Morsi faced a plethora of serious problems from day one. The worst was the dilapidated condition of the free falling economy, the root cause of Egypt’s most pressing problems. The culprit was grave economic mismanagement during the Mubarak years drastically compounded by the worldwide recession, its lingering effects and the last two years of political disruption.
The MB’s struggling government was helped by gifts of billions of dollars, mostly from oil-rich Qatar ($7 billion) and lesser amounts from friendly Turkey and some other sources. This helped, but not enough. The new military-guided regime was immediately gifted with $12 billion from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
The Cairo government is dependent on tourism, which brought in 17% of the country’s GNP until it vanished abruptly with the first mass demonstrations in early 2011. Investment dropped for the same reason. The price of food imports, largely wheat, increased after Morsi won the election.
In January 2011, when the first uprising began, unemployment was 8.9%. When Morsi took office it in July 2012, it was 12.6%, and today it is 13.2%. About 80% of the jobless are workers under 30 years old. In urban areas, more than 50% of young men are unemployed—a politically volatile statistic. This situation was worsened in recent months when public anger boiled over due to fuel and electricity shortages. (The shortages ended virtually the day after Morsi was ousted, a coincidence that led critics to suspect that anti-MB sabotage intentionally caused the problem as an incentive for the uprising.)
The Brotherhood’s rise to power exposed a sharp dispute between the key Sunni factions in the region—the MB on one side and the more extreme Wahhabi, Salafi, and al-Qaeda orientations on the other.
Indian news analyst M. K. Bhadrakumar commented in Asia Times on July 9: “The autocratic Persian Gulf oligarchies rushed to celebrate the overthrow of the elected government under Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian military. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah dispatched his congratulatory cable to Cairo within hours of the announcement of Morsi’s ouster. The sense of jubilation is palpable that the Muslim Brotherhood, which spearheads popular stirrings against the Persian Gulf regimes, has lost power in Egypt.” (Saudi Arabia helps finance the Egyptian Salafi and cheered when the al-Nour Party joined the opposition.)
“In that respect,” William McCants wrote in Foreign Affairs on July 7, “no Salafi is likely more pleased with the turn of events in Egypt than Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda. For decades, Zawahiri has argued that the Muslim Brotherhood’s engagement in party politics does nothing more than strengthen the hands of its adversaries and ratify an un-Islamic system of rule. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, he has continued to make his argument that the West and its local proxies will never allow an Islamist government to actually rule. He doubtless views the coup as a final vindication of his argument.”
Syria was also elated by Egypt’s coup, since Morsi called for the overthrow of the Assad government and even suggested that Egyptian Islamists consider joining the fight. However, Syria’s main ally, Iran, condemned the coup. Oil rich Qatar (which also opposes Assad in Syria) is odd monarchy out among the Gulf states, having provided generous funding to Morsi’s government and deploring the coup.
Turkey, which had very close relations with the MB regime in Egypt, strongly opposed the coup. Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu said: “A leader who came [to power] with the support of the people can only be removed through elections. It is unacceptable for democratically elected leaders, for whatever reason, to be toppled through illegal means, even a coup…. Turkey will take sides with the Egyptian people.”
Interestingly, although they are on opposite sides of the volatile Syrian civil war, Turkey and Iran are strongly united against the coup, despite Tehran’s silent reservations about Morsi’s recent anti-Shi’a comments and his backing for rebel forces in Syria. The interim regime in Cairo has already made friendly overtures to Damascus.
Remarking on the unusual Ankara-Tehran coupling, Bhadrakumar wrote: “The two key regional powers in the Middle East have now openly challenged the military junta in Egypt. It will have a profound impact on the so-called Arab Street. A Turkish-Iranian platform will be hard to resist, in geopolitical terms, for the coup’s Arab enthusiasts—Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,
Stratfor, the private geopolitical intelligence company, argues that the “coup does not bode well for international efforts to bring radical Islamists into the mainstream. However, it does serve the interests of Arab monarchies, particularly those of the energy-rich Gulf Cooperation Council states (and especially Saudi Arabia), most of which see the Brotherhood-style Islamist forces as a challenge to their legitimacy. The fall of the Morsi government has given them cause to celebrate because the Brotherhood’s political ideals run counter to their political interests.” The Egypt-centered Brotherhood has branches in Syria, Jordan, Gaza (Hamas), Tunisia and Morocco. It governs in the latter two countries. “Each group will be affected according to its particular geopolitical circumstances,” says Stratfor.
What lessons are to be deduced from the extraordinary mass demonstrations of the Egyptian people from 2011 to 2013. There are two important lessons, among others.
First, what occurred was an incredible display of the political power that can be generated when unprecedented numbers of people respond to mass popular dissatisfaction—in this case mammoth economic, political and social problems—uniting in prolonged militant actions in the streets, where everyone can see them and hear them. They booted out a dictator and elected a president.
Such actions do not often achieve a change of government, of course. But they certainly are—or should be—an inspiration for those who wish to change especially onerous or harmful government policies, if not government itself.
Second, while the people in the streets of Egypt were inspiring and they certainly changed history, the absence of a strong political organization with clear detailed goals and respected leadership greatly weakened their accomplishment.
The army, which served a dictatorship for 59 of its 61 years, still rules, stronger than ever, having made the transition from a decrepit, failed Mubarak regime to a weak and pliable democracy. A difficult but worthwhile first experiment in electoral democracy was crushed by the military acting in the name of the mass opposition. Now, key figures from the old dictatorship have reappeared. There is no chance the next government will be politically left enough to resolve the grave problems plaguing the Egyptian people. The Muslim Brotherhood is about to be repressed again, and there is no telling how it will respond.
A number of the people who took an important part in the mass demonstrations seemed to believe that organization, goals and leadership could be replaced by individual or small group initiatives, enthusiasm and spontaneity. These qualities can go so far, but no further.
For the Egyptian people to build a viable electoral democracy with a program that puts the needs of the working masses first, they require an organization, leadership, allies, finances, strategy, and tactics sufficient to attain that goal.
A number of left commentators have questioned the preference of some groups involved in the mass actions, such as Tamarod, a key player, to minimize the need for organization and leadership. In this regard here is a quote from an article in the July 7 Counterpunch titled, “The End of the ‘Leaderless’ Revolution,” by Cihan Tugal, who teaches Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley:
Multiple anti-representation theses from rival ideological corners (anarchist, liberal, autonomist, postmodernist, etc.) all boil down to the following assumption: when there is no meta-discourse and no leadership, plurality will win. This might be true in the short-run. Indeed, in the case of Egypt, the anonymity of Tamarod’s spokespersons initially helped: the spokespersons (who are not leaders, it is held) could not be demonized as partisan populists. Moreover, thanks to uniting people only through their negative identity (being anti-Brotherhood), as well as to its innovative tactics, Tamarod mobilized people of all kinds. Still, the mobilized people fell prey to the only existing option: the old regime!
When the revolutionaries do not produce ideology, demands and leaders, this does not mean that the revolt will have no ideology, demands and leaders. In fact, Tamarod’s spontaneous ideology turned out to be militarist nationalism, its demand a postmodern coup, its leader the feloul (remnants of the old regime). This is the danger that awaits any allegedly leaderless revolt: Appropriation by the main institutional alternatives of the institutions they are fighting against.
It is time to globalize the lessons from the [actions of] 2011-2013. Let’s start with the U.S. and Egypt. What we learn from this case is that when movements don’t have (or claim not to have) ideologies, agendas, demands and leaders, they can go in two directions: they can dissipate (as did Occupy), or serve the agendas of others…. The end of the leaderless revolution does not mean the end of the Egyptian revolutionary process. But it spells the end of the fallacy that the people can take power without an agenda, an alternative platform, an ideology, and leaders.
