Editor’s Note: Regular readers are aware that we don’t use the word Pak-i-Stan. We all remember what happened when a regime called itself & its land as the Master Race. Soon they came up with “Lebensraum” and the rest is history. No one of European descent ever calls that regime by its given name Third Reich. The word Pak-i-Stan is even more heinous than the Master Race concept. Because it means the land/regime of Pak or Pure people. So by definition the regime cannot allow itself to be impurified by people like Hindus, Ahmediya Muslims or now Shia Muslims. Yet, American & European keep using that given name Pakistan. We will not. So we correct it by add the neutral “non” and calling it NonPak-i-Stan. Note we don’t use NaaPak which is a negative or insulting term.
Pure Deja Vu, isn’t it? The Mubarakization of Mohamed Morsi just like the Musharrafization of Mubarak two & half years ago!
Mohamed Morsi was elected and that vote gave him just enough power to remove the then chief of the Egyptian Army. He may have thought that his new hand picked chief of the Egyptian Army would side with him. That was Morsi’s fatal mistake. He should have remembered the saga of Mubarak. The senior generals in the Egyptian military were loyal to Mubarak. After all, he had picked them, managed their ascent and made them rich in his 30-year tenure. Mubarak’s fatal mistake was his assumption that the senior generals would remain loyal to him even when he was trying to make his son Gamal their boss.
The generals acted against Morsi just as they acted against Mubarak, their patron. They waited patiently until the protestors in Cairo gave them the perfect opportunity to step in as selfless protectors of Egypt to restore the will of the people. In every revolution, in every coup, the “people” are those who are on the same side as the coup leaders. This is why the Egyptian Army protected the patriotic “Egyptian people” who protested in Tahrir Square against Mubarak & Morsi but shot & killed the “Egyptian people” who protested against the coup.
The Model is the Key
Egypt is a country with a MIP – Most Important Player. The MIP in Egypt, as in NonPak-istan, is the Military Class. The Egyptian military gave up long ago any pretense of fighting or even being ready enough to fight external enemies. Mubarak converted the Egyptian military into a ruling class that controlled the country and became obscenely rich in the process. It is almost like a colonial class, both above and distinct from the mess of the country that lies below them. As the Washington Post reports,
- “Egypt’s military establishment has long held paramount power over the country, with generals turning themselves into business tycoons over the three decades that President Hosni Mubarak was in office. The army’s business holdings are shadowy and vast, estimated at anywhere between 10 and 30 percent of the economy, and top leaders socialize with each other in manicured country clubs a world away from the vast, smog-filled streets where most people scrape by on just dollars a day. Military officers had run the country since the 1952 revolution, and their leadership has long been willing to go to great lengths to ensure the stability of both their own insular society and Egypt as a whole.”
Every ruling class has its own hierarchy, its own internal rules of power, its established modalities for succession. Mubarak challenged this process by trying to hoist his son at the top of the hierarchy. Morsi tried to subvert it by handpicking a chief who he thought would be loyal to him. Morsi made the same mistake that Nawaz Sharif made in 1990s by handpicking Musharraf to lead the NonPak-istani military, the same mistake Bhutto made in 1970s by handpicking Zia ul Haq to become the chief of the military.
Zia ul Haq imprisoned Bhutto and hanged him. Musharraf imprisoned Nawaz Sharif and would have hanged him but for the appeals of Saudi Arabia, his main bankers. Morsi is paying for his mistake before our eyes.
The NonPak-i-Stani Model
People laugh at NonPak-i-Stan for being a basket case. They forget that the model has worked for 50-60 years and worked very well for the military class. America, UK & Europe have called NonPak-i-Stan their most “allied” ally and funded the ruling military class with billions of dollars in military aid. The model requires semi-stability and the perception of patriotism. And it works very simply:
- “Look at [Non]Pakistani
history. Strongmen have come and gone, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia Ul
Haq, Bhutto, Musharraf. They have their days. But once protests
intensify against the reigning strongman, the [Non]Pakistani Military steps
in and overthrows the strongman. This is followed by temporary military
rule, then elections, an impotent civilian government, a new strongman
and so on.”
This is a model that is masterfully designed to keep America & Europe satisfied but not so satisfied as to create complacency. So crisis are created and relations are threatened just enough to persuade America to keep pouring in just enough money. And it works because America simply cannot afford to lose NonPak-i-Stan. So America pays a couple of billion dollars annually to keep the model working in NonPak-i-Stan.
Egypt is very similar. The people of Egypt are not important and neither is the Egyptian economy. Egypt is important because it guarantees the maritime safety of the Suez canal and because of its peace treaty with Israel. These two are overriding considerations for America and they are easily worth annual “aid” of a couple of billion dollars.
Now the Egyptian MIP has reestablished the model by removing Morsi from power and installing more acceptable people to lead the civil administration. Is this therefore time for America to reward the Egyptian Generals with more money? That is now the opinion of many American opinionators from both sides of the Democratic-Republican divide.
The Erdogan Factor
There was a time when Turkish Military was as much the MIP in Turkey as the Egyptian Army is now in Egypt. No more. Over the past ten years, conservative Prime Minister Erdogan has stripped the Turkish Military of much of its power. He has dreams of restoring the Ottoman era power of Turkey and becoming a leader of the Islamic cause in the Middle East. Erdogan has severely downgraded Turkey’s relationship with Israel and tried hard to get involved in the civil war in Syria.
This year it looked as if Morsi was following the pattern of Erdogan. He had replaced the chief of the military. He wanted to attack Ethiopia to stop a dam and he publicly tried to take up the cause of the Syrian rebels fighting Assad. Morsi was also trying to take control of as many sections of the Egyptian administrative base as he could.
Nobody in the Egyptian military class wanted any part of this. Forget Israel. The greatest source of danger to them was the Erdogan philosophy and approach. That is why the Egyptian military acted so quickly and so opportunistically to get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood regime and its leader Mohamed Morsi.
Egypt is Backkkkk?
It looks as if the old Egypt is back. Saudi Arabia & Jordan want this military run Egypt. So do all the Gulf countries. This Egypt revives the grand old coalition between royal monarchies and secular military led regimes. Heck, even Assad and Iran might prefer this “secular” Egypt over Morsi’s Sunni Egypt.
The Military will try hard to remain out of public limelight. They have already selected a Supreme Court Judge as President and El Baradei as VicePresident whose job will be to bring in America & European money with additional funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and GCC countries.
This Egypt is really Mubarak Redux without Mubarak. And it could turn out to be a stable story at least for a couple of years. Assuming elections are either not held or are held after writing a new suitable constitution and after weeding out of “unsuitable” candidates. If Iran can run elections like that, then why can’t Egypt?
But It’s Not So Simple
The above is straight and simple. Simplicity is often the key to longevity and it sometimes can be profound at its core. But the above could be be simplistic rather than simple.
Because there is no doubt that now Egypt is in the midst of a civil war with the conservative Islamic portion of Egyptian society. This is once again a clash of the Military-Intelligence complex and the largest organized Islamic organization in Egypt. This is an old story going back to when Al Qaeda co-founder Al-Zawahiri was a young man. The Egyptian military won that protracted brutal underground war and Al-Zawahiri types escaped to Afghanistan.
Will today’s Muslim Brotherhood go quietly? Will Egypt’s internal civil war create chaos? Will Egypt’s new leaders prove inclusive enough to share power with a large segment of conservative Islamic Egypt or will they prove to be power grabbers like Morsi? Will the Muslim Brotherhood fight with civil disobedience above ground or will enough of their people go underground? Will Al Qaeda try to enter Egypt again?
Remember the NonPak-i-Stani model also works because that military maintains links with and supports their extremist elements. They also protect their own society by directing the extremists externally towards attacking India. There is no such convenient enemy for Egypt except Israel. And Israel is not India. America would rather blow up the Egyptian military model than tolerate Egyptian extremists attacking Israel from Egypt. So who will Egypt’s extremists fight?
Today’s Middle
East is different than the one of 1950s & 1960s. And old methods may
not work well today. Just look at how easily Assad the father dealt with the
Islamic revolt in his era and look at the trouble his son faces today.
If the old methods work and Egypt remains semi-stable, that will encourage the monarchies and others to fight their Islamic opposition. If Egypt fails to remain stable, then it will lead to greater instability across the Middle East.
So what else is new?
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