By Anis Ahmed,
Egypt has once again made it to the headlines but unfortunately this time it was due to a very wrong reason. Two years ago the entire world celebrated the much hyped “Arab Spring” calling it a revolution. The fact cannot be denied that the “Arab spring” which ultimately forced Mubarak to quit had brought hopes of democracy to the eyes of every Arab belong to various countries.
A long and barbaric era of Mubarak was brought to an end and it resolved to make Egypt a sovereign democracy. The path to democracy was never easy but with continuous efforts the people of Egypt were able to hold election and elect their first democratically elected President. This was seen as a great victory of democracy especially considering its historical rule of famous strongmen.
All the expectations were vanquished, hopes were buried alive and dreams very brutally shattered in a single day. On 3rd July 2013 the General Abdel Fateh Al- Sisi – a darling of US – toppled the democratically elected government and brought Egypt back to the era of martial laws and army rule. Adly Mansour, a close associate of Hosni Mubarak was appointed as the interim president. Thousand of innocent Morsi supporters are killed every day under the excuse of the famous “George Bush formula of fighting terror”.
While the government is going with its killing spree of innocent protestors on the other hand they are building cases on Mr. Morsi for using force on anti-Morsi protestors. These entire chain of events are proudly called as “a continuation of the revolution”.
Egypt’s tryst with democracy only lasted for a year and the future seems very uncertain. We will indeed see elections happening but it will be the “Mubarak style” of rigged election where only a pre-determined person will win election after election without any opposition. The case of Egypt is indeed a very sorry tale but it is not a unique case. Going through the pages of history we can see such cases of toppling democratically elected have been going on since the 1950s.
The most famous case will be the over throw of the democratically elected government of President Mosaddeq in Iran in 1953. And everyone knows who overthrow his government. Let complete the sentence, it was the United States. These actions are called “covert operations” in the intelligence vocabulary. Numerous governments were toppled by planning a coup to be executed by the countries own army or the head of the country was assassinated or the final solution of sending an US led army in the name of protecting the civilized world. The US and its allies has been involved in numerous such operations. The procedure of toppling democratically elected government is a well document in the “Standard Operating Procedure” documents of the CIA and other agencies. The steps are planned to evolve one after another and the final outcome will be the fall of the government.
The first step will be creating socio-economic problems which results in developing frustration among the citizen. The reason can be anything like shattering a countries economy by means of international boycotts as done in Iran in 1953 or presenting the head of state as a communist freak as done with Hugo Chavez or increase unemployment and inflation as done in Egypt. These situations prove to be very fruitful in building a strong anti-government faction. The second stage would be to create unrest which includes protests conducted by major pro-US political parties, trade unions and celebrities. The protest usually lead to violent clashes in which we see mysterious incidents of killing of protestors to in turn intensifies the violent nature of the protests. Finally comes the Army to restore peace to the country and how do they do it? By simply overthrowing the government. Now can’t we see this pattern repeated in Egypt and now in-progress in Tunisia?
In the case of Egypt the Supreme Command of Armed Forces (SCAF) never wanted to give away power to the people. This a bunch of high level Army Generals developed under the mentorship of Mubarak. The SCAF was never comfortable with democracy as they only wished a transfer of power from Mubarak to most like Al-Sisi. But the biggest hurdle was the Egyptian cry for democracy which could not be ignored. Since the Arab Spring we have seen the SCAF always tried to make the path to democracy difficult and it was evident that they want to have short term romance with democracy and when the smoke settles again move back to Army rule with a brand new dictator. There was an evident power tussle between the Army and Mr. Mohammed Morsi for the entire one year duration of the government.
Though the power was nominally in the hands of the Mr. Morsi the controls on various departments of administration were still with the army. As per the plan the Army deployed a plan with which shortage of water, electricity and other basic amenities were created. These steps were aimed to create frustration among the Egyptians. There was increase in inflation and the entire discussion was related to uplift the deterioting economy of the country. Every sensible mind would understand that the economy of any country can never be recovered in a year. It took around 5 years for the US economy to come on track after the recession so how can Egypt’s economy will recover from exploits of the corrupt gang of Mubarak era? The most important factor to note here is that people where convinced that it was the failure of the newly elected government that they could not make Egyptian economy like that of any western country within a year. This is the power of media campaign, and who controls the Egyptian media? It’s again the pro-Mubarak and Army corporates.
In my previous article published during the Arab Spring, I had brought forward the concern of whether the Arab Uprising called be called revolution. We had concluded that it cannot be called a revolution as there is no change the internal system which controls the government. Everyone had hoped that with Mr. Morsi coming to power, he and his party would be successful in cleaning off the entire administration from clutches of the old vultures. But it is proved that this was not an easy task and since the fall of Mubarak a new generation of Army officials led by General Al-Sisi had an entire plan to bring back the power directly in their hands within a year. Unfortunately the uprising could never become a revolution as the people of Egypt failed in understanding the real intentions and plan of the Army and their US masters.
As I mentioned earlier this situation is not just limited to Egypt but we see similar plots to overthrow the democratically elected governments in Tunisia and also Turkey. In Tunisia the largest trade union is on the road protesting against the government claiming the same story of “Improving Economy”. We soon we will again see the army coming and toppling the government in Tunisia. In Turkey a small protest against the cutting of trees in the central park turned into a nationwide anti-government protest which demands the removal of the democratically elected government. But the case of Turkey is bit different as the government could manage the situation and control the eager awaiting army.
Now the question is why these democratically elected governments are targeted? The answer is the similarity in their ideology which is considered as a threat by the US ad Israel for the region. All these parties are termed as Islamist Parties which came to power through democracy which has always been seen as a foe of Islamist. Here we see a new trend where the Islamists who were never in the good books of the US are accepting the democratic form of politics and also becoming successful in this. The US and the west which claims to be the protector of democracy should have been happy but they are not and this was expected.
The US is more than happy to support those people whose are open enemies of democracy. The whole story lies in the fact that the Arab nations are evolving into democratic sovereign countries which means the entire power decision making will go into the hands of the people and the US friendly army generals and powerful families won’t have a say in the internal and external policies of the Arab country. We have seen how much of a problem is Iran for the US after the 1979 revolution which overthrow the Pehlavi rule and brought democracy in Iran. How can the US allow the countries in that region to do the same? So for the US policy makers democracy in Middle east is the real problem.
The fascinating thing about this entire sorry tale is the democratic struggle by the democracy loving citizens of Egypt. This is indeed a agitation which the world has never seen. The important fact to know is that these protests are going on under the most barbaric form of repression from the Army. The killing of innocent protestors by Egyptian government has even over shadowed the mass killing on innocents in Syria and Palestine.
As we are reading this article hundred more protesters are being killed but still the spirit of agitation never agrees to die. This is the most important lesson for all the activists, political parties and organizations which work for social justice. The oppressive regimes have no limits to their brutality and they will go to any level to save their power. The people of Egypt are setting up an example before the world on how to fight an oppressive regime with only the power of determination and commitment. We need to understand that a struggle of such intensity never goes waste. The result and outcome of this struggle will be seen but we are cannot predict what will be the nature of the result. It is time to show solidarity towards these defenders of democracy and justice. It is time to let them know that we are with them and we respect every drop of blood they sacrifice for this noble cause.
(The author is Bangalore based Software Engineer and a human rights activist and columnist. He is also a member of the National Executive Council of Popular Front of India.)
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Egypt’s descent into chaos and the dilemma of Muslims