In an article in the British Guardian newspaper on Tuesday and BBC Newsnight on Monday, the Novelist Ahdaf Soueif , described the murder of 25 people (310 injured) in Cairo by the army last Sunday. This followed a 1000 strong protest against the attack on a church in southern Egypt. The march included Christians and Muslims. When they reached the State TV building, unidentified armed gangs suddenly appeared and attacked the army, who then had the excuse of a riot to attack the demonstrators.
Ahdaf Soueif stated that although Mubarak (the head of the old regime) has been forced out, the rest of the regime is still in power. Under Mubarak there was proof that the interior ministry was organizing attacks against Christians, in league with minority Muslim fundamentalist Salafist groups.
The storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo on 10th September (following the killing of five Egyptian soldiers by Israel in Sinai) involved an unidentified but disciplined gang of around one hundred, many carrying sledge hammers. This incident gave the interim military government (SCAF) the excuse to reinstate emergency law. Since the revolution in February SACF have been prosecuting civilians in military courts for criticizing their actions.
In August the influential presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei, criticized SCAF for passing an electoral law in consultation with the Muslim Brotherhood, which will ban foreign monitoring of forthcoming elections. He said:
“Refusal of international election monitoring, one of the main seven demands voiced before the revolution for democratic transition (is based) on the erroneous understanding of interference in (the country’s) sovereignty….”
Compared this will Libya, where the NTC explicitly guarantee international monitoring in their Roadmap for democratic transition.
What is going on?
In April the journalist Robert Frisk wrote in an article…. “Field Marshal Tantawi, the head of the Egyptian army, for example, is now running Egypt. Yet he is not only a close friend of America, but a childhood and lifelong friend of Mubarak, who was allowed to whinge the usual ex-dictator’s self-congratulatory excuses on al-Arabia television (‘my reputation, my integrity and my military and political record’) prior to his own questioning – and inevitable emergency entry into hospital. When the latest Tahrir Square crowds also called for Tantawi’s resignation, the field marshal’s mask slipped. He sent his troops to ‘cleanse’ the square.”[ British Newspaper: The Independent “A long Time Coming” 15/4/2011 Robert Fisk]
The Egyptian regime was and is very corrupt, with a wealthy elite controlling extensive business interests, this includes senior army generals. The army is the most powerful and best funded institution in Egypt. Mubarak lost the support of the generals by favoring a rival power base of business cronies. The generals saw an opportunity to get rid of him when ordinary Egyptians rose up in protest against the regime.
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is the most successful and well established political party in Egypt, who could command around a third of the popular vote. It is a broad movement, with a generally older conservative wing, and a younger progressive wing closer to the demonstrators of Tahrir square.
The army generals have done a deal with the conservative wing of the Muslim Brotherhood to steal the Egyptian revolution. There will be no foreigners to observe the forthcoming rigged elections. Instead the Egyptian Justice Department stuffed with people from the old regime will do the monitoring.
The fundamentalist Salafists with the encouragement of the generals will stir up sectarian trouble with the ten percent of Egyptians who are Coptic Christians. This gives an impression of chaos, to justify martial law at home and especially abroad in Western countries sympathetic to attacks on Christian minorities.
Paramilitary gangs linked to the old regime, will provoke violence at otherwise peaceful demonstrations (ie by attacking the army and storming embassies).
Behind all this is Saudi Arabia. This repressive country, founded in 1936, that has stolen considerable wealth from the Arab people, is desperate to end the Arab Democratic Uprising. They are willing to fund in the short term, the buying of the votes of poor Egyptians (those that are not stolen) with promises of aid if they support the MB. About 30% of Egyptians thanks to Mubarak and others, live below the poverty line.
The Saudis have close links to the MB, when many of their members fled persecution under Nasser. They also directly fund Salafist groups throughout the Middle East, including Egypt.
The ordinary people of the Middle East are being denied the chance to get back on the path of progress, which has been blocked to them by internal colonization backed by foreign interests for over a century. The ordinary people in Western countries are being denied the chance to spread democracy to a key part of the world, when democracy needs to expand or face decline in Western countries. The ending of the Egyptian revolution is a crime against all our humanity.
