Harry Targ
Egyptian
History
Egypt secured its formal independence from British
colonial control in 1922. Nevertheless, the British continued to dominate
Egyptian military and political life until 1952 when the “Free Officers”
Movement led by Gamal Abdel Nasser launched a coup that toppled, King Farouk, the
British man in Egypt. Following Egypt’s real independence Nasser emerged as a
powerful charismatic figure in Middle East politics, seeking to create a zone
of “Arab Socialism.” He established economic and political ties with the former
Soviet Union, initiated efforts to construct a “United Arab Republic” with
Syria, and militarily opposed former European colonial powers and Israel in
reference to control of the Suez Canal in 1956 and the “Six Day War” against
Israel in 1967. Nasser died in 1970 and his successor Anwar El Sadat led the
Arab assault on Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Before Sadat was assassinated in 1981, Egypt reversed
course ending ties with the Soviet Union; tilted toward the West; signed the
Camp David Accords with Israel under the tutelage of President Jimmy Carter;
and began its long-term relationship with the United States, despite anger from
the Arab world. Egypt became one of the major recipients of United States
military assistance from 1980 to the present (receiving $1.3 billion per annum).
By the 1980s, the Egyptian military gained control of a large portion of the
economy of the country. After Sadat’s assassination Hosni Mubarak, the third
leader from the military, began his 30-year rule.
Arab Spring, the massive street mobilizations in the
Middle East which started in Tunisia in January 2011 quickly spread to Egypt
and elsewhere in the region. These revolts had large representations from the
working class, youth, and women and others demanding democratization. As a
result of the revolt in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in February, 2011, the military
stepped in to replace the former dictator, Hosni Mubarak, to stabilize a
country on the verge of fundamental social and economic change; established an
interim military government; and constructed a new constitution that would
mollify protestors, provide for elections, and at the same time would maintain
its own institutional power.
Elections were held in 2012 and Muslim Brotherhood
candidate Mohammed Morsi was elected president. In the year Morsi served as
Egyptian president, he declared the presidency’s ultimate power over the
courts, used his position to expand the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood
over the political system, repressed the ten percent of the population
affiliated with the Coptic Christian Church, stalled efforts to expand the
rights of women in Egyptian society, and most recently declared Egypt’s full
support of the rebels fighting against the government of Syria.
Two weeks ago a movement of young people calling
themselves the rebels (the Tamarrud) circulated a call to rally in Tahrir
Square. On June 30, a massive mobilization (some say the largest in modern
history) was launched demanding the ouster of Morsi from office. The military
issued a statement urging the Egyptian president to achieve some sort of
compromise with the protestors and, when he refused, they carried out a coup
putting in place an acting president. Subsequent to the coup there have been
massive mobilizations in opposition to and support of Morsi.
Economic
Context
In a recent article in the Guardian (July 4, 2013), Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of
the Institute for Policy Research and Development, scholar and reporter,
discussed the state of the Egyptian economy. Generally he characterized the
Egyptian economic policy embraced at least since the 1990s as involving
“structural failures rooted in an unsustainable global model of industrial civilization-addicted to
fossil fuels, wedded fanatically to casino capitalism, and convinced,
ostrich-like, that somehow technology alone will save us.”
Ahmed pointed out that oil production has declined
by 26 percent since 1996 and a once food sustaining economy now requires the
importation of 75 percent of its wheat. Inflation has increased in recent
years, particularly as to the price of food. Egyptian debt constitutes over 80
percent of GDP and the Egyptian government began to institute neoliberal
structural adjustment policies in the 1990s. The population has experienced
declining safety net policies and generalized programs of austerity as experienced
elsewhere in the world. Meanwhile, financial support of the military remains
unchanged. Austerity programs and increased taxes have been designed to get
approval for a new $4.8 billion IMF loan. And most critical, “with 40 percent
of Egyptians already below the UN poverty line of less than 2 pounds a day,
Morsi’s IMF-inspired policies amounted to a form of economic warfare on the
Egyptian people.”
What
Now?
Debate about the legitimacy of the ouster of Morsi
from office has begun to occur within the peace movement. On one side are those
who remember, with good reason, military coups supported by the United States
all around the world. The brutality of the U.S. sponsored coup in Chile on
September 11, 1973 comes to mind. The Chilean people suffered from a brutal
dictatorship leading to thousands of assassinations and people “disappeared,”
the end to formal democracy, the crushing of trade unions, and the imposition
of a brutal program of neoliberal economic policies that increased economic
inequality, reduced the quality of life of most Chileans, and conformed to the
dictates of the transnational capitalist class.
On the other hand, the case can be made that each
rupture in a society must be understood in its own historical context.
First, the mobilizations of June 30 can be seen as
continuation of a “revolutionary” process that began in 2011 (if not earlier).
Many activists at that time argued that the ouster of Mubarak is just the
beginning of what will be a long process of societal transformation. They
articulated the view that there were no “quick fixes;” that Mubarak, the
military, and the rest of the capitalist class were the product of a larger
global political economy.
Second, even though powerful military forces should
not in the main be relied on for social transformation, contexts and militaries
vary. For example, Hugo Chavez came out of the Venezuelan military and he was
saved from a U.S. engineered coup by his military comrades. Most important in
the Egyptian case, the military has dominated Egyptian political life since the
Nasser-led ouster of British/American Egyptian puppet, King Farouk. Nasser
remained enormously popular with his people until his death. On the other hand,
as Democracy Now’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous points out, the political instability
brought on by Morsi’s policies threatened not only his regime but the special
status of the military.
Third, Egyptian history, conveniently forgotten by
the media and political pundits, suggests that Nasser led a campaign to create
a coalition of secular states, even using the word “socialism” to describe his
vision. Even though his vision and
practice were flawed, Nasser was one of those first generation of post-colonial
leaders supporting what Vijay Prashad called “the third world project.” In
other words, he was a secular, radical nationalist. From the 1950s on,
ironically, United States policy has often tilted toward supporting “Political
Islam,” that is regimes and movements which embrace religious fundamentalism
and represent little or no threat to the global political economy. United
States funding of Osama Bin Laden in his war against the secular regime in
Afghanistan is a glaring example.
Fourth, political analysts, from academia and the Left,
have a fetishized conception of democracy. Democracy as it is conventionally
understood is about process. While important, periodically going to a voting
booth and choosing between a selection of candidates for public office is only
part of a more holistic conception of democracy. Democracy is procedural and it is substantive. In other words, democracy is about choosing
candidates and policies and it is also about providing for the fulfillment of
human needs. If 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line,
democracy in the substantive sense is woefully inadequate.
Finally, what we may call 21st century
social movements are spreading all across the globe. Tunisia, Tahrir Square in
Egypt, Greece, Spain, Chile, Quebec, the industrial heartland of the United
States, and occupiers everywhere constitute a new politics that only partially
conform to traditional models of mobilizing for social change. Indeed we
celebrate the mass movements for the eight-hour day, the right of industrial
workers to form unions, poor people’s campaigns, anti-war mobilizations, and public
campaigns to save the environment.
The historic role of socialist organizations and
visions remain critical to 21st century social transformations. But
the programmatic character of contemporary mobilizations; the inspirational
connectivity of movements across borders, classes, genders, and races; and the
recognition by participants that each is part of a historic process may be
somewhat new. Social movements today often see the need to “compromise” with
institutions such as the military to advance the condition of the people. At
the same time, as the movement in Egypt suggests, they remain mindful of the
limitations of alliances of convenience.
Therefore, there are lessons from Egypt for the
peace movement in the United States. Peace activists should analyze moments of
instability and change in their historical, economic, cultural, and political
complexity. They need to assess specific situations to understand which social
forces are more likely to represent the values that they support. Then in each
concrete case they should ask how activism in the United States can best
support the just struggles of 21st century social movements.
