When the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces handed power to President Mohammed Morsi last June it seemed that everyone in Egypt, especially the officers, breathed a huge sigh of relief.  The transition from Mubarak to Morsi had been long, difficult, and sometimes violent.  The SCAF under Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and his deputy, Lt. General Sami Ennan, were manifestly ill-equipped to govern Egypt on a day-to-day basis and it showed.  By the spring of 2012, the officers were counting down the days to when they could hand-off the whole problem that Egyptian politics had become to anyone who would relieve them of the burdens of government.  Of course, the military exacted its price.  Egypt’s constitution gives the senior command autonomy in defense policy, budgeting, and personnel.  In addition, the Ministry of Defense held onto its robust economic interests. Read more »

Hani Sabra responds to Cynical Islamist’s response to me…

On January 16, Steven Cook wrote a blog post that asked, “Are Egypt’s Muslim Brothers Democrats?” By the end of the piece, it’s clear that he believes the answer is no. A week later, an Egyptian man—and I’m going to go ahead and bet that it was a man—who goes by the moniker “Cynical Islamist,” responded to Cook’s piece in an attempt to pour cold water on the arguments. Read more »

Egypt is a mess.  Just two short years after the uprising that brought Hosni Mubarak’s long-rule to an end, the country is paralyzed politically, protests have become increasingly violent, sectarian tensions are high, the public health system is in total disarray, and the economy is near collapse.  Nothing has gone right in this country of 84 million people that has traditionally been the most influential in the region—for good or bad—and since the mid-1970s a pillar of U.S.-Middle East policy.  It is not only the peace between Egypt and Israel, but also the U.S. Navy’s access to the Suez Canal, the many daily U.S. military overflights critical to the United States in confronting the Iranian threat, and Egypt’s logistical assistance for U.S. operations in Afghanistan and until not too long ago Iraq that are of paramount importance to Washington.  As a result, an objective observer might come to the reasonable conclusion that Egypt needs help and that the international community should do what it can to help pull Egyptians back from the brink.  That is certainly the view of most analysts from across the political spectrum, yet in one corner of the commentariat, they are actually hoping for Egypt to fail. Read more »

On the second anniversary of Egypt’s January 25 uprising, I decided to re-post some of my own work on Egypt.  I hope you continue to find these posts/articles useful.  Enjoy!

Five Things You Need to Know About the Egyptian Armed Forces, January 31, 2011 on “From the Potomac to the Euphrates.” Read more »

My friend who goes by the twitter handle @CynicalIslamist responded to my post about the Muslim Brotherhood’s democratic credentials.  It’s a thoughtful and articulate response.  Enjoy! Read more »

It may seem non-controversial these days to suggest that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) are not exactly forces for democratic change.  Much of Washington, which only last spring feted an FJP delegation carrying the message that all would be well, has fallen into an Egypt funk.  No one is longing for Hosni Mubarak, but the hope for a democratic transition on the Nile has dissipated.  Indeed, with a few exceptions, there are few in the policy or traditional academic communities who cling to the once-conventional wisdom that the Brotherhood could be a force for more open politics. The record is clear and as a result, the conversation has shifted to hoping that Egypt can stay afloat economically.  Still, not everyone shares the doom and gloom about the Brothers.  When I recently suggested on Twitter that President Mohammed Morsi, the FJP, and the Brothers had not been exactly faithful to the revolutionary promise of a more open political system and had used some of the same tricks as the Mubarak regime, I received a fair amount of pushback from some quarters.  One of my tweeps challenged me to prove it, chastising me for blindly accepting the narrative of Egyptian liberals and revolutionaries. Read more »

Almost exactly a year ago, I published “It’s Time to Think Seriously About Intervening in Syria” on the Atlantic.com.  A lot has happened since then including an additional 55,000 deaths in what has become a full-blown civil war.  It is nothing short of tragic.  When I think about Syria today, I drift back sixteen and seventeen years ago to when I spent time there first as a tourist and then as a student studying Arabic.  As I explained to friends who invariably asked, “You are going where?” if you separate the brutality of the Assad regime from the people, the wonderful things to see, and the outstanding cuisine, Syria was a great place to visit.  By no means do I intend to whitewash the horrors of what Syria has become, which brings me back to the Atlantic piece.  I don’t think it was the time I spent in Damascus and traveling around the country that gave me some sort of insight, but I’ve never been so unhappy to say how correct I was about how Syria would unfold if nothing were done to stop Assad early last year.  The “it’s only a matter of time before Assad falls” argument that was going around Washington at the time was a matter of wishful thinking.  All of the talk of a diplomatic solution including the “Russia option” proved to be a chimera as Syrians were left to defend themselves against a leader who had every incentive and means to defend himself, his family, and his regime.  Is it any wonder that Syria has ended up the horrific war zone that it is? Read more »

It is finally the second week of January, meaning that the annual year-end/beginning lists and prognostications are mercifully behind us.  Some of these catalogues of best-worst and “what to expect” are more interesting than others—my favorites are best books and articles—but mostly, these exercises are filler for the December 20-January 5 slowdown.  The problem with the annual lists is that because they are done with one eye on the snow conditions at Aspen or the water temperature in the Caribbean or the traffic on I-95, they are often dashed off in a vacuum— with no context and no sense of how these observations connect to each other in useful analytic ways. Read more »

Markar Esayan says that Turkey’s democracy can only be consolidated if criminals of the past are held accountable, including officers of the Turkish Armed Forces. Read more »

The Sandmonkey gives a concise, but telling, summary of the situation related to Egypt’s constitutional referendum slated for December 15, 2012. Read more »