Egypt Enters the Danger Zone
Middle East Briefying/November 15/15
It is probably ironic that any return of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to the political theatre in Egypt would be the result of the actions of nobody other than the regime of President Abdel Fattah Al Sissi. The fall of former President Mohamed Morsi, which was triggered by massive public protests in June 2014, spread a typical Egyptian joke: In 50 years, Presidents Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak tried in vain to defeat the MB, it took Morsi only one year to do it.
However, the joke seems to have a second unexpected episode. It seems that the regime of Sissi, an arch enemy of the MB, is working hard to reverse what Morsi did so effectively. Sissi had it all -huge public support, a sincere will to put the country together, popular fatigue of demonstrations and protests, a wounded Islamic opposition and wide regional support. What he did not have is a deep understanding of how to handle the mess and a detailed plan to rebuild the country with as little as was available at the time.
The “logic” of the mission that Sissi had before him was as follows: There are three main central points in the picture-the population, the State machine and the MB. The population rejected Morsi because he could not deliver on promises to improve daily life or reform the state machine and stop the decay of public services. Sissi needed to work on these areas seriously and immediately. Of course he could not deliver right away. But the population was ready to wait if they saw credible attempts to implement a plan that promises results and give them some hope. However, Sissi chose to postpone any administrative reform and the pretext was not to disturb the State machine while it helps to fight the MBs and their allies. The choice was wrong. It costed Sissi most of his popularity. The relative weight and inter-reaction of each of the three poles in Egypt’s post Morsi triangle was not understood right.
It was a tough choice. But only unsophisticated minds see that the opposition between reforming the State machine and using it to fight the MBs as irreconcilable. It was possible to combine both in order to maintain popular support, which is also crucial to fight the MB. But now, popular support is diminishing fast. In fact, the population is reconsidering its two-year old rejection of the MB altogether.
No one could do the job of putting Egypt back together properly without adequate tools. If the job is to rebuild a country which was on the verge of total collapse, the main tool is the State machine and the main science is political management. None was available to Sissi. The main ally in the fight against the MB was the population itself. And this population conditioned its support to Sissi on doing some serious effort to reform the state and improve daily life. None came. Not even the hope they may come in the foreseeable future. Things were going the opposite way.
The “points of touch” between the regime and the population are known-any ordinary Egyptian “sees” the abstract term “State” in his daily life through civil servants, public services, police force, bureaucratic and administrative performance, prices and media. If Egyptians see the State as an organizer of the society, Sissi should have asked: Organize it with what? Where are the tools? And what happened was that all these points of touch, which form the population’s perception of the State, were getting worse, in fact, much worse, in the last couple of years.
To accomplish such a complex mission like leading the country safely through the current storm, Sissi needs to gain a steadfast support from the mood makers-the middle class, and particularly the urban middle class. There is, Grosso Modo, an urban Egypt and a rural Egypt. Of course they are both Egyptian, but due to many reasons, mainly related to the pattern of development in the last few decades, there is a substantial difference between the ways of thinking of these two Egypts.
But let us see one example of the “quality” of the media discourse which was used to address the urban middle class to show them that there is indeed an effort to change things. A famous newspaper editor said publicly few days ago that he “finally” found out why Sissi wears sunglasses all the time. “The man cries every night for long hours because he deeply feels the suffering of the poor in Egypt”. Well, and that is supposed to convince urban Egyptians that Sissi is alright? On the other hand, real journalists and human rights defenders like Hossam Bahgat are arrested or threatened.
In dire moments like those, the political legitimacy of the regime should be based on hope. Hope is generated through perceptions and experiences. Yet, hope cannot sustain itself for a long time. It has to be injected with signs of concrete improvement, however modest. If hope dwindles down, preserving the regime will be more and more based on oppression.
However, oppression is a double edged sword, particularly in a country that went through two or three years in a revolutionary mode. Egypt is not on the verge of another revolution. But it is getting closer fast. Very fast. And time is a valuable commodity in such cases. If there would be another revolt, the level of violence may threaten the country with total collapse a la Syria. The MB would be the lesser devils. It is clear that the security machine has an extremely raw and unsophisticated view of the situation in Egypt. This view is pushing large sectors of Egypt’s urban middle class to the anti-Sissi camp needlessly in most cases. But this machine lives on exaggerating the threat and its responses alike. This dynamics do not necessarily include a socio-political analysis of the challenges as they really are. The people working in the security machine are too close to the picture to see all of it in a real political context.
Sissi is left, unfortunately, only with the tool of oppression to be able to gain time. The other tools are all parroting the sunglasses theory or are utterly corrupt and incompetent. The man is well intentioned. He came to rule a country where nothing was standing or working. The magnitude of the problem in Egypt is even bigger than Egyptians can imagine. Yet, it is abundantly clear that he is on the wrong track. He should have started with sharpening and oiling his tools. The isolation of his enemies should have been understood as a political task. Security comes second. This order was reversed not only in confronting the enemy but in preserving the base of support as well. Short term success were presented as signs of a good strategy while they may well be signs of utter failure. Political free speech was dealt with as a source of troubles not as a potential tool to strengthen Egypt. Opposition voices were needlessly – in certain cases – silenced even when they were pointing to the incompetence of the State machine. Encouraging criticism to the performance of the State machine was not viewed as a tool to reform this machine.
Therefore, it is safe to say that the MBs have a powerful ally: The State machine and Sissi’s total loss of direction, regardless of what he says about himself or his role. And the MBs are letting the State machine do the group’s work: To move the population from the land of supporting the regime to the land of opposing it. And the State machine is doing this job surprisingly competently.
The MBs are now in midway to being rehabilitated and forgiven by the very population that forced them out of power a year and half ago. We saw in the last Parliamentarian elections two peculiar signs. First, the population did not vote. Second, the Salafi Islamist Nour party, which supported the regime, got a ridiculous number of votes. It is evident that Egyptian voters withheld their votes in a sign of silent protest. It is also evident that the MB has whatever it has of support not only because it is Islamist, but also, and maybe mainly, because it is “the opposition” to a regime working hard to alienate its own popular base. For if the votes were to be Islamists, the Egyptian voters had the Nour party to vote for.
Is it too late? No. Sissi still has a reasonable popular capital. He was given a wrong advice not to explain to Egyptians the real magnitude of the existential problems of the moment. He enjoyed his honeymoon, and it is time to show results when there is none. The advice not to explain the real problems obviously came from advisors with rural backgrounds. After the defeat of the six-day war in 1967, Nasser explained to the population the real magnitude of the catastrophe and asked them to help. They willingly accepted to tighten the belts and live on rationalized food supplies for several years. Obviously, Nasser did not have advisors like those surrounding Sissi today.
Yet, it is the urban middle class that will define the future of Egypt. The regime’s discourse should target this key social stratum if it wants to survive. And addressing the urban middle class should begin from respecting their minds and avoiding stuff like the “Sunglass” and weeping nights. But the central task is that of reforming the State machine. In East Europe, the job started with a plan then with changing high level officials and structures from up to down and not vice versa. Monitoring mechanisms to fight corruption and cronyism were given full authority within every government agency. But for this to work, you have to start with respecting the population and ceasing to see them as objects.
Recent rain storms flooded Egyptian cities and villages killed dozens. The tragedy focued the lime light on the paralysis of the state machine and public services. The disaster of the Sharm Al Sheikh Russian plane will further cripple tourism and deprive the public coffers of badly needed hard currencies. The state media continues its stupide explanation of bad things happening as part of a “global conspiracy” against Egypt. A “respected” military general-turned-analyst was telling his viewers on TV screens that even storms and rain can be “fabricated” by intelligence services in powerful nations.
Egyptian youth are preparing for a new episode of protests on the anniversary of the 2011 revolt-that is next January 25. This new wave of protests will not fly high as Egyptians did not give up on Sissi yet. But if the current course of the regime is maintained, these protests will be a rehearsal for something much worse. No one should hope for shaking Sissi as there are no valid alternatives except real chaos. No one should even hope that the Egyptian leader does not succeed as his failure is more ominous news to the region. And no one should hope for more instability as it is the last thing that the region needs is another Syria. The collapse of Egypt would usher in yet a more violent phase in the heart of the Middle East. But someone has to convince the Egyptian State machine with all this or manage to get Sissi to put his house under control.
Time is running out. Fast.
Pentagon to Escalate Syrian Bombing Campaign
Middle East Briefying/November 15/15
The US Air Force will resume more intensive bombings of Islamic State (ISIL) targets inside Syria, following a several week lull, in which the jihadist forces hunkered down and restricted movements and avoided deployment of heavy military equipment. During the period of relatively few sorties, due to the Islamic State’s shift in tactics, the US concentrated on developing new targets. At the same time, the small contingent of US Special Forces established plans to work with Kurdish militias on new assaults on core ISIL positions in the north of the country.
Once these operations increase, the US will be in a better position to develop a larger range of ISIL targets, and could increase the number of combat support missions by the US and allied Air Forces.
That initial contingent of 50 Special Forces is viewed by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter as the vanguard of what will likely soon to be a larger contingent of special warfare troops, linking up with other Kurdish and non-jihadist rebel forces.
While the Russians have persisted in carrying out far more sorties against a range of rebel targets, there is now a near-unanimous consensus among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CENTCOM commanders that the primary objective of the Russian military presence is to prop up Bashar Assad. The Pentagon is critical of this Russian posture, with one top defense official declaring that the US and Russian operations inside Syria are “like apples and oranges. There is no comparison.”
What he meant was that the US operational plans are singularly focused on degrading the Islamic State’s fighting capacity and territorial hold. Russia is targeting a wide range of rebel forces, as a means of defending the Assad regime. The net effect is that the Russian actions are extending the fighting.
An average of four Russian cargo planes are landing in Syria every day. Two of those four flights are stopping in Iran, to pick up Iranian fighters and their equipment. There is a dispute between the CIA and the State Department over how many Iranian troops are now inside Syria, fighting against rebels. The overall number, however, is somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters. This does not include Shia militia fighters who have been also coming in to Syria from Iraq and Lebanon to beef up the Syrian Army.
There are increasing reports of instances where IRGC officers are refusing assignments to go fight in Syria. These reports coincide with official Iranian admissions that Quds Brigade fighters are sustaining higher casualties. According to one account, three leading Quds Force officers, Col. Mostafa Ezzatollah, Gen. Farshad Hazoonizadeh and Gen. Hossein Hamedani, have been killed in combat in Syria since October.
Despite this beef up of fighters defending the Assad government, the Pentagon believes that, at best, the regime forces are at a standstill in their fight against ISIL and other rebel forces. The tempo of operations is seen as unsustainable, given limits on how much manpower and funding Russia and Iran can provide, without creating economic and morale problems back home.
Secretary of State John Kerry will be testing both Iran and Russia’s readiness to make serious concessions to move the Geneva-3 process forward, when talks resume in Vienna in the coming days.
ISIL Cannot be Defeated in Iraq without Major Reforms
Middle East Briefying/November 15/15
On Friday, November 6, in his regular weekly sermon, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a stern warning to the Iraqi parliament to stop obstructing the efforts at political reform and the crackdown on corruption being attempted by Prime Minister Haidar Abadi. Within hours of Sistani’s sermon, PM Abadi announced that salaries for three vice presidents and three deputy prime ministers had been cancelled, and that he planned to go ahead with his reforms, aimed at streamlining his cabinet and accelerating the anti-corruption campaign.
The intervention by the powerful Grand Ayatollah was welcomed by the Obama Administration and the Pentagon. There is a strong consensus within the US military command that there can be no success against ISIL in Iraq, without a wide range of government reforms in Baghdad. Without the reforms, Iraq will remain in a state of permanent crisis. Some American military commanders are drawing a direct parallel to Lebanon, where sectarian conflicts have made it impossible to conduct parliamentary elections or choose a new president. In the Iraq case, the consequences are far more devastating, given the presence of the Islamic State and the growing danger that the country will be partitioned along sectarian lines. Grand Ayatollah Sistani warned about the danger of partition during the summer.
Because the United States now has more than 3,500 troops on the ground in Iraq—and an even larger contingent of civilian contractors—the US has a much better grasp of the weakness of the situation than in the past.
As the US military advisors prepare to assist the Iraqi Army in launching new combat offensives against ISIL in the coming days, there are some serious unanswered questions. Will the Iraqi forces stand and fight or will they run, despite the upgraded supplies and training? Will the government in Baghdad interfere in the combat operations, by attempting to micro-manage the operations? Until these two vital questions are answered, there is no way to judge the prospects of sustained victories against the Islamic State.
Ultimately, the government in Baghdad must convince Sunni populations that they will have a genuine power-sharing stake in the future of Iraq. Without that assurance, it will be impossible to “win the hearts and minds” of the Sunni.
The number one problem that the Obama Administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff face in Iraq is the rampant corruption that permeates every aspect of government in Baghdad. The heart of the corruption problem is the ruling Dawa Party. Ten percent of all of the country’s oil revenue is skimmed off the top and divided among top party bosses. While Dawa is beholden to Iran out of necessity, the built-in corruption and sectarianism of Dawa is deeply entrenched.
One manifestation of this deep corruption was the fact that during the period that Nouri Al-Maliki was in power, he appointed political cronies to all top civil and military posts, and they were almost universally incompetent, as well as thoroughly corrupt. Some limited reforms within the Iraqi Army have been carried out, under strong US pressure, but this has been a limited factor at best.
Even Grand Ayatollah Sistani is aware of the limitations on his intervention to boost Prime Minister Al-Abadi’s top-down reform efforts. He cannot anger Supreme Leader Khamenei beyond a certain point, and he cannot force the tempo of reform to a point that it leads to Al-Abadi being ousted by a coup from within Dawa.
Even as US military advisors work with select Iraqi commanders to plan out “trial” military offensive operations, there is deep concern that the Iraqi Army is incapable of holding territory it takes back from ISIL. If the Iraqi forces were to retake towns in the Sunni provinces and fail to govern, it could, US military planners fear, lead to the Islamic State being invited back in by enraged local Sunni populations. That would be a recipe for permanent partition.
While there is confidence that some Iraqi Army combat units are now ready to engage the enemy, there is growing worry that the US is being once again dragged into an endless quagmire, costing billions of dollars a month.
It is for this reason that there is so much attention, back in Washington, on the question of whether or not Abadi and Sistani can make any true progress on reform. If that effort is blocked, even if there are some short-term combat gains, more voices at the Pentagon and in Congress will be talking about the US cutting its losses and withdrawing at some point in the not-too-distant future. The fact that the US is in the midst of presidential elections will only sharpen the political polarization.
