessary. It is not clear from the evidence that the military sought to break the pact but only to put enough pressure on the Brotherhood to ensure its respect for the deal. At any rate, the Brotherhood seems to be making enough mistakes in parliament to sufficiently alienate people. If President Morsi pushes the people too far, he will be inviting a military coup. The military will continue to maintain its dominant position, and if its hand is forced it has the option of undertaking a military coup. One can only hope that there has been enough counseling from the US side with regard to the dangers of such a decision. For now, given the enormous and deep divisions among the politically active public, the real question facing Egypt is what can be expected as the revolution’s final product.

Notes 1. “The Other Revolution in Egypt: An Interview with Mohamad Abbas of the Muslim Brotherhood,” uploaded August 23, 2011, available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVlhjHfGiFs. 2. A very interesting phenomenon noticeable in the early days of the revolution is that people went to work in the mornings, and congregated to demonstrate after that. In later days, people rotated into Tahrir Square, spending only a few hours at a time enthusiastically bringing in supplies and sharing their support, before returning to the affairs of their ordinary lives. If there had been turnstiles at the square to count participants as they came in, there would have been a much higher head count. 3. Mohamad Saad Abdel Hafeez, “Offer of Truce Between Government and Muslim Brotherhood” (in Arabic), al-Sherouk al-Jadeed, July 26, 2009. 4. “A Look at the Youth of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,” National Public Radio, February 17, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/02/17/133777435/a-look -at-the-youth-of-egypts-muslim-brotherhood.

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5. Soaud Mekhennet and Nicholas Kulish, “With Muslim Brotherhood Set to Join Egypt Protests, Religion’s Role May Grow,” New York Times, January 27, 2011. 6. Hossam Tammam and Patrick Haenni, “Islam in the Insurrection?” alAhram Weekly, March 3–9, 2011. 7. Ibid. 8. Mubarak’s January 29, 2011, speech (in Arabic) is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE5wuvCyjNM. A partial transcript is available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/Feb02/president -hosni-mubarak-egypt-speech. 9. Steve Niva, “Between Clash and Cooperation: US Foreign Policy and the Specter of Islam,” Middle East Report no. 208, US Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Critical Assessments (Autumn 1998). 10. “Obama Administration Corrects Clappers’ Claim That Muslim Brotherhood Is Secular,” Fox News, February 10, 2011. 11. “US Shifts to Closer Contacts with Egypt Islamists,” Reuters, June 30, 2011, http://reuters.com/article/2011/06/30/US-usa-egypt-brotherhood-idUS TRE75T0GD20110630. 12. “U.S.–Muslim Brotherhood Contacts to Resume,” June 30, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/30/us-muslim-brotherhood-egypt _n_887918.html. 13. “US in Contact with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood—Clinton,” June 30, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13979410. 14. Ibid. 15. Natasha Mozgovaya, “Clinton: US Engagement of Muslim Brotherhood Not New Policy,” Haaretz, June 30, 2011, http://haaretz.com/news/diplomacy -defense/clinton-u-s-engagement-of-muslim-brotherhood-not-new-policy -1.370482. 16. David Wood, “At Risk in Egypt’s Turmoil: US Military Access to the Middle East,” Politics Daily, February 5, 2011, http://www.politicsdaily.com /2011/02/05/at-risk-in-egypts-turmoil-u-s-military-access-to-the-middle-e/. 17. “Hijacking Revolution? Muslim Brotherhood Wants Power in Egypt,” April 21, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CwIDj19kPQ. 18. It is interesting that most observers interpreted the Muslim Brotherhood’s statements that it would not seek to monopolize the political arena as a promise to be open to debates among different ideological persuasions (liberal, leftist, etc.), when in fact the Brotherhood’s promise must have been directed at the military, in reference to the deal it struck prior to forcing Mubarak out of office. 19. Bruce Riedel, “Don’t Fear Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,” Brookings Institute, January 28, 2011, http://brookings.edu/research/opinions/2011/01/28 -egypt-riedel. 20. Nathan Brown, Amr Hamzawy, and Marina Ottaway, “Islamist Movements and the Democratic Process in the Arab World: Exploring the Grey Zones,” Carnegie Papers, Middle East Series, no. 67 (Washington, DC: Car-

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negie Endowment for International Peace and Herbert-Quant-Stiftung, March 2006). 21. Interview with Essam al-Erian, member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s guidance committee, Arab Reform Bulletin, June 15, 2010 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). 22. Brown, Hamzawy, and Ottaway, “Islamist Movements and the Democratic Process.” 23. Amr Hamzawy, The Key to Arab Reform: Moderate Islamists (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 2005). 24. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philip C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 37–38. 25. Ibid. 26. Hence the freeze on security sector reform. 27. The effort in 2006 to establish a national pact (meethaq watani), aborted by Mubarak, might have empowered the public to dictate to the SCAF the steps to take in the transitional phase. Such a national pact could have resulted in the convening of a constitutional committee charged with codifying principles agreed upon without reference to the old constitutional framework rejected by revolutionary Egypt. 28. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 29. The Freedom and Justice Party led the Dignity Party (which won six seats in the 2011–2012 lower-house parliamentary election), Ghad el-Thawra (two seats), the Civilization Party (two seats), the Islamic Labor Party (one seat), the Arab Socialist Party (one seat), and the Egypt Reform Party (one seat), in addition to the Independents, of whom nine won seats. 30. Noha el-Hennawy, “Defying Leadership, Brotherhood Youth Form New Party,” al-Masry al-Youm, June 21, 2011, http://almasryalyoum.com/print /470366. Interestingly enough, the Freedom and Justice Party won no votes in the parliamentary elections. 31. “Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to Hold a Public Internal Vote,” alMasry al-Youm, August 6, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node /483776. 32. Ibid. 33. Issandr El Amrani, “Final Results for Egypt’s Parliamentary Elections, January 22, 2012, http://www.arabist.net/blog/2012/1/22/final-results-for-egypts -parliamentary-elections.html. See also the Wikipedia entry on the elections, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_parliamentary_election,_2011–2012. 34. “Guide to Egypt’s Transition,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 21, 2001, http://egyptelections.carnegieendowment.org/2011 /09/21/al-tahrir-al-masry-egyptian-liberation-party. 35. Mohamad Hafez, “The Islamist Movements After 25 January,” alAhram Weekly, June 14–20, 2011.

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36. “Sufi Orders to Choose Presidential Candidate on Sunday,” May 1, 2012, http://news.egypt.com/english/permalink/109232.html?TB_iframe=true &height=650&width=800. 37. “Egyptian Shia Prepare for First Political Party,” al-Masry al-Youm, August 28, 2011, http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/egyptian-shia-prepare -for-first-political-party. 38. Mohamad el-Dahshan, “Egyptian Youth Sidelined from Their Own Revolution,” YaleGlobal, July 19, 2011, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/print/7204. 39. Salma Shukrallah and Nourhan al-Abbasy, “January Revolution Generates a New Egyptian Political Map,” al-Ahram, March 4, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/6863.aspx. 40. Ibid. According to the Law on Political Parties, which is still effective and observed, there can be no political parties based on class identification— in this case the working class.

Part 2 The Context of the Revolution

8 The Implosion of Political Patronage Regimes in the Middle East Ibrahim Elnur

In the postcolonial era, many countries of the global South successfully toppled authoritarian regimes and reconstituted themselves as democracies. The Middle East, however, was—with only a few and temporary exceptions—not included in this phenomenon. By 2011, with the so-called Arab Spring, the story began to change. In this chapter I argue that sixty years of postcolonial authoritarianism in the Middle East was instrumental in eroding old forms of political and social associations and platforms. Under the forms of government that prevailed during those six decades, governmental authority based on political patronage was characterized by expanded access to basic needs, including education and health. But that same authority also served to build up and maintain a form of crony capitalism that was cultivated carefully through selective interaction with an increasingly globalized world. Ironically, both the gains from decades of political patronage and the social and economic costs of maintaining the systems that were supported eventually undermined the sustainability of authoritarian regimes. While the ascendancy to power of these regimes was entirely based on the military, their survival was based on massive security forces. These forces exceeded by far the traditional army, in terms of both numbers and cost of maintenance. At the same time, accelerated population growth and urbanization created new political, socioeconomic spaces that were essentially different from the immediate post-independence

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urbanities and ruralities. Through their employment of the typical political patronage package, the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world created a massive, unserviceable, and uncontrollable stratum of educated young people with little or no access to jobs, social mobility, or political participation. While technical changes enabled the ascendancy of authoritarian regimes six decades ago, the compression of both time and space in the twenty-first century created new spaces that could hardly be policed by the decaying authoritarian regimes. A new era is now emerging and its main features are currently in the making. The 2011 uprisings in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world are best understood in the context of this reality. The waves of political uprisings transcend boundaries in the Middle East, and echo similarities in the histories of anticolonial struggles in the Arab-speaking countries. There is the evidence of events that produced just such domino effects in the 1920s and 1930s. For example, the anticolonial uprising in Egypt was a precursor to events in Palestine in 1920, Sudan in 1924, and even later in Syria. The ascendance of Arab nationalism in the early 1950s also triggered domino effects that were manifested through military coups. Under the conditions of the Cold War era, the domino effect was relatively easily suppressed. This was typical in the case of Sudan, which was the only country to successfully topple a military dictatorship, in 1964 and again in 1989, through popular uprisings. In both cases the domino effect was suppressed through regional and international agencies.1 Today’s domino effect is an altogether different story. The domino effect of the current wave of uprisings is a function of both the implosion of the system of political patronage and the remarkably small “global village” in which events are seen and heard by those in urban slums as well as those as who are far abroad. In the twenty-first century, the impact of the domino effect clearly transcends income and literacy barriers.

On Implosion and Rentierism There are two terms central to the thinking that guides this chapter: implosion and rentierism. In a typical dictionary, implosion is defined as a violent collapse inward or violent compression, but I owe the use of the term to Jef Huysman’s 1995 article in which he described the post–Cold War era as an implosion.2 I argue that the authoritarian

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regimes based on political patronage in the Middle East generated the seeds of their own dissolution, not through failure to deliver, but precisely because they succeeded in delivering the patronage package, albeit with diverse degrees of success. The achievements embedded in these packages (from education to various other manifestations of modernity) could not be accommodated within a static structure. In other words, modernization without structural transformation was by and large responsible for the central tension between the emerging political, economic, and social terrains and the premodern structures of authoritarian regimes. This was taking place in a completely different world in which barriers to connectivity had been demolished by the compression of both time and space, as will be further elaborated. In a rentier economy the state does not stand above the web of relationships and transactions of a grounded domestic process of production and accumulation. Instead, the state controls and distributes the revenue from one primary commodity sold on the world market. There is no separation between political and economic power, and the state therefore embodies economic wealth as well as pursuing its other functions, such as ensuring internal and external security. Obviously, oil-dependent states are the prime example of a rentier state. Rent, on the other hand, has been defined as income accruing from the exploitation of nonrenewable natural resources.3 The minor oil exporters, such as Egypt, Syria, and Yemen,4 can easily fit into a definition of rentierism by taking into account factors facilitating the inflow of external rent. The latter include disproportionate aid inflows because of strategic location as well as remittances from labor export to oil-producing economies, such as Egypt or, further west, Tunisia. Such external rent inflows have the same function as direct oil rents, as they allow a very low level of dependence on taxation. Only two countries in the Middle East North Africa region, Tunisia and Morocco, show relatively higher levels of taxation-related revenue.5 Both rentier and quasi-rentier states offer patronage packages that are not based on taxation capacities. Naturally the allocation of rent depends on the size of rent as well as the nature of the political regime that evolved through the state-making processes. In oil-rich shaikhdoms with tiny populations, the patronage package is extensive. In the larger states and in quasi-rentier states, the patronage package produces a multiplicity of authoritarian regimes whose survival and stability are linked to multiple forms of negotiation of the patronage package or rent-based social contracts.

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Two Distinct Phases of Patronage Early versions of patronage authoritarianism were marked by an emphasis on a national project: state-led capitalism. Examples of this type of system were Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Egypt and similar regimes in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, as well as—in the early stage—Sudan, during Gaafar Nimeiry’s rule. The second phase of authoritarian patronage was essentially different. State-led capitalism was the key economic feature of Arab authoritarian regimes from the 1950s to the 1970s. But by the 1980s, cronyism had become the order of the day in the transition to non–state-led capitalism. In terms of building and fusing various interests in a patronage system, corruption became an effective tool. This fusion of business with the interests of the ruling elites, in both civilian and security apparatuses, was a typically common feature of post-1980 regimes. The study of crony capitalism in South Korea and the Philippines by David Kang suggests two possible different outcomes depending on the balance of power between state and business elites.6 Kang suggested that if there is a balance of power among a small and stable set of government and business elites, corruption can actually reduce transaction cost and promote growth.7 Kang’s study is useful for understanding diversities in the forms and coherence of fusion between government and business elites in the post-1980s regimes in the Middle East.

Diverse Conditions, Similar Uprisings From “Ayat,” the Bahraini girl imprisoned for reading a poem, to Mohamed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself aflame in protest, to the Egyptian engineer and Internet activist Wael Ghonim, to Tawakkul Karman, the Yemeni human rights activist and Nobel Prize winner, a wide variety of triggers were at work to spark the Arab world’s uprisings. The same diversity is again manifested when we look at the key socioeconomic characteristics of the six sites with the most violent uprisings: Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen, as presented in Table 8.1. As a point of departure, it is important to recognize that these uprisings were not the outcomes of one single socioeconomic indicator. All indicators of inequalities and injustices matter. A brief overview of the basic and aggregate socioeconomic indicators in Table 8.1 paints a broad picture of the huge diversities among

Table 8.1 Major Socioeconomic Indicators in Arab Spring Countries, 2010 Human Development Index (country ranking) Bahrain Libya Tunisia Egypt Syria Yemen

39 53 81 101 111 134

Human Development Index 0.801 0.755 0.683 0.626 0.589 0.439

Life Expectancy (years) 76.0 74.5 74.3 70.5 74.6 63.9

Mean Schooling (years)

Gross National Income per Capita (US$)

Gender Inequality Index (country ranking)

9.4 7.3 6.5 6.5 4.9 2.5

26,644 17,078 7,977 5,889 4,760 2,387

55 52 56 108 103 127

Source: United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2010 (New York, 2010).

Adult Literacy (%, age 15+) 90.8 88.4 78.0 66.4 83.6 60.9

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countries of 2011’s Arab Spring. There are, of course, evident diversities, particularly with regard to indicators pertaining to income levels. Six decades of postcolonial development have also produced completely different population dynamics. Today, between 44 and 65 percent of the Arab world’s population is under twenty-five years old. As shown in Table 8.2, the total Arab population increased by fivefold over the past sixty years. The disaggregated figures are truly astronomical for two countries that were barely inhabited at the beginning of the period: Bahrain, whose population increased by a factor of twenty-six, and Kuwait, whose population increased twentyfold. The relative share of total Arab population of oilabundant countries almost doubled, from 17.5 percent in 1950 to 30.7 percent in 2010, reflecting not only a higher rate of population growth but also an influx of migrants who were later naturalized.8 The young people who constitute the majority of the Arab region’s population are far more educated than ever before in the area’s history. Adult literacy is above 90 percent in Bahrain, but is also significantly high (above 60 percent) in the extremely low-income state of Yemen (see Table 8.1). The implications of a very young population structure are numerous, including a very high dependency rate. One implication of high dependency rates involves pressures placed on education systems throughout the region.

Table 8.2 Arab Population, 1950–2010 (in thousands)

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

All Arab-Speaking

Oil-Producing

Population of OilProducing Countries as a Percentage of

Countries

Countries

All Arab Countries

69,824 97,900 127,943 173,237 231,918 291,866 359,803

12,327 24,245 32,884 48,239 71,334 87,423 110,491

17.5 24.7 25.7 27.8 30.7 30.0 30.7

Source: Calculated from Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, Statistical Abstract of the ESCWA Region, no. 28 (Arabic ed.) (New York: United Nations, 2009).

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One important outcome of both population growth and the political patronage package was the acceleration of the process of urbanization. This was most pronounced in the case of oil-surplus economies that transcended any linear notion of urbanization by moving from a preagrarian nomadic life to the stage of postmodern urbanity. These new multilayered urbanities are characterized by extreme levels of disparity, extending from skyscrapers to shantytowns. At the same time, the rural no longer is the old, dormant, isolated, and remote political-social space, but rather—thanks to the nature of technological change—is marked by the compression of both time and space across income and literacy barriers.9 These new multilayered urbanities and ruralities constitute serious challenges to the capacity of the security sector, irrespective of its size and outreach capacity. Another issue revolves around the implications of implosion of political patronage regimes based on rentier and quasi-rentier economies. In the past, when the social contract based on rent meant a lower demand for accountability and representation, and therefore tended to “dampen demands for representation,” it led to the emergence of politically dependent social groups. 10 As recent events in Bahrain have shown, the issue is not that the “governable” small educated elite are no longer there. The real issue stems from the fact that over five decades of patronage produced a massive bulge of educated young people for whom the old “package of patronage” is no longer attractive. Under certain conditions—those of the past, for example—injustices and inequalities might survive for long periods of time and remain relatively immune to exposure. However, to rule a well-educated and well-connected elite, an altogether different patronage package is required. In such a new package, those who need to surrender are the former winners, not the emerging social forces. From a historical point of view, there is nothing novel in this. A twenty-first-century formula for a shift from outdated monarchies and shaikhdoms to a modern constitutional system is “all” that is needed. But obviously, though elementary, this is far easier said than done. The political patronage package that long sustained authoritarianism in the Arab world became particularly problematic in the field of education. On the one hand, education, especially higher education, witnessed a massive upsurge. From 1998 to 2008, enrollment in higher education for eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds increased from 18 percent to 22 percent on average. This was a particularly significant increase, as the size of this age cohort increased by 156 percent during the same period, in contrast to a population increase of 139 percent.11

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Compared to other similar regions, the Arab countries’ achievement in higher education enrollment is both remarkable and paradoxical. In the more populated countries (Iraq, Sudan, Egypt, and Yemen), the vast expansion of higher education was not linked to universal provision of primary education. Thus, these states remained characterized by high illiteracy rates—with almost twice as many illiterate women as illiterate men in many Arab countries.12 The vast expansion in higher education in the Arab countries also created a massive body of unemployed university graduates. Graduate unemployment reached 40 percent in countries for which reliable statistics are available.13 In most of these countries, there were twice as many unemployed female graduates as their male counterparts.14 The graduate unemployment crisis reflects several aspects of the problems of the education system as well as of the rentier and quasirentier economies of the region. Primary among these is the declining quality of both general education as well as higher education.15 The mismatch between the education system’s output and the labor market’s demand is evident almost everywhere, but such a mismatch cannot explain the full dimension of the graduate unemployment crisis. The supply of graduates seems well beyond the capacity of these economies to absorb, which simply confirms that the demand for higher education continues to be socially driven. The outcome, however, of creating such a massive body of unemployed and, sadly, unemployable young people has been an ominous wellspring of social unrest. The expansion in higher education and the subsequent graduate unemployment eroded education’s function as a vehicle for social mobility. That role was further undermined by subsequent developments in the education system that led to the creation of a parallel education universe—that of private education. With private education (from preschool to higher education) quickly emerging as the only center of excellence, the social mobility role of education was almost completely eliminated.16 Thus, the dynamic of social mobility through education, central to the political patronage package, was largely destroyed. The blocking of this route to social mobility included other forms of social exclusion, underlying, for example, the burgeoning problem of delayed marriage.17 Such blocking of social mobility, and all associated forms of social exclusion, seem to overcome the capacities of even generous “patronage rents” to promote social mobility.18 Virtually all Arab societies have been affected by the challenge of youth, and in particular the problem of graduate unemployment. A

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recent study of the labor-importing economies of the Gulf suggested that “the growing level of national unemployment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries remains one of the region’s key domestic policy challenges.”19 There is an evident overproduction of graduates, a basic mismatch between the education system and the job market. The uncompetitive rentier and quasi-rentier economies are unable to absorb the growing numbers of newcomers to the labor market because of the youthful population structure. Old recipes of patronage seem to be blocked even in oil-rich economies. In the GCC, public sector bureaucracies, the main outlet for national employment, have reached the point of saturation. The potential for economic diversification and educational reforms that will enable nationals to be competitive vis-à-vis expatriates seems to be a long way in the future, if it is at all foreseeable. Ingo Forstenlechner and Emilie Rutledge concluded that “an updated social contract that distributes hydrocarbon wealth via mechanisms other than the provision of public sector jobs will need to be deployed and then recommended to citizens.”20 State intervention in the labor market to ensure higher levels of nationals’ employment, or an effective replacement of expatriates by nationals, is facing some strong reactions and resistance from the private sector.

New Urban and Rural Spaces Unlike the earlier phenomenon of industrialization-driven urbanization, the new trend of accelerated urbanization in the global South is being fueled by both the successes and the failures of development entailing structural transformation in imitation of the North. While half of the global village is being urbanized, whether rich or poor, the other half is no longer composed of the old isolated spheres. The new multilayered urbanities, in terms of both income and cultural diversities, bear little resemblance to the immediate postcolonial urbanities. The polarization between secular forces and political Islam in the uprisings, particularly in Egypt and to a lesser extent in Tunisia, marks an important shift in the urban political socioeconomic space. 21 In the 1930s, when conscious nationalism arose, Albert Hourany noted that younger members of the great urban families did not recognize any sort of gulf between secular and religious elements. 22 Hourany attributed that to the particular role played by centers for religious learning. 23

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In the colonial and immediate postcolonial urban periods, a much smaller and strictly regulated urbanity was associated with the rise of secular and Western-oriented educated elites. Out of the urban space emerged influential secular interpretations of both history and beliefs. Liberal, left, and right coexisted in a remarkable harmony. Urban spaces were greatly influenced in some countries (Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon, and Egypt) by organized labor movements and in others by strong leftist alliances, including strong communist movements. As Clement Henry and Robert Springborg explain: “In most countries, however, the emergent elite benefiting from western education did not have time to displace the old urban ones before independence. In Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, the prime ‘nationalist’ and beneficiaries of independence were the urban landowners, [and] in Iraq they included urbanized tribal leaders.”24 In the recent uprisings in the Arab world, such political tolerance is no longer widespread. Both the expansion of education and the ideational impact of migratory flows have, somewhat paradoxically, tended to eliminate flexibility in the interpretation of Islamic texts that are so central to the norms governing personal and political interaction. Decades of vast postcolonial urbanization—an outcome of both successful and failed development—produced a new multilayered urban space that created a sharp political divide between its various segments. In March 2011, post-revolutionary Egypt held a referendum on a variety of constitutional reform measures. Although there was general agreement among voters that the suggested measures would bolster the country’s chances of evolving into a functional democracy, divisions soon appeared. Essentially, those opposed to the proposed measures feared that the envisaged timing of elections to replace the temporary ruling military regime would benefit the erstwhile ruling party and the Muslim Brotherhood, each of which had solid organizational histories. The constitutional reform was therefore opposed by those who had led the revolution from the start, the modernized secular youth who had packed Tahrir Square. In the end, the referendum was passed decisively by those who favored the constitutional reform package: 77 percent of the voters approved the suggested reform measures, while only 23 percent opposed them. The results of Egypt’s March 2011 referendum dramatically portray the new multilayered urbanity that bears little similarity to the country’s immediate postcolonial urban reality. The referendum’s result in Cairo produced a very sharply divided population. The fault lines were along income as well as educational levels. Upper-middle-class and middleclass neighborhoods voted overwhelmingly against the referendum by an almost two-thirds margin. In the lower-middle income bracket,

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which included some heavily Christian-populated neighborhoods, a slightly larger percentage of people voted against the referendum. At the national level, the vote against the referendum in major urban centers (greater Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, and Ismailia) accounted for 35.4 percent of the tally, which was more than twice the negative vote in rural Egypt, where an average of 16.8 percent voted against. These major urban-urban and urban-rural divides are not unique to Egypt. They reflect the declining capacity of secular forces to reach out to both urban poor and rural areas throughout the Arab world.

Uprisings in the Era of Globalization In 1985, George Shultz wrote: Totalitarian societies face a dilemma: either they try to stifle these [information and communication] technologies and thereby fall further behind in the new industrial revolution, or else they permit these technologies and see their totalitarian control inevitably eroded. In fact, they do not have a choice, because they will never be able entirely to block the tide of technological advance.25

The communist authoritarian regimes could not survive the failure to control information and communications. In his book Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union, Scott Shane concluded that: “the thaw in information control [in the Soviet Union] exposed the horrors of Stalinism, the corruption of central planning, and the illusion of ‘the Soviet family of nations.’”26 Let us recall that this was in the early 1990s, when there were hardly any Internet users outside the United States. At the end of 1989, there were only 1.1 million Internet users worldwide. As shown in Table 8.3, it was not until the mid-1990s that global Internet usage began to significantly accelerate. The real compression of time and space is something that characterized the new millennium, certainly not the 1980s. It was the twenty-first century that really witnessed unprecedented global interconnectivity. The wide use of modern communication technology, particularly the Internet, as evidenced in Table 8.4, transcended both income and literacy barriers, and brought into the political space a very active and effective presence of new actors both internally and externally. Internally, the urban-rural divide was seriously undermined and increasingly made literacy barriers less formidable. Externally, the old tools of political exclusion (exile) became almost irrelevant. Instead of exile being a tool

142

Table 8.3 Internet Users in the United States and Worldwide, 1985–2015

US Internet users (millions) US Internet users as percentage of worldwide users US Internet users per thousand Worldwide Internet users (millions) Worldwide Internet users per thousand

1985

1990

1995

0.019

1.800

28.1

89.6 0.080 0.021 0.004

84.5 7.200 2.130 0.400

62.3 105.0 45.1 7.9

2000 135 31.3 477.0 430.0 70.8

2005

2010

198

254

18.1 668.0 1,094 170

12.5 820 2,030 297

Source: “Internet User Forecast by Country,” eTForecasts, http://www.etforecasts.com/products/ES_intusersv2.htm.

Projected 2015 288 10 885 2,890 399

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Table 8.4 Internet Penetration in the Arab World, 2011

Population (est.)

Bahrain Libya Tunisia Syria Yemen Egypt

Internet Penetration as Percentage of Population

1,214,705 6,597,960 10,629,186 22,517,750 24,133,492 82,079,636

57.1 5.9 36.3 19.8 10.8 24.6

Sources: “Middle East Internet Users, Population and Facebook Statistics,” http:// www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm; “Internet Users, Population and Facebook Statistics for Africa,” http://www.internetworldstats.com.

of exclusion, it became an avenue for active participation. From Egyptian Coptic organizations across the globe, to Rashid alGhannouchi in London, to Syrians in Europe, diasporas have now became active agents in uprisings, particularly when suppression is excessive.

Possible Scenarios: Directions of Transitions Implosion, as opposed to other forms of regime change, implies both anomie and unpredictability, and may lead to chaos. Typically the old is dead but not replaced by a new, relatively stable and predictable arrangement. In the six Arab countries that experienced the most violent uprisings, it is their diversities, reflective of their specific histories and socioeconomic structures, that are most likely to shape the outcomes of the uprisings. The rich experience of transition following the collapse of communist regimes in the late twentieth century and the outcomes of those transitions offer very useful lenses for reading the multiple possible directions of transition for societies in the Arab world. One analysis, written fifteen years after the collapse of the communist regimes, noted that “there is a wide range of political systems in the region that can be grouped in three categories: democratic, semi-democratic and autocrat-

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ic.”27 These divergent patterns of postcommunist transformation were attributed to a variety of explanatory factors: “Various authors invoke different explanatory factors, including historical legacies and initial social and economic conditions, types of democratic breakthroughs, choice of democratic institutions, dominant features of domestic political competition, proximity to the west, and influence of powerful international factors in support of democratic consolidation.”28 None of these explanatory factors seem to be irrelevant to the diversities embedded in the countries affected by the Arab Spring. While commonalities were as central to the making of the Arab Spring as they were for the erosion of the structural foundations of patronage, diversities in terms of regime histories and political socioeconomic characteristics are likely to produce—as occurred with the transitions of formerly communist states in Eastern Europe—a variety of regimes, ranging from liberal forms of democracy to new forms of authoritarianism. Yemen exhibited an extremely complex reality that relates more to its highly diversified composition than to anything else. First, the northsouth divide reflects a deeper historical divide. South Yemen’s anticolonial history produced a different culture of political participation. Second, the focus of regional and international powers on issues related to al-Qaeda’s presence in the Arabian Peninsula and the Huthi rebellion contributed negatively to the conclusion of the uprising. On the other hand, the fluidity of the Yemeni state structure generally had a positive impact on the ruling elite’s response to the uprising. As the International Crisis Group report rightly noted: “Tribal affiliations, regional distinctions and the widespread availability of weapons (notably in the northern highlands) likely will determine how the transition unfolds.”29 Among the six countries whose experience of the Arab Spring was violent, Yemen seemed the most likely to produce a negotiated deal between the opposition and the ruling elite. In this respect, it was safe to expect that Saudi Arabia would play an important role in encouraging a meaningful national dialogue. Unlike other cases, Yemen’s uprising produced a transitional agenda that prioritized both statebuilding and democratization. The uprising greatly reduced the north-south divide. As one observer correctly noted: “The majority believe that the ‘southern personality’ should have expression in the new south, although they disagree on what form it should take: decentralized southern provinces, confederation, federation or secession. Even the secessionists do not want to go back to the [People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen] of the 1970s and 1980s.”30

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The brutally smashed and silenced uprising in Bahrain is of direct relevance to most of the rentier economies of the Arab world’s shaikhdoms. It was not poverty but injustice that generated the uprising in Bahrain. The upheaval presented a perfect example of the implosion of patronage politics. The prompt military response by Saudi Arabia and the GCC was essentially a recognition that the domino effect might not spare even the most affluent. The Bahrain uprising also highlights a serious challenge to the thesis of “durable authoritarianism” based on oil rent. Syria is far more fragmented than both Egypt and Tunisia. The Alawite community, comprising about 10 percent of the country’s population, continues to constitute a large proportion of the security apparatus. The regime successfully continues to cultivate the fear of a possible Sunni Islamist hegemonic rule that commonly marks members of Syria’s various minority groups (Alawite, Christian, Druze, Tsherkess, Shiite, as well as secular Sunni).31 Syria also enjoys a stronger residual effect of its past socialist policies, which despite the rising fortunes of a small and corrupt elite, maintain some important components of basic services and subsidies. Yet growing regional disparities seem to undermine even this element of the regime’s residual legitimacy. As noted by the International Crisis Group: “Ironically, the regime grows out of the very same provinces that today are rebelling against it. In the 1950s and the 1960s, the peasantry and provincial petty bourgeoisie saw in the military and Baath party instruments of social promotion.”32 It seems that the marginalized periphery, which brought the Baath to power, may ultimately bring an end to its authority. The complexity of the Libyan scenario owes a lot to the eccentric one-man authoritarian rule of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. During his four decades in power, Qaddafi’s use of oil income led to a vast and speedy urbanization. While the country was still predominantly rural in the 1980s, by 2010 a large majority of Libyans, 78 percent, were living in urban areas. Qaddafi’s survival strategy involved both the weakening and underfunding of Libya’s regular army and the strengthening of its security apparatus, which increasingly became a family-led, clan-based apparatus that furthered the retribalization of Libya.33 The Libyan regime suffered also from a grossly underfunded patronage package. Wages had been frozen since 1981. As Waniss Otman and Erling Karlberg noted, there was an acute housing shortage and, because of the very low salaries, many Libyans had at least two

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jobs in order to survive.34 Despite the regime’s initial success in triggering interethnic and intertribal divisions, Qaddafi’s rule was ultimately brought to an end through foreign intervention. In the absence of any tradition of political representation, Libya’s transformation is likely to be a long and difficult process. Among the plethora of political groupings supporting the uprising, the Islamic groups seem to be relatively better organized (these groups include both the Muslim Brotherhood and jihadists, as well as Sufis in the eastern part of the country). Tunisia and Egypt, countries that witnessed a sweeping and relatively easy toppling of their regimes, share some important dimensions. Both did not have a strong fusion between various components of the regime, particularly between the internal security sector and the army. In both cases, the armed forces enjoyed a strong element of external financial support that assured the institution of a degree of autonomy within the ruling coalition. Furthermore, in both countries the ruling party did not have any coherent program or strong ideological background. These shared commonalities played a major role in the relative ease with which the ruling regimes were toppled. These commonalities do not, however, offer much in the way of determining the future trajectories for the polities. Compared to Egypt, Tunisia enjoys some important qualities relating to its political and social history. First, Tunisia has a stronger secular tradition, established by the ruling party since independence. Second, it has a far more vibrant and organized political movement. The best example is the National Workers Union, which, notwithstanding years of hegemony by the ruling party, succeeded in maintaining relative independence. Third, relative to the Egyptian diasporas, Tunisian diasporas maintained a much greater and more visible political presence in the affairs of the homeland. Finally, Tunisia has no tradition of direct military rule. All these factors may enhance a much smoother democratic transition for Tunisia, which, given the relatively heavy weight of political Islam in both countries, stands a better chance of approaching the Turkish model of restrained political Islam. In Egypt, Islamist groups maintained an active and effective presence in the public space even when the state subjected them to much repression. As the state patronage package started to shrink under pressures of population growth, Islamist groups—in particular, the Muslim Brotherhood—expanded their social services, especially in health and education. The outcome, as shown earlier in the pattern of voting during the March 2011 referendum, was a strong Islamist presence in both

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urban poor neighborhoods and rural areas. In addition, the Islamists, through their patronage package, became the single most important political party in the student movement. Among the professional groups, as Sheri Berman noted: “By the early 1990s, the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest of Egypt’s Islamist groups, had gained control of the doctors’, engineers’, scientists’, pharmacists’, and lawyers’ syndicates in free and fair elections and provided their communities with a variety of much-needed services.”35 None of the other parties in Egypt, whether right or left, survived the decades of authoritarianism, and consequently it was the Muslim Brotherhood that emerged as the single most powerful actor following the parliamentary elections. The broad and loose coalition of the secular and moderate liberals that led the uprising did not fare as well, in part because it had to organize its ranks and build parties and alliances, a process not easily concluded in the compressed transitional period. While the Islamists won the parliamentary elections, the worst-case scenario involves a broader coalition between the Islamic groups and the armed forces that might produce, at best, what Eastern European scholars have termed “soft authoritarianism.”36 This scenario would be similar to what has already transpired in Sudan. In fact, this may sound very similar to Ann Lesch’s reading of the post-Nimeiry scenarios in Sudan: [Nimeiry’s] overthrow in April 1985 resulted from the ground swell of dissent and from discontent within the armed forces. However, the groups that coalesced to remove him from power did not agree on an alternative constitutional system or on the principles that should guide inter-ethnic relations. During the four years of democracy that followed, polarization was acute between those who endorsed a secular system that would respect diversity and militant Islamists who insisted on a comprehensive religious system. The pluralists and the assimilationist approaches to nation-state building were contested bitterly. The clash threatened the nascent democracy.37

Such an outcome in Egypt might altogether halt any transition to democracy in the foreseeable future.

Notes 1. The history of the Sudanese uprising is well documented. See Tim Niblock, Class and Power in the Sudan: The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987); Peter Woodward, Sudan, 1898–1989: The Unstable State (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1990); Abdel Salam

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Sidahmed and Alsir Sidahmed, Sudan (London: Routledge, 2005); Ann Mosely Lesch, The Sudan: Contested National Identities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Didar Fawzi, La République du Soudan, 1956–1966: Échec d’une Expérience de Décollage Écononomiqe dans la Voie Capitaliste par une Ancienne Dépendance Colonial (Alger: Société Nationale d’Édition et de Diffusion, 2003). 2. Jef Huysman, “Post–Cold War Implosion and Globalization: Liberalism Running Past Itself,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 24, no. 3 (1995). The Sudanese were the first, long before the Palestinians, to call the events of April 1989 an “uprising” (intifada in Arabic). See Niblock, Class and Power in the Sudan. 3. Hazem Beblawi, “The Rentier State in the Arab World,” in Giacomo Luciani, ed., The Arab State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 85. 4. Egypt’s oil production peaked in 1996. By 2007, Egypt had become a net oil importer and natural gas replaced oil as an important resource export. Similarly, Syrian oil production peaked in 1996, but with 400,000 barrels per day, Syria is still a net exporter, though one with a declining capacity. Yemen’s production peaked in 2001, but domestic consumption is fast closing the export gap. Ben Jervey, “Less Oil, More Unrest: Are Declining Resources Driving the Arab Revolutions?” Good Environment, March 30, 2011, http://www.good.is /post/less-oil-more-unrest-are-declining-resources-driving-the-arab-revolutions. 5. Rolf Schwarz, “The Political Economy of State Formation in the Arab Middle East Rentier States: Rentier States, Economic Reform, and Democratization,” Review of International Political Economy 15, no. 4 (2008). 6. David C. Kang, Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 7. Ibid., p. 14. 8. The naturalization process was very uneven across oil-producing countries. In Kuwait, an extreme case, a significant proportion of the population are still treated as not being full citizens (bidoun, meaning “without nationality”). There are over 100,000 bidoun in Kuwait. Between independence in 1961 and 1985, the bidoun enjoyed full citizen rights, but the government systematically fired them from public sector employment. After the 1990–1991 Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait, bidoun military and police personnel were fired en masse. See Refugees International, “Kuwait: Gender Discrimination Creates Statelessness and Endangers Families,” October 17, 2011, http://www.refintl .org/policy/field-report/kuwait-gender-discrimination-creates-statelessness-and -endangers-families; “Bidoun,” World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, http://www.minorityrights.org/4278/kuwait/bidoun.html. 9. Ibrahim Elnur, Contested Sudan: The Political Economy of War and Reconstruction (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 33–36. 10. Mehran Kamrava, “Royal Factionalism and Political Liberalization in Qatar,” Middle East Journal 63, no. 3 (2009).

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11. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), “Education for All: Global Monitoring Report 2008,” http://www .unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda /efareport/reports; Ibrahim Elnur, “Differentiation in the Educational Systems, Diasporas, and Reproduction of Educated Elites,” in A. Ben Hafaiedh and M. el-Jaziri, eds., Social Science in the Arab World, Turkey, and Iran: Determinants, State, and Potentials (Tunis: Centre d’Études et de Recherches Économiques et Sociales, 2004). 12. UNECSO, “Education for All.” 13. European Training Foundation, “The Torino Process: Evidence-Based Policy Making for Vocational Education and Training,” http://www.etf.europa .eu/webatt.nsf/bcd528028d002322c125785d002ec888/108bef28722af822c1258 ab003277d4?OpenDocument; Ibrahim Elnur, “From Political Patronage to Empowerment: A Critique of Subsidies Systems, Anti-Poverty Policies, and Inequalities in Rentier and Quasi-Rentier Regimes in the Arab World,” background paper for Arab Human Development Report 2012. 14. Outi Karkainen, Women and Work: Access, Limitations, and Potential in Tourism and ICT: Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia (Luxembourg: European Training Foundation, 2010); Ahmed Galal et al., The Road Not Travelled: Education Reform in the Middle East and North Africa (Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2008). 15. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Arab Social Science Research in the 1990s and Beyond: Issues, Trends, and Policies,” in Eglal Rached and Dina Craissati, eds., Research for Development in the Middle East and North Africa (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2000), p. 130; Hamid Ammar, University: Between Mission and Institutionalism: Studies on Education and Culture (in Arabic) (Cairo: Arabic Studies, 1996), p. 63. 16. Elnur, “Differentiation in the Educational Systems.” 17. Hilary Silver, “Social Exclusion: Comparative Analysis of Europe and Middle East Youth,” Middle East Youth Initiative, Working Paper no. 1 (Dubai: Wolfensohn Center for Development and Dubai School of Government, 2007), pp. 15–17. 18. “In 2006, police needed to be called to disperse as many as 10,000 angry Saudi job seekers who had pushed in person to apply for one of 500 advertised administrative jobs at the government passport office.” Elizabeth Bains, cited in Ingo Forstenlechner and Emilie Jane Rutledge, “Growing Levels of National Unemployment in the Arab Gulf: Time to Update the ‘Social Contract,’” Middle East Policy 17, no. 2 (2010), p. 46. 19. Forstenlechner and Rutledge, “Growing Levels of National Unemployment.” 20. Ibid., p. 40. 21. Secularism is here defined narrowly as a political doctrine that prescribes the separation of religious authority and political authority. The term “secular” provoked sensitive accusation of hostility to religion in the Islamic world and the response was to adopt the less Western-related term “Madinia” or

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“civic state.” See Rajeev Bhargava, Secularism and Its Critics (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 31–32. 22. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 368. 23. Ibid. 24. Clement Henry and Robert Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 18. 25. George Schultz, quoted in RAND, “The Case of the Soviet Union: The Dictator’s Dilemma,” October 19, 2010, http://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs _dissertations/RGSD127/sec2.html. 26. James A. Dorn, “Book Review: Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union, Scott Shane (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994),” in Cato Journal 16, no. 2 (Fall 1996). 27. Grzegorz Ekiert, Jan Kubik, and Miladda Anna Vachudova, “Democracy in the Post-Communist World: An Unending Quest,” East European Politics and Societies 21, no. 1 (2007), p. 11. 28. Ibid., p. 13. 29. International Crisis Group, “Popular Protest in North Africa and the Middle East,” pt. 1, “Egypt Victorious?” (Brussels, February 24, 2011), p. iii. 30. Neol Brehony, Yemen: The Story of a Failed State in South Arabia (London: Tauris, 2011), p. 212. 31. International Crisis Group, “Popular Protest in North Africa and the Middle East,” pt. 4, “The Syrian People’s Slow-Motion Revolution” (Brussels, June 6, 2011). 32. Ibid. p. 13. 33. International Crisis Group, “Popular Protest in North Africa and the Middle East,” pt. 5, “Making Sense of Libya” (Brussels, June 6, 2011); Ali Chibani, “How Gadafy Used Libya’s Tribes,” Le Monde Diplomatique (English ed.), February 17, 2012, http://mondediplo.com/2011/03/08libya. 34. The International Crisis Group met school inspectors who were forced to drive taxis in the afternoon and evening in order to survive. See International Crisis Group, “Popular Protest in North Africa and the Middle East,” pt. 5, Waniss Otman and Erling Karlberg, “Making Sense of Libya,” p. 2, n. 5. 35. Sheri Berman, “Islamism, Revolution, and Civil Society,” Perspectives on Politics 1 (2003), p. 261. 36. I am borrowing the term from Olexiy Haran, “From Viktor to Viktor: Democracy and Authoritarianism in Ukraine,” Demokratizatsiya 19, no. 2 (2011), p. 93. 37. Lesch, The Sudan, p. 61.

9 Egypt’s Social Forces, the State, and the Middle East Order Sean F. McMahon

The events in Egypt at the end of January and the beginning of February 2011 were energizing and exhausting, inspiring and disappointing, full of political promise and ultimately emptied. The standard historiography goes something as follows. Protests started on Tuesday, January 25, 2011. The “Day of Anger” was chosen to coincide with Egypt’s Police Day. Three days later, during the Friday “Day of Rage,” portions of Cairo were literally ablaze. Pitched battles between protesters and the state’s repressive apparatuses raged for hours along the Nile Corniche and on the October 6 and Kasr el-Nil bridges. In the evening, the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) were set ablaze and the army was deployed. Shortly thereafter, the police disappeared and communities organized popular defense committees. Late the following evening, President Hosni Mubarak addressed the country and appointed longtime chief of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Omar Suleiman, as vice president. On February 1, Mubarak announced that he would not stand in the presidential elections scheduled for late 2011, but refused to step down. The next day, pitched battles raged in a besieged Tahrir Square. Thugs recruited by the NDP attacked with guns, knives, and Molotov cocktails, and some even charged the protesters’ lines with horses and camels. For the next week, Tahrir Square remained occupied and the Mubarak regime machinated in an attempt to retain political power. Finally, on February 11, Mubarak announced he was stepping down and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took power.1

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This chapter explores the regional implications of Egypt’s tumult using a neo-Gramscian approach. Neo-Gramscian analysis penetrates neorealism’s billiard-ball model of the state and “makes change a central feature of the understanding of international relations.”2 It is the ideal approach to answer the question: How will the events of January 25, 2011, affect Egypt’s regional relations? I argue that Egypt’s “revolution” is having reactionary effects on the role Egypt plays in the Middle East regional order. Phrased differently, I argue that the events of late January and early February 2011 are making Egypt an increasingly satisfied, status quo–oriented power in the Middle East. As a result, Egypt has and will increasingly align its policies with those of the United States, the prominent external power in the region, and Saudi Arabia and Israel, the dominant regional status quo powers. I develop my argument in four stages. First, I outline my neoGramscian framework. Second, I show that the January 25 events reconfigured relations between Egypt’s social forces in favor of reactionary elements; what started as a movement with revolutionary potential was taken over by reactionary social forces in the Egyptian state/society complex and turned to serve their interests. Third, I demonstrate that the form of the Egyptian state has not fundamentally changed as a result of the events of January 25. The Egyptian “revolution” elevated reactionary, status quo–oriented social forces, namely the military and political Islamists, to positions of dominance. Fourth and finally, I explain the effects of this reconfiguration on Egyptian foreign policy. Simply put, the elevation of these social forces begets a reactionary state, and a reactionary state begets status quo–oriented international and regional behavior. Status quo–oriented behavior is, among other things, aligning Egypt more closely with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

Neo-Gramscian Analysis Production of material life takes ontological priority in neo-Gramscian analysis.3 Robert Cox is clear: “Production creates the material basis for all forms of social existence, and the way in which human efforts are combined in the productive processes affects all other aspects of social life, including the polity.”4 He continues: “To assert the centrality of

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production . . . leads directly to the matter of social classes.” 5 A conscious class, a class aware of shared “common experiences of life and work, common perceptions of the cleavages in society . . . , and most likely expressing this sense of community in collective action and shared aspirations,” is a social force.6 Like commodities, social forces are produced; different modes of production produce different social relations (the feudal mode of production positioned people as lords or peasants; the capitalist mode positions people as bourgeoisie or proletariat) and different social forces. The resolutions of power struggles between social forces mark the (dis)continuities of history. According to neo-Gramscian analysis, different configurations of social forces create different forms of states. These are not, however, the states of the dominant approaches to international relations. They are not undifferentiated, unitary actors—John Mearsheimer’s “billiard balls”—nor are they relatively constrained by civil society. NeoGramscian analysis does not see some relational balance between civil society and the state—a strong civil society making for a weak state, or a weak civil society making for a strong state. Neo-Gramscian analysis has a different ontology: “in actual reality civil society and the State are one in the same” and “one might say that State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion.” 7 The apparatuses of government as well as the “private” apparatuses of society, religious institutions, schools, and the media together constitute the state/society complex. When political rule is established by the state, with its coercive power over civil society, the order is nonhegemonic. When, on the other hand, the rule of a dominant social force is grounded in civil society, the order is hegemonic. Hegemony is a particular political configuration of social forces. Consent, as opposed to coercion, is the defining element of hegemony. To the extent that subordinate social forces consent to being ruled, because of religious belief, ideology, the provision of concessions by dominant forces, or the mediating of power through institutions, the order is hegemonic. When force is the primary instrument of rule over subordinate social forces, the order is one of dominance, not hegemony.8 In the neo-Gramscian lexicon, “the term ‘hegemony’ is reserved for a consensual order and ‘dominance’ refers only to a preponderance of material power.”9 Two points bear making. First, hegemony exists at both the state and international levels. In fact, hegemony at the global level follows

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from hegemony at the state level. Hegemony is achieved by social forces in one state and is then expanded outward onto the world scale.10 For neo-Gramscians, bourgeois hegemony at the global level is not reducible to relations of dominance between states rooted in material power. It is a composite of ideologies such as free trade, norms of sovereignty and nonintervention, and international institutions such as the United Nations and International Monetary Fund (IMF). One regulative outcome of global hegemony is restriction of the permissible forms of states. A form of state at odds with the prevailing structure of accumulation will be opposed by the hegemonic order. Second, not all societies are hegemonies, and the absence of hegemony at the state level has different effects depending on the state’s location in global production processes. “Fascism is an effect of hegemonic absence” in late-developing core countries.11 In lieu of consent, the dominant but not hegemonic bourgeoisie in these states relies on the coercive apparatuses of the state to organize production and discipline subordinate social forces. Italy in the 1920s was an example of just such a state. Many societies in the postcolonial periphery are nonhegemonic. Such forms of state are not sustained by social forces. The state, as an agent, extracts rents from foreign capital in exchange for access to the national economy, expands the state sector, increases foreign borrowing, creates state-sponsored organizations including labor unions and syndicates, and remains dependent in the global system of accumulation. Such states begin as populist regimes and are replaced by military-bureaucratic regimes. Egypt is just such a nonhegemonic society. Two other Gramscian notions relate to the absence of hegemony at the state level: passive revolution and caesarism. Passive revolution is a condition of stalemate between social forces. A social force may emerge dominant, but it does not establish itself as hegemonic over a society that consents to being led. These societies, as Cox explains, are “caught up in a dialectic of revolution-restoration.” 12 Caesarism is a means of resolving the deadlock between social forces in a nonhegemonic society: “a strong man intervenes to resolve the stalemate between equal and opposed social forces.” 13 According to Cox, caesarism is “the instrumentality of a ‘passive revolution,’ i.e., of an attempt to introduce aspects of revolutionary change while maintaining a balance of social forces in which those favoring restoration of the old order remain firmly entrenched.”14 Caesarism is a temporary solution for a crisis of hegemony.

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Social Forces in Egypt Egypt, in January 2011, was in a crisis of hegemony. The caesar of the then fifty-nine-year-old passive revolution was an octogenarian supported by a power structure comprising the military and, increasingly, the social force of monopoly capital. Putting aside the military momentarily, President Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal had become increasingly powerful within the ruling NDP since his appointment to the party’s general secretariat in 2000. Gamal Mubarak was a neoliberal and he created, through IMF-inspired privatization schemes (both of national industries and of land), and integrated into the NDP, monopolist capitalists—such as Ahmed Ezz, the steel monopolist and the NDP’s secretary for organizational affairs, and Rashid Mohamed Rashid, who before becoming minister of trade and industry established a food empire and partnered with Unilever. This nonhegemonic class relied heavily on the state’s coercive mechanisms to control and discipline subordinate social forces. Shortly after the 1952 coup, Gamal Abdul Nasser created the Department of General Investigations and tasked it with controlling and suppressing labor activism. Over the span of three different caesars, the state developed paramilitary forces attached to the Ministry of Interior—the State Security Investigations Services—that worked tirelessly against, among other things, the interests of Egyptian labor. Also in nonhegemonic fashion, the dominant class penetrated civil society with state-controlled organizations such as the Egyptian Trade Union Federation. The coup of 1952 initiated a long period of passive revolution guided by four caesars based in different configurations of social forces and deploying different repressive and civil society instruments. In early 2011, Egypt again experienced the dialectic of passive revolution through which restoration came to predominate, but based on a new configuration of social forces. The April 6 Movement is credited with being the catalyst for the events of January 25, 2011. The movement emerged, and took its name, in 2008, when it supported the April 6 workers’ strike in Mahalla alKubra. At that time, the movement’s platform included addressing “poverty, unemployment, social justice and fighting corruption.” 15 It focused on the social question. In some regards, the April 6 Movement was late in making connections with labor actions in Egypt. There were strikes at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra in December 2006 and September 2007, and these in turn prompted

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other workers’ actions. This “lateness” in no way diminishes the strong connection between labor and the events of January 25, however. The connection was so strong, in fact, that the social question was the clarion call of the “Day of Rage” as protesters demanded “Bread, Freedom, and Social Justice.” The relevance of Nietzsche’s insights to the neo-Gramscian framework becomes important here. First, says Nietzsche: Whatever exists, having somehow come into being, is again and again reinterpreted to new ends, taken over, transformed, and redirected by some power superior to it; all events in the organic world are a subduing, a becoming master, and all subduing and becoming master involves a fresh interpretation, and adaptation through which any previous “meaning” and “purpose” are necessarily obscured or even obliterated.16

Second is Nietzsche’s observation that language is an instrument of power, and a change in language is indicative of a change in power relations. What started on January 25 as a workers’ movement with genuine revolutionary potential was taken over. The evidence that it was taken over lies in the fact that the social question was discursively marginalized in favor of a demand for removal of the Mubarak regime. In other words, while Egyptians have long worried that their “revolution” might be usurped, they have missed the fact that its revolutionary potential was taken over before Mubarak was deposed, when the primary demand became his removal. The initial Tuesday “Day of Anger” was organized by groups with connections to the Egyptian working class, notably the April 6 Movement. The Muslim Brotherhood, which “never had a strong base in the industrial working class” and even helped break strikes in the past,17 did not heed the call to participate. The next day, however, after the scale of the protests demonstrated the support they had in Egyptian society, the Muslim Brotherhood opportunistically announced that it would participate in the Friday “Day of Rage.” The Brotherhood joined the protests on January 28 and five days later was instrumental in ending the February 2 Battle of the Camel in Tahrir Square. The Brotherhood’s involvement in the resistance is notable for two reasons: it changed the nature of the protesters’ demands, and it enabled the Egyptian army to intervene while recognizing the legitimacy of the protesters’ demands. First, dispensing with religiosity, Samir Amin explains that on

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the terrain of real social issues political Islam aligns itself with the camp of dependent capitalism and dominant imperialism. It defends the principle of the sacred character of property and legitimized inequality and all the requirements of capitalist reproduction. The support by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian parliament for the recent reactionary laws that reinforce the rights of property owners to the detriment of the rights of tenant farmers (the majority of the small peasantry) is but one example among hundreds of others.18

He continues: “The local comprador bourgeoisies, the nouveaux riches, beneficiaries of current imperialist globalization, generously support political Islam,”19 and “political Islam was constructed by the systematic action of imperialism, supported, of course, by obscurantist reactionary forces and subservient comprador classes.”20 The Muslim Brotherhood, understood in terms of social forces, is reactionary. It is the competitive sector of the Egyptian structure of accumulation—national capital, the petty bourgeoisie, in contrast to the monopoly sector of the structure. According to Joel Beinin, “the society’s activities are funded largely by its members in the Islamist business class” (people like Mohammed Khairat el-Shater) and the “leadership is linked to old money and the educated middle classes.”21 The constituency of the Brotherhood is primarily urban poor, but its members are those largely excluded from the dominant social force of monopoly capital that increasingly surrounded the Mubarak regime and controlled the state. The privileges enjoyed by monopolist capitalists like Ezz meant restrictions and reduced opportunities to accumulate for the Brotherhood’s entrepreneurs.22 As a reactionary social force of competitive capitalism, the Brotherhood had an interest in ending the dominance of monopoly capital in the Egyptian structure of accumulation—competitive capital could participate in redistributed, formerly monopolized markets and gain access to highly politicized credit necessary to compete against the influx of Asian-produced goods. This had to be done, however, in a manner that did not raise the social question and that perpetuated the capitalist structure of accumulation. The group succeeded in accomplishing exactly these ends. On February 6, opposition groups, including the April 6 Movement, the Popular Campaign to Support el-Baradei, and the Muslim Brotherhood, formed a coalition called the Unified Leadership of the Youth of the Rage Revolution. The Unified Leadership had seven demands: “the resignation of Mubarak, the immediate lifting of emergency law, release of all political prisoners, the dis-

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solution of both the upper and lower chambers of parliament, the formation of a national unity government to manage the transitional period, investigation by the judiciary of the abuses of the security forces during the revolution, and protection of the protestors by the military.”23 Conspicuously absent from this list was any mention of the social question. Between January 25, when the Brotherhood was not participating, and February 6, when it was actively participating and coordinating, the social question of poverty went from being prioritized—“Bread, Freedom, and Social Justice”—to being completely silenced—“People demand removal of the regime.” Second, the Egyptian military deployed on the night of January 28. It did not use violence against the protesters, but rather claimed to be protecting the people. The armed forces also tacitly acknowledged the legitimacy of the opposition’s demands in telling Mubarak “that he had to negotiate with the protestors.”24 This tacit communication to the president was made explicit and public by the military on January 31, when it announced that the armed forces were aware of the legitimacy of the protesters’ demands. The military was able to recognize the legitimacy of the protesters’ demands precisely because the Brotherhood had actively involved itself three days earlier. The Brotherhood’s involvement ensured, for the military, the perpetuation of Egypt’s dependent location in the global structure of capitalist accumulation. For the military, the dominant, nonhegemonic social force of monopoly capital could be replaced with a social force drawn from the competitive sector, and the structure of accumulation would remain intact because the interests of reactionary competitive capital had successfully silenced the social question. On January 29, Mubarak was assured of the military’s loyalty “and that [it] would stay neutral while he dealt with the situation.” 25 Gramsci makes a crucial point on the issue of neutrality of the military: “it is not true that armies are constitutionally barred from making politics; the army’s duty is precisely to defend the constitution—in other words the legal form of the State together with its related institutions. Hence so-called neutrality only means support for the reactionary side.” 26 Those millions of Egyptians who welcomed the tanks into Tahrir Square, shook hands with and hugged soldiers, and chanted “The people and army are one hand!” were celebrating the institution most opposed to genuine, thoroughgoing change in the state/society complex. The preceding section begs a question: Why would the reactionary military have an interest in displacing the nonhegemonic social force of

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monopoly capital and perpetuating the structure of accumulation? The first interest stands alone. The military as an institution wanted to continue to collect “geopolitically motivated rent transfers,” 27 including military financing, arms procurement, and training. The second and third reasons are interrelated. According to Ulrich Wurzel, “the relative importance of the military, compared to the internal security forces, seems to have declined dramatically since the times of Nasser and Sadat.”28 After the failure of the repressive apparatuses to quell the protests, and their subsequent withdrawal from Egypt’s streets, the military was given the opportunity to reverse its relative decline while concomitantly repositioning itself to better service its material interests. In an age of austerity, the Egyptian military profits from such varied economic activities as production of cement and agriculture, the bottling of water, and land reclamation. These interests led the military to oppose Gamal Mubarak’s presidential aspirations, as well as his neoliberal privatization program. According to Philipp Droz-Vincent, “The military resisted Gamal Mubarak’s attempts to take a political role in 1999–2000 when speculations mounted that he might lead a new party, alMustaqbal.”29 The military’s vested economic interests prompted Hosni Mubarak to amend the constitution in 2005 as a way “to neutralize the military’s reluctance to his son’s candidacy [for president].” 30 It was those same interests that induced the military’s representative in government to halt, against the wishes of the Mubarak regime, the sale of banks and other major national institutions that were being offered up for privatization and to stop the awarding of a contract for a railway linking Cairo and the Tenth of Ramadan City to a company owned by close associates of the regime.31 The Egyptian military has monopolist capitalist interests, some of which came into conflict with the social force of monopoly capital aligned with the state’s political apparatus. The events of January 25 enabled the military to displace other monopoly capitalist interests in the Egyptian structure of accumulation while simultaneously enlisting a junior partner from the competitive sector that would not seek to alter the overall structure. Ultimately, the February 2 Battle of the Camel in Tahrir Square was a microcosm of the struggle to reconfigure the Egyptian state/society complex: the interests of monopoly capital battled the interests of competitive capital, devoid of any concerns for the social question, with the military positioned to continue to accrue benefits regardless of which social force emerged victorious. Ultimately, Mubarak resigned, the reactionary forces of the Muslim Brotherhood and the military emerged dominant, and the form of the Egyptian state persisted.

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Persisting Form of State The events of January 25, 2011, reconfigured social forces in Egypt in favor of reactionary elements, specifically the military and domestic, competitive capital. Through these events, nonhegemonic social forces ensured restoration predominated in the dialectic of passive revolution. Evidence of the persistence of the Egyptian form of state abounds. The SCAF has enacted policies and articulated statements that are clearly in the interests of competitive capital. On the most general level, the SCAF has used the bourgeois instruments of repression, nationalist rhetoric, and the discourse of economic growth to govern. In the post-Mubarak period, the army repeatedly attacked protesters in and around Tahrir Square with live ammunition, tear gas, batons, and vehicles. The SCAF also continued to keep political prisoners and practice torture.32 In addition to the patriotic fervor that defined the occupation of Tahrir Square and has been incubated in the wake of Mubarak’s departure, “the SCAF has called on striking workers to go back to work, claiming that the continuation of protests could lead to economic catastrophe. . . . [Newspapers are] calling on strikers to put the ‘national interest’ ahead of their economic demands.”33 Nationalism is an instrument deployed by capital to overcome class antagonisms. The doctrine of a harmony of interests is a “moral device invoked . . . by privileged groups in order to justify and maintain their dominant position.”34 The SCAF and domestic, competitive capital have positioned their interests as the interests of all Egyptians and, furthermore, are representing those who do not subscribe to their construction as troublemakers. Paradoxically, the discourses of nationalism and harmony of interests are casting workers who are seeking an answer to the social question as “counterrevolutionaries.”35 Statements made by the SCAF also belie the state’s form. The military’s second statement affirmed “the need for work to continue at the agencies of the state, and for the restoration of normalcy in order to preserve the interest and properties of our great nation.” 36 Similarly, the fourth statement instructed that “all agencies of the state, and the private sector must play their noble and patriotic role to drive the economy forward, and the people must fulfill their responsibility towards that goal.” 37 The SCAF has encouraged a return to economic “normalcy” and growth. This is what Charles Maier calls “the great conservative idea.” The reactionary forces now dominant in Egypt have posited a return to receiving rent from tourists and growth as surrogates for redis-

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tribution.38 Pursuing growth rather than redistribution clearly marks the reactionary class bias of the Egyptian state. Also at the state level, but more specifically, the SCAF and its transitional government have issued decrees and laws targeting the working class. On March 23, 2011, the cabinet “approved a decree-law that criminalize[d] strikes, protests, demonstrations and sit-ins that interrupt private or state owned business or affect the economy in anyway.” 39 Even more pointedly, the SCAF and its government banned class-based parties with the new Law on Political Parties. Despite the democratic rhetoric, under this law “the establishment of class-based parties is strictly prohibited.”40 The conditions of party formation are clear: “The principles, programs, activities, or means of selecting leaders and members must not be founded on the basis of religion, class, geography, or on the basis of race, language, religion or creed.”41 The law’s conditions for notification of the formation of a political party extend capital’s dominance further: “Notifications must include the notarized signatures of at least 5000 of its members, which originate from at least 10 governorates with at least 300 members in each of the governorates,” and “the political party must publish the names of its founding members in two widely circulated daily newspapers.”42 These conditions pose considerable organizational and material hurdles for Egyptian labor. It is important to note that a Muslim Brotherhood politician worked with the SCAF and served on the committee that drafted amendments to the constitution. The amendments left intact the injunction on political activity “with a religious frame of reference.” The Law on Political Parties includes a similar prohibition on religiously based parties. While the representatives of domestic competitive capital did not, or could not, eliminate this injunction, the scope of prohibitions has been expanded by the SCAF–competitive capital configuration to include workingclass representation. Religious parties continue to be banned, but so too now are class-based parties. Ongoing strikes, the establishment of workers’ parties in violation of the law, and state policies are all evidence of the continuing capitalist form of the Egyptian state. Workers have continued to strike and organize since Mubarak left office because their interests were betrayed by political demands that did not address issues surrounding employment and poverty. While the labor movement was central to the start of the January 25 events, its interests are not being served by the SCAF and the national bourgeoisie collaborators who have taken possession of the “revolution.” This restoration and its policies, in turn, are evidence of the nonhegemonic condition of Egypt. Legislation such as the Law

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on Political Parties is not necessary in state/society complexes in which the bourgeoisie is hegemonic because subordinate social forces can be counted on to consent to and perpetuate bourgeois rule. It is the absence of hegemony, the prospect that the interests of capital might be challenged by subordinate social forces that do not consent to being ruled, that necessitates legislation prohibiting working-class parties. There is evidence, too, at the regional and global levels, that the reconfiguration of Egyptian social forces has not fundamentally altered the form of the state. It is also clear that these social forces are producing a state that is very acceptable, maybe even more acceptable than was the previous iteration, to global hegemony. The SCAF was adamant, expressing in both its fourth and fifth statements its commitment to all of Egypt’s international treaties. While comprehensive, these reaffirmations clearly spoke specifically to the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel. Revolutionary state forms do not reaffirm the institutions of regional order and global hegemony. On the contrary, revolutionary state forms challenge such institutions. In 1917, the revolutionary Soviet Union violated the institution of diplomacy by releasing the secret negotiations the deposed czar had had with the other European powers. Similarly, the revolutionary state of Iran violated the institution of extraterritoriality in 1979 when it condoned the violation of the US embassy in Tehran. Status quo forms of state reaffirm international institutions. The manner in which global hegemony has received the reconfigured Egyptian state provides further evidence that the form of the state has not changed fundamentally. Shortly after the SCAF took power, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced that the United States was reprogramming $150 million for Egypt to aid the political transition.43 A month later, Clinton announced a package of financial aid: “$90 million in near-term economic assistance, $80 million towards insuring letters of credit, plus a new U.S.-Egypt Enterprise Fund and an increase in special duty-free investment zones.”44 This was in addition to the $1.3 billion the United States transfers to the Egyptian military annually.45 In her remarks with then–Egyptian foreign minister Nabil al-Arabi, Secretary Clinton also noted: I brought with me the head of our Overseas Private Investment Corporation [OPIC], Elizabeth Littlefield, to discuss the ways that we could support this effort. And we want to see a very specific commitment by OPIC and by [the] U.S. Export-Import Bank to provide letters of credit, to encourage private sector investments, because the long-

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term economic growth of Egypt depends not on government jobs but on private sector jobs.46

OPIC “mobilizes private capital to help solve critical world challenges and in doing so, advances U.S. foreign policy.” 47 Secretary Clinton, the highest-ranking US official to visit Egypt since January 25, 2011, mobilized the discourse of growth (“private sector jobs” rather than wealth redistribution) and enlisted an organization whose function is to help US capital further penetrate peripheral economies, so as to ensure the continuation of bourgeois hegemony in the United States. Global hegemony, or more specifically parties central to the hegemonic order, sever ties with revolutionary state forms. The global hegemonic order does not increase aid to, secure credit for, and encourage private investment in forms of states it does not find permissible. Moreover, it is only when state forms are found to be more acceptable to global hegemony that their resources are increased. The current Egyptian form of state is even more appealing to global hegemony than was the military-monopoly capital configuration that predominated under the last decade of Mubarak’s rule. The events of January 25 reconfigured the relations between social forces in Egypt in favor of reactionary elements. This reconfiguration, which effectively replaced a social force of monopolist capital with one of competitive capital, meant the persistence of the form of state. The apparatuses and discourses mobilized by, the decrees and laws issued by, and the statements articulated by the state clearly indicate that its form did not fundamentally change. The persistence of the form of state, now with the trappings of bourgeois democracy, has made it even more permissible to global hegemony.

Egypt in the Middle East Order My argument is that the events of January 25, 2011, are making Egypt an increasingly satisfied, status quo power in the Middle East, and as such it is more closely aligning itself with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. While this argument runs contrary to political analysis and regime statements,48 there already exists a considerable corpus of evidence to support it. Further to the increase in US aid to Egypt outlined by Secretary Clinton in March 2011, President Barack Obama gave clear indication

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of Egypt’s increasingly close alignment with the United States, and better integration into the global hegemony, in his remarks on the Middle East and North Africa in May 2011. In addition to rehashing the Congressional Enterprise Fund and OPIC investments raised by Clinton, Obama said his administration had “asked the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to present a plan for next week’s G8 summit for what needs to be done to stabilize the economies of Tunisia and Egypt.”49 He also announced that he would “relieve a democratic Egypt of up to $1 billion in debt, and work with our Egyptian partners to invest these resources to foster growth and entrepreneurship. We will help Egypt regain access to markets by guaranteeing $1 billion in borrowing that is needed to finance infrastructure and job creation.” A debtor state has a modicum of its debt load eliminated and is extended credit when it more closely aligns its policies with its creditor’s policies. Obama’s remarks were not limited to Egyptian-US relations. They were also a performance of global hegemony. Obama was explicit that with aid should come trade: “The goal must be a model in which protectionism gives way to openness.” To this end he announced that the United States would launch a comprehensive Trade and Investment Partnership Initiative in the Middle East and North Africa. . . . So we will work with the EU to facilitate more trade within the region, build on existing agreements to promote integration with U.S. and European markets, and open the door for those countries who adopt high standards of reform and trade liberalization to construct a regional trade arrangement.

Egypt, like many states in the region, has been less neoliberalized than other states in the postcolonial South. Citing World Bank studies, Clement Henry explains that “at the turn of the millennium the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] countries seemed even less integrated, with respect to trade, in the world economy than in the early 1980s”; between 1981 and 2000, “Egypt cut back its trade by more than half, from 82 to 39 per cent of GDP [gross domestic product]”; in 2000, over 10 percent of Egypt’s revenues came from tariffs; and overall, Egypt attracted relatively little private investment capital.50 The reconfiguration of social forces in 2011 presented global hegemony with a longsought opportunity to better penetrate the Egyptian structure of accumulation while concomitantly ensuring the structure’s better integration into the processes and institutions of global hegemony. The elimination of the monopoly capital sector allows for the deeper and broader pene-

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tration of transnational capital through, among other things, increased transparency and the removal of a layer notorious for extracting rents in exchange for market access. Alaa Mubarak, the president’s son, was “infamous for demanding a large cut in any enterprise an investor propose[d] to operate in Egypt.”51 Under the cover of reform, Obama deployed the institutions of global hegemony—the World Bank and IMF—to realize in Egypt the ideology of global hegemony (neoliberal free trade and competitiveness), thereby restructuring and internationalizing the state in order to better instrumentalize it as “a transmission belt” for practices and ideas from the world economy to the domestic economy.52 Under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt was squarely aligned with Saudi Arabia. Egypt was such an important ally to the Saudis, in fact, that only days after the protests started, “King Abdullah told President Obama not to humiliate Mr. Mubarak and warned that he would step in to bankroll Egypt if the US withdrew its aid programme, worth $1.5 billion annually.”53 Concomitant with these Saudi interests, Saudi capital invested heavily in Egypt, and, while the number of Egyptian migrant laborers has fallen since the 1970s and 1980s, Saudi Arabia also employed a large Egyptian migrant labor force. Egypt’s interests with Saudi Arabia were not changed by the reconfiguration of social forces in Egypt. If anything, the extant interests increased in importance with the coming to dominance of the military and domestic competitive capital. In keeping with these interests, post-Mubarak Egypt has perpetuated the close alignment with Saudi policy. In April 2011, as protests raged in Manama, then–foreign minister al-Arabi, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia through the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), accused Iran of trying to destabilize Bahrain. Al-Arabi declared that “the stability and Arabhood of the Arab Gulf countries is a red line against which Egypt rejects any trespass.”54 He went on to support Saudi intervention in Bahrain under cover of the GCC, saying that the Gulf countries had “succeeded in moving in a coordinated fashion to preserve the security of Bahrain, giving a practical application to the concept of collective security in the Gulf region.”55 Egypt remains an ardent supporter of Saudi hegemony in the Gulf and unwaveringly opposed to an extension of Iranian influence in the region. The events of January 25 brought reactionary forces to the fore in Egypt, and these reactionary forces, in turn, allowed the state to praise what otherwise would have been the paradoxical Saudi crushing

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of prodemocracy activists in Bahrain. Egypt’s reactionary forces have lined up with Saudi reactionary forces. Finally, in late April 2011, days after the successful negotiation of a Palestinian reconciliation agreement, al-Arabi announced that Egypt would permanently open the Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip.56 Facilitation of the reconciliation agreement and the opening of the border crossing have been cited as marked changes in Egyptian policy visà-vis the Palestinians and Israel. This overstates the matter. These steps are only changes in the modality of Egyptian policy, not a change in the policy itself. Underneath Egypt’s border with the occupied Gaza Strip lies a warren through which Palestinians in Gaza receive almost all goods. Because the tunnels were illegal under Mubarak, all of this illicit traffic was unregulated. Egypt has agreed to open the Rafah crossing so as to better control and manage movement between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. While being able to package it rhetorically—al-Arabi called Egypt’s complicity in Israel’s medieval siege “shameful”57—Egypt agreed to open the Rafah crossing in order to make movement across its border visible and subject to surveillance and administration. The announcement of the opening of the Rafah crossing amounts to a differential exercising of Egypt’s sovereign territorial prerogatives. Before the events of January 25, Egypt controlled the traffic by hiding it underground. After the events of January 25, Egypt is seeking to better regulate the traffic by making it visible. The traffic is still regulated by Egypt, but in a more exacting, effective, and efficient manner. This change in the modality of Egyptian policy vis-à-vis Palestinians and Israel makes sense, given the military-appointed foreign minister responsible for the decision, and given the emergence into dominance of the social force of domestic competitive capital. Al-Arabi was a member of the Egyptian team that negotiated the 1978 Camp David Accords with Israel. Again, despite the agreement’s rhetorical support of Palestinians, it was an exercise in ensuring the territorial integrity of Egypt. Egypt defected from the Arab multilateral position, and gave Israel a free hand in Palestine and Lebanon, in exchange for Israel’s full evacuation of the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt’s newly dominant, competitive capital reinforces the military’s/minister’s sovereign concern with territorial integrity. According to Michael Barnett, “the lower and middle classes are accepting of Arabism’s goals, whereas the upper classes are more conservative and supportive of the territorial status quo.”58 While myriad social forces participated in the struggle against the Mubarak regime and its monopolist capital collaborators, the reac-

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tionary social forces that came to predominate in the wake of January 25, the military and domestic competitive capital, are both inclined to maintain the territorial status quo in the region. If the Rafah border crossing is permanently opened, it will be opened in the service of Egypt’s territorial integrity, not out of commiseration with Palestinians or because of a realignment of policy away from Israel, which, like Saudi Arabia, wanted to see Mubarak’s military-monopolist capital configuration perpetuated.59 One Israeli commentator went so far as to characterize Mubarak’s ouster as a “nightmare.”60 Israel’s worries were misplaced. The Egypt of the military and domestic, competitive capital configuration aligned itself with Israel when it reaffirmed the Camp David Accords in February 2011. It aligned itself again, or more closely, in mid-May when it took to disciplining Egyptians. As a means of commemorating the sixty-third anniversary of al-Nakba (the “Day of Catastrophe”) and demanding the realization of the Palestinian right of return, Egyptian activists, including the April 6 Movement, organized a rally in Tahrir Square and a subsequent march to Gaza. Instructively, the SCAF urged the activists to cancel the events so as “to prevent any repercussions that might result from this march.”61 Equally instructive, while the Muslim Brotherhood supported the rally, the group did not favor the march on Gaza.62 When the march went ahead, the SCAF blocked access to the Sinai Peninsula by closing the “Peace Bridge” to all but residents of the peninsula. The reactionary social forces dominant in Egypt did not want the territorial status quo altered, or breached in the case of the march to Gaza. The reconfiguration in Egypt brought to dominance reactionary social forces with interests in common with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel that are protective of Egypt’s territorial integrity and supportive of the region’s territorial status quo. As a result, postMubarak Egyptian policy has been closely aligned with US, Saudi, and Israeli regional policy. Egypt’s solidarity with Palestinians is much more imagined than real. In reality, the events of January 2011 have made Egypt even more of a bulwark of the regional order.

Conclusion In early 2011, Egypt’s crisis of hegemony came to a head. The dominant configuration of social forces was no longer able to coerce Egyptians into accepting its rule. Revolution briefly predominated in the dialectic of passive revolution as demands for social justice were articulated. The

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involvement of reactionary social forces, particularly those associated with the competitive capitalist sector, shifted the dialectic to restoration by reducing the demands to a single political one denuded of any concern for the social question, namely removal of the Mubarak regime. A configuration of the social forces of the military and domestic, competitive capital came to dominate the Egyptian state/society complex. While this produced no fundamental change to the form of the Egyptian state, the trappings of bourgeois democracy it has bestowed have made the “new” Egyptian state more acceptable than was its predecessor to global hegemony. The coming to domestic dominance of reactionary social forces has, in turn, made Egyptian foreign policy reactionary. Egypt is an increasingly satisfied, status quo–oriented power in the Middle East. It is increasingly aligning itself with the United States and being supported by the global hegemony that finds the “new” state permissible. In the context of the Middle East order, shared interests, concerns regarding the integrity of borders, and predilections for the territorial status quo mean that Egyptian foreign policy is also closely aligned with that of Saudi Arabia and Israel. The events of January 25 provided cover for different social forces to pursue myriad interests through a single end. For different reasons, the Egyptian military, Egypt’s domestic, competitive capitalist sector, and the transnational capital of global hegemony all had interests in ousting Egypt’s monopoly capital sector. The military-monopoly capital configuration under Mubarak restricted the ability of the competitive sector to accumulate, particularly by exposing it to external competitive pressures, but it also militated against some external influences. The reconfiguration of social forces in Egypt, together with the attendant shattering of monopoly capital, means that the conflict of interests between domestic, competitive capital and global hegemony will become more acute. It is in this context that the results of Egypt’s presidential elections of 2012 must be understood.

Notes 1. The SCAF’s assumption of power was unconstitutional. According to Hesham el-Bastawisi, former vice president of the Cessation Court (Egypt’s highest appellate court) and presidential candidate: “the old constitution [of 1971] has no article saying that the military council can run the country or that the president has the right to delegate his authority to the military council.” Noha el-Hennawy, “Q&A: Reformist Judge Hesham el-Bastawisi on the

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Revolution, Constitution, and Future of Egypt,” al-Masry al-Youm, March 2, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/336534. 2. Timothy Sinclair, “Beyond International Relations Theory: Robert W. Cox and Approaches to World Order,” in Robert Cox and Timothy Sinclair, eds., Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 3. 3. Ibid., p. 8. 4. Robert Cox, Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 1. 5. Ibid., p. 2. 6. Ibid., n. 407. In Hegelian fashion, the notion of “social force” unifies the objective and subjective. The objective, physical reality of people in production is given form by shared subjective ideas about their reality. 7. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York: International Publishers, 2008), pp. 160, 263. 8. Robert Cox, “Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations: An Essay in Method,” in Cox and Sinclair, Approaches to World Order, p. 127. 9. Robert Cox, “Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,” in Cox and Sinclair, Approaches to World Order, p. 120. 10. Cox, “Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations,” p. 137. 11. Cox, Production, Power, and World Order, p. 198. 12. Cox, “Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations,” p. 129. 13. Ibid. Gramsci himself was clear: “[a] Caesarist solution can exist even without a Caesar, without any great, ‘heroic’ and representative personality.” Hoare and Smith, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, p. 220. 14. Cox, Production, Power, and World Order, p. 192. 15. Esam al-Amin, “Meet Egypt’s Future Leaders,” Counterpunch, February 9, 2011, http://www.counterpunch.org/alamin02082011.html. 16. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1969), p. 77. 17. Joel Beinin, “Neo-Liberal Structural Adjustment, Political Demobilization, and Neo-Authoritarianism in Egypt,” in Laura Guazzone and Daniela Pioppi, eds., The Arab State and Neo-Liberal Globalization: The Restructuring of State Power in the Middle East (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2009), p. 39. 18. Samir Amin, “Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism,” Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine 59, no. 7 (December 2007), p. 2, emphasis added. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., p. 8. 21. Beinin, “Neo-Liberal Structural Adjustment,” pp. 33–34. As if to prove his class position, when el-Shater was nominated to be the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate in March 2012, he was variously described as the

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group’s “financier,” “a millionaire business tycoon,” and a businessman who, not surprisingly, “supported a market economy.” Further to this point, in April 2012, it was revealed that el-Shater was a large stakeholder in a to-be-launched Muslim Brotherhood–affiliated chain store intended to compete with the likes of Carrefour and Metro (el-Shater “registered his share under the name of his sonin-law after he announced his presidential run”). See David Kirkpatrick, “Islamist Group Breaks Pledge to Stay Out of Race in Egypt,” New York Times, March 31, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/world/middleeast /brotherhood-chooses-a-candidate-in-egypt.html?pagewanted=all; Adrian Blomfield, “Muslim Brotherhood Raises Fears Among Liberals as It Names Egypt’s Presidential Candidate,” The Telegraph, April 1, 2012, http://www.telegraph .co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/9179297/Muslim -Brotherhood-raises-fears-among-liberals-as-it-names-Egypt-presidential -candidate.html; Patrick Werr and Marwa Awad, “Exclusive: Egypt’s Islamist Candidate Says IMF Deal Unlikely,” Reuters, April 8, 2012, http://www .reuters.com/article/2012/04/08/us-egypt-economy-shater-idUSBRE8370 DI20120408; “Muslim Brotherhood to Launch Chain Store,” al-Masry al-Youm, April 14, 2012, http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/shater-launches-chain -store-econ1. 22. Ulrich G. Wurzel, “The Political Economy of Authoritarianism in Egypt: Insufficient Structural Reforms, Limited Outcomes, and a Lack of New Actors,” in Guazzone and Pioppi, The Arab State and Neo-Liberal Globalization, p. 121. 23. Al-Amin, “Meet Egypt’s Future Leaders.” 24. Esam al-Amin, “When Egypt’s Revolution Was at the Crossroads,” Counterpunch, March 9, 2011, http://www.counterpunch.org/amin03092011 .html. 25. Ibid. 26. Hoare and Smith, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, p. 212. 27. Wurzel, “The Political Economy of Authoritarianism in Egypt,” p. 120. 28. Ibid., p. 115. 29. Philipp Droz-Vincent, “The Security Sector in Egypt: Management, Coercion, and External Alliance Under the Dynamics of Change,” in Guazzone and Pioppi, The Arab State and Neo-Liberal Globalization, p. 244. 30. Ibid., p. 222. 31. Galal Nassar, “The Army’s Side of the Story,” al-Ahram Weekly, April 14–20, 2011, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1043/eg4.htm. 32. “The Military Is the Guardian of Dictatorship,” SocialistWorker.org, April 11, 2011, http://www.www.socialistworker.org/2011/04/11/the-guardian -of-dictatorship; Tamim Elyan, “Tahrir Protestors Say Sit-In Will Continue, Brawl with Army,” Daily News Egypt, April 11, 2011, http://thedailynews egypt.com/egypt/tahrir-protestors-say-sit-in-will-continue-brawl-with -army.html; “Army Officers in Torture Video Face Military Trials,” al-Ahram, September 19, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsContent/1/64/22899 /Egypt/Politics-/Army-officers-in-torture-video-face-military-trial.aspx; Human

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Rights Watch, “Egypt: Retry or Free 12,000 After Unfair Military Trials,” September 10, 2011, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/10/egypt-retry-or-free -12000-after-unfair-military-trials. 33. Mostafa Omar, “Egypt’s Spreading Strikes,” SocialistWorker.org, February 18, 2011, http://socialistworker.org/2011/02/18/egypts-spreading -strikes. 34. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 75. 35. Omar, “Egypt’s Spreading Strikes.” 36. “Statement of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (2),” Egypt State Information Service, February 11, 2011, http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/Story .aspx?sid=53693. 37. “Statement of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (4),” Egypt State Information Service, February 11, 2011, http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/Story .aspx?sid=53695. 38. Maier, quoted in Cox, Production, Power, and World Order, p. 223. 39. Lina el-Wardani, “Egypt Protests Against Anti-Protest Law,” al-Ahram, March 24, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/8484/Egypt /Politics-/Egypt-protests-against-antiprotest-law-.aspx. 40. Jano Charbel, “Labor Activists Organize Despite Legal Hurdles,” alMasry al-Youm, April 15, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node /401570. 41. Summary of the Main Features of the Amended Law on Political Parties,” Egypt State Information Service, March 29, 2011, http://www.sis.gov .eg/En/Story.aspx?sid=54576. 42. Ibid. 43. Andrew Quinn, “U.S. Pledges $150 Million to Help Egypt’s Transition,” Reuters, February 17, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article /2011/02/17/us-egypt-usa-aid-idUSTRE71G5OY20110217. 44. Elizabeth Arrott, “Clinton Promises Support, Money to New Egyptian Government,” VOANews.com, March 14, 2011, http://www.voanews.com /english/news/middle-east/Clinton-Promises-Support-Money-to-New-Egyptian -Government-118038774.html. 45. Droz-Vincent, “The Security Sector in Egypt,” p. 231. 46. “Clinton’s Remarks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Araby, March 2011,” Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/egypt/clintons -remarks-egyptian-foreign-minister-nabil-al-araby-march-2011/p24390. 47. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, “Overview,” http://www .opic.gov/about-us. 48. See Liz Sly and Muhammed Mansour, “New Egypt Foreign Minister Likely to Be Tougher on Israel,” Washington Post, March 6, 2011, http://www .washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/06/AR2011030603018 .html; Omar Halawa, “New Egyptian Foreign Policy Challenges Regional Alliances,” al-Masry al-Youm, April 20, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com /en/node/407610; Hassan Nafaa, “Egypt’s Changing Foreign Policy,” al-Masry al-Youm, May 3, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/422298; and

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“New Egyptian Minister Promises Shifts in Foreign Policy,” BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13178249. 49. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa,” May 19, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office /2011/05/19/remarks-president-middle-east-and-north-africa. 50. Clement M. Henry, “The Clash of Globalizations in the Middle East,” in Louise Fawcett, ed., International Relations of the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 111–115. 51. Beinin, “Neo-Liberal Structural Adjustment,” p. 31. 52. Robert Cox, “Toward a Posthegemonic Conceptualization of World Order: Reflections on the Relevancy of Ibn Khaldun,” in Cox and Sinclair, Approaches to World Order, p. 154. See also Cox, “Social Forces, States, and World Orders,” pp. 107–109. 53. Hugh Tomlinson, “Saudis Told Obama Not to Humiliate Mubarak,” The Times, February 10, 2011, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news. 54. “Egypt Says Arab Identity of Gulf a ‘Red Line,’” Google News, April 6, 2011, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iJCgzNR3i CTFnQrwyGSEfNx3KrNA. 55. Ibid. 56. In mid-May 2011, the crossing was open on only a limited basis for humanitarian cases. As of mid-2012, the crossing remained closed to Palestinian men under age forty. 57. “Egypt to Open Gaza Border Crossing,” Al Jazeera, April 29, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/2011429155947718117 .html. 58. Michael N. Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 275, n. 25. 59. Robert Fisk, “The Destiny of This Pageant Lies in the Kingdom of Oil,” The Independent, February 26, 2011, http://www.independent.co.uk /opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-destiny-of-this-pageant-lies-in-the -kingdom-of-oil-2226109.html. 60. Amos Harel, “Cairo Tremors Will Be Felt Here,” Haaretz, January 30, 2011, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/cairo-tremors-will-be-felt-here -1.340058. 61. “Egypt Urges Cancellation of Pro-Palestinian March to Gaza,” alMasry al-Youm, May 12, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node /434811. 62. Ibid.

10 Egypt’s Uncertain Transition Ivan Ivekovic

For many, the events in Egypt in January 2011 seemed spontaneous. In fact, the antecedents of these events were deeply rooted in the Egyptian polity’s colonial past, struggle for political emancipation, and postcolonial economic, social, and political developments. This chapter historicizes the events of January 2011 and speculates as to what the ongoing and uncertain political transition will mean for a post-Mubarak Egypt. First, the chapter locates the toppling of the Mubarak regime in the long trajectory of Egypt’s political economy. Second, it examines the different players involved in Egypt’s transition, including the army and the Islamic economic sector. Third and finally, it raises the question of how the contest for power in Egypt will be resolved.

Egypt’s Political Economy The Mubarak regime, which ruled Egypt for more than thirty years, can be situated, analytically, between two types of authoritarian systems— the authoritarian growth regime, with its “elite-dominated government that promotes economic growth but not welfare” and “rests on an alliance between local private capital, state enterprises, and transnational corporations,”1 and a regime based on the autocratic rule of a supreme leader, whose main aim is the enrichment of the elite that controls the state. In addition to its authoritarianism, Hosni Mubarak’s

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Egypt was a neoliberal developmental state-in-the-making as it was rapidly adapting to the dictates of economic globalization. A special place was reserved for the military elite and its industrialbusiness sector within this authoritarian structure. As was the case with his predecessors’ regimes, the military was the power behind the presidency of Mubarak. The National Democratic Party (NDP) and its government, including the rubber-stamp parliament, were the civilian pillars of the regime in charge of administering the country and managing the economy. The internal security apparatus, with its special forces and police, maintained the order and stability that enabled the system to function. The heads of the army, of the Ministry of Interior, and of the external intelligence services reported directly to the president. The president also nominated and dismissed provincial governors. The grand shaikh of Al Azhar University and the mufti were also his appointees. Mubarak was additionally the head of the NDP, meeting regularly with its leadership and issuing instructions. He was legally empowered to disband the parliament, dismiss the government and the NDP leadership, and rule by decree. However, the system did allow for the articulation of divergent interests, which resulted in the multiplication of civil society organizations, a relatively free press, and the circulation of critical and dissenting voices, within certain limits. Some avenues for controlled political participation were also offered, followed by periods of repression. Regular, strictly controlled elections at all levels of the state pyramid were held, as well as presidential plebiscites/elections. Focusing on Islamic networks that emerged on the periphery of this system, Carrie Wickham notes: Uneven political liberalization under Sadat and Mubarak created a political system with a hollow core and a dynamic periphery. Although contestation for power in Egypt’s formal political system remained highly controlled from above, outside the sphere of party politics, there emerged a vast network of Islamic institutions with de facto autonomy. . . . The Mubarak regime tolerated the emergence of new space on the periphery while retaining tight control over political contestation at the center.2

Temporary deals were made with loyal opposition parties, and even with formally illegal groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, only to be ignored afterward. Social peace with the poor was bought with subsidies for essential foodstuffs and energy, while wealthy elites were

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selectively co-opted into the power structure or given access to lucrative deals brokered by the state. Already co-opted elite groups were competing with each other for favors from the president, who arbitrated between his clients, keeping a balance between their divergent interests while always mindful not to permit the emergence of alternative power centers. As Jay Ulfelder correctly comments, “intra-elite bargaining dominates the politics of [such] personalistic regimes.”3 The regime’s essence was formed of a network of patrimonial relationships between the patriarch and his clients. In fact, arbitration between opposites—different factions of the bourgeoisie, state-run and private economic sectors, civilian and military state bureaucracy, interests of the workers and factory owners, wage laborers and farm holders, Muslims and Christian Copts—became Mubarak’s main source of legitimacy as he presented himself as a “just and impartial” ruler. Additionally, he was portrayed by his propaganda machinery as a pious but open-minded Muslim, reformer, and defender of Egyptian national sovereignty and Arab dignity, working relentlessly to improve the condition of his people. Ideology, which is usually the main instrument for the dissemination of legitimacy, was a cocktail of contradictory ideas and principles from which anyone could find something to which they might relate. Egypt’s current crisis follows not only from the authoritarianism and clientelism of the Mubarak regime. It also overlaps with the crisis of the economic models of development dominant during Mubarak’s rule. The “Arab socialist” model of development (in fact, a state capitalist welfare model), inaugurated by the Nasserist populist revolution, had already begun to erode by 1974, when Anwar Sadat launched his policy of economic opening (intifah). By 1991 the model had been completely eclipsed and its effects were being reversed. Instead of nationalizing the commanding heights of the Egyptian economy, the Mubarak regime, in coordination with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), started to privatize state-owned monopolies in accordance with the dictates of neoliberalism. At first the process proceeded haltingly, but then accelerated after 1999 and reached its zenith in 2004 with the appointment of the government of Ahmed Nazif. The Nazif government was aligned with and supported by Gamal Mubarak and his entrepreneurial cohorts. Nazif’s government proved more enthusiastic than its predecessors in following guidelines authored by the IMF in pursuing policies of economic reform and structural adjustment. After 2004, privatization of everything became possible, of

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entire businesses in both the industrial and service sectors, including even in education and health care.4 Individual businessmen and groups used their connections to the Nazif government to acquire political power and privileged positions in the domestic, often newly privatized markets, while ranking state and NDP officials used their positions to gain wealth. The continued efforts of Gamal’s business associates to further liberalize the economy ran counter to the interests of the NDP’s old guard in safeguarding the state’s role in the economy. Concomitantly, privatization was anathema to the army elite, sitting on top of a huge military industrial and business complex. This was one of the reasons the military abstained from publicly supporting the dynastic project of the Mubarak family. Egypt’s move away from the state capitalist welfare model of development and toward the neoliberal model produced impressive growth rates in the economy. Over the entirety of Mubarak’s rule, the economy saw greater than fourfold growth, one of the best results among developing countries. More recently, once the processes of privatization and liberalization were in full swing, Egypt seemed to benefit from being somewhat isolated from the vicissitudes of the global economy: During the world financial-economic crisis the Egyptian GDP did not fall, but continued growing at a rather high rate. Annual economic growth rates slowed down somewhat, from 7.2% to 4.6% (though many countries would dream of achieving a 4.5% rate of economic growth even in crisisless years!). Nevertheless, the Egyptian government did succeed in preventing any economic collapse. In 2010 Egyptian economic growth rates increased again.5

Other structural indicators also tended to indicate that Egypt, on the eve of the 2011 revolt, was poised for a “takeoff,” requiring perhaps only a few additional years to be realized. Yet the type of economic development promoted in Mubarak’s Egypt was one-dimensional. First, it produced a distorted class stratification, a pyramid with a small, rich, and opulent comprador elite at the top; a relatively large middle class, impoverished because of high food prices and inflation, whose educated children were unemployed; and a mass of semipoor and poor, struggling to survive at the bottom. Second, the decline in infant mortality in the period 1975–1995 led not only to a demographic explosion, but also to what has been called Egypt’s “youth bulge.” The phrase refers to the fact that the generation of children reaching the ages of fourteen to twenty-five in 2010–2011

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was much larger in number than their parents’ generation. Many of these individuals were far better educated than their parents, but remained unemployed. Forced to live as parasites on the meager incomes of their families, this educated bulge became the driving force of the revolt that overthrew Mubarak. Third, the profit-seeking domestic economy favored importers and traders of industrial products and of commodities for mass consumption, including foodstuffs, which were cheaper than those produced locally. Even raw cotton, on which the local textile industry depends, and which was the single foreign currency earner until the 1960s, had to be imported. The domestic economy also favored export-oriented agribusinesses, which made the country dependent on expensive, imported food. Since Sadat’s 1977 attempt to discontinue food subsidies prompted “bread riots,” the regime was keen to prevent popular outbursts born of food insecurity.6 As a result, cheap subsidized baladi bread was made available to everybody, while other staples in fixed quantities, such as rice, cooking oil, sugar, and tea, were sold at subsidized prices to the owners of ration cards.7 Another important facet of the Egyptian political economy under Mubarak was endemic corruption. According to a report by Global Financial Integrity—a Washington, D.C.–based think tank—that was released in February 2011, Egypt ranks third among all African countries in illicit capital exports, with cumulative outflows from 2000 to 2008 of US$57.2 billion, or US$6.4 billion per annum. “Weak governance allowed rampant bribery, theft, crime and tax evasion to drive billions of dollars out of the country every year.”8 Much of this money was driven out by personal tax evasion in addition to corruption and crime: “The annual loss, which seriously hampered the government’s ability to stimulate economic development and alleviate poverty, made President Mubarak’s dictatorial regime unbearable and brought Egypt to its current state of social and political unrest.”9 Far from being isolated acts committed by immoral local businessmen and officials, such behavior was embedded in Egypt’s political economy. This highly centralized and corrupt neoliberal model of development, notably similar to the Tunisian one, was statistically successful, but it generated the social drama that caused the 2011 revolt. Most of the surplus value produced by the country’s economy was appropriated by the small business oligarchy that dominated the ruling NDP and government. The remainder of the surplus was allocated through taxes to the state, which struggled to provide basic services. At the same time, the government tried to economize in order to achieve two goals: main-

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tain its oversized and corrupt bureaucracy and repressive state apparatuses, and buy social peace with subsidies for essential foodstuffs and energy. The historical trajectory of Egypt’s political economy had two salient consequences for the contemporary period. First, it produced a heterogeneous movement opposed to the Mubarak order. With the demographic explosion (yearly birthrates of 2 percent), radical changes to the social structure of Egypt’s population, and its class relations, took place within the span of one generation. The gap separating the minority “haves” from the mass-majority “have-nots” increased dramatically. The poorest segments of Egypt’s population are concentrated in rural areas, and it is poverty that has pushed them to migrate either permanently or on a daily-shuttle basis to towns that offer more opportunities for survival. These are the so-called urban peasants who settled in the shantytowns that proliferate at the peripheries of urban agglomerations in all underdeveloped countries. They were numerous, perhaps even the relative majority, in Cairo’s Tahrir Square—the epicenter of the revolt. There they rubbed shoulders with middle-class urbanites and some younger representatives of the upper classes. Young people, with the multitude of nongovernmental organizations and informal groups to which they belong, became the most dynamic and outspoken members of the sociopolitical protest movements demanding change in Egypt, and more widely across the Middle East and North Africa. Women, too, were importantly involved in the resistance, and not only young female students in jeans, but also partially or completely veiled women. At certain hours of the day during the 2011 events in Tahrir Square, perhaps as many as 20–30 percent of the protesters were female. They were visible too, shouting and singing. They acted as sentinels, served in the medical tents, and helped organize and coordinate with other women joining the protests. In a patriarchal society like Egypt, their active presence in places such as Alexandria’s corniche was a public manifestation of individual emancipation. This heterogeneous social movement constituted a “collective class actor.” It involved itself in a social conflict that transcended the existing system by questioning that very system’s sociocultural and sociopolitical foundations. According to Alain Touraine, whose arguments I repeat here, the “class character” of such movements lies in their radical and critical orientation and “transformational potential,” not in objective economic interests of their supporters.10 The legacy of development in Egypt also had the consequence of leaving the economy particularly vulnerable to political shocks. Egypt’s

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central bank reported that foreign currency reserves that amounted to US$33.3 billion in December 2010 fell to US$24 billion by the end of September 2011.11 This outflow of resources resulted from a collapse of the tourism sector and the disruption of exports. Foreign tourists and many foreign residents were evacuated in the two weeks following the January 25 uprising, and already-booked tourist arrivals were canceled. Exports dwindled because many factories closed down during the escalation of industrial strikes, or because their owners were unable to pay their workers. A number of businessmen involved in production and export became targets of investigation and were detained or accused of malfeasance. Foreign investors and many wealthy Egyptians took their money out of the country. By early 2012, the country’s foreign currency reserves had fallen to perilously low levels. Egypt’s macroeconomic picture is bleak in the short term. Growth drivers have been hit hard as private consumption, investments, and exports have slowed. And while parliamentary and presidential elections have been contested, lingering uncertainty over the political transition and its outcomes—as well as ad hoc incidents adversely affecting the security situation—are all brakes on consumption and are slowing the return of mass tourism. According to an April 2011 report by Barclay’s Bank titled “Point of No Return”: Risk will not dissipate quickly. . . . The rise of a new leadership with a greater role of Islamic parties will be . . . a dominant feature of Egyptian politics in the coming months . . . and will therefore shape investors’ perception of risk towards Egyptian assets. . . . Even if the government manages to increase spending significantly during the second half of the fiscal year, we believe that besides rising current spending, its ability to implement a large-scale . . . fiscal stimulus package will likely be difficult.12

Even worse than the economic situation is the problem of food security. This problem combines three factors: the export-oriented cashcrop agricultural policy implemented by Egypt’s neoliberal government; the reliance of domestic food production on local small-scale farming, with its high cost of inputs and labor; and the rising cost of foodstuffs, which Egypt must import, on world markets. In 2010, domestic wheat production covered only 40 percent of total needs, and Egypt had to import 7–8 million tons (in the process becoming the world’s biggest wheat importer). The country also imported 90 percent of its edible oil, 50 percent of its fawa beans, and other staples. In addition, about twothirds of Egyptian households have ration cards. In 2010, 25 percent of

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Egypt’s budget was devoted to food and fuel subsidies. With subsidized food and butane gas cylinders for household consumption, the Mubarak regime was buying social peace and containing the anger of the poor. Faced with widespread social and political protests, the interim government that patched together the budget for the 2011–2012 fiscal year was at pains to earmark additional money to maintain the same level of subsidies. Indeed, more money was allocated, but because of the increased prices of imported and locally produced food, the share of subsidies, both for food and for energy, was ultimately reduced from 25 to 20 percent. Food subsidies are for the poor, but more affluent strata of the population also benefit from energy subsidies (accounting for 80 percent of the total).13 The explosion of protest in late January 2011 was the result of tensions that had long been smoldering in Egypt. Crises of different economic models of development that had produced a distorted social pyramid characterized by a large, deeply impoverished base, a considerable number of unemployed and underemployed youth, and trade practices and imbalances coupled with authoritarianism and clientelism in the political system meant that Egyptians had long lacked recourse to representative and responsible government as a means of improving their material conditions. The January 25 revolt may have only lasted eighteen days, but its sources had a much longer history in Egypt’s political economy.

Actors and the Final Transition Process The history of Egyptian development and political economy set the stage for the power struggle that continues to unfold in the wake of the Mubarak regime’s collapse. Some of the actors now peopling this stage are holdovers, the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, while others are new, most notably the heterogeneous popular revolt movement. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), headed by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, was not only the manager of the political transition process, but also the collective representative of the military establishment. When in control of the state, it vacillated between dialogue, repression, and offering concessions. It initiated a “national dialogue” with handpicked representatives of civil society, most of whom were formerly either members of the loyal opposition or associated with the ruling oligarchy. It also, though sporadically, communicat-

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ed directly with representatives of the protest movement and youth coalitions. This military junta used the powerless interim government as a buffer between itself and the public. Behind the cover of this arrangement, the junta posted on its website a series of communiqués and promulgated a number of decrees and drafts called “laws.” These included a constitutional declaration endorsed by popular referendum in March 2011, as well as regulations for the registration of political parties, a decree banning protests and strikes, a draft law on the construction of religious buildings, and a controversial measure on the parliamentary elections. The junta also adopted a controversial budget for 2011–2012. All these steps were supposed to create a legal framework for Egypt’s transition to civilian rule. The fact is that the junta reacted in a haphazard manner to unfolding events without clear direction. On some occasions it tried to tame protesters with concessions, the most important being the ousting of President Mubarak and his clique. On other occasions it opted for brutal repression, using anonymous thugs who were, in fact, special auxiliary units of the Ministry of Interior to provoke clashes, which served as the pretext for the army’s intervention to separate the opposed camps of Egypt’s civilians. The military junta was keen to control the transition process in order to maintain its considerable business interests. As is the case in Turkey, the military in Egypt manages a vast, exclusive economy, which produces, among other things, armaments, transport, gasoline, furniture, televisions, olive oil, and bottled water. It is also involved in the importexport trade, construction, engineering, tourism, and farming. The military pays no taxes and employs conscripted and hired civilian labor. Rare strikers are subject to military tribunals. The exact size of the Egyptian military’s business interests is unknown, but its total value has been estimated to be between 10 and 15 percent of Egypt’s US$210 billion yearly economy. 14 This dwarfs the 5 percent share of the whole tourism industry, which is Egypt’s primary source of foreign currency.15 During the heated debate about whether parliamentary elections should be held before the adoption of a new constitution, which was the initial plan of the SCAF, it was suggested that “supra-constitutional principles” be relied on to grant the military a special role in protecting Egypt’s civil institutions and the equality of its citizens, regardless of the political affiliations of the majority in the legislature. It was explained that the inclusion of such an article in the constitution “would

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prevent Islamists, such as the [Muslim Brotherhood] and Salafists, from adopting measures that would transform Egypt into a theocracy if they won the majority of parliamentary seats.”16 The principles also suggested that a national security council be created and charged with protecting national sovereignty and the civil character of the state. These principles were supposed to counterbalance Article 2 of the Mubarak-era constitution, which stipulated that Islam was Egypt’s state religion and that sharia law was the main source of legislation. Had this scenario been realized, Egypt would have had, at the end, a military constitution similar to that of Turkey. Paradoxically, a number of Egypt’s prodemocracy secular forces would prefer an enlightened military dictatorship to a state subject to the rule of Islamist groups. Egypt’s Islamist groups are also important players in the ongoing transition process. The groups enjoy support largely because of the networks of private mosques and voluntary organizations they control. They also benefit from associations with informal financial institutions as well as domestic and Gulf Islamic banks, and other financial and commercial institutions operating within existing state-regulated markets. The leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood mostly belong to the affluent middle-class strata. They are not personally wealthy, but are connected with rich local and Gulf sponsors. Some Brotherhood members and their associates sit on the boards of Islamic banks, investment funds, and commercial companies, while others are local representatives of Gulf investors. They have privileged access to bank loans and, when needed, can mobilize considerable financial resources. They are the intermediaries between global Islamist capital and Egypt, or even managers of its Egyptian branches. Because they operate within the existing system, it is practically impossible to estimate the overall amount and value of the assets of this Islamist economic sector in Egypt. Islamic banks and insurance companies, which adhere to Islamic principles that ban usury and speculative trading, could in the future attract not only Gulf capital but also a growing number of small Egyptian savers disenchanted with the corruption endemic to the local political economy.17 The Islamist sector of the Egyptian economy, as well as its Gulf supporters, could coexist with the military industrial-business sector. They are not in competition with each other. Large Islamist companies are mainly involved in investment and trade, while the military sector’s businesses are mainly involved in production. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood offered its political cooperation to the SCAF and extant political authority even more openly than it did previously under the

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Mubarak regime. Together with the center-right secular Wafd party, with which the Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) concluded a preelectoral alliance, it offered a thinly veiled deal to the military on limiting the number of parliamentary seats they would contest in the elections. Brotherhood leaders publicly claimed that they could field candidates for 50 percent of seats, but in practice would be satisfied with 30 percent (10 percent more than the quota they won in the 2006 elections) as long as they were accepted as legitimate shareholders in the governing equation. The military found the Muslim Brotherhood useful in controlling the Salafi extremists with whom they joined in what was supposed to be the “Rally of Unity” on Friday, July 29, 2011. Organized in conjunction with secular coalitions and youth groups, the rally was heterogeneous and actually became known as the “Friday of Disunity.” Verbally abused and physically threatened, representatives of twenty-eight nongovernmental organizations withdrew from Tahrir Square. Concomitantly, Islamist groups mobilized at least 2 million followers across the country, and hundreds of thousands of them converged on Tahrir Square. The space swarmed with bearded men in white robes and women covered in black carrying banners that read “Islam is the solution” and “the Quran is our constitution,” demanding the introduction of sharia, expressing support for Field Marshal Tantawi, and rejecting the “supra-constitutional principles.”18 The SCAF, which on the eve of this rally accused the April 6 youth movement of “seeking to sow sedition by driving a wedge between the army and the people” and threatened to prevent this progressive group from achieving this alleged goal, said nothing about the unprecedented show of Islamist forces.19 The military was the manager and most prominent player in the transition process, and Islamist forces offered to collaborate in an attempt to secure the position of junior partner, but they were not the only actors in the Egyptian drama. While without a clear class-based constituency, there did exist a heterogeneous popular revolt movement consisting of some 200 civil society organizations, coalitions, and groups that operate, to borrow Touraine’s conceptualization, as a “collective class actor.”20 At the forefront of the movement were young activists. As distinct from the military establishment, the Muslim Brotherhood and its FJP, and some of the center-right political parties, this youth movement did not dispose of financial resources and had no immediate economic interest to defend. The movement’s only force was its power of political mobilization, and the only area of confrontation with the repressive

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state was the public space. The SCAF perceived the popular revolt movement as its main enemy. In contrast with the ascendant popular revolt movement, Egypt’s traditional state-approved opposition parties, which in some cases survived three decades of oppression under Mubarak’s regime, struggled to adapt themselves to the dynamics of the transition process. Of the bloc of old loyalist opposition parties, perhaps the Wafd—because of the tradition attached to its name and the role of its members in the business community—had the best chance of securing a niche in the emerging political order. In a clear sign that the party was acceptable to the military junta, three prominent members were co-opted into the interim government: Fakry Abdel Nour, a Coptic Christian, was made minister of tourism; Osama Heikal, editor-in-chief of the daily el-Wafd, was given the revived portfolio of minister of information; and Ali el-Salmi, a member of the Wafd leadership, was made deputy prime minister in charge of political affairs. The only real rival to the Wafd party on the center-right of the political spectrum was Naguib Sawiris’s newly established Free Egyptians Party. It had a good chance of attracting liberals, secularists, and probusiness followers disenchanted by the opportunism of the Wafd and other former loyal opposition parties. The Free Egyptians Party, as Sawiris announced, stands for democracy and freedom, a civil state and equality among all citizens, empowerment of women in all fields, an independent judiciary, and a separation between the legislative and executive bodies. From the outset, the party has had to overcome bad press—it has been called a “celebrity party” and a “Coptic party.” This second characterization is particularly inaccurate, as the Free Egyptians Party has attracted more Muslims than Copts. Overall, the party has done well organizationally. It opened offices in twenty-two governorates, held working and recruiting conferences in a number of them, and registered 100,000 members. It is difficult now to forecast the political fortunes of a growing number of other formations that are struggling for their place in the center and center-right of the Egyptian political spectrum. A number of them, such as the Democratic Front Party, al-Ghad (Tomorrow), Ayman Nour’s faction, and the Reform and Development Party of Osama alGhazali Harb, were active before the events of January 25, 2011. Situated within this hotly contested and unsettled political space are also the Popular Democratic Party, al-Umma, the Egyptian Green Party, the Democratic Union Party, the Party of Social Solidarity, the Party of National Understanding, Egypt’s Party, the Party of the Democratic

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Generation, the Party of Egyptian Youth, the Party of Democratic Peace, and the Free Republican Party.21 A few of these parties succeeded in securing representation through the November 2011 legislative elections; for most, the elections marked their death knell. The would-be leftist and liberal Tagammu (Progressive National Unionist Party), which during the Mubarak era loyally collaborated with the NDP, is exemplary of Egypt’s uncertain and unsettled politics. In early 2011, seventy-three prominent members resigned in protest against the policies of Secretary-General Refaat el-Saed, who refused to support the January uprising. Many of those dissidents joined the then–recently launched Socialist Popular Alliance, a coalition of a number of leftist groups. Some other former Tagammu members apparently joined the center-left Egyptian Social Democratic Party. Still other personalities considered forming their own leftist or center-left parties. Ultimately, the political prospects of all of these nominally left-leaning former regime loyalists remain unclear.22 Left of center are also the Nasserist Democratic Party, whose aging leader, Diaa Eldin Dawoud, died in 2011, and another Nasserist group, the Karama (Dignity) party. Three socialist groups—the Democratic Workers Party, the Revolutionary Workers Party, and the Popular Coalition Party—all sought to be authentic representatives of the working class and discussed the possibilities of unification or forming an electoral coalition. They similarly saw their political fortunes decline with the parliamentary elections. As of September 2012, a major unknown was the power of Egypt’s president, for that could only be clarified after the country finalizes a new constitution. Overall, Egypt’s political scene remains chaotic. The military establishment and the government that emerged under Mohamad Morsi following the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory in the presidential elections of June 2012 seemed unsure of what they really wanted. Much, of course, will depend on the outcome of President Morsi’s pledge that Egypt will have a new constitution. While military leaders seem, for the moment, to have bowed to Morsi’s assertion of civilian control of Egypt’s government, the permanence of that stand will be confirmed only through the passage of time.

Notes 1. Georg Sorensen, Democracy and Democratization (Boulder: Westview, 1993), pp. 75–79.

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2. Carrie Rosefsly Wickham, Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 93, 202. 3. Jay Ulfelder, “Contentious Collective Action and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes,” International Political Science Review 26, no. 3 (2005), p. 315. 4. See Sarah Hartmann, “The Informal Market of Education in Egypt: Private Tutoring and Its Implications,” Working Paper no. 88 (Mainz: Johannes Gutenberg University, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, 2008), http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/workingpapers/AP88.pdf; Ahmed Feteha, “Egyptian Education Needs Reform, Not Just Spending: Experts,” al-Ahram, June 12, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/14101/Business /Economy/Egyptian-education-needs-reform,-not-just-spending.aspx; Amina Abdul Salam, “Abysmal Effects of Corruption on Health,” Egyptian Gazette, March 25, 2011, http://213.158.162.45/~egyptian/index.php?action=news&id =16490&title=Abysmal%20effects%20of%20corruption%20on%20health. 5. Andrey V. Koratayev and Julia V. Zinkina, “Egyptian Revolution: A Demographic Structural Analysis,” Entelequia: Revista Interdisciplinar, no. 13 (Spring 2011), p. 140. 6. David Hirst, “How High Life and Scandal Rocked Sadat,” MERIP: Middle East Research and Information Project Reports no. 54 (1977), pp. 19–20. 7. Report of the thirty-second RECA seminar, Food Security: Global Trends and Perspectives (New Delhi: Afro-Asian Rural Development Organization [AARDO], 2010), p. 159. 8. Quoted in Ahmed Kamel, “Illegal Egyptian Outflows Stand at $57.2b,” Egyptian Gazette, March 21, 2011, http://213.158.162.45/~egyptian/index.php ?action=news&id=16346&title=Illegal%20Egyptian%20outflows%20stand%20 at%20$57.2b. 9. Ibid. 10. Alain Touraine, The Voice in the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 77. 11. “Central Bank of Egypt,” http://www.cbe.org.eg. 12. “Egypt’s Risky Economy Is Making Investors Think Twice,” al-Ahram, April 9, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/9654/Business /Economy/Egypts-risky-economy-is-making-investors-think-twi.aspx. 13. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Egypt’s Progress Towards Achieving the Millennium Development Goals, http://www.euro medalex.org/node/13940, Mona el-Fiqi, “A Costly Meal,” al-Ahram Weekly, May 5–11, 2011, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1046/ec1.htm; Food and Agriculture Organization, “GIEWS Country Briefs: Egypt,” http://www.fao .org/giews/countrybrief/country.jsp?code=EGY. 14. David D. Kirkpatrick, “Egyptians Say Military Discourages an Open Economy,” New York Times, February 17, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011 /02/18/world/middleeast/18military.html?pagewanted=all. 15. The military’s economy has not always been this large or far-ranging. The military sector of the economy expanded considerably under Mubarak’s

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presidency, facilitated in no small measure by the $1.3 billion per year the United States provided Egypt as a result of the Camp David agreement with Israel. 16. “Egypt’s Consensus Conference Wants Military to Guarantee Secular Character of State,” al-Ahram, June 19, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/News /14608.aspx. 17. “A New Chance in Egypt for Islamic Finance,” al-Masry al-Youm, April 21, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/408315. 18. “Egypt Islamists Rally in Show of Strength,” Egyptian Gazette, July 29, 2011, http://213.158.162.45/~egyptian/index.php?action=news&id =20075 &title=Egypt%20Islamists%20rally%20in%20show%20of%20strength; “Islamists Dominate Demonstrations Across Egypt,” al-Ahram, July 29, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/17645/Egypt/Politics -/Islamists-dominate-demonstrations-across-Egypt.aspx; Rania al-Maliki, “Editorial: Egypt’s Salafis: Enter the Dragon,” Daily News Egypt, July 29, 2011, http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/editorial/egypts-salafis-enter-the -dragon.html; Hany Elwaziri, “Freedom and Justice Party Rejects Islamist Slogans in Tahrir,” al-Masry al-Youm, July 29, 2011, http://www.almasry alyoum.com/en/node/481529. 19. Heba Fahmy, “26 Political Powers Suspend Tahrir Sit-In, Hundreds Remain,” Daily News Egypt, July 31, 2011, http://www.thedailynewsegypt .com/egypt/26-political-powers-suspend-tahrir-sit-in-hundreds-remain.html. 20. Touraine, The Voice in the Eye, p. 77. 21. Mohamed Abdel-Baky, “Liberal Uncertainty,” al-Ahram Weekly, May 5–11, 2011, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1046/eg7.htm. 22. Alistair Beach, “What Is Left of Egypt’s Left,” al-Masry al-Youm, March 26, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/375053.

Part 3 Implications of the Revolution

11 Two Peaceful Revolutions Compared: Egypt and East Germany Nadine Sika

Throughout the 1980s, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) functioned as an authoritarian state under the leadership of East Germany’s ruling Marxist-Leninist party, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED). It was, however, a decade of impending change caused by both social and political dynamics within the GDR and the reinforcing influence of changes within the East European political environment as a whole. In 1989, a popular but peaceful revolution swept East Germany. Within a year, this led not only to the fall of the SED government, but also to the reunification of the German state and the disappearance of the GDR itself. Over twenty years later, in 2011, the authoritarian regime of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and his dominant single party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), succumbed to an essentially peaceful popular revolution. In this case, the previous half-decade had seen the growth of arbitrariness of government, on the one hand, and the increasing loss of regime legitimacy, on the other. On January 25, 2011, the Tahrir Revolution erupted. Eighteen days later, Mubarak and his crew abandoned the ship of state. As a feature of the Arab Spring of 2011, the Tahrir Revolution forms part of a series of political events in the Arab world’s very recent history that belie claims that the study of the Middle East cannot contribute to theory building in the social sciences. Indeed, this chapter attempts to identify the role played by social movements in altering nondemocratic regimes by analyzing two case studies in two different 191

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social contexts. The first is the role of social movements in the German Democratic Republic in the 1980s. The second is the role of social movements in Egypt in the events that led to the 2011 revolution. The analysis suggests that protest movements that develop effective mobilizational capabilities are able to utilize the political opportunity structure within their polities to bring an end to nondemocratic regimes. Nevertheless, their role in creating a new democratic regime is questionable, and depends on their ability to attain political power and to influence institutional change. This analysis underscores the important role of social science in bringing state-society relations to the forefront of political considerations in the Middle East. Moreover, it clearly implies the fallacy of claims that Arab societies must be seen as “exceptions” to otherwise universal human impulses favoring democratic political orders. The events that led to the Arab uprisings in general, and to the Tahrir Revolution in particular, show that Middle Eastern societies have the same aspirations for equality, freedom, and democracy as do other societies in the world. The tactics and mobilizational strategies of the protest movements in both Egypt and the former GDR are cases in point. The case studies in this analysis depend on a comparative historical analysis that seeks to establish valid associations linking potential causes to a given phenomenon.1 Here, the phenomenon under study is the demise of a nondemocratic regime, and the postulated causal factor is the protest movements, which were able to delegitimize the regime through their mobilizational capabilities and their ability to use the prevailing political opportunity structures. A comparison of the processes that brought about systemic change in the GDR in 1989 and in Egypt in 2011 should be illuminating. Within an analysis-based social movement theory,2 this chapter focuses on two important factors: the dynamics of citizen mobilization and the structure of political opportunities. Three main concerns are dealt with in the hope of understanding how protest movements operate and are able to influence politics from below: 1. How the public sphere is controlled by nondemocratic regimes and the extent to which social movements are able to use the available public sphere to their own advantage. 2. The extent to which social movements are able to mobilize different social forces in their respective countries.

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3. How social movements try to use the political opportunity structure within their given circumstances.

The Public Sphere in Nondemocratic Regimes Most scholarly work during the 1990s argued that a strong and vibrant civil society is the basis for any democratization process.3 Throughout the same era, scholarly debate in the Arab world also focused on the importance of civil society for the promotion of democracy.4 However, no Arab country witnessed a democratization process, and the increasing number of civil society actors failed to promote movement toward a democratic transition. As a consequence, a body of literature emerged contending that civil society can impede democratization rather than generate it, since civil society is tied to authoritarian state apparatuses, and its members tend to overlap with government officials. Often, civil society organizations are established as a result of their members’ networking ability with the state.5 Thus the relationship between civil society and the state is not necessarily a zero-sum game, but rather a mixture of different forces within civil society and the state. In these cases, civil society actors reach out to the communities of their choice without fear of being obstructed by state officials. On the other hand, the state develops the internal and international image of being the arbiter of a multifaceted public sphere. As a result, the public sphere6 becomes dominated by the media, which approves the state structure and is mired in political information provided by the dominant elite.7 The result is an erosion of the public sphere: civil society’s role in rationally assessing public policies diminishes as the public sphere loses its power to oversee the state.8 Individuals who want to retain or re-create their lifestyles turn to grassroots mobilization through social movements. 9 Social movements typically have loose organizational structures and high mobilizational capacities, and tend to rise and fall instantaneously.10 They form an important and integral part of civil society organizations, yet they are more autonomous than professional and religious associations. They challenge the boundaries of institutional politics, and place themselves between the private and the public life.11 Their ability to mobilize through informal networking with the masses poses a challenge to state authorities and can be influential in changing politics in nondemocratic regimes.12

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[Social movements] contribute to the creation of a public space . . . separate both from governing institutions and from organizations devoted to production or reproduction, in which consequential deliberation over public affairs takes place—as well as sometimes contributing to transfers of power over states. Public space and transfers of power then supposedly promote democracy, at least under some conditions.13

Dynamics of Mobilization It is vital to identify how protest movements organize, mobilize, and manage the resources they employ in pursuit of their goals. Group coherence and horizontal links are key points in the formation of collective action and the development of group identity and solidarity, which make communication between individuals easier and help cultivate organizational and leadership skills.14 Such links are believed to be the basis for any collective action.15 The tactics by which protest movements are able to mobilize individuals and create horizontal links convince followers that the benefits of taking part in the movement are higher than the losses.16 Ronald Inglehart equates the “scarcity hypothesis”17 with a hierarchy of higher and lower needs. The lower needs are normally related to physical survival, while the higher pertain to intellectual and personal growth. The second cannot be fulfilled unless the lower hierarchy of needs is satisfied.18 Thus, when the economic and sociopolitical situation within a certain country fails to address one of these hierarchies, protest movements arise and try to address and mobilize like-minded individuals. An important aspect of social movement theory is its acknowledgment that the forces of globalization play key roles in the ways in which social movements can influence politics. According to Anthony Giddens, globalization is the development of “worldwide social relations which link distinct localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occuring miles away and vice versa.”19 Mobilization in the age of globalization also links it to diffusion studies, which identify two channels of diffusion: direct and indirect links between different actors. Direct diffusion is the existence of links on a personal and relational level between actors, while indirect diffuson is the transfer of a movement’s ideas and structures to a global level.20 In the German Democratic Republic, the existence of the Evangelical Church and its partial freedom from the state was essential for

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developing the mobilizational capability of protest movements. The church was able to develop a free public forum far from the control of the state, and to ensure that this public space would not be ensnared by religious values. Thus, different protest movements took the opportunity to meet and articulate their own ideas to the rest of the opposition forces within the state. These movements were composed of peace, human rights, environmental, third world, and women’s rights groups, which were able to exchange views in the churches. They did not have big organizational structures, nor did they have a set agenda or an iconic figure around which to rally. They emerged sporadically and were the collective voice of different people and groups.21 They formed social movements by mobilizing networks of different groups who had one collective goal: to oppose the militarization of the state and the oppression of citizens. They developed collective action to protest and to create social change. “The experience of shared grievances, a sense of community and solidarity is a necessary condition for the collective actions of social movements.”22 During the 1980s, few East German citizens participated in opposition movements. However, by the end of the decade, when the opposition gained momentum and was able to demonstrate its own strength versus that of the authorities, more citizens followed suit and voiced their opinions by protesting in the streets. The opposition groups can be categorized as follows: 1. Protest movements, whose ideology favored maintaining the socialist system in the GDR, yet desired to develop and reform the system from within. 2. Resistance forces that wanted to overthrow the socialist system but did not have the means to confront it. As a result, these forces generally either abstained from politics or sought asylum in the West. Their spontaneous uprising in 1989 was crucial in the development of East Germany’s peaceful social revolution. 3. “Soft” dissident forces within the SED regime, like party affiliates, intellectuals, and artists.23 These movements were essential in framing ideas within the structure of the church, but they were also able to network and reach out to international actors. For example, Robert Havemann, a GDR dissident, and Reiner Eppelman, an opposition priest residing in East Berlin, produced the first initiative of the peace movement. They showed their

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clear intentions to oppose the militarization of the state by sending to the president of West Germany the Berlin Appeal, a document that addressed major issues for the promotion of peace, such as halting any nuclear activity and banning school militarization and military education on East German soil.24 Havemann and Eppelman appealed to the higher needs of citizens of East Germany. Eppelman gained more support by introducing these ideas during his “blues masses,” very popular events among young people who later signed the appeal as an act of solidarity with opposition movements.25 With a state that occupied the secular public sphere, youth who were indoctrinated to be atheists at school and in the media found refuge in a religious space that was able to free itself from religious indoctrination and open itself for free speech. The movements in the GDR that emerged during the 1980s numbered probably no more than 200. Their different work and ideals were all linked to the same idea, that of changing society from within into a more open and democratic space. In 1983, different groups decided that networking through yearly conventions in different Evangelical churches would make their work more efficient. Consequently, they developed “Peace Concrete,” the biggest network of clerical and secular actors, which met on March 5–6 every year to network more efficiently. They worked in different groups to discuss the viability of linking the church to peace, demilitarization, and freedom.26 “Peace masses,” which began in Dresden in 1982, continued to be an important force in different cities of East Germany. Opposition groups also networked with peace organizations that had begun to flourish in West Germany as early as the late 1970s.27 In July 1989, East German opposition movements organized a “State-Church Day” with the intention of opening communication channels with SED regime personnel. By September of the same year, many groups, like New Forum, Democracy Now, and Democratic Awakening, broke away from the church and developed their own space to build opposition. At the same time, the SED continued to lose legitimacy because many GDR citizens were fleeing to Hungary and Czechoslovakia.28 These organizations, along with others, were able to increase their demonstrations against an already illegitimate regime, and by October they took the demonstrations to the streets. With opposition groups gaining more power, the GDR regime cracked down on many of their leading figures, but the pressure did not stop either the demonstrations or the peace masses. On the contrary, demonstrations against the regime

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increased with the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the creation of the GDR.29 In Leipzig’s Nikolai church, the peace mass of October 9, 1989, was memorable: the church was filled to capacity, while outside its walls thousands of demonstrators—ever increasing in number—joined the protesting ranks under the watchful eye of the police, who did not dare use violence against them. When the news that the state had refrained from violence reached the rest of the GDR, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of all cities. On October 18, Eric Honecker resigned as head of state and nominated Egon Krenz as his replacement.30 The opposition demonstrators had clearly established that freedom of expression could no longer be contained in East Germany. The demolition of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 heralded the end of the SED, which retreated and established a coalition government with opposition groups.31 The movements had won the battle, but they had called for a democratization of the GDR, not for reunification with West Germany. On these points, they were unable to develop a coherent government and a unified voice. This led the masses to choose their own destiny through a referendum that laid the grounds for the reunification of both Germanies.32 In Egypt, the rise of protest movements increased after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but stalled for a while after the 2005 parliamentary elections increased the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country’s affairs. As a result, the regime increased its coercion against the movements, and international players decreased their call for reform in Egypt, fearing an Islamist hold on power. Nevertheless, increasing neoliberal economic reforms added to the social pressures on the middle and lower classes, and workers and technocrats developed a new wave of protest movements after 2006. 33 This period also saw a new wave of social youth movements, like April 6, “We Are All Khaled Said,” and Youth for Change, which was an offspring of the Kefaya movement. New protest movements in Egypt can be divided into two types: 1. Movements essentially concerned with general political reform projects and international politics. 2. Movements essentially concerned with socioeconomic reform— enhancing the economic standards that shape the lives of most Egyptians.34

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According to Sameh Fawzy, the new socioeconomic movements were far more successful in promulgating change in the Egyptian public sphere than were the political movements. The reason for this was that the socioeconomic movements were goal-oriented, but their economic goals were limited and called for change within the existing authoritarian system. They showed a disinterest in politics, distancing themselves from political movements and political parties. This made it easier for the government to negotiate with them and fulfill some or all of their demands. They did not have a leader; rather, the backbone of these movements was formed of average citizens, mainly workers, who had a societal base. The socioeconomic movements ensured that their negotiating partner was the government. This, of course, increased the legitimacy of both the government and the movements themselves.35 For instance, the protest movement of the Mahalla textile workers in 2006 was a reaction to the prime minister’s denial of a bonus he had promised them. This protest was not a “politicizing” force, but rather a pure “workers” protest for their own limited economic benefit. No political figures or political parties were involved except for the Egyptian Movement for Change, Kefaya, and the April 6 Movement. Their presence was minimal compared to that of the workers, and they followed the workers’ lead. The result of the protest was that the Mahalla workers received their bonus as well as the resignation of Mahalla’s board of directors.36 These movements addressed the lower needs of society, and therefore addressed a wider public and received the sympathy of citizens at large. On the other hand, protest movements with a political agenda had broader goals that could not be discussed with the ruling regime. Generally, they called for a complete rupture of the political system, like Kefaya, or for a total reform of the political system with the goal of democratic transition, for example the National Committee for Change, which chose Mohamed el-Baradei, the former International Atomic Energy Agency director, as its leader. These movements, unlike the socioeconomic movements, are primarily led by middle-class social elites who do not have a mass base in society. For instance, the Kefaya movement came into being through a coalition of leftists, nationalists, and Islamists. It called for an end to the existing regime, for the development of democracy, and for a stand against the United States and Israel. 37 The movement was never able to attain a mass following; it was only able to provide a largely empty forum for some Egyptian citizens. For almost a decade, it was not able to produce real democratic

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change because of its internal problems and the regime’s brutality against its membership.38 Youth movements, on the other hand, addressed both high and low interests of the citizenry, and used information technology and social networking as one of the main features of their mobilization and organizational structures. Youth for Change sprang mainly from Kefaya, but its organizational life had been laden with problems, as demonstrated by the Kefaya old guard’s efforts to retain control of the group. Different political backgrounds existed within Egypt’s youth movements, and as a result, such groups experienced many internal struggles. For instance, a major issue was the differing degrees of radicalism among individual members of these groups. 39 Nevertheless, members generally shared a collective identity characterized by a highly critical outlook on the Mubarak regime and by favoring a complete political reform of Egypt’s political system. They appeared not to have firm ideological inclinations. Rather, they were able to mobilize youth with different socioeconomic and political backgrounds because their main reference for political reform was a commitment to human rights values, democracy, and social equity and justice. They were secular in nature. Until the early days of the January 25, 2011, revolution, Islamist youth played only a marginal role in the events that produced the Egyptian revolution.40 The April 6 Movement conducted its activities by depending primarily on social networking sites and blogs. Its members mobilized different youth and bloggers and collaborated with the Mahalla textile workers in striking against the government.41 This group’s solidarity with the workers was essential for its ability to combine both the individual’s lower economic needs and society’s higher needs of political reform. Nevertheless, the April 6 Movement’s politicization of the workers’ movements was criticized by many workers who did not want to politicize their demands, for fear of losing their negotiating edge with the government. A major attribute shared by all new protest movements in Egypt was their adoption of characteristics that were previously nonexistent in the country’s public sphere. After July 2010, these movements adopted clearly political slogans. When the Egyptian police brutally killed a young man named Khaled Said, a new cyber movement emerged on Facebook: “We Are All Khaled Said.” It had many young sympathizers who expressed fear that any individual trying to defy security personnel in Egypt could be subjected to intimidation, torture, and violent death.42

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These protests mobilized different people through a “passive network,”43 which implies the absence of deliberate or well-developed structures of networking. Only when such movements are threatened will “their passive network [be] . . . likely to turn into . . . active communication and cooperation.”44 A major theme of the messages on Facebook and Twitter was important for framing the purposes of these movements: “Tomorrow Egypt will follow Tunisia.” It was clear that the religious discourse was on the defensive, with the Muslim Brotherhood playing only a marginal role and the secular youth taking the lead in the protests. The April 6 Movement and “We Are All Khaled Said” used Facebook and Twitter to call for social justice and an end to poverty, corruption, and authoritarianism. They were successful in amalgamating both low and high needs of citizens, effectively making the argument that citizens could not have a better standard of living as long as the Mubarak regime stayed in power. They were able to conduct workshops for youth and for people who wanted to protest. For the first time, the youth movement earned the sympathy of different segments of Egyptian society. Hence, these used the unconventional sphere of cyberspace, but were also able to use the conventional protest venue, namely the street, for mobilizing citizens. The new youth movements went further than had the earlier Kefaya movement.45 According to Asef Bayat, youth movements would have ceased to exist had the Egyptian political regime taken their concerns seriously.46 Ever since the uprisings of the first youth movements in the mid-2000s, the regime had ignored and largely marginalized their calls for change. As a consequence, activists took matters into their own hands and, making good use of the illegitimacy of the political system, seized the opportunity to mobilize the masses under a collective identity and foment the uprising of January 25, 2011. Youth movements were able to network with other opposition forces, primarily with the National Association for Change; the al-Ghad, al-Karama, and al-Wafd parties; as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. All agreed to label January 25 as the “Day of Anger,” during which they would call for the end of tyranny, corruption, and torture.47 In addition, these networks cultivated international sympathy and called for solidarity with the Egyptian people in different parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Korea.48 Citizens were mobilized quickly after leading opposition figures went to the streets of various Egyptian governorates. This boosted the number of protesters into the tens of thousands. Police authorities used brutality against them,

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which resulted three days later in a wide protest, the “Friday of Anger,” which called for the overhaul of the entire Egyptian regime.

The Structure of Political Opportunities New social movements seek political change, and one of their most important challenges is how to seize the political opportunities available within a given polity. These movements decide the actors with whom they will associate and ally, and the ones they will discard. The political environment in which different social movements operate is not passive. The structure of the state and the degree of freedom that the state permits these movements to maneuver are essential elements in the strategies they adopt.49 According to Herbert Kitschelt, these political opportunity structures are “institutional arrangements and historical precedents for social mobilization, which facilitate the development of protest movements in some instances and constrain them in others.”50 Even though these criteria are not the sole determinants of social movements’ success, comparing movements along these lines helps explain similarities and differences.51 International constraints and opportunities are an important criterion determining the effectiveness of movements. Political change on the international scene may either weaken or strengthen a new social movement. Thus, international pressure could be exerted on the national government to encourage or to block any plans a movement might have for political change.52 Changes in the international context may exert pressure to retain the status quo, or alternatively may work against outside intervention, thus strengthening possibilities of successful mobilization on the part of a nascent social movement aiming for social change. When the international context changes and barriers to political change lose ground, new social movements’ recognition of these changes enhances prospects that the chance for intensified mobilization will occur. This model was successfully applied in the case of new social movements in Eastern Europe.53 The barrier was the Soviet Union, and when liberalization started to take place there and the political regime seemed to be changing, social movements seized these opportunities for effective political action. The German Democratic Republic gained much of its legitimacy from being a model socialist state. The SED believed that its legitimacy would be enhanced by the unity of state, party, and citizens behind the idea of socialism. The state was able to provide many social benefits for

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its citizens, including a high standard of living by maintaining high employment, especially for women, and high educational standards and subsidized living costs. Indeed, the GDR’s living costs were among the lowest in Eastern Europe. Accordingly, stability prevailed in the relations among the ruling elite as well as in the alliance system among different factions of East German society. However, the regime cracked down on any political opposition, converted all mass media to state-run media, and did not allow citizens the right to travel abroad.54 As a political system, the GDR depended on its potential for repression to maintain its hold on power for the first fifteen years of its existence. While the signing of the Helsinki Accords in the 1970s did not fundamentally alter the regime’s nature, repression came to be employed in more indirect ways. The GDR’s international image was an important incentive for the reopening of its political system. In fact, by the 1970s, after two decades of suppression and discrimination against religious believers, the East German regime allowed churches to operate. An important opportunity for the Evangelical Church to become a gateway for protest movements was created by its prior separation from its alliance with the Western Evangelical Church. The church in East Germany developed an alternative alliance with the state, which was important in portraying the church as a partner with the socialist regime, rather than an adversary.55 This maneuver was in the interest of the church’s own survival, because it gave the church more freedom within the socialist regime. Nevertheless, some priests who were politically in opposition to the ruling SED were later able to use this free space to attract people, especially youth, and to construct different viewpoints within the political system. The Evangelical Church in effect developed qualities of a public sphere wherein citizens and different groups who longed to go beyond the state’s control could meet.56 An important moment in the history of these movements was their call for a boycott of the May 1989 local elections, and the ensuing systematized rigging of those elections by the SED. The opposition movements managed to win much public support by exposing the SED’s rigging. Moreover, at the same time, free elections took place in Poland, an event that only underscored the East German opposition movement’s stress on the vital importance of free and fair elections in its own country.57 Sparked by the Monday prayers in the Nikolai church, many protests occurred in various East German cities, especially Leipzig, and quickly gained ground throughout the country. In summary, the GDR’s experience shows that the opening of a religious space was clearly a milestone in the development of protest

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movements. Activists seized the opportunity to develop a new social identity based on the legitimacy of democracy and human rights. The regime’s endeavor to gain international recognition also permitted new social movements to win some freedoms that promoted further liberalization of political life as the 1980s progressed. In contrast, Egypt under the Mubarak regime was an authoritarian state that survived “primarily through the implementation of policies that stifle[d] not only dissent but also other unauthorized expression of political opinion by social actors.”58 The economic and political liberalization measures enacted in the 1990s largely opened up the public space in which civil society organizations could flourish, in which a fairly free press could exist, and in which a fairly pluralist political party system could function. However, these measures constricted the possibility that any real opposition might take place. The press was fairly free to criticize the regime’s political and economic policies, to accuse ministers of corruption and electoral fraud, but criticism of Mubarak himself continued to be banned until the January 25, 2011, uprising. For instance, the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper al-Dostour lost his position in 2010 as a result of the publication’s unrelenting criticism of Mubarak and his family. Civil society organizations remained weak because they had limited freedom of action. Their roles were far more service-oriented and they tended to refrain from explicit political activity.59 The regime used soft authoritarian measures to gain international legitimacy as a supporter of safe and slow-evolving reform. At home, it held its grip on a security policy that was designed to keep Islamists out of power. Conversely, the regime adopted a highly religious discourse in an attempt to delegitimize the Muslim Brotherhood and gain for itself religious legitimacy. Thus, Egypt became filled with private voluntary religious organizations, as well as with an increasing number of religious satellite television channels. The government encouraged these religious organizations to guide public opinion in an attempt to depoliticize citizens. 60 Consequently, protest movements, especially youth movements, emerged in cyberspace through blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, and on the streets of metropolitan cities in a strikingly secular guise, calling for political and economic change without offering a religious rationale.61 The Egyptian regime’s long hold on power had created widespread corruption and a form of capitalism based on cronyism. The country eventually sprouted a political economy that was based on authoritarianism and fed by business elites who depended on that power structure.

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The system was able to develop a “dominant-power system”62 that had limited political space but enjoyed some form of political contestation by opposition groups and some basic institutional forms of democracy.63 This arrangement encouraged actors to resolve conflicts within the existing political system.64 In addition, the international arena and Western public opinion branded Arab countries as being inherently antidemocratic, which in effect portrayed the Mubarak regime as being simply “normal” for Egypt.65 Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was an important catalyst that increased the ability of protest movements in Egypt to press for more effective change. After Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the former president of Tunisia, fled his country, the US administration, under Barack Obama, openly criticized corruption in the Arab world, and was quick to support Tunisian protesters. However, the extent to which it was willing to support social movements in Egypt was vague, given Mubarak’s crucial role in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and given Egypt’s strategic role in the region. The Obama administration did not directly side with the Egyptian movements until Mubarak was ousted. As Egyptian activists pursued their peaceful uprising against the regime, they threatened the stability and unity of the Mubarak clan and its supporters by allying with different structures of society that had reform as their general ideal. Regardless of the stalled liberalization measures, emerging movements were able to use the opening of a public space in the media and in cyberspace, away from the religious public sphere, to develop newly acquired values based on human rights standards. The mass following of this movement was limited until the movement effectively used Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution to its own advantage. It portrayed the quick toppling of the Tunisian regime as evidence that Egyptians could also change the politics of their own country. However, the extent to which new social movements in Egypt are able to promote a real democratizing process is still dependent on their ability to network with one another, to mobilize different social actors, and to influence policymaking.

Conclusion This chapter has shown that protest movements arise in a public sphere that is free from government intervention, develop new collective val-

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ues, and are able to change politics in authoritarian regimes by altering power arrangements within society. In the German Democratic Republic, the protest movements, whose political culture sprang from an atheistic background, rose within a church that was largely free from the regime’s intervention. On the other hand, the Egyptian movements, whose political culture was mainly religious, arose within a secular public sphere, namely in cyberspace and on the streets of metropolitan cities, without relying on religious institutions. Thus an authoritarian political socialization process does not necessarily influence movements that become capable of developing their own values and their own understanding of sociopolitical and cultural matters. The potential of the Egyptian movements to influence political reform and change depends on their own abilities to mobilize different factions in society and on the political opportunities they encounter. Within the general study of social movements, both the East German and the Egyptian cases show important similarities. First, nondemocratic forms of government characterized their political regimes, with a dominant political party taking the lead in all political affairs of the polity. Throughout the years, the SED in East Germany and the NDP in Egypt were believed to be strong institutions with mass followings. However, party membership was based on certain socioeconomic and political privileges denied to the rest of society. Thus, corruption was deeply entrenched and associated with a party system that was key in delegitimizing each regime. With the rupture of the old political structure in both societies, both parties ceased to exist. The widespread rigging of legislative and local elections in both regimes was a wellknown fact; it had been practiced since the inception of both the SED and the NDP. Nevertheless, the rigging of the last elections prior to the end of both regimes, and the ability of protest movements to provide proof of this rigging, were essential for both movements to realize their immediate political goals. The catalyst for the collapse of both regimes was based on external factors. In the GDR, it was the free and fair Polish elections and the Soviet Union’s nonintervention policy that empowered the protest movements to mobilize citizens. Thus, when demonstrations occurred in Leipzig in October 1989, the rest of the nation quickly joined to overthrow the SED. In a similar vein, the Egyptian movement was influenced by external factors: Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, which quickly ousted a longstanding authoritarian leader from his post. Like their German counter-

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parts, Egyptian protest movements effectively used the cyberspace they had painstakingly cultivated throughout the decade to mobilize massive numbers of other citizens. Therefore, when the movements called for the January 2011 uprising, many sympathizers who were not officially members of the new social movements were among the first to demonstrate. The protest movement in the GDR initially called for, but was unable to develop, democratic reforms within the system. The masses went a step further and called for the complete abolishment of the system, and one year later East German citizens chose unification with West Germany rather than internal reform. The protest movements in Egypt, on the other hand, were effective in removing the symbolic power of the old regime by ousting Mubarak from his presidential office and calling for a complete reform of the sociopolitical and economic structure in the country. The extent to which Egypt will continue to democratize is still unknown. A new constitution that emphasizes a clear separation of the three branches of government, in addition to a clear and enforceable system of checks and balances, is the only guarantee for a full-fledged democratization process to succeed.

Notes 1. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 36. 2. See, for instance, Ruther Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Claus Offe, “Reflections on the Institutional Self of Movement Politics: A Tentative Stage Model,” in Russel J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler, eds., Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Craig Jenkins, “Sociopolitical Movements,” Oxford Handbook of Political Behaviour 4, no. 9 (1981); Alberto Melucci, “The New Social Movements: A Theoretical Approach,” Social Sciences Information 19 (1980); Herbert Kitschelt, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies,” British Journal of Political Science 16 (1985); Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978); Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2009). 3. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Robert Putnam, Making Democ-

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racy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). 4. See, for example, Augustus R. Norton, Civil Society in the Middle East, 2 vols. (New York: Brill, 1995 and 1996); Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany, and Paul Noble, Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World: Theoretical Perspectives (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995). 5. Amy Hawthorne, “Middle Eastern Democracy: Is Civil Society the Answer?” Carnegie Papers (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index .cfm?fa=view&id=1463. 6. The public sphere here as defined by Habermas is the free realm between the family and the workplace, where citizens gather and organize to discuss their common goods and public affairs. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by Thomas Burger (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1989). 7. Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, translated by Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1984); Douglas Kelner, Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html. 8. Sami Zubaida, “Capitalism, Democracy, and ‘the Public Sphere’ and Globalization,” in Eberhard Kienle, ed., Politics from Above, Politics from Below: The Middle East in the Age of Economic Reform (London: Saqi, 2003). 9. Alberto Melucci, The New Social Movements; Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2. 10. Marc Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 11. Offe, “Reflections on the Institutional Self.” 12. Asef Bayat, “Revolution Without Movement, Movement Without Revolution: Comparing Islamic Activism in Iran and Egypt,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40 (1998). 13. Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani, Social Movements: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), p. 246. 14. See for example, Anthony Oberschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973); Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultures of Framings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 15. Eduardo Canel, “New Social Movement Theory and Resource Mobilization Theory: The Need for Integration,” International Development Research Centre, 2004, http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-54446-201-1-DO_TOPIC .html. 16. Karl-Dieter Opp, Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Critique, and Synthesis (London: Routledge, 2009). 17. See Della Porta and Diani, Social Movements, p. 68.

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18. Ibid. 19. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 64. 20. Donatella Della Porta and Hanspeter Kriesi, “Social Movements in a Globalizing World: An Introduction,” in Donatella Della Porta, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Dieter Rucht, eds., Social Movements in a Globalizing World (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 21. Gerd Meyer, “Auf dem Weg zu Freiheit und Einheit: Die Politische Kultur der DDR im Umbruch” (Tubingen: University of Tubingen, 1990), http://tobias-lib.uni-tuebingen.de/volltexte/2009/4412/pdf/Meyer_Gerd _Auf_dem_Weg_zu_Freiheit_und_Einheit.pdf. 22. Dietrich Rucht and Friedrich Neidhardt, “Towards a ‘Movement Society’? On the Possibilities of Institutionalizing Social Movements,” Social Movement Studies 1 (2002), p. 11. 23. Eckert Rainer, Antitotalitaerer Wiederstand und Kommunistische Repression (Leipzig: Vorum Verlag Leipzig, 2006), p. 11. 24. For text of the Berlin Appeal, see http://beepworld.de/members /opk-akte-verfasser/berliner-appell.htm. 25. Author interview with Katrin Eigenfeld, July 8, 2010. 26. “Jugend Opposition in der DDR,” http://www.jugendopposition .de/index.php?id=1. 27. Erhart Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 1949–1989 (Berlin: Ch. Link Verlag, 1998). 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Christian Fuehrer, Und Wir Sind Dabei Gewesen: Die Revolution, die aus der Kirche Kam (Berlin: Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, 2009). 31. Ibid. 32. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition. 33. Dina Shehata, introduction to Shehata, ed., Audet al-Siyassa: AlHarakat al-Ihtijajiyya al-Jadida fiy Misr [The Return of Politics: New Protest Movements in Egypt] (Cairo: al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 2010). 34. Sameh Fawzy, “Al-Harakat ‘al-Matlabiyya’ wa ‘al-Siyassiya’ fiy Misr: Qira’a Naqdiyya Muqarana” [“Demands” Movements and “Political” Movements in Egypt: A Comparative Critical Reading], in Shehata, Audat alSiyyassa. 35. Ibid. 36. Rabab al-Mahdi, “Umal al-Mahala: Intilaq Haraqa Umaliyya Jadida” [Al-Mahala Workers: The Beginning of a New Movement], in Shehata, Audat al-Siyyassa. 37. Fawzy, “Al-Harakat.” 38. Ibid. 39. Shehata, Audet al-Siyyassa, p. 12. 40. Dina Shehata, “Youth Activism in Egypt,” Arab Reform Initiative, 2008, http://www.arab-reform.net/IMG/pdf/ARB.23_Dina_Shehata_ENG.pdf.

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41. Amr al-Shoubki, “Arab Reform Bulletin, 2009,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/arb/PDF/conference /Amr_al-Shoubki.pdf. 42. See, for instance, the movement’s Facebook page, http://www .facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk. 43. Bayat, Life as Politics. 44. Ibid. 45. Samantha Shapiro, “Revolution, Facebook Style,” New York Times, January 25, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25bloggers-t .html?_r=1. 46. Bayat, Life as Politics. 47. “The Political Opposition Prepares for the Day of Anger and Calls on Police for Restraint,” al-Masry al-Youm, January 24, 2011, p. 6. 48. Ibid. 49. Canel, “New Social Movement Theory.” 50. Kitschelt, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest,” p. 58. 51. Ibid. 52. Della Porta and Kriesi, “Social Movements in a Globalizing World.” 53. Gary Goertz, Contexts of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 54. Detlef Polak, Politischer Protest: Politische Alternative Gruppen in der DDR (Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 2000). 55. Author interview with Gerd Meyer, July 9, 2010. 56. Ibid. 57. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition. 58. Mehran Kamarva, “Non Democratic States and Political Liberalization,” Third World Quarterly 19 (1998), p. 64. 59. Hawthorne, “Middle Eastern Democracy.” 60. See, for example, Amr Shobaky’s al-Wafd and al-Masry al-Youm articles on the increasing religious strife and the “New Preachers” phenomenon in Egypt, available at http://www.coptreal.com/WShowSubjuct.aspx?SID=21145. 61. Fawzy, “Al-Harakat.” 62. Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” in Larry Diamond, Marc Plattner, and Philip Costopoulos, eds., Debates on Democratization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), p. 83. 63. Ibid., p. 84. 64. Steven Heydemann, “Social Pacts and the Persistence of Authoritarianism in the Middle East,” in Oliver Schlumberger, ed., Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). 65. Mustapha al-Sayyid, “International Dimensions of Middle Eastern Authoritarianism: The G8 and External Efforts at Political Reform,” in Schlumberger, Debating Arab Authoritarianism.

12 Israel and the Tahrir Revolution Amr Yossef

On January 30, 2011, in the midst of Egypt’s prodemocracy revolution, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman appearing on government television said that “recent events have helped [identify] the true friends of Egypt.”1 Obviously, the spokesman was referring to the friends of the regime. Israel proved to be the truest friend Hosni Mubarak had. Unlike the United States and other allies of Egypt’s regime, Israel stands out (along with only Saudi Arabia) for not abandoning President Mubarak at any stage, even after his fall. During the revolution, Israel developed a policy that broadly ran from a low-profile silence, to actively campaigning in support of Mubarak, to preparing for post-Mubarak Egypt, while praising Mubarak’s leadership throughout. Initially, Israeli officials were uncharacteristically strict in maintaining diplomatic silence regarding the uprising in Egypt, and on January 30, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his ministers “to refrain from making comments on the issue.”2 That was probably due to two main factors. First, the revolution apparently took Israel by complete surprise, which, as one Israeli columnist has termed it, amounted to an “intelligence failure.” 3 Though the prospects of post-Mubarak Egypt had long been debated in Israel,4 confidence in Mubarak’s grip on power was so strong that Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, former defense minister and an expert on Arab affairs, had claimed on January 28 that Mubarak remained in full control and was only allowing people to let off steam.5 With the help of his sophisticated intelligence services, BenEliezer opined, “it won’t be a problem.”6 Second, the silence was meant to avoid inflaming an already volatile Egyptian public. Israel correctly 211

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calculated that pro-regime messages could provoke the protesters to turn their dissent against the Jewish state, whose name was almost never heard in the domestic-focused uprisings—which, of course, would have played into the hands of anti-Mubarak forces. However, when President Barack Obama called for an immediate, orderly transition to democracy, the significance of the change in US policy was quickly grasped. This change, particularly the threat to review aid to Egypt if violence against civilians continued, would strengthen the protesters by undermining Mubarak’s international legitimacy, and suggest to the military—the regime’s backbone and the major stakeholder in US aid—that it should withdraw its support for Mubarak. Israel therefore abandoned its subdued support and engaged openly in helping the embattled president. On the one hand, Israel embraced Mubarak’s arguments. Echoing the regime’s “Mubarak or chaos” dualism, Israeli leaders portrayed the grim prospect of serious damage to Middle East stability were Mubarak to leave. On January 31, President Shimon Peres praised Mubarak for keeping the peace, and asserted that “a fanatic religious oligarch is not better than a lack of democracy.”7 Similarly, Netanyahu warned against the takeover of Egypt by an organized Islamic group.8 Chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Shaul Mofaz also stated that Israel’s interest lay in the preservation of Egypt’s stability.9 Israel went as far as instructing its ambassadors in major capitals to urge their host countries to curb their criticism of Mubarak.10 On the other hand, Israel launched a pro-Mubarak campaign vis-àvis the United States, criticizing what it saw as President Obama’s betrayal of a longtime ally, and his naive policy approach, which in Israel’s eyes would not lead to a democratic process, but to the end of it.11 Housing Minister Ariel Atias and Deputy Minister for Galilee and Negev Development Ayoub Kara expressed disappointment in the Obama administration’s rejection of Mubarak by warning that US support of the masses amounted to supporting the Muslim Brotherhood’s bid to replace Mubarak.12 Meanwhile, former senior officials and commentators were far more outspoken. Two former heads of the Mossad, Dany Yatom and Ephraim Halevy, agreed that by abandoning Mubarak, the United States was sending the wrong message to its allies in the region: that it was not reliable. 13 Uzi Dayan, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, and Zalman Shoval, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, described US policy as irresponsible and irrelevant to reality.14 For other Israeli commentators, Obama was char-

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acterized as having “stabbed Mubarak” or shot him: “a bullet in the back from Uncle Sam.”15 Parallel to these messages, Israeli officials are reported to have assumed the role of Mubarak’s advocate in Washington, D.C., establishing intense contacts with the White House through which they communicated anger at Obama’s call to Mubarak to agree to a transition, and urged the US administration to back the Egyptian president.16 According to a former Israeli peace negotiator, the message Israel conveyed was that “après Mubarak, le déluge,” and that gets to the core US interest in the region—Israel.17 Simultaneously, the Israel lobby in Washington, D.C., was mobilized for the same purpose. US Jewish leaders met on February 1, 2011, with Daniel Shapiro, senior director for the Middle East on the US National Security Council, to discuss the implications for Israel of Obama’s Egypt policy. Other supporters of Israel in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations warned that a democratic Egyptian government, led by either the Muslim Brotherhood or Mohamed el-Baradei, would be tough on Israel’s peace and soft on Iran’s nukes.18 Mubarak’s declaration on February 1 that he would not run in the next presidential elections caused another shift. Now that the longresisted transition was in effect, Israel adopted an approach that did not abandon Mubarak, despite recognizing that his era was over, but focused more on preparing for post-Mubarak Egypt.19 Israel employed the 1979 Iran analogy—by referring to a democracy-seeking uprising usurped by organized Islamists.20 Netanyahu used this idea to urge the international community on February 2 to encourage any government of Egypt to honor the peace with Israel. 21 On February 5, Peres praised Mubarak for his contribution to peace and repeated the regime’s position that “[free] elections in Egypt are dangerous.” 22 Netanyahu reaffirmed Peres’s point two days later and highlighted the likelihood that Egypt might be taken over by Islamists, either directly or gradually.23 Ironically, Israeli and Iranian assessments concurred at this stage, though for different reasons, for Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei also claimed to see in the events in Egypt the same “Islamic awareness” produced by the revolution in Iran.24 Director of the Political-Military Bureau at the Ministry of Defense Amos Gilead put it unambiguously, stating that Israel would prefer stability to democracy in Egypt and adding that were a transition unavoidable, it should be marked by full respect for the ex-leader. 25 The

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urgency of this view led Israel to intensify contacts with the United States. Defense Minister Ehud Barak made a rushed visit to Washington, D.C., and on February 9 met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to stress the importance of US support to Israel in light of the political unrest in Egypt.26 The same day, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, urged the administration to reaffirm its commitment to Israel’s security in light of the possibility that Egypt’s democratic process might be hijacked by Islamists.27 In the end, the most Israel would do to acknowledge Egypt’s transitional situation was to characterize Mubarak’s decision to remain in office as an internal Egyptian affair.28 Remarkably, Israel has continued to dignify Mubarak’s leadership even after his fall; as Netanyahu put it on March 17, his country deeply appreciated Mubarak’s role in keeping the peace.29 Israel’s pro-Mubarak position was so blunt that columnist Thomas Friedman concluded in the International Herald Tribune that Israel and Saudi Arabia gained fame as the two large countries that stood against the young Egyptians in their quest for democracy.30

Why Were You with Pharaoh, Israel? For Mubarak’s critics, the issue is that the former president was so proIsrael that he subordinated Egypt’s national interests to those of the Jewish state. However, a deeper inspection of Mubarak’s approach reveals a more complex reality. Under the “Mubarak doctrine,” the essence of which was the preservation of stability, “negotiated peace” became the “strategic choice” of Egypt and the Arabs as a means of resolving the conflict with Israel. The Arab Middle East was not to be further pushed into a clash with the outside world, and extremist nationalism and radical Islam were seen as dangerous threats to domestic as well as regional security. Thus, according to his long-term adviser Osama el-Baz, Mubarak “acted in conformity with the nation’s interests, refusing to get involved in whatever might cause tension in relations with Israel; he wanted to focus on the country’s development and spare it from war and conflict.”31 Combined with Mubarak’s overcautious character and his deepseated aversion to risk-taking,32 his policy, though essentially serving a genuine Egyptian national interest in maintaining the peace, often exceeded the requirements of keeping the bilateral peace, particularly with regard to the situation in Gaza and other regional issues. This was

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the “extra mile” that gave Israel a greater stake in Mubarak’s Egypt than any other country. It is true that Israelis have long protested against the “cold peace” with Egypt, which meant that the broader elements of bilateral relations—such as economic and cultural exchanges—remained essentially undeveloped. Commercial ties were kept to such a bare minimum that bilateral nonoil merchandise trade in 2009 amounted to only 0.004 percent of Israel’s total international trade.33 The trade agreement regarding qualifying industrial zones is viewed by Israel as a political tool to break the Arab taboo against doing business openly with Israeli firms, but it provided only a modest increase in Israeli exports.34 Even the oftpublicized Egyptian natural gas deal, though it supplies Israel with 40 percent of its needs, does not seem to have benefited Israel as much as it corrupted Egyptian officials and businessmen. The Egyptian government sold gas at a low rate—almost half the price of comparable deals in the region—to a consortium led by Mubarak’s friend Hussein Salem, which then negotiated its own price with Israeli buyers.35 Israel has frequently complained of the meager social exchanges entailed by its relations with Egypt. In Israel’s view, the Egyptian government tolerated widespread anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish positions in the state-controlled media, prevented bilateral cultural and social interaction by endorsing the Egyptian professional boycott against Israel, and delayed and denied nontourist visas for Israelis while also imposing prohibitive restrictions on Egyptians wanting to travel to Israel.36 Mubarak opted for restricted normalization as a hallmark of Egyptian ties to the Jewish state largely because of the Egyptian public’s sympathy with their Palestinian brethren and Egyptians’ generalized antipathy toward Israel’s occupation of Arab lands and belligerent policies toward other Arabs. However, criticism of Israel was also not infrequently used as a means of deflecting public attention away from Egypt’s own decaying socioeconomic conditions. This official schizophrenia, as one Egyptian commentator aptly observed, was explained by the regime’s need to allow people to let off steam through “creating a virtual heroic world in which we [Egyptians] defeat and humiliate Israel.”37 The point of interest here is that Israel understood this logic and became reconciled to it, reasoning that even this “ground level of relations,” according to a former Israeli ambassador to Cairo, Ephraim Dowek, would be better than military confrontation and enhance Israel’s security.38 For Israel, Mubarak’s policies constituted a strategic asset that only Egypt, as a neighbor and the center of the Arab world, could offer. The

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stability of the 1979 peace with Egypt, after thirty years of war, had become key to Israel’s national security. The peace relieved Israel from the danger of war with the strongest Arab army, significantly widened Israel’s margin of security by limiting the Egyptian military presence in Sinai with an effective verification mechanism, and offered Israel a substantial “peace dividend”—the opportunity to reduce its defense budget and reallocate its funds to development projects that might achieve rapid economic growth.39 Security was the reward that outweighed all other aspects of Israel’s relations with Egypt. Mubarak’s approach to Egypt’s relations with Israel meant that any and all negative aspects should always be in the margins, not the core, of the relationship. The latter were clearly reserved for the bilateral security regime. Mubarak had frequently been pressed by Egypt’s opposition groups and the Arab mass media to terminate the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, or sever diplomatic relations with Israel, or even intervene militarily against Israel. However, the principal characteristics of Mubarak’s approach to policymaking—including his reflexive aversion to risk-taking and an unwillingness to jeopardize US military and economic assistance—prevailed. Mubarak constantly turned down these calls. Therefore, in times of crisis in the Egyptian-Israeli relationship, Mubarak would typically suspend some nonessential elements of cooperation (agricultural and trade, such as in the 2006 Lebanon war and the 2009 war on Gaza) or take restrained diplomatic measures (temporarily recalling the Egyptian ambassador in Tel Aviv for consultations, such as in the 1982 Lebanon war and the 2001 intifada), but go no further. On the use of force, his standard response was that Egypt would never go to war for reasons other than its own territorial integrity.40 Military-to-military ties were not warm; there were no joint exercises, exchange of attachés, or top-level visits. However, the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) in Sinai offered an institutional platform not only for cooperation over border control, but also for confidencebuilding measures that allowed coordinating short-term limited force deployments in demilitarized areas. Examples included the recurrent Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deployments close to the Gaza border and the Egyptian army’s deployment to restore order in Sinai during the revolution.41 At the same time, intelligence cooperation seemed close and effective. According to diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks, the Egyptian intelligence service, sharing the common concern over Islamic extremism, developed a strong working relationship with the Israeli

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Ministry of Defense that focused on preventing Hamas and other extremist organizations from undertaking operations against Israel and on thwarting militant activity in Egypt.42 High-level visits between Cairo and Tel Aviv recurrently took place (usually by Egypt’s chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, and his Israeli interlocutor, Amos Gilead, director of the Political-Military Bureau at the Ministry of Defense), and a “hot line” set up between the two was used almost daily.43 James Larocco, former director of the MFO, offered the following assessment of security ties between the two countries: “Egyptian-Israeli intelligence cooperation is by far the most developed, the most frequent, the most institutionalized, the most personalized and without question the most productive of all bilateral ties.”44 Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Egypt was not even a priority for the IDF, 45 nor did Israel appear on Egypt’s list of regional security threats.46 Whereas security cooperation could be reasonably justified on the grounds of preserving the bilateral peace, this argument was hardly applicable to the situation in the Gaza Strip. Following the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the two countries coordinated the deployment of an Egyptian border-guard regiment to curb the smuggling of arms across the fourteen-kilometer Egypt-Gaza border. When Hamas, which calls for Israel’s destruction, took Gaza in June 2007 from the secular Fatah, which leads the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and is committed to peace with Israel, both countries imposed an embargo on Gaza to compel a restoration of PNA rule. Hamas was an anathema to Mubarak, who saw it as a branch of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which he considered the most significant challenge to his rule. Mubarak was therefore as interested as Israel in undermining it. When Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008–2009, causing massive civilian casualties, Mubarak condemned the Israeli offensive but held Hamas responsible for the outbreak of fighting and adamantly rejected appeals to open the Rafah border crossing, Gaza’s sole non-Israeli-controlled outlet to the outside world. A review of diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks shows that Israeli officials were satisfied with Egypt’s wide range of security and diplomatic efforts to counter the smuggling of arms into Gaza. 47 To interdict the movement of people, goods, weapons, and money into and out of Gaza, Egypt embarked on a system involving three programs: (1) a US$23 million seismic-acoustic tunnel detection system along three and a half kilometers of the central portion of the Egypt-Gaza border; (2) a US$40 million, nineteen-meter-deep, subterranean steel wall along the border to cut off existing tunnels and obstruct new ones; and (3) fifteen x-ray

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machines to scan vehicles entering Sinai to search for arms and explosives.48 This system is believed to have gone into operation by the beginning of 2011. While Mubarak had every right to prevent his country from being dragged into another conflict with Israel over Hamas and its smuggling activities, there was obviously no justification for what Egypt’s foreign minister in the first post-revolution cabinet termed the “shameful blockade” that hindered the normal movement of people and commodities across the Rafah crossing.49 At the regional level, Israel found in Mubarak’s Egypt a partner that shared its worldview. A status quo power, Egypt became a prime member of the region’s “moderate” camp along with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the PNA (vis-à-vis the “extremist” camp led by Iran and its proxies, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas). Common interests and threats were reflected in the two major outstanding issues between those camps, the peace process and Iran’s regional influence. True, the two countries appeared to disagree over the peace process. Egypt demanded full Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. In fact, however, Mubarak’s Egypt was basically in harmony with Israel. Mubarak considered his intermediary role the most valuable service he could deliver to the West or to his own public.50 Therefore, the “peace process” became an end in itself for him, as it was for Israeli leaders. Mubarak’s role was vital in Yasser Arafat’s decision to renounce violence—an Israeli prerequisite for initiating the peace process in 1991. It was also vital to the “momentum” of what were effectively stagnant Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Mubarak hosted for this purpose countless conferences in Cairo and Sharm el-Sheikh. The twodecade-long peace process produced virtually no result but instead created what in Roger Cohen’s telling phrase has been described as “a permanent temporariness ever more favorable to Israeli power.”51 At the regional level, Mubarak lobbied the League of Arab States until that organization adopted the Arab peace initiative at the Beirut summit of 2002, and then joined forces with Saudi Arabia to block any steps proposed at the League to reverse that initiative or to be otherwise confrontational toward Israel, such as during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.52 Mubarak was instrumental in pressuring Arafat to crack down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad, reform PNA security services, and stop supporting violence against Israelis.53 Under Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, Mubarak practiced his own dual containment: pressuring the PNA to soften demands and negotiating positions, and undermining

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Hamas to render it more flexible on the restoration of PNA rule in Gaza as well as on the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped in June 2006.54 Finally, it was Mubarak who provided diplomatic backing even for extreme right-wing Israeli leaders like Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, despite worsening relations with the Arab world.55 On the other hand, and true to his doctrine, Mubarak viewed Iran as the greatest threat to Egypt and to the Middle East as it pursued the development of nuclear weapons and continued trying to export its Islamic revolution. Mubarak persisted in rejecting restoration of diplomatic relations with Iran, even when the Arab Gulf states chose that option, and appears to have supported Israel’s drive to counter the potential of a nuclear Iran.56 Mubarak’s Egypt—much as had Israel—urged the West not to trust Tehran’s claims regarding its nuclear program and pushed for a confrontational approach. As early as 2003, Mubarak warned International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed el-Baradei against Iranian deception rooted in the Shiite concept of taqqiya.57 Later on, Egypt urged major European powers to exert maximum pressure on Iran. 58 President Obama’s call for a dialogue with Iran in 2009 came as unwelcome news in Cairo. According to WikiLeaks, Mubarak reportedly told Special Envoy George Mitchell that he did not oppose the dialogue with Iran as long as the United States “did not believe a single word they say.”59 Similarly, Egyptian officials relayed to Special Envoy Dennis Ross their expectation that the initiative would fail and that Washington “should prepare for confrontation through isolation.”60 Also in 2009, Egypt twice approved the passage of Israeli warships through the Suez Canal on their way to the Red Sea, a move that was interpreted in Israel as a message that Egypt would support Israel’s deployment of its deterrent force near Iran’s shores.61 For Mubarak’s Egypt, as it was for Israel, Iran was also a source of havoc and terrorism in the region. Mubarak believed that Iran was working to weaken his regime through creating Hezbollah and Hamas terror cells in Egypt and supporting Egyptian opposition groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Jamaat al-Islamiya.62 Egypt’s exposure in 2009 of a Hezbollah “terror” network, accused of planning attacks against ships passing through the Suez Canal and against Israeli tourists, touched a nerve with Israel. It seemed that Israel and Egypt were ultimately, as an editorial in Haaretz was titled, “in the same boat.” 63 The commentary added the pertinent observation that “those who seek signs of warmth between [Egypt and Israel] may not find

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them among authors and journalists, but they definitely exist in the realm of both countries’ security.”64

Challenges and Opportunities Uncertainty over Egypt’s future led the Netanyahu government to take a fairly cautious approach by sending a dual message of deterrence and reassurance to avoid deterioration in relations with revolutionary Egypt. First, announcements on military upgrades were made. In early March 2011, Defense Minister Ehud Barak indicated that Israel might seek an additional $20 billion in US military assistance to help it manage potential threats stemming from upheavals in the Arab world.65 A month later, the Knesset’s Finance Committee decided that the IDF would receive a supplementary 260 million shekels (US$74 million) to its 2011 budget.66 Israel also reminded Egypt of its own benefits from the peace, implicitly showing that a renewal of conflict with Israel would be selfdefeating. David Brodet, chair of the board of directors of Bank Leumi, emphasized Egypt’s dependence on US military aid and pointedly stressed that even an Islamist takeover of Egypt would not enable it to obtain sufficient power to “allow the country to encounter Israel militarily.”67 Yitzhak Gal of Tel Aviv University wrote that principal sectors of the Egyptian economy—oil exports, Suez Canal revenues, and tourism, as well as international investment—would be vulnerable to severe damage if relations with Israel were destabilized, because they were contingent on political and security stability, for which peace with Israel was essential.68 The Israeli minister of foreign affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, was even more blunt. Lieberman is reported to have sent a document to Netanyahu in which he stated that the “Egyptian question is more disturbing than the Iranian question” and advised the prime minister to rebuild the IDF force in southern Israel in response to political changes taking place in Egypt.69 The second wing of the Israeli government’s post-revolutionary approach to Egypt engaged the government in a wide range of activities meant to reassure Egypt as well as the already alarmed Israeli public. Netanyahu welcomed the declaration by Egypt’s governing Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) on February 12, 2011, that Egypt would honor all its international agreements, calling the Egypt-Israel peace treaty a “cornerstone for peace and stability in the entire Middle East.”70 Signaling confidence in the SCAF leadership, Israel approved

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the deployment of additional Egyptian troops in Sinai in mid-February to help secure the natural gas pipeline.71 Barak also expressed the view on February 28, after a phone conversation with the head of the SCAF, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, that the peace treaty with Cairo was not in danger and praised the role the Egyptian army was performing.72 In early March 2011, Netanyahu called upon the international community to help economic progress in Egypt and Jordan through a Marshal Plan–like effort.73 Peres was soon to follow up this idea with President Obama during his visit to Washington, D.C., on April 5, when he reportedly stressed the importance of ensuring economic opportunity as well as the nurturing of democracy in Egypt.74 Signaling a willingness to maintain normal channels of communication, several senior Israeli officials arrived in Cairo. Among them were Amos Gilead, director of the Political-Military Bureau at the Defense Ministry, and Rafi Barak, director-general of the Foreign Ministry.75 When Israel was forced to give priority to the supply of Egyptian natural gas after sabotage attacks on the pipeline from Egypt in the spring of 2011, Israel’s government showed uncharacteristic sensitivity to charges in Egypt of corruption surrounding the gas deal. Thus it did not oppose renegotiating the price.76 A similar sensibility was shown when Egypt decided in April 2012 to cancel the gas deal. Netanyahu stated that the decision was not born out of political developments, but only a business dispute between the Israeli company and the Egyptian company.77 Challenges

That “Egypt will never be the same,” in the words of President Obama on the day of Mubarak’s departure, is Israel’s gravest challenge.78 Trusting the leadership of the SCAF and aware that in the near future Egypt will be preoccupied with its internal affairs, Israel generally anticipates no drastic, immediate changes in Egypt’s policy.79 But it is alarmed at the long-term prospects. Though it was not radical Islamic forces that overthrew Mubarak, it is clear that political Islam will influence the policies of post-Mubarak Egypt. In June 2012 the Brotherhood won the presidential elections. In early August the newly named Egyptian president, Mohamad Morsi, at least temporarily resolved the ensuing power struggle with the SCAF by forcing the military to accept the legitimacy of civilian rule in Egypt. Morsi committed his administration to having a new constitution drafted. The outcome of that process will largely determine whether ideolog-

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ical purity or pragmatic political calculation will be the dominant guiding impulse behind Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood government. Israel should endeavor to promote the latter alternative. Opportunities

While there is almost a consensus on the challenges the Egyptian revolution presents to Israel, opportunities seem to mean different things for different people in Israel. On the one hand, the right wing, represented by the incumbent coalition government, sees the Egyptian revolution and the Arab Spring in its entirety as an opportunity for further procrastination in peacemaking. In the midst of Egypt’s uprising, Israel’s right wing bluntly defined its aims in the revolution. As the current head of Israel’s National Security Council wrote: The inevitable lesson is that Israel’s security needs and its capability to defend itself should be given priority over any other demands, including the noble dream of reaching political [peace] agreements. If we have to choose between an agreement and Israel’s security demands, then security is preferable. . . . Negotiations or even an agreement with the Palestinians will not solve the problem created by the new situation in Egypt, and by no means will they help Israel in front of the threats that will emerge in the future.80

Netanyahu’s strategy has been to exploit the natural anxiety of the Israeli public over the drastic changes in the region to show that under proliferating uncertainties, Israel should avoid making crucial decisions. Too often used is the analogy of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 as well as the “scarecrow” of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to tell the world that holding territories is the best safeguard against a worstcase scenario of Islamist takeover in the neighborhood.81 The post-revolution Netanyahu government’s “security first” policy is the means of pursuing this strategy. The policy, best expressed during Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C., in May 2011, comprises four main elements: 1. No return to the June 1967 borders, which are seen as indefensible, so as to accommodate “changed reality on the ground”—that is, Israeli settlement blocs. 2. Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people. 3. An indefinite Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley.

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4. A long-term interim agreement leaving the core disputed issues to a future permanent agreement.82 Implicit in this policy is the method at which Israel has excelled for decades: using the interim period to accelerate settlement construction in the West Bank in order to predetermine the shape of the final status, rendering the presumably future Palestinian state into no more than several disconnected, overpopulated enclaves.83 On the other hand, Israel’s left wing and its allies in the peace camp see different opportunities, reasoning, as Defense Minister Barak put it, that “we should look for opportunities within these difficulties rather than spiral into heavy uncertainty that paralyzes us from acting toward a better and more stable future.”84 In other words, unless Israel takes the initiative and contributes to shaping the region’s future reality by advancing peace with the Palestinians, uncontrolled developments may define a different reality that will make an agreement more difficult. 85 Israel’s hopes can be reconstructed into three interlinked opportunities. Opportunity 1: Democratic peace. Utilizing the democratic peace theory, which posits that democracies rarely go to war with each other, Israel has long argued that a true peace with the Arab world will be possible only when Arabs embrace democracy.86 It has long been argued that the Arab public is hostile to Israel because the Arab authoritarian regimes have allowed the spread of misinformation about Israel through tolerating anti-Israel, anti-Semitic media, serving the double aim of legitimization and diversion. A representative Egyptian government would not need to use such tactics. The prospect of a democratic Egypt is therefore good for Israel because it could deliver to the state a real, warm peace between peoples and not only between governments. Because Egypt is the epicenter of the Arab world, an Israel that makes peace with the Palestinians and a renewed peace with the Egyptians would push its dividend to the wider regional level. For example, Israel could help the Arab Gulf states become home to cutting-edge technology in industry and, in turn, receive investments from their oil-based treasuries.87 Opportunity 2: Exposed extremists. The unresolved Palestinian question was used by Arab autocrats for diversion, and also by the anti-Israel Islamic extremist forces for recruiting frustrated Arab youth. Given that what brought about the revolution in Egypt and the Arab world were

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domestic injustices and not anger against Israel, this pool on which extremist movements once drew is likely to dry up. The Arab Spring hit not only the extremists’ argument, but also their credibility. In 2006, Hezbollah’s flags and pictures of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, were displayed in Cairo and elsewhere in the Arab world as demonstrators protested against the Israeli war in Lebanon. Now, Hezbollah’s image is damaged in the eyes of Arabs because of its defense of the Syrian regime’s murderous crackdown against prodemocracy protests.88 In Syria, the largely Sunni Muslim opposition has expressed sentiments against Hezbollah and Iran.89 If the Bashar alAssad regime falls and a democratic government emerges there, this will produce a crack in the extremist camp, driving Syria away from Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.90 Opportunity 3: Iranian revolution. Israel’s “greatest opportunity,”

according to Amos Yadlin, former chief of the IDF’s intelligence branch, is “if the Jasmine Revolution spreads to Iran.”91 Israel’s primary security policy priority has been preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, and it has worked hard both to encourage the world to prevent this scenario and to develop its own military capabilities to preempt it. A democratic Iran might not turn back to the Shah’s days, when Tehran was Israel’s strategic ally in the Middle East, but there is a reasonable likelihood that it would redirect the bulk of its resources away from supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, expanding its defense budget, and focusing on the military applications of its nuclear program. Instead, a democratic Iran could be expected to focus on economic development. In essence, Israel would not only be relieved from the greatest threat it had to face since its existence, but also benefit from a more secure regional environment.

Conclusion Statements and communications by Israeli officials and public-opinion makers during the Egyptian revolution of 2011 show that Israel not only genuinely took Mubarak’s side during the uprising, but also acted accordingly. Israel’s pro-Mubarak position during the uprising did not go unnoticed in Egypt, where it is widely believed that Israel supports the counterrevolution forces.92 Israel’s anti-revolution stance is explained by the fact that its peace with Mubarak’s Egypt was greater than the sum of its parts. Despite the

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weak economic and cultural ties between the two states, Mubarak’s rule was a major asset for Israel because the regime shared the fear of a common threat of Islamism and an identical interest in promoting peace as the Arabs’ “strategic choice.” Israel cared more about cooperation in security, which it obtained, than about economic and cultural normalization, which it was partly denied. Therefore, Israel faces serious challenges in dealing with postMubarak Egypt, ranging from a possible takeover by radical Islamic forces, to simply a chaotic Egypt, or to an Egypt that maintains the peace with Israel but is nonetheless no longer a member of the region’s moderate camp. However, the future of Israel’s relations with Egypt, and its status in the Middle East in general, may lie somewhere between these scenarios, and in all cases will be contingent not only on domestic developments in Egypt but also on Israel’s policies. The crisis in relations caused by the August 18, 2011, attack in Eilat led observers to blame Netanyahu’s “total paralysis toward the Palestinian issue.”93 This view suggests that Israel should engage in a serious effort to reach a final-status agreement with the PNA regarding the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Resolution of the Palestinian issue would dry up the main source of anti-Israel sentiments in Egypt and the Arab world, and lead to full, peaceful, normalized relations as prescribed by the 2002 Arab peace initiative. A frozen Palestinian issue will always continue to be an unsettling factor in Egyptian-Israeli relations. However, the constraints imposed on real options by Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government render the materialization of this view unlikely in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, given Israel’s interest in maintaining peace, other steps should go hand in hand with pursuing peace with the Palestinians. Instead of Netanyahu’s futile “wait and see” attitude, a new approach would see Israel engaging with the Egyptian revolution. Publicly, Israel should adopt symbolic measures that show respect and not arrogance toward Arab dignity. Israel should also invest more in targeting the Arab masses with a different discourse to demonstrate that Israel, as a democracy, supports their demands for freedom. In the same vein, now that the Muslim Brotherhood has become a significant player in Egypt, Israel should not automatically designate the party as a natural enemy, since it is likely that the Brotherhood will probably have to moderate its anti-Israeli positions under the burdens of governance. Finally, Israel would find it strategically rewarding to use its influence in Washington and major capitals to support economic assistance

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to Egypt by the international community in order to ensure economic opportunity as well as the nurturing of democracy. At the same time, the Israeli government should employ quiet, bilateral diplomacy to communicate its concerns about the implications of the prevailing instability in Sinai for its security. Though sending more Egyptian troops into Sinai may not be a panacea to the peninsula’s problems, Israel may consider amending the peace treaty to allow larger Egyptian military units to operate there. This would not only enhance Egyptian-Israeli mutual security, but also address Egyptian sensitivity toward the issue. Notes 1. “Al-Qahira: La Ta’theer ‘ala Awlawyat Siasat Misr al-Kharjiyya” [Cairo: No Effect on Egypt’s Foreign Policy Priorities], Xinhua, January 30, 2011, http://arabic.news.cn/arabic/2011-01/30/c_13714002.htm. 2. Prime Minister’s Office (Israel), “PM Netanyahu’s Remarks at the Start of the Weekly Cabinet Meeting,” January 30, 2011, http://www.pmo.gov.il /PMOEng/Communication/Spokesman/2011/01/spokestart300111.htm. 3. Yoav Limor, “Ha-Kishalon ha-Mode’ini Shel Kolam” [Intelligence Failure of All of Them], Israel Hayom, January 31, 2011. See also Zvi Gabai, “Mizraim: Madoa’ Shuv Hofta’nu?” [Egypt: Why Were We Surprised Again?], Israel Hayom, February 1, 2011. 4. See, for example, Zvi Bar’el, “Before He Is Dead,” Haaretz, July 25, 2010; Yoram Meital, “Approaching the End of Mubarak Era: Egypt’s Achievements and Challenges,” in Shlomo Brom and Anat Kurz, eds., Strategic Survey for Israel 2010 (Tel Aviv: Institute for National Security Studies, 2010). 5. Gil Hoffman, “Ben-Eliezer: Mubarak Regime, Peace Will Endure,” Jerusalem Post, January 28, 2011. 6. Ibid. 7. Greer Fay Cashman, “Peres Stands by Embattled Egyptian Counterpart,” Jerusalem Post, January 31, 2011. 8. “Netanyahu Fears Radical Islam Takeover in Egypt,” Yediot Ahronot, January 31, 2011. 9. Shlomo Cesana and Gideon Alon, “Ha-Hashash: Mishtar Islami” [The Fear: Islamic Regime], Israel Hayom, February 1, 2011. 10. Barak Ravid, “Israel Urges World to Curb Criticism of Egypt’s Mubarak,” Haaretz, January 31, 2011. 11. Boaz Bismuth, “Obama Neged Mubarak” [Obama Against Mubarak], Israel Hayom, January 30, 2011. 12. Ibid.; Herb Keinon, “Israeli Critics Open Up on US ‘Abandonment’ of Mubarak,” Jerusalem Post, January 31, 2011. 13. Keinon, “Israeli Critics Open Up”; “Israel: Is the U.S. Attitude to Egypt a Message?” Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2011.

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14. Uzi Dayan, “Ha-Mizrah ha-Tikhon ha-Hadash, le-Tsa’areno” [The New Middle East, Unfortunately for Us], Israel Hayom, January 31, 2011; Zalman Shoval, “Mhomot be-Kahir: Schizophrenia Amerikanit” [Disturbances in Cairo: American Schizophrenia], Israel Hayom, February 1, 2011. 15. Aviel Magnezi, “Could US Abandon Israel Too?” Yediot Ahronot, February 1, 2011; Aviad Pohoryles, “Kador be-Gav me-ha-Dod Sam” [A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam], Maariv, January 31, 2011. 16. Helene Cooper and Mark Landler, “U.S. Trying to Balance Israel’s Needs in the Face of Egyptian Reform,” New York Times, February 4, 2011. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. “Mubarak’s Era Is Over, Says Barak,” Now Lebanon, February 2, 2011, http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArchiveDetails.aspx?ID=236886. 20. Roger Cohen, “Tehran 1979 or Berlin 1989?” New York Times, February 7, 2011. 21. Prime Minister’s Office (Israel), “Excerpt of PM Netanyahu’s Speech in Knesset,” February 2, 2011, http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng /Communication/PMSpeaks/speech40020211.htm. 22. Omri Efraim, “Peres Praises Mubarak for His Contribution to Peace,” Yediot Ahronot, February 5, 2011. 23. Prime Minister’s Office (Israel), “Address by PM Netanyahu to the European Friends of Israel Conference,” February 7, 2011, http://www.pmo.gov .il/PMOEng/Communication/PMSpeaks/speechfriends0702011.htm. 24. “Iran Supreme Leader: Egypt Unrest Inspired by Our Islamic Revolution,” Haaretz, February 4, 2011. 25. IDC Convention, “Maj. Gen (res.) Amos Gilead, Director, PoliticalMilitary Bureau, Ministry of Defense, Israel,” eleventh annual Herzliya Conference, February 6, 2011, http://switch5.castup.net/frames/IDC/20110206 /Default.aspx. 26. Natasha Mozgovaya, “Israel Urges U.S. to Reaffirm Support in Light of Egypt Unrest,” Haaretz, February 10, 2011. 27. Ibid. 28. Nico Colombant, “Israel Says Mubarak’s Decision to Stay Is Internal Egyptian Issue,” Voice of America, February 10, 2011, http://www.voanews .com/english/news/middle-east/Israeli-Def-Chief-Mubarak-Decision-to-Stay-is -Internal-Egyptian-Issue-115802219.html. 29. Prime Minister’s Office (Israel), “PM Netanyahu’s Interview with Piers Morgan of CNN,” March 17, 2011, http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng /Communication/Interviews1/interviewcnn170311.htm. 30. Thomas L. Friedman, “Why Were You with Pharaoh, Israel?” International Herald Tribune, February 15, 2011. 31. Hala Bayazid, “Osama el-Baz: Talabtu Mubarak be-Tasleem al-Sulta fe 2005 wa Lakenahu Rafada Istama’a le Ashab al-Masaleh” [Osama el-Baz: I Asked Mubarak to Make Power Transition in 2005 but He Refused and Listened to Interest Groups], al-Masry al-Youm, January 12, 2012.

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32. See Helene Cooper and Mark Mazzetti, “Prizing Status Quo, Mubarak Resists Pressure to Resign,” New York Times, February 6, 2011. 33. UN Comtrade Yearbook 2009, http://comtrade.un.org/pb/CountryPages New.aspx?y=2009; Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor (Israel), “Yahasi haMishar Yisrael-Mizraim” [Israel-Egypt Trade Relations], December 2010, http://www.moital.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/30EFF7ED-583B-4575-86CF-62AA 7594B4AC/0/egypt_2010.pdf. 34. Vikash Yadav, “The Political Economy of the Egyptian-Israeli QIZ Trade Agreement,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 11, no. 1 (March 2007). 35. Neil MacFarquhar, “Mubarak Faces More Questioning on Gas Deal with Israel,” New York Times, April 22, 2011. 36. See, for example, David Schenker, “Normal Peace?” Middle East Strategy at Harvard, October 8, 2009, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2009 /10/normal-peace. 37. Gamal Hassan, “’An al-’Eilaqa be-Isra’yel fi al-Drama al-Misryya” [On the Relationship with Israel in Egyptian Drama], al-Shorouk, January 20, 2010. 38. Ephraim Dowek, Israeli-Egyptian Relations, 1980–2000 (London: Cass, 2001), pp. 117–125, 295–299, 332–336; Eitan Haber, “My Tears for Mubarak,” Yediot Ahronot, February 13, 2011; Dan Eldar, “Israel Could Be the One Thing All Egyptians Agree On,” Haaretz, February 20, 2011. 39. Jordin S. Cohen, Randolph Stevenson, Alex Mintz, and Michael D. Ward, “Defense Expenditures and Economic Growth in Israel: The Indirect Link,” Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 3 (August 1996). 40. “Mubarak: Narfud Syasat al-Mahawer” [Mubarak: We Reject Axes’ Politics], al-Ahram, July 27, 2006. 41. Associated Press, “Israel Allows Egypt Troops in Sinai for First Time Since 1979 Peace Treaty,” Haaretz, January 31, 2011. 42. US Embassy in Cairo, “Scenesetter for Requested Egyptian FM Aboul Gheit Meeting with the Secretary,” WikiLeaks, February 9, 2009, http://www .wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/02/09CAIRO231.html. 43. US Embassy in Tel Aviv, “Defense Minister Barak’s Discussions in Egypt Focus on Shalit, Tahdiya, Anti-Smuggling, and Iran,” WikiLeaks, August 29, 2008, http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/08/08TELAVIV198.html. 44. James A. Larocco, “Overcoming the Constraints,” Bitterlemons International, August 27, 2009, http://www.bitterlemons-international.org/inside .php?id=1172#. 45. Ibid. 46. US Embassy in Cairo, “DNI Meets with Defense Minister Tantawi,” WikiLeaks, December 21, 2009, http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/12/09 cairo2331.html. 47. US Embassy in Cairo, “Scenesetter for Admiral Mullen,” WikiLeaks, February 9, 2010, http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2010/02/10CAIRO 181.html.

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48. US Embassy in Cairo, “Counter Smuggling Update,” WikiLeaks, December 20, 2009, http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/12/09CAIRO2325 .html. 49. “Egypt to Open Gaza Border Crossing: Egypt’s Foreign Minister Says Cairo Will Permanently Open the Rafah Border Crossing to Ease Israel’s Blockade on Gaza,” Al Jazeera, April 29, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net. 50. US Embassy in Cairo, “President Mubarak’s Visit to Washington,” WikiLeaks, May 19, 2009, http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/05/09CAIRO 874.html. 51. Roger Cohen, “Go to Jerusalem,” New York Times, March 3, 2011. 52. Heba Saleh, “Arab League Calls for UN Action on Gaza,” Financial Times, December 31, 2008. 53. David Makovsky, “The Missing Link to Mideast Peace: Arab Pressure,” Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2002; Dennis Ross, “Egypt’s New Role,” Washington Post, July 2, 2004. 54. US Embassy in Cairo, “General Petraeus’ Meeting with EGIS Chief Soliman,” WikiLeaks, July 14, 2009, http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/07/09 CAIRO1349.html. 55. See, for example, Der Spiegel, “Interview with Egypt’s President Mubarak: ‘Foreign Troops Can’t Do the Job,’” New York Times, December 20, 2004; Aluf Benn, “Without Mubarak, Israel Will Be Left with No Friends in Mideast,” Haaretz, January 29, 2011. 56. US Embassy in Tel Aviv, “Defense Minister Barak’s Discussions in Egypt.” 57. Mohamed Elbaradei, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times (Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation, 2011), p. 118. 58. Ibid., p. 242. 59. US Embassy in Cairo, “Scenesetter for Requested Egyptian FM.” 60. US Embassy in Cairo, “President Mubarak’s Visit to Washington.” 61. Jack Khoury, Amos Harel, and Anshel Pfeffer, “Did Israel Coordinate Warships in Suez with Egypt?” Haaretz, July 15, 2009. 62. US Embassy in Cairo, “General Petraeus’ Meeting with EGIS Chief Soliman.” 63. “In the Same Boat,” Haaretz, April 16, 2009. 64. Ibid. 65. Richard Boudreaux and Bill Spindle, “Israel Considers Military ‘Upgrade,’” Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2011. 66. Zvi Zrahiya, “Israel’s Defense Establishment to Get Additional NIS 260 Million,” Haaretz, April 10, 2011. 67. IDC Convention, “Mr. David Brodet, Chair, Board of Directors, Bank Leumi,” eleventh annual Herzliya Conference, February 6, 2011, http://switch5 .castup.net/frames/IDC/20110206/Default.aspx. 68. Yitzhak Gal, “Ha-Interest ha-Kalkali ha-Mizri be-Yizivut ha-Yahasim ‘em Yisrael” [The Egyptian Economic Interest in the Stability of Relations with Israel], Zomet ha-Mizrah ha-Tickhon [Middle East Crossroads] 1, no. 3 (Tel

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Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, March 6, 2011), http://www.dayan.org/framepro.htm. 69. Ben Caspit, “Lieberman Hetri’a Befnie Netanyahu: Mizraim Yoter Matrida me-Iran” [Lieberman Warned Before Netanyahu: Egypt Is More Disturbing Than Iran], Maariv, April 22, 2012. 70. Prime Minister’s Office (Israel), “PM Netanyahu Welcomes Egyptian Military Statement That Egypt Will Continue to Honor the Peace Treaty with Israel,” February 12, 2011, http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication /Spokesman/2011/02/pokeegypt120211.htm. 71. Oren Kessler and Associated Press, “Egyptian Army Deploys Additional Soldiers in Sinai,” Jerusalem Post, February 18, 2011; Isabel Kershner and Mona el-Naggar, “Pipeline Blast in Sinai, Said to Be Sabotage, Cuts Gas Supply in Israel and Jordan,” New York Times, April 27, 2011. 72. “Egypt Will Not Be a Western Democracy,” Jerusalem Post, February 28, 2011. 73. Prime Minister’s Office (Israel), “Address by PM Netanyahu at the JNF Conference,” March 3, 2011, http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication /PMSpeaks/speechkkl280311.htm. 74. Agence France-Presse, “Obama, Peres See Urgent Need for Middle East Peace,” al-Ahram, April 6, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent Print/2/0/9432/World/0/Obama,-Peres-see-urgent-need-for-Middle-East -peace.aspx. 75. Deutsche Welle, “Mab’outh Isra’yli Yugri Mubahathat fi al-Qahira” [An Israeli Delegate Holds Talks in Cairo], al-Shorouk, March 29, 2011; Middle East News Agency, “Amos Gilead Yughader al-Qahira ba’da Ziyara Qaseera” [Amos Gilead Leaves Cairo After a Short Visit], Elyoum Elsabaa, May 15, 2011. 76. MacFarquhar, “Mubarak Faces More Questioning on Gas Deal with Israel”; Ashraf Fekry, “Israeli Delegation in Egypt to Negotiate Fixed Gas Rates,” al-Masry al-Youm, May 13, 2011, http://www.almasryalyoum.com /en/node/435267. 77. Prime Minister’s Office (Israel), “PM Netanyahu Comments on Egyptian Gas Issue,” April 23, 2012, http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication /Spokesman/2012/04/spokegas230412.htm. 78. Kent Klein, “Obama: Egypt Will Never Be the Same,” Voice of America, February 11, 2011, http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Obama-Egypt -Will-Never-Be-the-Same-115965119.html. 79. Gidi Weitz, “Peace, Politics, and Patek Philippe: An Interview with Ehud Barak,” Haaretz, May 9, 2011; Lahav Harkov, “IDF Making Every Effort to Bring Schalit Home, Gantz Tells MKs,” Jerusalem Post, June 1, 2011. 80. Yaakov Amidror, “Ha-Lekah ha-Ekari: Ha-Bitahon ‘Adif ‘al haShalom” [The Basic Lesson: Security Is Preferable to Peace], Israel Hayom, February 1, 2011. 81. See, for example, Prime Minister’s Office (Israel), “PM Netanyahu’s 40 Signature Speech,” February 23, 2011, http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng /Communication/PMSpeaks/speech40sig230211.htm.

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82. “Transcript: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Address to Congress,” Washington Post, May 24, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com /world/israeli-prime-minister-binyamin-netanyahus-address-to-congress /2011/05/24/AFWY5bAH_story.html. 83. Amira Hass, “The Peace Process: A Hollow, Cynical Concept,” Daily News Egypt, April 17, 2011. 84. Colombant, “Israel Says Mubarak’s Decision to Stay Is Internal Egyptian Issue.” 85. Michael M. Cohen, “Why Israel Must Seize the Moment,” Arab News, February 16, 2011, http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article266184.ece. 86. Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Israel), “Interview by PM Benjamin Netanyahu with Charlie Rose,” September 24, 2009, http://www.mfa.gov.il /MFA/Government/Speeches+by+Israeli+leaders/2009/Interview_PM_Netanyahu _Charlie_Rose_24-Sep-2009.htm. 87. Ghanem Nuseibeh and Naava Mashiah, “Changing Realities: An Opportunity for Israel and Its Neighbors,” Daily News Egypt, May 15, 2011. 88. Hamid Dabashi, “Arab Spring Exposes Nasrallah’s Hypocrisy,” Al Jazeera, June 22, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06 /2011618103354910596.html. 89. David Schenker, “Why Hezbollah Had a Really Bad Week,” New Republic, July 1, 2011, http://www.tnr.com/article/world/91167/lebanon-tribunal -hariri-hezbollah. 90. Amos Yadlin, “Winds of Change in the Middle East: An Israeli Perspective,” lecture presented at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, March 30, 2011, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/html/pdf/Yadlin20110330 .pdf. 91. Ibid. 92. See, for example, Emad Gad, “Isra’yil wa al-Thawra al-Misriyya” [Israel and the Egyptian Revolution], Sho’oun Arabiyya [Arab Affairs] no. 145 (Spring 2011); Mahmoud Mo’az Agour, “Qalaq fi Tal Abib” [Anxiety in Tel Aviv], al-Siyassa al-Dawliya [International Politics] no. 184 (April 2011). 93. Ethan Bronner, “Beyond Cairo, Israel Sensing a Wider Siege,” New York Times, September 10, 2011.

13 The United States and the Tahrir Revolution Dan Tschirgi

Herodotus once famously described Egypt as “the gift of the Nile,” a happily apt label that has clung to the country for over two millennia. The almost interminable procession of Egypt’s foreign rulers— Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, Mamluks, French, and British—presided over a polity that simultaneously had a proud and ancient history of its own and a growing dependence on the directive guidance of non-Egyptians. Through the vagaries of the various stances of its rulers, Egypt remained an attractive, temperate region, peopled by what on the whole proved to be a hospitable and flexible population who not only welcomed but also emulated the characteristics of the country’s multiple and distinct dominant forces. That spirit of accommodation became a hallmark of Egypt’s identity. Indeed, it can reasonably be speculated that what many observers have seen as the Egyptians’ “inherent” preference for moderation rather than confrontation is the cultural outcome of a history marked by an array of competing identities that ultimately left the average person on the street skeptical of investing too much psychic energy in any absolute communal value. It fell to Barack Obama—the man who visited Cairo in June 2009, where he thrilled crowds with his prodemocracy rhetoric—to deal with the end of Mubarak’s rule after thirty years. This chapter seeks to assess the US administration’s handling of that very difficult issue. With a history of nearly four decades of strong support for the governments of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, serious questions arose as to whether the United States would be willing to support Egypt’s democratic move233

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ment rather than opt for the security provided by a reliable, but authoritarian, proven friend.

The United States and Egypt As the twenty-first century dawned, Egypt’s importance to the United States rested solidly on four major pillars. First was Cairo’s role in the ongoing Arab-Israeli problem, a position that rapidly evolved into one marked by the frequency with which Egyptian efforts successfully mediated, often at Washington’s behest, outstanding issues between other Arab actors and Israel.1 Second, Egypt stood out above all as a living example of the reality that the United States was not “antiIslamic,” regardless of the claims of al-Qaeda spokesmen. Third, Egypt’s relation to the United States rested on Washington’s eagerness to avail itself of Egyptian practical services in the military and intelligence spheres, such as the annual “Bright Star” military exercises and Egypt’s availability for Central Intelligence Agency–sponsored “renditions” of suspected terrorists for purposes of interrogation.2 Finally, the last major pillar of the United States–Egypt relationship was implicit in the very volume of resources transferred to the latter. Since 1979, Egypt has been, after Israel, the second largest recipient of US foreign assistance. According to the US embassy in Cairo, the total amount of nonmilitary US aid directed to Egypt since 1979 surpassed $30 billion by April 2011.3 Washington had become involved in a tense dance with Egypt that would test whether or not “development” could be purchased. The question was guaranteed to captivate audiences around the world. In April 2011, a statement issued by the US ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, reviewed the past thirty years of US developmental aid to Egypt. The ambassador was unrestrained in pointing to the multiple benefits the relationship had yielded for Egypt’s development, proudly listing a host of significant US contributions to Egypt’s social welfare, public health, and educational, energy, and economic systems. The ambassador also pointedly noted that Washington had included “in its assistance programs funding to strengthen and expand Egypt’s civil society, including those brave Egyptians struggling for democracy and human rights. In the Mubarak era, this assistance was often labeled ‘interference,’ and opposed by a government uncomfortable with hearing the voices of its own people.”4

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Given that eight years earlier the Mubarak regime had forced Washington to backtrack from plans to help boost real participatory government in Egypt, there was an undoubted measure of satisfaction in the diplomat’s remark. By late 2003, the George W. Bush administration had concluded that its “war on terror” required the buttressing impact of a parallel political strategy to nurture the growth of democracy in the Middle East. Plans were then made for a multipronged political demarche that took the form of what Washington chose to call the Greater Middle East Initiative. By way of signaling the measure’s importance, President Bush announced it himself in November during a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, a congressionally funded private organization.5 Bush expressed full optimism for democracy’s chances for success in the Arab world. He announced what he called a “forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.” The president equated freedom with democracy and found a link between divine approval and earthly benefits. “Liberty,” he said, “is both the plan of heaven for humanity, and the best hope for progress here on earth.”6 He pledged that the United States would work to promote democracy in the Middle East, partly for ideological reasons (“we believe that liberty is the design of nature . . . the direction of history”) and partly from selfinterest: “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to any country . . . it would be reckless to accept the status quo.” In Bush’s view, the truth was clear: “The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country.” The address was possibly the best speech delivered in his first term. It was straightforward and explained why America’s terrorist enemies sprang from the Middle East and why US national security required democratization abroad. The real issue, maintained Bush, was not in the “failures of a culture or a religion,” but rather “in the failures of political and economic doctrines.” The authoritarian and antidemocratic structural conditions prevalent in the greater Middle East created a “freedom deficit” that, in turn, led to the “stagnation and resentment” the president blamed for producing “violence ready to export.” To anyone familiar with the contemporary Arab world, the president’s argument contained much that was valid. Governments in the region were neither responsive nor responsible to their citizens. Moreover, various types of authoritarianism prevailed throughout the

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greater Middle East, along with a general climate in which the rule of law suffered seriously. Finally, of course, those same governments presided over societies in which not only was poverty rampant, but also the gap between rich and poor was widening. The core of the president’s message—that such a dismal context could be blamed for the “stagnation and resentment” by which most societies in the Middle East were riddled—could not be denied. Bush’s speech to the National Endowment for Democracy portended a major departure in US policy toward the Middle East, or at least it was intended to serve as such a herald. After so many years of dealing with the Arab world, Washington had come to accept as a matter of course the notion that Arab countries were headed by authoritarian governments. The Bush administration now intended to launch a direct challenge to that bit of received wisdom. Noting that observers had frequently questioned whether “this country, or that people, or this group are ‘ready’ for democracy,” the president roundly rejected such doubts. Instead, he asserted, “it is the practice of democracy that makes a nation ready for democracy and every nation can start on this path.” Bush argued that while democratic governments “will reflect their own cultures,” they would also exhibit common “essential principles.” He sketched out the latter by offering a list of legal and institutional features of democratic polities: rule of law, healthy civic institutions, political parties, labor unions, independent newspapers, religious liberty, and rights of women. Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush proudly proclaimed, were countries “where these vital principles are being applied.” And there, of course, was the key issue. The real question was, and remains, whether the institutional and legal characteristics of a democracy can be successfully grafted onto any society or, on the other hand, whether there exist sociocultural prerequisites for the creation and survival of democratic systems. It is possible to make a plausible case for the notion that democratic institutions and processes must rest on a social basis of accepted values that are conducive to the tradeoffs of power, limits on governmental authority, and tolerance of opposing views upon which democratic systems depend. In this light, political culture can be seen as the basis of democratic systems. The question, of course, is precisely whether, and to what extent, the political cultures of the Arab world are conducive to democratic systems.7 Bush strongly rejected the notion that the Arab people and Islam are inherently unsupportive of democratic practices. As he put it some years later: “There is a notion that certain people can’t self-govern; certain religions don’t have the capacity of self-government. . . . And I refuse

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to accept that view.”8 Although Bush seemed eager to put his outlook to the test, the Greater Middle East Initiative of 2003 was doomed to remain untried. Post-revolutionary Egypt’s political fate will do much to shed light on the ongoing debate over the social prerequisites for democratic political systems. The Bush administration’s response to the initially lukewarm reaction given by the Arab world to its announced Greater Middle East Initiative was unduly optimistic. In early 2004, however, it became obvious that Washington had misjudged the reactions of the Arab governments. When the administration sent its diplomatic officers a set of “guidelines for coordinating efforts by the United States and other members of the G-8” (the eight leading industrialized countries of the world) to promote political and economic reform in the greater Middle East, an immediate outcry went up from the Arab world. 9 Instead of being seen as an essentially innocuous set of instructions preparatory to what the administration hoped could be unveiled in the summer at a summit conference of the Group of Eight at the resort of Sea Island, just off the Georgia coast, the document became a source of bitter recrimination. While much of the draft guidelines called only for a continuation of long-established policies and practices of the Group of Eight members, three items generated particular outrage in the Arab world and underlay what Ambassador Margaret Scobey would scathingly denounce nearly eight years later as the Mubarak regime’s charges of “interference” in Egypt’s internal affairs. Taken together, these elements were seen by Arab regimes not only as the heart of Washington’s vision of a democratizing initiative in the region, but also as designed specifically to forge direct links between Group of Eight countries and local populations that would simply bypass local authorities. The specific points that generated official Arab ire were (1) the suggestion that Group of Eight countries increase “direct funding to democracy, human rights, media, women’s and other NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] in the region”; (2) that they should “encourage the region’s governments to allow civil society organizations, including human rights and media NGOs to operate freely without restrictions”; and (3) that Group of Eight members should “fund an NGO that would bring together legal and media experts from the region to draft annual assessments of judicial reform efforts or media freedom in the region.”10 Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers—leading students of democracy and its chances in the Middle East—point out that the Greater Middle East Initiative’s objective of transforming “the region

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politically, economically, and socially” was presented as a “vital visionary complement to the war on terror,” and that the Bush administration saw the full concept as comparable to the Helsinki Process, which had boosted liberal forces in Europe during the final years of the Soviet Union.11 The so-called Helsinki Process, begun in 1972, comprised a series of lengthy negotiations that eventually led to Western recognition of the post–World War II international boundaries in Eastern Europe and of the Soviet Union’s legitimate presence in the region. In return, the Soviet Union agreed to permit the flow of ideas and people into countries that had signed the Warsaw Pact. The Helsinki Accords also provided for periodic review of compliance. Ottaway and Carothers point out that “the Helsinki Accords turned into an important tool through which the United States and Western Europe pressured the Warsaw Pact countries to improve their human rights records and move slowly toward political reform.”12 Ottaway and Carothers also point to a basic flaw in the expectation that the Helsinki model could provide a paradigm for the Greater Middle East Initiative. The former relied on reciprocity, with the Soviet Union winning security guarantees in Eastern Europe while the West won freer access to the region as well as an acknowledgment of the worth of important Western values. However, the Greater Middle East Initiative did not offer any tradeoff to existing Arab regimes, and nowhere was this more evident than in regard to their main concerns, among which, of course, were Israel and the Palestinians—issues the Bush administration was determined to keep separate from its campaign to restructure the Arab world. In fact, the original Greater Middle East Initiative offered the region’s authoritarian governments only the prospect of creating dynamics that promised to lead to their own collapse. This was exactly the dilemma described ten years earlier by the perceptive Egyptian political scientist Mustapha al-Sayyid: “Ruling groups that currently hold the reins of government are probably the most influential actors. . . . They are not likely to undertake any initiative that would obviously jeopardize their hold on power.”13 When news of the Greater Middle East Initiative was first leaked in February 2004, the reaction of Arab regimes was intensely negative. In the forefront of the Arab response were Washington’s supposed best Arab friends: Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was furious, berating the United States in no uncertain terms: “Whoever,” he said, “imagines that it is possible to impose solutions or reform from abroad on any society is delusional.” 14 Together with Jordan’s King Abdallah, Mubarak charged off to Europe to per-

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suade other Group of Eight members of the Arab leaders’ view. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, sarcastically referred to the presumed parallels between Washington’s Greater Middle East Initiative and the Helsinki Process: “The results on the Soviet Union we all know. It was broken up, its people suffered deprivations, its people [were] the unhappiest people for at least two decades. So if this is presented as a lure to Arab countries, we really don’t see much of a lure in the Helsinki Accords.”15 In the face of this caustic Arab reaction, which was largely supported by European skepticism over the proposed new approach to the Middle East, Washington soon scrambled to abandon its initial guidelines for the Greater Middle East Initiative. The new version was wrapped in some of the rhetoric of Western support for the development of democratic processes in the Arab world, but it was an undisguised retreat from the original concept. The result became all too visible at the Group of Eight summit at Sea Island in June 2004. The conclave’s claim to historical importance rested, weakly and briefly, on its success in having produced what became known as the Broader Middle East and North African Initiative. This drastically watered-down version of the original Greater Middle East Initiative concept abandoned any notion of bypassing local authorities to work directly with civil society groups. It also dropped the idea of funding an NGO to monitor steps toward political reform in the region. Finally, it pledged the Group of Eight to support political reform in the region that would “go hand in hand with support for a just, comprehensive and lasting settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict,” but also acknowledged that change should not be imposed from outside and that “each society will reach its own conclusions about the scope and pace of change.”16 Critics of Washington’s democratization drive in the Middle East were vocal. Ottaway and Carothers argued that by adopting “a softedged approach to promoting change in the Middle East, the administration has ended up with an initiative that is hollow at the core.” They continued: “In situations where entrenched power elites are determined to hold on to power and only interested in cosmetic reforms. . . . In such situations, which prevail in most of the Arab World, the central problem is . . . the absence of any real interest or will on the part of the powerholders to carry out changes that will threaten their own powers.”17 The truth of this observation would be indisputably evident until Egypt’s Tahrir Revolution shattered almost everyone’s view of what was politically possible and where power, at least for the moment, really resided.

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The Dilemma Posed by the Upheaval of January 2011 On January 14, 2011, Tunisia’s President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali finally bowed to several weeks of popular public protests, resigned his twentythree-year presidency, and fled the country. The Tunisian upheaval had been inspired by the tragic self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a young street vendor who had fallen afoul of Tunisia’s heavy-handed police over a minor infringement of a local regulation. Bouazizi’s death on December 17, 2010, sparked the wave of protests that led ultimately to Ben Ali’s downfall. Egyptians watched the unfolding events in Tunisia with deep interest. Having endured the Mubarak regime for nearly thirty years, they had their own stories of abuse by a police force that was hardly constrained by law. On January 25—a national holiday in honor of the country’s police—protests that were clearly inspired by the events in Tunisia broke out in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Beni Suef, and Mansura. From the outset, some of the antigovernment demonstrators proclaimed the goal of toppling the Mubarak regime. Government spokesmen were quick to charge the Muslim Brotherhood with instigating the crisis, an accusation the movement immediately denied. On the other hand, journalists on the scene interviewed protesters and found the following: “The reality that emerged. . . was more complicated and reflected one of the government’s deepest fears: that opposition to Mr. Mubarak’s rule spreads across ideological lines and includes average people angered by corruption and economic hardship as well as secular and Islamist opponents. That broad support could make it harder for the government to co-opt or crush those demanding change.”18 As had been the case in Tunisia, the Egyptian revolution’s primary group of organizers were generally young and well educated and made full use of social-networking media. In the final days that led up to the revolution’s outbreak on January 25, “more than 90,000 signed up on a Facebook page for the ‘Day of Revolution’ organized by opposition and pro-democracy groups.”19 By the afternoon of January 25, Twitter confirmed that its site in Egypt had been blocked; there were also indications that government authorities were taking steps to disrupt cell-phone usage and Internet communication. Within twenty-four hours these latter suspicions were proved true. Virtually all observers were taken aback by the political upheaval in Egypt. Foreign diplomatic, academic, and media personnel knew well that general dissatisfaction with the Mubarak regime had been steadily

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growing over the past few years, and those who enjoyed sustained, or significantly wide, contact with the Egyptian public had a fairly clear idea of the degree to which the regime had come to be despised throughout society. But none of this prepared most of them to see the January protests as the beginning of the downfall of Hosni Mubarak. Mona el-Ghobashy put it well in an issue of the Middle East Research and Information Project Reports: “Officials, pundits and academics, foreign and domestic, thought the regime was resilient—not because it used brute force or Orwellian propaganda—but because it had shrewdly constructed a simulacrum of politics. Parties, elections and civic associations were allowed but carefully controlled, providing space for just enough participatory politics to keep people busy without threatening regime dominance.”20 The initial reaction of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was fully in keeping with this outlook. Asked at a press conference on January 25 about Washington’s view of the significance of the protests that had begun to sweep Egypt earlier that day, Clinton offered the following response: “We know that [demonstrations] occurred not only in Cairo but around the country and, we’re monitoring that very closely. We support the fundamental right of expression and assembly for all people, and we urge that all parties exercise restraint and refrain from violence. But our assessment is that the Egyptian Government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”21 Washington had to confront fundamental questions regarding the nature of the events that were gripping Egypt, and taken by surprise— as was virtually everyone else—it had to ask whether “revolution” or something else was at hand. There was, initially, an apparently determined effort to deny the possibility that the Mubarak regime had largely dug its own grave. Against the backdrop of the undeniable Islamophobia that has taken root in US culture since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the early claim made by Mubarak’s Ministry of Interior accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of having instigated the revolt found ready believers among the US public. Glenn Beck—the right-wing guru (with academic pretensions) of a large and vocal following in the United States rather quickly concluded that Islamists were behind the crisis in Egypt as a blatant first step in the resuscitation of a caliphate that aimed to undermine the United States and Israel as well as threaten Europe.22 While Beck’s version of Islamophobia may be seen by some as too silly for comment, the same is not true of the views expressed by

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Senator John McCain. The Republican candidate for president in 2008, the Arizona senator is a respected conservative leader in the United States. Yet, as late as early February 2011, he had fretted that Mubarak might attempt to cling to power, thereby allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to take control of Egypt. Interviewed by Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren, McCain emphasized his concern over “the Muslim Brotherhood . . . about them hijacking any election.”23 At the same time, Senator McCain demonstrated a thoroughly realistic view of the source of Egypt’s problem: “I think for the first 10, 12 years of [Mubarak’s] presidency of Egypt he was very good. Power corrupts. Power intoxicates. And I’m afraid he lost touch with the people of Egypt and also, made [the] fundamental mistake of not moving towards a more free and open society and democracy in his country.” The Obama administration continued to cling to the supportive position staked out by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on January 25. With violence still raging in Cairo and other Egyptian cities by January 27, Vice President Joseph Biden was asked whether he felt the time “has come for President Mubarak . . . to go.” He answered, “No. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in the direction that—to be more responsive to some of the needs of the people out there.”24 The administration also still retained substantial international support for its posture, although the winds of change were obviously blowing in capitals throughout the world. By the end of January, European states, including Britain, Germany, and Italy, were expressing support for efforts by the Egyptian government to find means of allowing the Egyptian people (in the words of Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague) to “pursue their legitimate grievances peacefully.”25 Other Western European states displayed a range of views. The Danish government, which for years had enjoyed a well-established developmentaid connection with the Mubarak regime, was volubly represented by Denmark’s prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who on February 3 flatly stated that Mubarak was “finished as Egypt’s leader. The only matter for discussion,” he added, “is how quickly that materializes.”26 France, on the other hand, would remain essentially silent on Egypt until February 6, when the French Foreign Ministry announced the largely symbolic gesture of “suspending” the sale of arms and tear gas to the Egyptian government.27 In the Middle East, most Arab governments watched uncomfortably as the prodemocracy protests took root in Egypt. Their reactions were varied, with some (Jordan) being noncommittal, while others (Kuwait,

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Saudi Arabia, and Libya) strongly supported Mubarak, and yet others (organized Palestinians, for example) exhibited deep divisions within their own ranks. Iran, of course, was different, roundly condemning Mubarak for treachery to Islam and professing to see a pro-Islamist tinge to the anti-Mubarak insurrection.28 Israel, of course, was the state potentially having the most to lose as a result of Egypt’s upheaval. Israel initially viewed the prodemocracy protests with the complacent certainty that Mubarak’s regime was stable, but Israel’s alarm quickly grew to major proportions as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the situation too dangerous to be commented upon by members of the government.29 As Netanyahu later made abundantly clear, the Israeli government’s greatest fear was that Mubarak’s fall might lead to Egypt coming under the sway of militant Islamists.30 It was a theme that Israel’s supporters in the United States were quick to adopt. In the meantime, on Friday, January 28, events in Egypt took a decided turn for the worse for the regime. As protests continued to spread throughout the country, President Mubarak declared a curfew in Cairo, Alexandria, and Port Suez. The measure was immediately ignored by the country’s citizens. Amid reports of looting and violence, many tens of thousands of Egyptians joined the demonstrations in Cairo and other urban centers, where the major demand had now become Mubarak’s resignation.31 Instead, that same evening, Mubarak fired the cabinet and indicated his determination to remain in power. In a televised speech, Mubarak claimed to understand the protesters’ grievances and pledged to deal with them.32 That same day, Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama gave parallel indications that Washington had moved slightly away from its earlier expressed conviction regarding the Mubarak regime’s “stability.” Clinton’s statement implied parity of responsibility for resolving the crisis: “We are deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protestors. We call on the Egyptian government to do everything in its power to restrain security forces. At the same time, protestors should also refrain from violence and express themselves peacefully.”33 Obama’s statement struck the same chord, but went into greater detail in the picture it painted of US policy. The image was clearly designed to signal Washington’s inclination to support the insurrection. While Obama first called on Egypt to “reverse the actions they’ve taken to interfere with the access to the internet, to cell phone service and to social networks,” he went on to argue that “this moment of volatility has to be turned into a moment of promise.” The key, as he saw it, was

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to build on the fact that “the United States has a close partnership with Egypt and we’ve cooperated on many issues, including working together to advance a more peaceful region. But we’ve also been clear that there must be reform—political, social, and economic reforms that meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people.”34 Obama also revealed that he had spoken with Mubarak just after the latter’s speech to his own people. Noting that Mubarak had pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity, Obama reported: “I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.” The very next day, January 29, Mubarak named Omar Suleiman— Egypt’s well-known intelligence chief—as vice president, the first time that this office had been filled in Mubarak’s thirty-year rule. At the same time, Ahmed Shafiq, former minister of aviation, was appointed prime minister. Both men had military backgrounds and were close to Mubarak personally. Suleiman, in particular, had gained fame as a supporter of Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel and had played a role that was much appreciated by the Jewish state in furthering practical accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians after Hamas’s ascendancy in Gaza. Speculation that the appointments of Suleiman and Shafiq were designed to secure the military establishment’s loyalty to the regime seemed borne out within forty-eight hours, on January 31, when military authorities issued a statement recognizing the “legitimate rights of the people” and pledging not to use force against them. At the same time, Vice President Suleiman announced the opening of a dialogue with all political parties on constitutional reform. Finally, on the same day—January 31—Mubarak received a special envoy from President Obama, Frank Wisner Jr. While the details of Wisner’s conversation with the Egyptian president were not revealed, “an administration official said the envoy sought to impress upon the leader the need both to declare he would not seek reelection and to step aside immediately in favor of a transitional government.”35 Mubarak’s final ploy came the following day, February 1, when the president gave another major speech declaring his intention to resign after the presidential elections in September. Taken together, the major events of January 29 through February 1—the appointments of Suleiman and Shafiq, the opening of a dialogue on constitutional reform, Wisner’s talk with Mubarak, and Mubarak’s announcement of his intent to resign the presidency after the September elections— marked the high point of Mubarak’s disposition to compromise.

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However, it was insufficient to sway the resolve of the protesters throughout the country, who remained firm in their demand that the Mubarak regime should be eliminated at once. Shortly after Hosni Mubarak publicly announced he would resign the presidency in September, President Obama again spoke to him by telephone. Obama summarized their conversation later that same day, telling Americans: “He recognizes that the status quo is not sustainable and that a change must take place. Indeed, all of us who are privileged to serve in positions of political power do so at the will of our people. Through thousands of years, Egypt has known many moments of transformation. The voices of the Egyptian people tell us that this is one of those moments; one of those times.”36 In just eight days, then, the US government had moved from Secretary of State Clinton’s affirmation that Washington retained confidence in the Mubarak regime’s “stability” to the president’s recognition and acceptance that Mubarak’s days of political leadership were over. While clearly a milestone event, this development had little initial impact on events within Egypt. February 2 and 3 saw the eruption of major clashes in Cairo as proand anti-Mubarak factions battled for control of the streets. Friday, February 4, however, saw a change. Having been beaten in the battles of the past forty-eight hours, the regime’s thugs either disappeared or at least remained quietly on the sidelines, permitting a huge crowd to gather in anticipation of what organizers mistakenly pronounced the “Day of Departure.” The next day, Saturday, February 5, was filled with the news that the ruling party’s leadership, including Gamal Mubarak— Hosni’s son and heir-apparent—had resigned en masse. February 5 was also notable on another count. On that day, presidential envoy Wisner, who had left Cairo on Wednesday, February 2, spoke to a security conference in Munich in terms that seemed to contradict Obama’s policy on Mubarak. Wisner argued that Mubarak should be encouraged to remain in power for the moment, since Egypt needed “a national consensus around the preconditions for the next step forward” and Mubarak’s presence was still required “to steer those changes.” 37 State Department spokesman Philip Crowley promptly retorted that Wisner’s statement was unauthorized: “The views he expressed today are his own. He did not coordinate his comments with the U.S. government.”38 In the following days, as Mubarak failed to meet the public’s expectations, rumors filled the vacuum: the president had left the country already, it was said, or alternatively he would soon do so, or he was hospitalized, and so it went. Finally, on Thursday, February 10, a flurry

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of statements by former ruling-party officials and military leaders seemed to vindicate the latest product of the rumor mill: Hosni Mubarak would resign the presidency that very night. However, much to the disappointment of most viewers in Egypt, Mubarak’s televised speech only reaffirmed his determination to remain in office until the September elections. In reality, but well behind the scenes, Mubarak’s regime was already a thing of the past. Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq would be forced to resign within three weeks.39 Much earlier—within only twentyfour hours of Mubarak’s disappointing final speech—Omar Suleiman had completed his final act as vice president by announcing that Mubarak had resigned Egypt’s presidency, effective immediately. The powers of government were transferred to a military council. It was February 11 when Suleiman proclaimed the end of Mubarak’s rule; it was also a Friday evening and Tahrir Square was packed—as was only fitting for such a moment. The revolution that ended Mubarak’s Egypt was seen as a threat to US interests from many perspectives. The Glenn Becks and Benjamin Netanyahus of the world united to raise the specter of Egypt falling to the rule of a hostile, fanatically militant Islamist government. On the other hand, many of the Arab world’s Islamic states, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, were aghast at the very notion that the United States might turn on the Mubarak regime for something as insubstantial as democratic ideals. Finally, many Americans who clung to those same democratic ideals saw the threat as mainly lying in Washington’s failure to proactively support Mubarak’s Egyptian opponents. In their view— which, at the time, I personally shared—Obama “could not bring himself to take the statesmanlike risk of supporting the full democratic program in Egypt.”40 To his credit, Obama heeded the advice of none of his critics and was instead guided by his own pragmatic, flexible search for ways to avoid harming US interests as much as possible. It may not have been a glorious performance, but it was an effective one. US interests have so far not suffered a serious setback in either Egypt or the Arab world. For now, the way seems open for the incremental growth of values and societies with which the United States can sympathize and actively support. This in itself may provide a foundation for the United States to rebuild a mutually fruitful relationship with Egypt and other states of the region. For now, it seems hard to beat the assessment of President Obama’s approach to the Egyptian revolution offered by Senator John McCain,

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who noted in the early days of February 2011 that the Egyptian revolution had created a difficult situation requiring “a steady hand and measured and mature leadership from the United States of America. And so far, I think the President has handled it pretty well.”41

The Revolution’s Aftermath Eventually it would become clear that Egypt was destined to suffer badly in the months following Mubarak’s downfall. However, this was not immediately apparent in the initial wave of euphoria that swept the country. The existing constitution was nullified two days after Mubarak’s resignation and the first priority therefore became—or rather, should have become—the rebuilding of the constitutional system. That it did not can be attributed to Egypt’s “political underdevelopment.” In March 2011, a referendum was held and roundly approved a three-stage plan that called for parliamentary elections to be held by early 2012 and, second, the establishment of a hundred-member committee to be appointed by parliament and charged with drafting the country’s new constitution. The third and final stage was to come in the summer of 2012, when Egypt’s presidential elections were to be held. The plan seemed solid, founded on logic, and compelling. It was very much like the “best laid plans of mice and men.” It was doomed to fail—and it did—because it took little account of Egypt’s social reality. The first stage was completed on schedule in early January 2012. Islamists won the day, controlling Egypt’s new parliament by a whopping margin of some 70 percent. The second stage faltered when the Constituent Assembly was boycotted in April by non-Islamists, which included liberals and leftists, as well as Egypt’s official Islamic authority, Al Azhar, and the Coptic Church.42 By the latter half of April 2012, the ongoing legal wrangling over the Constituent Assembly’s future had raised questions about any possible movement on the anticipated presidential elections. However, these were eventually held on schedule, and in June 2012, Egypt’s electorate chose the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohamad Morsi, Egypt’s first president to have been freely elected within a competitive context. The obvious problem could not be denied. It stemmed from the fact that Egypt was without a constitution. Thus Egyptians were being invited to elect a president whose “job description” was not only hidden but also contested, for parliament clearly preferred a parliamentary system in which the president’s pow-

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ers would be limited, while the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) favored a “presidential system” in which the chief executive’s powers would more or less be unchallengeable. Further complicating the already difficult situation was the role of Egyptian courts in the electoral process. By the time the first round of presidential elections started, parliament had already decreed a law of exclusion, aimed at Ahmed Shafiq. By that measure, Shafiq, as a former senior-level functionary of the previous regime, was considered ineligible for election. Because of its struggle with parliament, the SCAF did not enforce the measure, and Shafiq emerged as one of two contenders in the runoff election. By early June, the Supreme Constitutional Court, which had decisive power in the case, was still undecided. With this, Egypt’s politics reached a nadir that could only be attributed to the country’s political underdevelopment. It was the low point in the revolution’s aftermath and it came after some eighteen months of a steady and continuing decline in the quality of life for everyone in the country. Egypt’s economy lay in shambles and there were few grounds to hope for any sort of recovery in the foreseeable future. Average Egyptians also saw their personal security undermined as criminal activity rose markedly. Life became more complicated for everyone as periodic shortages of essentials—gasoline, for example—blossomed. Such discomforts came in a broader context formed by the unrelenting deterioration of Egyptian political life. The period stretching from the spring of 2011 to the early summer of 2012 saw Egypt’s political life move from crisis to crisis. The political ineptitude of Egypt’s government—the SCAF—was largely responsible for this. The spring and early summer of 2011 were marked by repeated clashes between the SCAF and elements of the public. By July—following massive antigovernment demonstrations in April and May—protesters were gathering in the hundreds of thousands in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, as well as in public squares in Alexandria and other cities, to show their disapproval of the junta’s slow approach to change. In September, social tensions increased when a mob stormed the Israeli embassy in Cairo. The following month saw a massacre in the Cairo district of Maspero that left at least 25 people dead and some 200 wounded—almost all of them Copts. What was occurring as 2011 wound to its end was no less than the progressive crumbling of what had once appeared to be an integral and cohesive society. Egypt was breaking into different and mutually opposed factions that in the end became identifiable as distinct groups:

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Islamists (moderate and extreme), secularists-modernists (in a panoply of various guises), and those favoring the military’s approach—a simple equation of order as the first and basically the only priority. The result tended to undermine the very concept of the “Egypt” known by Hosni Mubarak. This was the outcome of Egypt’s “development”—in all its political, social, and economic dimensions—over the past six decades. The unevenness of the country’s economic development had long been noted, particularly in the preceding decade, as Egypt’s liberalism increasingly degenerated into crony capitalism. Even more ominous was the sociocultural division that came to exist between the vast majority of traditionally minded Egyptians and the minority of their modernized compatriots. Politically, the dynamic tended to favor the SCAF, as the process rapidly reduced the common bond among Egypt’s citizens to the irrational appeal of patriotism pure and simple. It was this—far more than any thirst for power on the part of the SCAF itself—that underlay the rising fear of Egyptian liberals that the military might find some way to entrench itself for the long term as Egypt’s real government. “Political development,” of course, is an academic construct and, as such, has no right to intrude in any wordy way in a digression to the present discussion. Still, it can briefly be said that political development refers essentially to the process of “community formation,” which in turn centrally involves the related process of the formation of personal identity. In short, the phenomenon is one we have all experienced firsthand: the one through which we have come to identify ourselves individually as part of a broader social group. “Political underdevelopment,” on the other hand, is a common condition that obtains when a marked deficiency characterizes the correlation between self-identity and communal identity. In other words, political underdevelopment is manifested to the extent that a notable gap exists between the individual’s self-identification and his or her recognition of group membership as an integral part of that identity. This was precisely the nature of Egypt’s main problem in the aftermath of Mubarak’s downfall. But there is still more to be said regarding the Obama administration and the difficult situation presented by Egypt in 2011–2012. At the end of 2011, Egypt’s new rulers took steps that plunged their country’s relations with the United States into a crisis that threatened to become the worst since Hosni Mubarak first took office. The affair began on December 29, 2011, when Egyptian security forces, following months

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of a public campaign to discredit the work of foreign-supported prodemocracy organizations, conducted armed raids on seventeen international NGOs. Among these were three high-profile US groups: Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute, whose director in Egypt was Sam LaHood, the son of Obama’s secretary of transportation, Ray LaHood.43 In quick order, the issue became a major point of contention between Egypt and the United States. In late January 2012, six US NGO personnel were forbidden to leave Egypt. At the same time, others sought asylum in the US embassy. Early the next month, sixteen US NGO personnel were officially charged with criminal offenses. The clash between Cairo and Washington, which hinged on Cairo’s claim that the NGO workers had not received official permission to operate in Egypt, soon threatened to inflict major damage on EgyptianUS relations. It also threatened to be enormously expensive to Egypt, whose government still hoped for $1.3 billion in US military aid as well as a $3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. The Obama administration, largely through Secretary of State Clinton, sought to settle the matter with minimal fuss. It reportedly paid a hefty “bail” of some $330,000 for each charged US citizen that finally, in March, enabled the NGO workers to leave Egypt.44 The fight picked by the SCAF at the end of December 2011 seems explicable only by alluding to the Egyptian military’s unfamiliarity with governing or by its being torn between the needs to govern and to maintain internal legitimacy, or by a glaring lack of coordination within Egypt’s government. It is important to note that these alternatives are not mutually exclusive. Whatever the case, by March 1, 2012, the US NGO workers were allowed to exit Egypt, and within two weeks Secretary Clinton announced that Egypt was again in Washington’s good graces.45 With chaos threatening at every turn, but never quite gaining the upper hand, the Obama administration confronted one of its strongest challenges in the Middle East when it had to face Egypt’s Tahrir Revolution. To its credit, the equanimity embodied by the president, and reflected in the demeanor of his secretary of state, prevailed throughout the trying period since Mubarak’s overthrow. Eschewing panicky advice emanating from all quarters of the political spectrum, Washington steadfastly clung to its clear view of the ultimate prize: a stabilized Egypt that would be more democratic and therefore, eventually, a more reliable international ally.

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It is therefore, at least at this juncture, impossible to improve upon the judgment given by John McCain in February 2011 to the effect that the Egyptian revolution created a complex crisis that “the President . . . handled . . . pretty well.” If the United States and other international actors continue to display forbearance in their dealings with the new Egypt, they will have done much to facilitate the democratizing impact of Egyptians’ inherent preference for moderation.

Notes 1. See, for example, online reports of Egypt’s mediation roles in regard to Lebanon in 2006 (“Egypt’s Mubarak: No Light at the End of the Tunnel,” Time Magazine, July 27, 2006, http://time.com/time/world/article /0,8599,1220010 ,00.html). 2. For an online discussion of US rendition programs and Egypt, see “Rendition Timeline,” Frontline World, http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld /stories/rendition701/timeline/timeline_1.htm. 3. Statement by US ambassador Margaret Scobey, “Thirty Years and $30 Billion of USAID Assistance to the Egyptian People,” April 21, 2011, http://egypt.usembassy.gov/pr042111a.html. See also “US Embassy Egypt: $30 Billion USAID Assistance to Egypt in 30 Years,” April 2011, http://diplopundit .blogspot.com/2011/04/us-embassy-egypt-30-billion-usaid.html. During the same period, the United States provided Egypt with nearly $40 billion in military aid. 4. Scobey, “Thirty Years and $30 Billion of USAID Assistance.” 5. Dan Tschirgi, Turning Point: The Arab World’s Marginalization and International Security After 9/11 (Westport: Praeger Security International, 2007), pp. 37–44. 6. George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy,” November 6, 2003, http://frwebgate1 .access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=601081331274+7+0+0 &WAISaction=retrieve. 7. Tschirgi, Turning Point, p. 40. 8. “President Holds Press Conference,” January 26, 2005, http://www .whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20050126-3.html. 9. Gary C. Gambil, “Jumpstarting Arab Reform: The Bush Administration’s Greater Middle East Initiative,” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin 6 (nos. 6–7), http://meib.org/articles/0407_me2.htm. The Group of Eight countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 10. Gambil, “Jumpstarting Arab Reform.” 11. Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers, “The Greater Middle East Initiative: Off to a False Start,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,

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Policy Brief no. 29, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index .cfm?fa=view&id=1480&prog=zdrl,zme. 12. Ibid. 13. Mustapha K. el-Sayyid, “The Third Wave of Democratization in the Arab World,” in Dan Tschirgi, ed., The Arab World Today (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994), pp. 182–183. 14. Ottaway and Carothers, “The Greater Middle East Initiative.” 15. Ibid. 16. “Partnership for Progress and a Common Future with the Region of the Broader Middle East and North Africa,” June 9, 2004, http://www.G8.utoronto .ca/summit/2004seaisland/partnership.html. 17. Ottaway and Carothers, “The Greater Middle East Initiative.” 18. Kareem Fahim and Mona el-Naggar, “Violent Clashes Mark Protests Against Mubarak’s Rule,” New York Times, January 26, 2011, http://www .nytimes.com/2011/01/26/world/middleeast/26egypt.html. 19. Ibid. 20. Mona el-Ghobashy, “The Praxis of the Egyptian Revolution,” Middle East Research and Information Project Reports no. 258, http://www.merip.org /mer/mer258/praxis-egyptian-revolution. 21. “Hillary Clinton’s Remarks on 25 Jan Protests in Egypt,” http:// jotman.blogspot.com/2011/01/hillary-clintons-remarks-on-25-jan.html. 22. Jean Williams, “Glenn Beck: Egyptian Revolution Is the Beginning of a New World Order,” Liberal Examiner, February 10, 2011, http://www .examiner.com. 23. “McCain: It’s Time for Egypt’s Mubarak to Step Down,” February 3, 2011, http://foxnews.com/on-the-record/transcript/mccain-it03. 24. “Exclusive: Biden Discusses Unrest in Egypt, Keeping U.S. Competitive,” PBS Newshour, January 27, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/newshour /rundown/2011/01/exclusive-biden-discusses-unrest-in-egypt-keeping-us -competitive.html. 25. “Reaction to Egypt Protests,” BBC News (Middle East), January 30, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12316019?print=true. 26. “Prime Minister: Mubarak Is Finished,” Politiken, February 3, 2011, http://politken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE1185609/prime-minister-mubarak. 27. “France Suspends Arms Sales to Egypt,” CNN.com, February 6, 2011, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/02/06/france.egypt.arms. 28. Scott Peterson, “Iran’s Khamenei Praises Egyptian Protestors, Declares ‘Islamic Awakening,’” Christian Science Monitor, February 4, 2011, http:// www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/361116. 29. See “Ben-Eliezer: All We Can Do Is Express Support for Mubarak,” Jerusalem Post, January 26, 2011, http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/Print Article.aspx?id=205362; Mahmud Muhareb, “Israel and the Egyptian Revolution,” http://english/dohainstitute.org. 30. Reuters and Barak Ravid, “Netanyahu Warns Outcome of Egypt Revolution Could Be Like Iran’s,” Haaretz, January 31, 2011, http//www .haaretz.com.

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31. “Egypt Protests: Key Moments in Unrest,” BBC News, http://www .bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12425375. 32. “Egypt Cracks Down on Mass Protests as Mubarak Dissolves Government,” CNN.com, January 29, 2011, http://www.cnn.com/2011 /WORLD/africa/01/28/egypt.protests/index.html?iref=allsearch. 33. US Department of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), “Egypt: Government Measures Fail to Quell Protests,” January 28, 2011, p. 9. 34. Barack Obama, “All Governments Must Maintain Power Through Consent, Not Coercion,” January 28, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog /2011/01/28/president-obama-situation-egypt. 35. Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, “Obama Turned to Envoy Who Could Speak to Mubarak as a Friend,” Washington Post, February 1, 2011, http:// www.washingtonpost.com. 36. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on the Situation in Egypt,” February 1, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/02/01 /remarks. 37. “Egypt: President Mubarak Must Stay for Now, U.S. Envoy Says,” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2011, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylon beyond/2011/02/egypt-president-mubarak-must-stay-us-envoy-says.html. 38. Kareem Fahim, Mark Landler, and Anthony Shahid, “West Backs Gradual Egyptian Transition,” New York Times, February 5, 2011, http://www .nytimes.com. 39. “PM Ahmed Shafiq Resigns Following Demands by Opposition,” Ikhwanweb, March 3, 2011, http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id =28141. 40. Dan Tschirgi, “The Sad Truth About Egypt: Realism Steps In Where Statesmen Fear to Tread,” Palm Beach Post, February 8, 2011, http://www .palmbeachpost.com/opinion/commentary. In retrospect, I have concluded that my early reaction was unduly influenced by the enthusiasm I had for the revolution. I have since come to believe that Obama’s more cautious approach was more warranted given the uncertainties of the period. 41. B. Robinson, “McCain: It’s Time for Mubarak to Step Down,” Fox News, February 3, 2011, http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record /transcript/mccain-it0395-time-egypt0395-mubarak-step-down. 42. “Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court Suspends Embattled Constituent Assembly,” al-Ahram, April 10, http://english.ahram.org.eg/News /38936.aspx2012. 43. “US ‘Deeply Concerned’ After Egyptian Forces Raid NGO Offices in Cairo,” The Guardian, December 29, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world /2011/dec/29/us-egyptian-forces-raid-cairo. 44. “American Activists Fly Out of Egypt, Defusing Row,” Reuters, March 1, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/01/us-egypt-usa-ngos-idUS TRE8200H520120301. 45. Actually, her spokesperson announced that “on the basis of America’s national security interests, she [Clinton] will waive legislative conditions relat-

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ed to Egypt’s democratic transition, allowing for the continued flow of ‘Foreign Military Financing’ to Egypt.” Susan Cornwell and Arshad Mohammed, “Clinton to Let Military Aid to Egypt Continue: State Department Official,” Reuters, March 22, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USBRE 82L13D20120323.

Part 4 Conclusion

14 Egypt in the Balance Dan Tschirgi, Walid Kazziha, and Sean F. McMahon

Perhaps, as never before, this is the moment to say that Egypt finds itself “in the balance.” The Tahrir Revolution clearly marked a historic change in Egypt’s political fortunes. But a thoroughly opaque element still remains: the absence of even the most tentative indication of what the future holds. The only discernible bit of evidence in the otherwise utterly confused and confusing situation is the influential role that the country’s military already has, and undoubtedly will continue to have, in the immediate unfolding of Egypt’s national life. This single strand of analytic reliability allows us to suggest that Egypt’s upcoming realities will have striking significance for developments in three important areas: global politics, the study of political science and the Arab world, and above all, the lives of ordinary Egyptians. As is inevitable for all predictions, these necessarily rest on a very unstable sort of assumption—the notion that existing patterns of human behavior will probably remain more or less constant.

Egypt in the Global Environment For most of its long history, Egypt has experienced the mixed blessing of being at, or close to, the centers of world politics. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Cold War, oil, and the Palestine issue were among factors causing the country to retain its status as a political lightning rod. As the Arab world’s primary state, Egypt had little choice

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but to accept the burden of regional leadership. Today, Egypt must continue to confront major regional challenges whose importance actually extends to the global level. There can be no doubt that chief among these is the Arab-Israeli problem, an issue so significant that it now draws in not only the United States and other global superpowers, but also regional powers such as Egypt and Iran. The situation has, of course, also developed into an acute question of nuclear-arms proliferation. The very close ties between the United States and Egypt make Washington’s approach critically important. The Obama administration coped adequately with the initial phases of Egypt’s revolution, exhibiting a patience and imperturbability that proved essential in minimizing harm to US interests during the revolutionary period. However, the US presidential election of November 2012 raises obvious doubts about the possibility of the Obama administration maintaining its previous style of engagement. There is no guarantee that Obama can continue to deal with Egypt in such a low-key, self-effacing, and nonconfrontational manner. The reelection of Barack Obama in 2012 indicates the probability that Egypt’s revolution will heighten the need for renewed attention to be given to the so-called Arab-Israeli peace process. What actually remains of that long-dead concept is only an empty shell—a corpse whose ghostly shade still reemerges occasionally in politically charged rhetoric in the form of allusions to “the peace process.” It is now time for the corpse finally to be buried and for a new effort to be made in the hope of bringing definitive peace to the region. Any such effort should aim at a two-state solution that provides not only for Israel’s full security but also for a viable Palestinian state with recognized and internationally guaranteed borders. The hard logic of politics seems to dictate that the Palestinian people will be losers by virtue of having to forgo their claimed “right of return.” Against this, however, should be balanced Israel’s loss of the territorial ambitions that have fueled the Jewish state’s policies for over forty years. The same logic also dictates that the international community’s role should be paramount in determining what borders will distinguish Israel from Palestine. Among its other lessons, Egypt’s Tahrir Revolution underscores with undeniable immediacy the urgency of international efforts to deal with the Arab-Israeli problem realistically and definitively. Anything falling short of this risks unleashing an unforeseeable string of political developments that may well become an unstoppable juggernaut to catastrophe in the Middle East and areas far beyond its limits.

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At the same time, Egypt’s 2011 experience with revolution seems to have laid to rest most of the commonly accepted wisdom supporting the tired notion of “Arab exeptionalism”—the idea that Arab societies have somehow been immunized against more universal patterns of human behavior.

Significance for Political Science Political science is part of the political world. It constitutes the political world, and is constituted by the political world. On this latter point, David Garson concluded almost four decades ago that “political science ‘grows’ largely reactively, in response to outside stimuli . . . rather than through the self-conscious testing of analytical models.”1 Egypt’s political changes certainly rank as external stimuli that should help “grow” political science. How might Egypt’s political changes in 2011 and beyond contribute to improving political science’s analytical infrastructure? Three necessarily partial reflections immediately come to mind. First, Egypt’s recent politics suggest that the discipline should reflect, among other things, on its central categories and concepts. Political science accommodates myriad subject positions—class, race, gender, sexual orientation, (dis)ability—in its analyses. It may now be time for the discipline, particularly its critical margins, to further interrogate “youth” as a social and analytical category. The events in Egypt also certainly encourage a (re)thinking about the role of technology in politics. Has technology, particularly social media, fundamentally changed the practice of politics? Second, the most important opportunity afforded political science by Egypt’s recent politics is a further, and more far-reaching and devastating, challenge to the Orientalism that has always informed the discipline. Egypt now offers a ready rebuke to the tired notion of “Arab exceptionalism.” And as Rashid Khalidi has observed, the events in Egypt contrast markedly with standard Orientalist representations of Arabs and Muslims as enraged terrorists and religious fundamentalists.2 These are not small or unimportant points of contestation. They should not, however, be overstated. Unfortunately, many of the discipline’s standard-bearers are again falling into the Orientalist discourse. This is being done through the use of the now ubiquitous term “Arab Spring,” a phrase connoting that Arabs can be lumped together into largely undifferentiated experiences and phenomena. It also suggests that these changes are seasonal—ephemeral and fleeting. Then too, it eliminates

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Western culpability in the long perpetuation of, in this case, the Mubarak regime.3 Moreover, much political discourse about Egypt’s political changes reifies a specific notion of democracy: “Western” institutions and practices are being ideologically legitimized. Finally, political science has long been a discourse about the state. As James Farr explains, the state gave the discipline, and political scientists, “a sense of identity and unity.”4 Among many things, this led to a stale debate about the strength or weakness of the Egyptian state relative to Egyptian society. As some authors in this volume intimate, political science would do well to end its obsession with the state and focus its analytical energies on the struggles being waged in society. Indeed, the state should not remain the preeminent vantage point from which political scientists gaze upon politics. That perspective did not, after all, enable political scientists to predict the demise of the thirtyyear Mubarak regime. Ideally, Egypt’s ongoing political changes will encourage more disciplinary work with what Edward Said called “traveling theory.” According to Said, “our model of academic freedom should . . . be the migrant or traveler. . . . [T]he traveler crosses over, traverses territory, and abandons fixed positions, all the time.”5 Furthermore, “the point of theory therefore is to travel, always to move beyond its confines, to emigrate, to remain in a sense in exile.”6 In this book, theories of a profoundly American social science have emigrated and been deployed by “travelers” and “exiles” to and in Egypt. In the spirit of Cornel West’s suggestion that the United States “learn from Cairo, Egypt,”7 these theories and their insights and questions are intended, in part, to inform the discipline and, it is hoped, help address some of its inadequacies.

Significance for Egypt and the Egyptians Finally, the overwhelmingly important question remains that of the revolution’s meaning for the Egyptian people. If the army depended on its position as the best organized and most disciplined institution in the Egyptian state to exercise its political influence after the fall of Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood had the advantage of being a wellorganized underground party, with long experience in political survival under extremely difficult conditions. Emerging from the grassroots of Egyptian society, its power-base rested in civil society and not the state. By building efficient networks of social, medical, and economic organi-

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zations, it competed with the state in offering a variety of services to the public at large, especially in the populated poorer areas in both urban centers and the countryside. When the revolution erupted on January 25, 2011, the Brothers decided not to take part. However, once they realized that the events were moving in a direction favorable to the revolutionary youth, they changed course. On January 28, three days after the revolution began, the Brothers decided to join the rebellious crowds in Tahrir Square and the rest of Egypt. Until Mubarak’s departure on February 11, the Brotherhood refrained from raising its own slogans, such as “Islam is the solution,” or introducing religious overtones to its political activities. On the contrary, efforts were made by the movement to blend in with the rest of the demonstrators by raising patriotic slogans and demands that would not alienate liberals, leftists, or the noncommitted elements among the rebellious masses. However, once Mubarak and his entourage exited the scene and the Brothers were ensured success, they began to show signs of independence from others, and became increasingly interested in monopolizing the sources of power as new opportunities became available. Thus the movement opted to support the military’s rule by constitutional declarations rather than push for a clear-cut constitution. This was seen by many Egyptians as reflecting the Brotherhood’s hope that by flirting with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), it would be able to secure its own power. The army, on the other hand, was reluctant to fall for that maneuver and maintained its grip over legislative and executive powers. The next step for the Brotherhood was to take control of the newly elected parliament. It succeeded in doing this via an alliance with the Salafists, but its attempts to exercise power over the cabinet were thwarted by the military. Notwithstanding the parliamentary election, the appointment of the cabinet remained the SCAF’s prerogative. Frustrated by its inability to gain control over the executive, the Brothers, contrary to their previous announcements, decided to contest the presidential elections by fielding their own candidate with his slogan “Islam is the solution.” The strong machine of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party succeeded in rallying enough support to place the party’s candidate in the first round of the elections slightly ahead of the candidate supported by the SCAF. In the meantime, due to its opportunistic attitude and its rush to capture executive as well as legislative power, the Brotherhood alienat-

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ed its former liberal allies and a large constituency of Egyptians who had hoped to see it show a more ethical approach to politics. Instead, it rapidly gained a reputation of being power-hungry and a threat to those who disagreed with it politically. This was particularly the case with regard to Egypt’s Coptic community. The results of the second, and final, round of presidential elections were officially announced in late June. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamad Morsi won by a narrow—but decisive—margin. Despite the public’s rejection of its own favored candidate, Ahmed Shafiq, the SCAF promised to respect the voters’ decision. For the first time in its history, Egypt had freely elected a head of state who won office through a truly competitive electoral process. What’s more, the new president did not come from a professional military background. Moreover, as a Muslim Brother, Egypt’s new leader had been shaped by an organization long marginalized from the country’s political life and that therefore rooted its political legitimacy and power in civil society, rather than in any official organization linked to the state. To some observers, the outcome of Egypt’s first post-Mubarak election seemed a promising start to the creation of a new Egypt, an Egypt in which government would be both responsive and responsible to the people, in which personal growth would be protected by the collective power of society within a framework of justice for all. On the other hand, a sizable portion of Egyptians (48 percent) had not supported Morsi in his bid for the presidency.8 Most had been influenced by a thoroughgoing distrust of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and the conviction that Morsi and his followers would do all in their power to impose an atavistic Islamic theocracy on Egypt. Such fears were not overcome by Morsi’s early declarations that he would serve as the president of all Egyptians, a clear effort to assuage the disquiet of the more secular segment of Egypt’s Muslim population as well as of the country’s Christian communities.9 Mohamad Morsi quickly proved politically adept. Some six weeks after his inauguration, he exploited the Egyptian public’s anger over a terrorist incident to take a surprisingly bold step against the SCAF’s claim to be Egypt’s supreme authority. On August 12, the president fired General Tantawi from his posts as Egypt’s minister of defense and chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. At the same time, he also dismissed Army Chief of Staff Sami Enan as well as the commanders of the navy and air force. An even more important step in Morsi’s restructuring of Egypt’s internal balance of political power was his cancellation of a decree issued by the SCAF in June that drastically reduced

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the president’s power to govern as he wished.10 Most observers were surprised by the military’s acceptance of Morsi’s “August coup d’état.” In late August, Morsi’s office announced that the draft of Egypt’s new constitution would be completed by the end of September and that it would be submitted to a popular referendum within thirty days of its submission to the government. The seeming eclipse of the military as a factor in Egypt’s political life clearly suggests that the Muslim Brotherhood now holds full responsibility for its own eventual political fate. Unless Morsi’s government manages to construct a generally acceptable balance between its Islamic ideological preferences and its political desire to rule, Egypt’s future promises to be bleak. The effective balance, though difficult to find, is not impossible. Turkey’s government is a well-known success story in this regard. But Turkey is not Egypt and Turks are not Egyptians. The so-called Turkish model, therefore, should not be counted on. Egypt will have to discover its own unique blend of pragmatism and Islamic values. Should this be the case, Egypt’s rewards will nowhere be greater than in the realm of foreign affairs. The successful practice of international relations requires above all the skill of dexterously combining ideological goals with pragmatic considerations in a seamless fabric of coherent and beneficial policies. As Egypt faces its post-revolutionary future, a vital question is clearly that of whether the country’s forthcoming constitution will establish and protect the rights of all Egyptians. Perhaps an even more significant issue is whether Egypt’s military will continue to accept a role subordinate to the country’s civilian leadership.

Notes 1. G. David Garson, “On the Origins of Interest-Group Theory: A Critique of a Process,” American Political Science Review 68 (1974), p. 1519, quoted in Gabriel Almond, A Discipline Divided: Schools and Sects in Political Science (London: Sage, 1990), p. 190. 2. Rashid Khalidi, “Reflections on the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt,” Foreign Policy, February 24, 2011, http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts /2011/02/24/reflections_on_the_revolutions_in_tunisia_and_egypt. 3. Rami G. Khouri, “Drop the Orientalist Term ‘Arab Spring,’” Daily Star (Lebanon), August 17, 2011, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Article.aspx?id=146 410#axzz1vjBc1mjc. 4. James Farr, “The Historical Science(s) of Politics: The Principles, Association, and Fate of an American Discipline,” in Robert Adcock, Mark

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Bevir, and Shannon Stimson, eds., Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges Since 1880 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 66. 5. Edward W. Said, “Reflections on Exile” and Other Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 403–404. 6. Edward W. Said, “Traveling Theory Reconsidered,” in Said, “Reflections on Exile” and Other Essays, p. 451. 7. “Cornel West and the Fight Against Injustice,” Al Jazeera, April 25, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2011/03/2011328633115 84728.html. 8. “Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi Wins Egypt’s Presidential Race,” The Guardian, June 24, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle -east-live/2012/jun/24/egypt-election-results-live. 9. CNN, “Egypt’s President-Elect Promises to Put Power in Hands of the People,” June 29, 2012, http://articles.cnn.com/2012-06-29/africa/world_africa _egypt-morsi_1_ahmed-shafik-egyptians-freedom-and-justice-party?_s=PM :AFRICA. 10. Dan Murphy, “Egypt’s President Morsi Fires Senior General Tantawi, Asserting His Power,” Christian Science Monitor, August 12, 2012, http:// www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2012/0812/Egypt-s-President -Morsi-fires-senior-general-Tantawi-asserting-his-power.

Acronyms

CIMAL CIMUN FJP GCC GDP GDR IDF IMF LDC MESA MFO NDP NGO OPIC PNA SCAF SED UNDP UNESCO

Cairo International Model Arab League Cairo International Model United Nations Freedom and Justice Party Gulf Cooperation Council gross domestic product German Democratic Republic Israel Defense Forces International Monetary Fund less developed country Middle East Studies Association Multinational Force and Observers (Sinai) National Democratic Party nongovernmental organization Overseas Private Investment Corporation Palestinian National Authority Supreme Council of the Armed Forces Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands United Nations Development Programme United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization

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The Contributors

Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid is professor of political science at Cairo University and adjunct professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. His recent publications include “The Judicial Authority and Civil Society,” in Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron, ed., Judges and Political Reform in Egypt (2008), and “International Dimensions of Middle East Authoritarianism: The G-8 and External Efforts at Political Reform,” in Oliver Schlumberger, ed., Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes (2007). Sherine ElGhatit graduated with a master’s degree in political science from the American University in Cairo and also received a master’s degree in the same field from Boston University. ElGhatit is senior lecturer in the American University in Cairo’s Department of Political Science. Ibrahim Elnur is associate professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. His recent publications include Chasing Modernities: On Mobility-Development Nexuses—The Challenges of Harnessing Transformative Potential (2010) and Contested Sudan: The Political Economy of War and Reconstruction (2009). Nadia Ramsis Farah is professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. Her recent publications include Religious Strife in

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The Contributors

Egypt: Crisis and Ideological Conflict in the Seventies (2012) and Egypt’s Political Economy: Power Relations in Development (2009). Ivan Ivekovic is professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. His recent publications include “Le Printemps Egyptien,” in Revue d’Études et de Critique Sociale (December 2011), and “Libya: A Collapsed State,” in Transeuropennes (April 2011). Walid Kazziha is professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. His recent publications include “Democracy Revisited: An Arab Perspective,” in Christian Peter-Hanlet and Almut Moller, eds., Bound to Cooperate: Europe and the Middle East, vol. 2 (2010), and “The Fallacy of Arab Democracy Without Constituency,” in Nathan Brown and Emad el-Din Shahin, eds., The Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (2009). Sean F. McMahon is assistant professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. His recent publications include “What Is Left Out? Power, Violence, and War,” in Janine Brodie, Sandra Rein, and Malinda Smith, eds., Critical Concepts: An Introduction to Politics, 5th ed. (2013); “Post-Oslo Peace Initiatives and the Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations,” Unidad de Investigación Sobre Seguridad y Cooperación Internacional (UNISCI) Discussion Paper no. 26 (2011); and The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations (2010). Manar Shorbagy is adjunct associate professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. Her recent publications include “The Politics of Anti-Americanism in Egypt,” in Jane Desmond and Virginia Dominguez, eds., America in the World: Discourses of Americanization and Anti-Americanism (2011), and Aswat Obama al Thalatha: Al-Arab fi Marhalat ma Ba’ad al-Abyad wal Sewed [Obama’s Three Voices: Arabs in the Post–Black and White Era] (2009). Nadine Sika is assistant professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. Her recent publications include “The Millennium Development Goals and the Prospects for Gender Equality in the Arab World,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 12, no. 3 (March 2011), and Educational Reform in Egyptian Primary Schools Since the 1990s: A Study of Political Values and Behavior of Sixth-Grade Students (2010).

The Contributors

277

Earl (Tim) Sullivan is professor emeritus of political science at the American University in Cairo. His recent publications include The New Dynamics of Multilateralism: Diplomacy, International Organizations, and Global Governance (as coauthor, 2011), and Multilateral Diplomacy and the United Nations Today (as coeditor, 2005). Dan Tschirgi is professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. His recent publications include The Origins of U.S. Involvement in the Modern Middle East Problem (2009) and Turning Point: The Arab World’s Marginalization and International Security After 9/11 (2007). Amr Yossef is adjunct professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. His recent publications include “Obama in the Middle East: Why He Needs European Support” (as coauthor), in European Political Science 10, no. 1 (March 2011), and “Another War in Lebanon? Not Likely,” in Foreign Policy in Focus (September 2010).

Index

Abbas, Mahmoud, 218 Abdallah (King of Jordan), 238 Abdel Fatah, Ezraa, 97 Abou Ghazala, Abel Halim, 18, 40 Aboul Fotouh, Abdel Moneim, 121 Abu Eita, Kamal, 97–98 Al Marakby, Nafissa, death by torture, 99 Al-Arabi, Nabil, 33, 162, 165–166 Al-Assad, Bashar, 12 Al-Aswani, Alaa, 16 Al-Azhar Mosque, 41 Al-Dostur, editor criticizes Mubarak, 203 Al-Faisal, Saud (Prince of Saudi Arabia), 239 Al-Ghad, 184, 200 Al-Karama, 200 Al-Nafees, Ahmad Rassem, 124 Al-Qaeda, 144, 234 Al-Sayyid, Mustapha Kamel, 7, 238 Amer, Abdel Hakim, 18, 36 American University in Cairo, 20, 21, 68, 75 American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, warns against democratic Egypt, 213 Amin, Samir, 156 April 6 Movement, 16, 18, 23–24, 73, 90, 97, 113, 124, 155, 157, 167, 183, 197, 198, 199

Arab Spring, 8, 131, 136, 191, 222, 224, 259; and ultimate outcomes, 144 Arab world: declining education, 138; democratic order, 192; disparities in, 137; outdated political patronage package, 137; problem of graduate unemployment, 138; problem of higher education, 137–138; urbanization and political patronage package, 137 Arab-Israeli problem, 258 Arafat, Yasser, 34, 218 Atias, Ariel, 212 Authoritarianism and postcolonialism in Middle East, 131 Baath Party, 134, 136, 145, 165 Barak, Ehud, 214, 220–221, 223 Barak, Rafi, 221 Battle of the Camel, 156 Bayat, Assef, 200 BBC, 68, 78 Beck, Glenn, 241, 246 Beinin, Joel, 157 Ben Ali, Zine el-Abidine, 71, 204; resigns as Tunisian president, 240 Berlin Appeal, 195–196 Biden, Joseph, 242 Bouazizi, Mohamed, 134; selfimmolation of and Egyptians, 25

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Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative (BMENAI) replaces Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI), 239 Bush, George W., administration of: and democracy in Middle East, 235; sees GMEI as comparable to Helsinki Process, 238; rejects notion that certain people can’t self-govern, 236 Cairo International Model Arab League (CIMAL), 68, 75 Cairo International Model United Nations (CIMUN), 68 Camp David Accords, 33, 162, 166–167 Carothers, Thomas, 237, 239; points to flaws in belief that GMEI was comparable to Helsinki Process, 238 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 234 Clinton, Hillary, 163–164, 214, 241, 250; and contacts with Muslim Brotherhood, 116; and financial aid to Egypt, 162–163; indicates altered US position on Mubarak regime, 243 CNN, 68, 78 Cox, Robert, 152, 154, 160 Crowley, Philip (State Department spokesman), 245 Demerdash, Wedad, 95–96, 101, 104 Democratization: civil society can impede democratization, 193; requires a strong civil society, 193 Developmental state, 50 Diasporas, as active agents of uprisings, 143 Doctors Without Rights, 98–99 Domino effect, 132 East Germany, 1989 revolution in, 191 Egypt, 20, 145, 146, 152, 221, 238, 258, 263; adapts to globalization under Mubarak’s rule, 174; altered social forces and reactionary elements, 167; approves passage of Israeli warships through Suez Canal, 219; armed forces, 19; conflict between domestic capital and global hegemony, 168; Constituent Assembly (March, 2012), 120; constitution still pending, 263; and corruption, 177, 203; and decline in infant mortality, 176–177;

democracy low priority for most Egyptians, 62; economic and political situation of, not worst in region, 11; and economic and political liberalization produce collapse of regime, 12; and economic inequality, 55–56; economy of, vulnerable if relations with Israel destabilized, 220; and distorted class stratification, 176; food security of, 179–180; foreign currency reserves reduced by revolution, 179; and freely elected head of state in country’s history, 262; and future of youth power in, 83–84; and gap between “haves” and “have nots,” 178; and generation gap, 74; and growth of middle classes as cause of revolution, 67; and Islamist groups, 182–183; and Islamist sector of national economy, 182–183; labor movements not served by SCAF, 161–162; and labor protests, 59–62; and labor strikes, 55–56; legacy of development, 178; long-term future of, 6–7; main actors involved in postrevolution politics, 180–185; main problem of in aftermath of Mubarak’s downfall, 249; majority of youth favor patriarchal order, 80–81; middle classes, 80; and military, 45, 81–82, 159, 181, 244; model for developing states according to UNESCO, 14; and Mubarak, 18–19, 23–24, 43, 70, 174; and natural gas deal with Israel, 215, 221; and negotiated peace with Israel as strategic choice, 214; and neopopulism, democracy, and development, 57, 62; not a failed state, 12; and parliamentary elections (2010), 31, 43, 71, 77, 110; parliamentary elections (2011), and Islamist victory, 121; Peoples’ Assembly elections (2011–2012), and Islamist victory, 1; and political blocs, 5; and political development, 249; political economy of, 173–180; and political unrest, 24; and populism, neoliberalism, and neopopulism, 51–57; post-revolution, 4, 6, 102, 152, 160, 162, 163–167,

Index

249; and post-revolution government’s uncertain economic policies, 61; and privatization, 54; and promise of economic liberalization, 25–26; and prospects for becoming a stable democracy, 79–80; and prospects for democracy, development, and social equality, 59–62; protest movements in, 197, 198; and public awareness of corruption in, 16; and reduction of foreign debt, 53; referendum on constitutional amendments, 1; and regime change, 32; regional leadership, 92, 257–258; and rentierism, 133; and restricted normalization as mark of ties with 215; and revolution of 1952, 52; and revolution, 29, 31–32, 109, 110, 151; revolution and absence of Islamist organizations, 110; and revolution’s aftermath, 247–251; revolution and Coptic Church, 114; and revolution’s goals as most unrevolutionary, 6; revolution and Muslim Brotherhood Youth participation in, 113; revolution and Salafis, 114; revolution and Shiites, 114; revolution and Sufis, 114; revolution as synthesis of Marxist and Weberian models, 3; revolution in and extrication pact, 119–120; revolution in, and new information technology, 17–18; revolution in, and significance of, for Egyptians, 260–263; revolution in, and significance of, for political science, 259–260; revolution in, as popular revolt against neoliberalism, 47; revolution in, lays to rest notion of “Arab exceptionalism,” 259; revolution in, understood in context of compression of time and space in twenty-first century, 132; revolution in, causes of, 36; revolution only briefly predominated, 167; revolution reconfigures social forces in favor of reactionary elements, 163; revolution was unexpected by most observers, 241; revolution in, causes of, 36; revolution’s organizers primarily

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young and educated, 240; SCAF encourages return to economic normalcy, 160; as semifailed state produces semifailed society, 44; Shura Council elections (2011–2012), and Islamist victory, 1; social forces in, 155–159, 160; and social movements, 192, 204; social question (“poverty, unemployment, social justice, and fighting corruption”), 155, 157, 158; society of begins to crumble into mutually opposed factions, 248; socioeconomic movements, 198; as statistically successful model that generated 2011 revolution, 177; as status-quo power, 218; structural adjustment causes economic recession, 53–54; and super-wealthy, 70; and three-pronged effort to block movement of people, goods, weapons and money into Gaza Strip, 217–218; and 2011 referendum on constitutional reforms, 140; and 2012 presidential election, 168; and uncertain future, 82–83; unemployment, 54–55, 70; US aid, 234; and women in revolution, 89–104; and youth and revolution, 24, 30–31, 59, 67, 77, 178; and youth bulge, 176–177; and youth movements, 199; under Mubarak, 91–92, 203; women and, 90, 91, 93–94, 97, 99, 101–104. See also Mubarak regime; Tahrir Revolution Egyptian Coalition for Civil Education and Women’s Participation, 102 Egyptian Movement for Change. See Kefaya Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty (1979), 216 El-Baradei, Mohamed, 30, 78, 157, 198, 213, 219 El-Bishri, Tarek, 120, 122 Elnur, Ibrahim, 8 El-Shater, Mohammed Khairat, 121, 157 El-Sherif, Safwat, 21 Enan, Sami, dismissed by Morsi, 262 Eppleman, Reiner, 195–196 Evangelical Church, in GDR, 194–195, 202

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Extrication Pact, 119 Ezz, Ahmed, 71, 91, 155, 157 Facebook, 18, 11, 68–69, 73, 75, 97, 111, 113, 199, 200, 203 Farah, Nadia Ramsis, 7 France, 242 Free Officers, 77, 84; and promises to the Egyptian people, 69 Freedom and Justice Party, 122, 183, 261 Friedman, Thomas, 214 Gates, Robert, 214 Gaza, 166, 216, 244 German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), 191, 194, 196–197, 201–202; and social movements for political change, 192 Ghatit, Sherine, 7 Ghonim, Wael, 14, 18, , 73, 78–79, 100, 124, 134, Gilead, Amos, 213, 217, 221 Giza, and sectarian tensions, 110 Globalization, and neoliberalism as a universal prescription, 49–50 Globalization, and social movements, 194; as characteristic of new millennium, 141–143 Gramsci, Antonio, 1; on military, 158 Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI), US misjudged reactions of Arab governments, 235–239 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), 145, 165 Hamas, 115, 217–218, 224 Hamzawy, Amr, on Muslim Brotherhood centrists, 118 Harb, Osama al-Ghazali, 184 Helsinki Accords, 202, 238 Henry, Clement, 140, 164 Heykal, Mohamed Hassanein, 20 Hezbollah, 218, 224 Honecker, Eric, resigns as head of state, 197 Hussein, Saddam, 34 Ibrahim, Sa’d el-Din, 21 Implosion: definition of, 132; success of authoritarian regimes and patronage package, 132–133

International Atomic Energy Agency, 78, 219 International Crisis Group, 144, 145 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 61, 154, 164–165, 175, 250; democracy and human rights conducive to economic growth, 58; and structural adjustment policies, 50 Iran, 33–34, 165, 219, 222, 224, 258 Iraq, 84, 134, 236; as turning point, 93; supported by Egypt during war with Iran, 33–34 Islamists, 7, 198; generate fear revolution will be hijacked, 4; and 2011 elections in Egypt, 147; win 2012 parliamentary election, 247 Islamophobia, in the United States, 24 Israel, 109, 152, 166–167, 198, 221, 234, 244; and call to engage in serious effort reach final agreement with PNA, 225; diplomatic silence, 211; embassy of in Cairo stormed by mob, 248; Israel’s security needs, 222; and Islamists in Egypt, 221, 243; leaders embrace “Mubarak-orchaos” argument, 212; lobby of, 213; and Mubarak’s policies, 211, 212, 215; and 1982 invasion of Lebanon, 34; officials of assume role of Mubarak’s advocates in Washington, D.C., 213; and peace with Egypt, 215, 224; and possible help to Gulf states, 223; and settlement construction in occupied West Bank, 223; surprised by Egyptian revolution, 211 Ivekovic, Ivan, 8 Jordan, 218, 221, 238, 242 Journalists’ Syndicate, 16, 94 Karlberg, Erling, 145–146 Kazziha, Walid, 7 Kefaya Movement, 15–16, 18, 20, 23, 30, 103, 92, 197–199; inspires emulation, 93 Khalidi, Rashid, 259 Khamenei, Ali, 213 Krenz, Egon, nominated as Honecker’s replacement, 197 Kuwait, 34, 136, 242–243, 246

Index

Latin America, structural adjustment policies, 50 League of Egyptian Mothers, protests, 94 Leipzig, 197 Libya, 74, 84, 134, 145–146, 244 Lieberman, Avigdor, 220 Littlefield, Elizabeth, 162 Mafouz, Asmaa, 73, 89–90, 100, 111 Mahalla al-Kubra, 24, 70, 124, 155 Mahalla Textiles, 55–56; and labor unrest involves women as leaders, 95–97 Maher, Ahmed, 14 Marzouk, Laila, 100 Maspero, massacre of Copts in, 248 McCain, John, 242, 251; Obama handled Egypt “pretty well,” 246 McMahon, Sean F., 8 Middle East, government authority in based on political patronage, 131; patronage creates massive stratum of unemployed youth, 131–132; structural adjustment policies lead to slow economic growth, 50 Mina, Mona, 98–99 Mitchell, George, 219 Mobilization, dynamics of, 194–201 Modernization, and structural transformation of pre-modern Middle East authoritarian regimes, 133 Morsi, Mohamad, 1, 121–122, 185; elected as Egypt’s first postrevolution president, 247; first freely elected Egyptian president, 262; proves to be politically adept, 262 Moussa, Amr, 78; on succession issue as cause of revolution, 34–35 Mubarak Doctrine, 214 Mubarak, Gamal, 7, 15, 17, 19, 21, 39, 42, 44, 71, 103, 117, 159, 175, 245; business associates of use positions to amass wealth, 176; as cause of father’s regime’s collapse, 34–35; failure of, 35–36; and National Democratic Party, 155; plans for succeeding his father as president unpopular, 20; and power-sharing with Hosni Mubarak, 35–36; and succession, 33

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Mubarak, Hosni, 25, 29, 44, 56, 67, 151, 155, 156, 158, 233, 241; booed by crowds in Tahrir Square, 78; and choice, 20; claims demonstrations resulted from Muslim Brotherhood plot, 109; criticism of banned in Egypt, 203; fixated on security, 39–41; and Higher Council of the Police Force, 41; and hypocrisy of regime, 17; and Iran, 219; and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as opportunity, 34; Israel on his expulsion, 214; legitimacy lost, 11; less committed than predecessors to republican ideal, 22; and Ministry of Interior, 40–41; and national universities, 41; ouster of as military’s effort to placate protestors, 181; overcautious character of, 214; pattern of division of labor emerges as part of succession plan, 42–43; perfects authoritarian presidential system, 36; and political and economic spheres, 41; prioritized ensuring loyalty of officer corps, 19; regime of ends, 1, 246; resists structural adjustment until 1991, 53; retains Sadat’s economic policies until 1991, 52–53; and rule of as major asset for Israel, 225; and senior military officers, 40; style of leadership contrasted with predecessors’, 38–40; and twopronged approach to dealing with opposition, 15 Mubarak regime: blames Muslim Brotherhood for revolution, 240; blockades Gaza Strip, 218; criticizes US for interference, 234; and economic performance, 176; and education, 13; and Egyptian information highway, 13; and failed promises to Egyptian people, 69–70; and freedom of expression, 13; as network of patrimonial relationships, 175; not worst in region, 11; and successes contributing to fall of, 13; as a type of authoritarianism, 173; and Western culpability for, 260 Muslim Brotherhood, 18, 22, 23, 30, 32, 72, 77, 113, 119, 120–122, 140, 146, 147, 156–158, 167, 182, 183, 185,

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Index

200, 203, 212, 213, 217, 219, 222, 225, 242, 261–263; and contacts with US government, 116; dominates parliament, 125; and impasse with SCAF, 122; favors “a civil democratic state with an Islamic reference,” 79; ideology or pragmatism as guides to policymaking, 222; lack of clarity on key issues, 83; offers political cooperation to SCAF, 182–183; as qualified candidate for US-sponsored transitional pact, 118; role enhanced following 2005 parliamentary elections, 197; used by regime to scare secularists, 92 Nasrallah, Hassan, 224 Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 18, 20, 44, 52, 84, 134, 159; and promises to the Egyptian people, 69; as pragmatic leader, 38; creates authoritarian presidential system, 36–38; development of security forces of Ministry of Interior, 155 Nasserist Democratic Party, 185 National Association for Change, 200 National Campaign Against Family Succession, 20 National Democratic Party (NDP), 15, 31, 20, 22–23, 35, 56, 71, 151, 174, 176, 185 National Endowment for Democracy, 235–236 National Front Party, 30 Nazif, Ahmed, 17, 19, 21, 91, 175–176; policies result in control of the state by private business interests, 54 Negm, Nawwara, 101 Neo-Gramcian Analysis, explained, 152–155 Neoliberalism: and backlash against it in 1990s, 50; and death of development theory, 50; and neoliberal counterrevolution, 49 Neopopulism: as explanation of events in Middle East, including Egypt, 51; as reaction to neoliberalism, 51; differentiated from older populism that rested on authoritarianism, 57

Netanyahu, Benjamin, 212; 213–214; 219–220, 246; and anxiety of Israeli public, 222; criticized by observers for total paralysis toward the Palestinian issue, 225; instructs ministers to remain silent on Egyptian revolution, 211 Nimeiry, Gaafar, 134, 147 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and women in Egypt, 103–104 Nour, Ayman, 20, 184 Obama, Barack, 163–165, 204, 219, 221, 233, 258; calls for transition to democracy in Egypt, 211; and end of Mubarak’s era, 245; pragmatism of his handling of Egypt’s revolution, 246; and signs of change US support for Mubarak regime, 243 Operation Cast Lead, 217–218 Ottaway, Marina, 237, 239; points to flaws in belief that GMEI was comparable to Helsinki Process, 238 Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), 162 Palestine, 223 Palestine Liberation Organization, 34, 74, 93 Palestinian National Authority (PNA), 115, 217–219 Party of National Understanding, 184 Party of Social Solidarity, 184 Party of the Democratic Generation, 184–185 Party of the Democratic Peace, 185 Party of the Egyptian Youth, 185 Patronage, and Islamists in Egypt, 146–147; cronyism, 134; in oil-rich states and in larger quasi-rentier states, 133; old system blocked in oilrich economies, 139 Peoples Assembly, and elections of 2010, 22–23, 56 Peres, Shimon, 212, 213, 221 Popular Campaign in Support of Gamal Mubarak, 20–21 Populism, and import substitution, 49; defined, 48 Qaddafi, Muammar, 145–146

Index

Rafa, 166, 217–218 Rashid, Mohamed Rashid, 155 Rasmussen, Lars L., 242 Revolution: definition of, 1–3 Ross, Dennis, 219 Sadat, Anwar, 14–15, 23, 25, 33, 39, 44, 52, 67, 109, 159, 174–175; assassination of (1981), 37; creates authoritarian presidential system, 36–38; and October (1973) War, 37; and promises to the Egyptian people, 69; as pragmatic leader, 38; style of leadership of, 38 Said, Edward, and “traveling theory,” 260 Said, Khaled, 24; death of, 99–100, 199; mother’s video plea, 73 Saints Church, bombing of (2011), 110 Salafists, 4, 5, 121, 182–183; and May 2011 demonstrations, 120; on liberal democracy, 83; parliamentary elections (2011), 123 Salah, Ali Abdullah, 12 Samuel P. Huntington, 115 Saudi Arabia, 34, 84, 144–145, 152, 165, 218, 238, 243, 246 Sawiris, Naguib, 78, 184 Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), 4, 6, 36, 96, 184–184, 221, 221, 249, 248, 250, 261; and Egypt’s international commitments, 162, 220; meets without president, 19; repeals affirmative action quota for women in parliament, 102; targets working class, 161 Scobey, Margaret, 234, 237 Shafiq, Ahmed, 121, 246, 248; named prime minister, 244 Shalit, Gilad, 219 Shapiro, Daniel, director for Middle East on National Security Council, 213 Sharon, Ariel, 219 Shiites, 123–124, 145 Shorbagy, Manar, 7 Sika, Nadine, 8 Social movements: and creation of public space, 194; East German and Egyptian cases compared, 205–206; as forces for political transition, 191; high mobilizational capacities, 193

285

Soviet Union, 58, 201, 239 Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), 191, 196, 201–202; end of heralded by events, 197 Springborg, Robert, 140 Sufis, 123, 146 Suleiman, Omar, 40–41, 78–79, 121, 217, 246; announces Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, 79; named vice president, 244 Sullivan, Earl (Tim), 7 Supreme Administrative Court, nullifies election results for 184 seats, 22 Supreme Constitutional Court, 248 Syria, 12, 37, 84, 134, 145, 218; and rentierism, 133 Tagammu Party, 30, 185 Tahrir Revolution, 257; belies claim that study of Middle East cannot contribute to theory-building in social sciences, 191; as product of generational change, 67; shatters views of the politically possible, 239 Tantawi, Hussein, 19, 117, 180, 183, 221; fired by President Morsi, 262 Touraine, Alain, 178, 183 Tschirgi, Dan, 8 Tunisia, 20, 61, 134, 145, 200, 204; and moderate Islam, 146; and rentierism, 133; revolution in, 31, 43, 71 Twitter, 11, 18, 68, 73, 75, 113, 200, 203 Unified Leadership of the Youth of the Rage Revolution, 157 United Kingdom, 200 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 69 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 14 United Nations (UN), 154 United States, 152, 198, 200; and approach to the Arab World, 236; confused over origin of Egypt’s revolution, 241; and crisis in relations with post-revolution Egypt, 249–250; and dilemma created by Egypt’s 2011 revolution, 240; and Egypt, 234–239, 246; and foreign policy debate and

286

Index

democratization in Egypt, 115–116, 233–234; and four pillars of USEgyptian relations, 234; and interests in Egypt, 116–117; and Muslim Brotherhood, 116, 117–118 Urbanization: fueled by structural transformations in global south, 139; and secular-religious cleavages in postcolonial era, 140 Wafd Party, 30, 183–184 Washington Consensus, 50 We Are All Khaled Said, 14, 18, 23, 78, 100, 124, 197, 199 Wikileaks, 217, 219

Wisner, Frank Jr., 244; appears to contradict Obama’s policy on Mubarak, 245 Women: in revolution, did not take role as followers, 101; sidelined from building Egypt’s future in postrevolution period, 101–102 World Bank, 61, 164–165; democracy and human rights conducive to economic growth, 58 Yemen, 12, 84, 134, 144; and rentierism, 133 Youth for Change, 93, 199, 197

About the Book

The eighteen-day revolt that ended Hosni Mubarak’s thirty years of rule marked a historic turning point in the political fortunes not only of Egypt but of the entire Middle East. While the impact of that seminal event will continue to unfold for years, this volume, written by members of the Department of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, presents a timely and authoritative exploration of the circumstances and implications—both political and theoretical—that surrounded what has come to be known as the Tahrir Revolution. The authors’ balanced scholarly analysis illuminates much about the practical meaning of the revolution for Egyptians, other regional actors, and students of political science in the broadest sense. Dan Tschirgi and Walid Kazziha are professors of political science and Sean F. McMahon is assistant professor of political science at the American University in Cairo.

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