Over the three days of Aug. 13-16, by official figures over 700 people were killed in clashes between Egyptian security forces and Muslim Brotherhood supporters, from whose ranks came the vast majority of the victims. The actual number could be much higher.
The Muslim Brotherhood called for a week of protests across Egypt, which indicates the high probability of further escalation of the conflict. “Our rejection of the coup regime has become an Islamic, national and ethical obligation that we can never abandon,” reads a Brotherhood statement.
In the days leading up to the July 3 coup, Egypt had been the scene of massive demonstrations of millions of people demanding Morsi’s ouster. Led by Gen. Abdul Fatah Saied al-Sisi, the military stepped in and took control, on the pretext of maintaining law and order.
Violent repression of the Muslim Brotherhood started shortly after the July 3 coup, when Egypt’s military removed President Mohamed Morsi from power. As early as July 9, less than a week after the coup, the military killed over 50 Brotherhood supporters in its raid on the protest outside the Republican Guard headquarters.
Undeterred by the killings of their members, supporters of the Brotherhood continued sit-ins at several sites, including the main one at Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque. When the previous rounds of killings and several warnings did not deter demonstrators, the military decided to remove them in a show of force to restore order through terror.
The military has portrayed the conflict as a fight against terrorists. However, the sit-ins and other protests had been largely peaceful. Even if some Brotherhood supporters were armed, it would have been in self-defense, given the previous rounds of killings of protesters by the armed forces. In any case, the multi-day sit-ins did not present a security threat.
U.S. government role
Once again, the United States and other imperialist countries issued the formal condemnations and expressed displeasure at the bloodshed. But in reality, Egypt’s military is striving for the very same thing that the U.S. would like to see—an end to the revolutionary movement and a return to a stable client state.
The Obama administration’s harshest reaction has been the cancelation of a scheduled joint military exercise, hardly a devastating blow to the Egyptian generals. It has even refused to call the military takeover a coup, in fear of that classification causing a disruption to the U.S. military aid to Egypt.
On Aug. 15, President Obama said in a statement in regard to Egypt, “We are guided by our national interests in this long-standing relationship.” This statement has an element of truth in that U.S. policy toward Egypt has nothing to do with the interests of the Egyptian people. But what he means by “national interests” are the interests of the banks and corporations, not the people of the United States.
It is incorrect to assume that the coup was the initiative of the United States. The U.S. could live with Morsi, who proved in his one year in office that he was more than willing to accommodate Washington’s agenda. But it is even more incorrect to assume that broad statements of condemnation of the bloodshed indicate U.S. opposition to the military rule and support for the Brotherhood.
The United States may be concerned about the consequences of the bloody crackdown for the stability of its client state, but there is no institution in Egypt that Washington trusts more than the military. Virtually all of the top military commanders in Egypt are U.S.-trained. Of the $1.3 billion of U.S. military aid to Egypt annually, what does not go directly to U.S. defense contractors lines the pockets of Egyptian military leaders. In the decades of the Mubarak dictatorship, the generals showed their value and loyalty to Washington. To suggest that Washington is plotting to overthrow its time-tested loyal generals in favor of Morsi defies logic.
Role of the military
It is true that the military removed Morsi not in a vacuum but in an atmosphere of daily anti-Morsi protests. But this was not because of the military’s respect for the will of the people or its commitment to popular control over the government. This same military had defied the popular will for decades, violently repressing any dissent against the much-hated dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
History has proven time and again that in order for a revolution to achieve ultimate victory, it needs to smash the state apparatus, first and foremost its military. Egypt’s military, with its top commanders, its chain of command, its structure and its strong role in the economy, has been the chief enforcer of decades of oppression in Egypt. This same military, by its very nature, cannot be turned into an instrument of revolution and progress.
The Egyptian masses, despite their heroic movement, have not been able to make even superficial changes to the military, Mubarak’s U.S.- client military. To see this point, one only has to look at the crimes of which the military regime is accusing Morsi. On Aug 15, the military government extended Morsi’s detention for 30 more days “over charges of jailbreak, relevant murder as well as spying for the Palestinian Hamas movement.” The jailbreak and murder charges go back to the time when Morsi, along with millions of other Egyptians, was fighting to overthrow Mubarak’s dictatorship. In fact, this same military continued to pursue charges against revolutionaries for “crimes” committed under Mubarak even while Morsi was in office.
Far from being a tool of the revolution, the generals made a timely and calculated move to restore the old regime, without the person of Mubarak and with a few superficial changes. In February 2011, when millions of demonstrators occupied Tahrir Square week after week, the military did not go into an all-out bloody campaign to save Mubarak—although there certainly were hundreds of victims of police/military repression. Mubarak seemed beyond rescue and the generals, now seeing Mubarak as a liability, decided to cut him loose. Washington concurred. Egyptian protesters, while quite diverse in their political orientations, were absolutely united in the demand for Mubarak’s ouster.
Muslim Brotherhood
But by July 2013, Morsi had been in office for one year. Throughout its history, the Muslim Brotherhood could hardly be called a revolutionary organization. They had tried to overthrow the progressive nationalist regime of Gamal Abdul Nasser. During the latter years of the Mubarak dictatorship, the Brotherhood almost exclusively limited their activities to electoral politics, through their legal wing, the Freedom and Justice Party. The FJP would win a few seats in Egypt’s parliament, itself a body with very limited powers in a country essentially run by its military under Hosni Mubarak, who would get elected in sham elections over and over.
With the economy in shambles and the revolutionary demands of the masses in motion, the Brotherhood proved no match for the task at hand. Confined by the limits of its own conservative program, and the limits imposed on it by a military that never lost power, Morsi and the Brotherhood lost much of the popularity they had at the time of the elections due to their inability to effect any fundamental changes.
Solving the deep problems of society requires a revolutionary approach, something that the Brotherhood lacks. The economic hardships of the working class could only have been addressed by taking decisive action on the repayment of Egypt’s foreign debt to international financial institutions, 88 percent of the GDP. Morsi was unwilling and unable to take such decisive action.
The one area where Morsi’s government did take decisive action was ramming through a new constitution, codifying the Brotherhood’s reactionary social programs. This created a division among the forces that had overthrown Mubarak, a significant part of whom favored a secular, not a sectarian, form of government.
In early July, the generals calculated that if they moved against Morsi, they would no longer have to face the united opposition of the Egyptian masses. Instead, the movement would be divided between secularists of all stripes on one side and the Brotherhood on the other. Of course, the ultra-religious Salafists were also in opposition to the Brotherhood, this itself adding another layer of division. The generals also calculated, correctly, that the millions-strong protest movement would see the removal of Morsi as a positive development, even if it was done by the military.
Mass movement divided
Today, what used to be a united mass movement is divided. On the one side, supporters of the Brotherhood are struggling against the military coup, being killed in the hundreds. Interviews with protesters indicate that the ranks of the demonstrators include individuals who were not Brotherhood supporters but ones who are now protesting the military killings. On the other side, there are individuals and forces that support the Brotherhood’s ouster, among them not an insignificant number who even support the military crackdown.
With the current trajectory of events and array of forces, it is clear that the military’s violent repression of the Brotherhood is not leading the country to realization of the goals of the Egyptian revolution. Rather, the military is attempting to return the country to the past—to the Mubarak era. At stake is not whether Morsi and the Brotherhood return to the seat of the presidency. All the gains of the revolution are at stake. If the military succeeds in defeating the Brotherhood through a bloody campaign, they will not tolerate dissent from any other forces, sectarian or secular.
The military has declared a month-long state of emergency—something they have extensive experience in. During the entire era of the Mubarak dictatorship, the military ruled under a state of emergency. If the military has its way, the current one will likely be extended indefinitely.
The only defense that the revolution has against a reestablishment of military dictatorship is united mass action. Such revolutionary mass action could propel the revolution forward and form a revolutionary movement that will not only overthrow military rule but organize a state that will go far beyond where a Muslim Brotherhood could go—a state that operates in the interests of the working class.
End U.S. military aid to Egypt!
