BACKLASH OF THE "REVOLUTION"

The dramatic upheavals in Egypt are continuing. The power of the "victors" has now been overthrown in a country that was celebrating the "Arab Revolution" just a year ago. What will this "reverse reading" bring for the people of Egypt?

Generally speaking, the situation in Egypt following the ousting of President Moursi by the armed forces has been developing as predicted. Moursi himself was arrested on a charge of murdering troops, plundering the Egyptian economy and for links with the terrorist groups HAMAS and Hezbollah. The former president's Muslim Brotherhood movement has been subjected to persecutions that have been stepped up following their numerous acts of protests. For their part the most radical section of Islamists has begun undertaking certain aggressive actions against the forces of the law. The official media even accuses them of the arson of Orthodox Coptic churches throughout the country.

A turning point in the dramatic events in Egypt was the dispersal by the security forces of the tent camps of the ex-president's supporters in Cairo and other towns. According to official figures, over 600 people were killed and more than 4,200 injured, although the Muslim Brotherhood is talking about almost 3,000 dead and over 10,000 injured.

After this Egypt's caretaker president, Adly Mansour, issued a decree on introducing a state of emergency throughout the country for one month. This was followed by the arrest of members of the Islamist movement, including the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Badie. 

The Egyptian caretaker president's advisor, Mustafa Hijazi, said that the disturbances in Egypt are a consequence not of political differences, but extremism and terrorist actions by the Islamists. Acting Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi went even further, proposing that the Muslim Brotherhood be officially disbanded. The latter would thus again find themselves outlawed and in a situation they were in for over half a century until the triumph of the "Egyptian Revolution", which was marked by the defeat of Hosni Mubarak, a dictator for many years. Incidentally, the events of the past few days have also affected the fate of Mubarak himself: an Egyptian court adopted a decision to release the former president, who had been accused of organizing mass murder during the dispersal of participants in protest actions, because it could find no grounds for keeping him behind bars.

This event is a very meaningful one in the whole Egyptian history of these times, which is, in point of fact, testimony to the end in Egypt of the so-called "Arab Revolution", or at least of the model of it which, following the overthrow of tyrannies, brought Islamic governments to the crests of power.

However, none of this contradicts the fact that the inner political crisis in the "land of the pyramids" is a reflection of a split in Egyptian society. The suppression of Islamic acts of protests does not mean a reduction in the electorate of the Islamists, thanks to whose support Moursi and the Muslim Brotherhood took political power in Egypt a year ago. At the same time the command of the Egyptian army is demonstrating not only the unity of the military circles but also its reliance on significant sections of the population. The punitive actions of the military against the Islamists have been supported, generally speaking, by the whole secular part of society, including the liberals, unhappy with the imposition of Shari'ah Law, who preferred dictatorship of the army to dictatorship of the Islamists. Not to mention the Coptic Christians who initially did not accept the Islamist results of the "Egyptian spring"…

Meanwhile, the question as to what Egypt can expect in the near future and what the policy of the country's new leadership will be remains open. In this connection special attention is being focused on the real leader of Egypt, General Abdul-Fattah as-Sisi, the main character in the production that lead to the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood from power. Many people expect that it is he who will soon be Egypt's new president following elections to the head of state that are due to be held. There are sufficient grounds for such a supposition, especially if one takes into account the virtual withdrawal from the power block that is currently taking shape of Muhammad al-Baradei, one of the few Egyptian liberals who protested at the brutal dispersal of Islamist demonstrations by the military authorities. Al-Baradei has resigned as Egyptian vice president which, in essence, means an even greater strengthening of General as-Sisi's political positions. An interesting thought was expressed in this connection by Muhammed Soffar, a Cairo University professor, who is convinced that the "Egyptian people are psychologically unprepared to accept a civilian leader".

General as-Sisi has the reputation of being an "Egyptian nationalist" who was inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who in the 1950s and 1960s played an outstanding role in defending and strengthening Egypt's positions in the international arena. Meanwhile, the international community is just as heterogeneous as it was more than half a century ago in its attitude to the events now developing in and around Egypt.

A critical position in relation to the actions of Egypt's military leaders is being expressed by the European Union. While urging the new Egyptian authorities to refrain from violent actions against the Islamists, the EU plans to suspend supplies to Cairo of arms, equipment and special requirements intended for police operations. In addition, Brussels is preparing to adopt a decision to freeze financial and economic aid programmes to Egypt. The leading European countries describe the level of violence in Egypt as "unacceptable" and demand that the warring sides refrain from its use and sit down at the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, only Turkey has openly described the events in Egypt as a military coup, demanding the convention of the UN Security Council to discuss the punitive actions of the new Egyptian authorities.

The biggest interest in connection with the situation in Egypt is being aroused by the position of the United States, especially bearing in mind the special allied relations between Washington and Cairo, and also the indisputable fact that the Egyptian armed forces (the main exponent of current Egyptian policy) in their current guise are a fledgling of the United States and the military power it provides. President Barack Obama, on the one hand, refuses to recognize the overthrow of Muhammed Moursi as a military coup, but on the other hand he does not express support for the actions of the Egyptian military. The White House has officially condemned the imposition of a state of emergency in Egypt and has made clear its readiness to go back on its offer of $1.3bn of American aid to Egypt.

In connection with the question of providing aid to Egypt, many experts are drawing attention to the unprecedented support for the actions of the Egyptian military by Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has even expressed its readiness to extend aid to Cairo if the US suspends it. Such obvious rejection by the Saudis of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is explained by Riyadh's fears that the Egyptian Islamists could really deprive Arabia of the garland of victory in the Arab world. Furthermore, the Saudi monarchical clan saw the Moursi government as a threat of the further spreading of the "Arab Spring" to the countries of the Persian Gulf.

The extreme interest of external forces in the development of the situation in Europe gives grounds to assume that the reasons for what is happening in the "land of the pyramids" are linked not only with domestic differences. The processes around the "Arab Spring" are steadily leading to the conclusion that the achievement of an infamous manageable chaos in the Near East is in the interests of its external inspirers, and in a broader sense, the whole Islamic world. Among other things, the ousting of secular regimes in a number of countries of the region and the promotion to positions of power of Islamists with its subsequent "backlash" are linked with this. This may be seen in the example of Egypt which, to all intents and purposes, has found itself on the verge of a civil war (the scenario of a civil war may be judged by the events in Syria, which has placed on its altar over 100,000 of its citizens' lives).

The defeat of political Islam in Egypt in no way means an end to the struggle between the supporters of the secular and clerical paths of development. This is sufficiently clear bearing in mind that the army and secular circles have no way of preventing the rise of the Islamists other than by demonstrating force and imposing a state of emergency throughout the country (as shown by the experience of Mubarak's many years of rule). After all, last year's democratic elections in Europe - both presidential and parliamentary - ended in victory for the Muslim Brotherhood…

But how can one deal in the long term with Islamism, which is inexorably gaining popularity throughout the Muslim world in the context of deepening socio-economic problems and a geopolitically valid counter-action to the USA in its position as a super power and the hegemony of the whole of the West? Neither American-European strategists, nor ideologists of secular development in the Arab countries, nor the military circles in Egypt itself, who are more concerned with solving tactical tasks of the "here and now", can provide an answer to this question.