ANDREA TETI - The function of violence in Egypt
Violence in Egypt
Violence in Egypt
reached a new peak after Muhammad Morsi's ouster.
The conflict has pitted the 'security state' and its allies against the Muslim
Brotherhood and its supporters, but with the Brotherhood's 'revolutionary
credentials' long squandered, it is facing the full might of the 'deep state'.
This at least temporarily coherent front of armed forces, internal security,
former regime members (felool), and commercial elites not aligned with
the Brotherhood – particularly in the media – have attacked the Brotherhood
relentlessly, both physically with a gruesome display of violence and in the
media. There have been calls for western governments to try to stop
this violence, and on the Egyptian security forces to restrain themselves, but
these calls fail to recognise just how useful the violence is to Egypt ’s
newly assertive regime.
The Muslim Brotherhood's failure
There is little doubt that the Brotherhood’s tactics in
power were foolhardy. Its only serious chance of countering the economic, media
and security power of Egypt's 'deep state' was through popular mobilisation,
coalition-building, and economic reform – yet this was an unlikely avenue for a
movement used to compromising with power and to charity to paper over the worst
effects of economic 'reform'.
Very early on after Mubarak’s removal, it was clear that the
Brotherhood was unwilling to build a broad coalition against the 'deep state'
to further the demands made during the January 2011 uprising. Rather, it
preferred to combine trying to place its men in key positions of the state and
security apparatus with striking a deal with the military and the internal
security forces – or at least the attempt to do so, just as it had always
attempted with the Mubarak regime.
Indeed, although in opposition under Mubarak, the
Brotherhood was comfortable in the 'system' the Egyptian state controls and
oversees: it never attempted to formulate a genuine political or economic
alternative to this regime beyond visibly empty slogans such as ‘Islam is the
solution’, regardless of how central social justice and economic rights were to
the January 25th Uprising.
The regime reincarnate
Not least as a result of the Muslim Brotherhood's attempt to
take control of the levers of state in the name of democracy and of the
revolution, the interests of the various components of Egypt 's
'deep state' converged on two objectives. First, in neutralising the threat
from the Brotherhood itself gaining the kind of leverage the Justice and
Development Party gained in Turkey .
This fight was never going to be on equal terms: although the Brotherhood
remains Egypt ’s
largest and best-organised political force, its resources pale in comparison to
the state's. Second, and more importantly, the components of the 'deep state'
share an interest in neutralising the very idea that it might be possible for
Egypt's dissatisfied population to mobilise to demand a representative
government willing and able to address the people's needs. This possibility was
the truly revolutionary aspect of the uprising on January 25th, 2011 .
The function of violence
Since Morsi's removal on July 3, the Brotherhood's
leadership, its rank and file, and its sympathisers have been given no quarter
by the army and internal security forces, with several gruesome episodes of
violence against pro-Morsi demonstrators across the country, and in Cairo in
particular. The death toll has been horrific, climbing into the high hundreds,
overwhelming Cairo 's only morgue,
and offering a gruesome illustration of both the 'deep state’s' determination
and its current sense of impregnability. Both the EU and the USA
attempted to broker a peaceful resolution to the clash between the Brotherhood
and the security forces, but most accounts agree it was the latter that
ultimately refused to compromise... read more:
