A Faustian Pact: Egypt Generals as Democrats
The luxurious officers’ club of Egypt’s elite Republican Guard sits near downtown Cairo, its pool and patios surrounded by high walls with reliefs and paintings lauding Egypt’s military history, going back to the pharaohs. Where a huge poster of the deposed president Hosni Mubarak once stood, a new one declares: “The Army. The People. One Hand.”
The slogan echoes chants heard in Tahrir Square in 2011, when the army chose not to fire on demonstrators, and again three weeks ago, when the army deposed President Mohamed Morsi. Now Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s powerful defense minister, is putting it to the test by calling on Egyptians to return to the streets Friday to support the armed forces’ efforts to suppress postcoup violence that has claimed some 170 lives.
In fact, millions of Egyptians welcomed the coup at the time, even as they claimed to want democracy, and they apparently do not see the tension between these positions. Their faith in the military is probably misplaced, but it can be explained by six decades of Egyptian hopes and disappointments, and the desperation that marks Egypt’s politics today.
Since a 1952 coup ousted the corrupt, British-dominated King Farouk, the armed forces have been Egypt’s state builder, liberator and savior. That was true when its troops crossed the Suez Canal in 1973 in a war that ultimately ended with the Sinai Peninsula returned from Israeli control. It was even more true in the years between 1956 and 1967, when Gamal Abdel Nasser and his fellow Free Officers nationalized the Suez Canal; stood firm in the face of a British, French and Israeli invasion; rejected the terms of Western financing of the Aswan High Dam; and created new economic and social opportunities for Egyptians.
The fact that the Free Officers delivered on promises of national power, social justice and economic opportunity provided Mr. Nasser and his comrades a reservoir of support. To be sure, they built the archetypal Middle Eastern authoritarian state; they also led Egypt to calamitous defeat at the hands of Israel in June 1967. But Mr. Nasser’s heyday still represents, for many, the last time that Egypt felt united under leaders whose espoused principles met the needs of ordinary Egyptians.
Even now, the elderly owner of a tiny grocery could tell me, in reverent tones, that Mr. Nasser and the army gave Egypt “a gift.” New generations share the impression, and contrast it with the sheer desperation of today.
The ouster of Mr. Mubarak eventually brought free elections, but the victor, Mr. Morsi, proved a disappointment. By last April, when activists began to collect signatures to force an early presidential election that might remove him, there was no lower house of parliament, the constitution was contested, the economy was near ruin and Mr. Morsi was trying to institutionalize the power of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptians faced rising prices, rising crime and heightened sectarian tensions. In June four Shiite Muslims were lynched. Egypt’s Christians have never felt so insecure.
In contrast, the military had weathered Egypt’s post-uprising politics. In 2011, it was accused of harsh treatment of some protesters, but it left politics in June 2012 under a deal that guaranteed it continued autonomy and enjoyment of the perquisites it had under the old order. The deal also immunized it from prosecution over the virginity tests and military trials inflicted on some democracy activists after Mr. Mubarak fell.
So when millions of Egyptians returned to the streets to oppose Mr. Morsi, they looked to the armed forces to be the capable arbiter to reset country’s transition toward democracy. As one longtime activist declared in a private message over Twitter, “We have no choice.”
The defense minister’s call for mass demonstrations did produce hand-wringing among some liberals and activists, but they seem to be vastly outnumbered. And the coup has disturbed critics in the United States, which has built a strong relationship with Egypt’s officer corps since the early 1980s and helps sustains the military with $1.3 billion in annual aid. This week, President Obama delayed shipping four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt, a gesture of disapproval of the coup that seems unlikely to threaten the relationship.
The ready acceptance by liberals and pluralists of a coup in the name of democracy is understandable, but at best they are playing with fire. General Sisi’s democratic credentials remain suspect, and the champions of a new and more open Egypt have now given him a powerful argument with which to deflect virtually any criticism.
In a poll in May, only 27 percent of the Egyptians surveyed identified civilian control of the military as “very important.” But in fact the military’s intervention is a setback for the cause of pluralism. Coups d’état, no matter how popular, are by definition anti-democratic. Rarely, if ever, do they improve the environment for democracy. Perhaps Egypt will be different, but even so, full democracy there must someday challenge the military’s autonomy, economic interests and singular role as the source of legitimacy and authority — items the officers will not give up willingly.
Simply put, democracy is built on democratic principles, not coups.
About the Writer:
Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow in Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square.”
Source: The New York Times
