Egypt and the US

It was hardly much of a surprise. The removal of Egypt’s democratically elected leader by an army that owes its prominence and survival to US support ($1.2 billion annual funding) had a familiar feel about it. One need only remember the US-backed military intervention in Algeria about 20 years ago that prevented the Islamic front, on the threshold of victory, from forming government. And remember also the denial of victory to Hamas in 2006 when it had won the elections in Palestine.

For more than three decades the US continued to support Hosni Mubarak’s government – one of the most oppressive regimes in the Arab world – and after it signed a peace treaty with Israel, poured annually nearly $2.5 billion into the Egyptian economy. Egypt was the second biggest recipient of US assistance after Israel. No one from Congress or the mainstream media ever demanded that this assistance be made conditional to the evolution of democracy or the protection of human rights in the country. So much for the American dream of promoting the cause of democracy!

The US-backed Egyptian army is a behemoth. It controls nearly 40 percent of the country’s economy and is one of the biggest corporate entities in the Arab world. Whether it is retail business, housing, trade, commerce or the manufacturing sector, the footprints of the army are visible everywhere.

 The US investment in the Egyptian military has obvious justification. As long as the most powerful Arab country maintains peace with Israel, the Zionist state will not be in any mortal peril of its existence. And no government will be formed or sustained without the full involvement and support of the army. That would act as a firm guarantee for the state of Israel’s survival and dominance in the region. That would also explain why even the Muslim Brotherhood government was not in a position to scrap the peace treaty with Israel.

But the script for Morsi’s removal had been ready for some time. The US would not countenance a regime led by the Brotherhood that could pose potential problems not only for Israel but also its Middle Eastern allies – the pro-US Arab regimes in the region. It was expected that the successful Islamic transition in Egypt would inevitably encourage and spur such movements in Arab monarchies and other totalitarian Arab countries.

This, in turn, would mean the heralding of an ‘Islamist revolution’ – a prospect reinforced by a survey conducted by an American think tank that revealed that an overwhelming majority of people in Muslim countries support the introduction of shariah laws. It is now a matter of public knowledge that the anti-Morsi demonstrations were orchestrated by the military working with US diplomats in Cairo and supported by some other powers in the region.

Morsi’s failure was that he did not purge government structures of the many Mubarak-era bureaucrats who were well entrenched in their positions and had no sympathy for the system that the new dispensation was trying to bring into the country. Perhaps he was scared of the possible backlash that such ‘cleansing’ would generate.

Equally importantly he went about his reform programme without creating an atmosphere that would win him the support of the masses. One year was too short a period for him to make decisive and robust interventions in many areas of public welfare and policy. He also had problems with the ‘Salafis’ who did not entirely share the Brotherhood’s philosophy or programme for a change based on an Islamic system of governance.

Such was the extent of US clout in the military that the Brotherhood government continued to make favourable gestures towards Washington in order to somehow neutralise its (the US) hostility to the new government and win its trust for the reform programme that the movement had long planned. But the Washington elite would not buy such concepts and remained fixated on their aversion to any development that would have a negative fallout on their allies in the region.

However, history is full of instances where short-term goals are accomplished at the expense of long-term strategic objectives. In 1953 the Americans – acting in tandem with the British MI 6 – intervened to remove Dr Musaddiq, Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister, paving the way for the return of the Shah and also helping to create conditions for the return of Ayatollah Khomeini – a blunder the US lived to regret.

Morsi’s removal from office will have grave implications in a world that has suffered at the hands of the US military machine in terms of death and destruction on a scale never before witnessed in the entire human history. For one thing, it sends a clear message to the Arab world that democracy that threatens to be in conflict with US agenda in the region will not be tolerated.

Second, it is a warning for Islamist movements in the region and beyond that programmes based on shariah are acceptable only when the regime or government is fully on board with US strategic objectives in the area. Third, it conveys a message to the world that totalitarian regimes the world over are darlings of the US as long as they are compatible with American policy and dependent on the US for sustenance and survival.

Morsi and the Brotherhood government in Egypt have been sent packing. They had attempted to change the course of history in Egypt – a country of nearly 90 million people. But it must be remembered that the movement has a remarkable resilience. They have learnt many lessons in adversity, and many among them have become able practitioners of the art of politics. They are no longer the detached ideologues of the 50s or 60s. They have a more down to earth and pragmatic approach to the problems and challenges that face Egypt and the rest of the Arab world.

There was some hope, for instance, that the Brotherhood would play a role in containing the growing gulf between Iran and the Arabs – a schism that is fuelled by some powers in the west. The objective of promoting such hostility between Iran and the Arab world is to weaken both for the benefit of Israel. Now, with Morsi gone, the US game of promoting regional tensions will be played with renewed vigour.

The ouster of the Brotherhood is sure to create a momentum for ever-escalating instability in the country and the region. It will release violence and insecurity that will be difficult to contain. From this chaos and despondency could emerge a movement that is more radical, more revolutionary and more assertive.

The ball has been set rolling, and sooner or later it will boomerang on those who managed to kill democracy in its cradle.

The writer is a former ambassador.