News Analysis
Region Finds Peace Is Harder Than Revolution
By BEN HUBBARD and RICK GLADSTONE
The violence in Egypt has underscored how the Arab Spring has devolved into bitter political power struggles.
Mohammed Al-Shaikh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
People protested Bahrain’s government on Wednesday behind barbed wire placed by the police.
By BEN HUBBARD and RICK GLADSTONE
Published: August 14, 2013
BEIRUT, Lebanon — In Libya, armed militias have filled a void left by a
revolution that felled a dictator. In Syria, a popular uprising has
morphed into a civil war that has left more than 100,000 dead and
provided a haven for Islamic extremists. In Tunisia, increasingly bitter
political divisions have delayed the drafting of a new constitution.
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Hundreds Die as Egyptian Forces Attack Islamist Protesters (August 15, 2013)
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The Lede: Updates on Security Crackdown in Egypt (August 14, 2013)
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U.S. Condemns Crackdown but Announces No Policy Shift (August 15, 2013)
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Room for Debate
Is This the End of the Arab Spring?
Has the military's bloody crackdown in Egypt dashed any hope that democracy can thrive in the Middle East?
Mohammed Abdel Moneim/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A woman confronted a security forces bulldozer near a wounded protester.
And now in Egypt, often considered the trendsetter of the Arab world,
the army and security forces, after having toppled the elected Islamist
president, have killed hundreds of his supporters, declared a state of
emergency and worsened a deep polarization.
It is clear that the region’s old status quo, dominated by imperious
rulers who fixed elections, ruled by fiat and quashed dissent, has been
fundamentally damaged, if not overthrown, in the three years since the
outbreak of the uprisings optimistically known as the Arab Spring. That
was amply illustrated on Wednesday in Egypt, where a reversion to the
repressive tactics of the past was met with deep outrage by Islamist
protesters who had tasted empowerment.
What is unclear, however, is the replacement model. Most of the
uprisings have devolved into bitter struggles, as a mix of political
powers battle over the rules of participation, the relationship between
the military and the government, the role of religion in public life and
what it means to be a citizen, not a subject.
Middle East historians and analysts say that the political and economic
stagnation under decades of autocratic rule that led to the uprisings
also left Arab countries ill equipped to build new governments and civil
society. While some of the movements achieved their initial goals,
removing longtime leaders in four countries, their wider aims —
democracy, dignity, human rights, social equality and economic security —
now appear more distant than ever.
“The old regional order has gone, the new regional order is being drawn
in blood, and it is going to take a long time,” said Sarkis Naoum, a
political analyst at Lebanon’s An Nahar newspaper.
“All the people in those countries lived under similar suppression
despite the differences in their regimes, so the uprisings were
contagious,” Mr. Naoum said. “But nobody in Syria, Libya, Egypt or
Tunisia who wanted to get rid of the regime was prepared for what came
next.”
In many ways, the Arab Spring has revealed and exacerbated deep societal
splits, between secularists and Islamists and between different
religious sects.
“This is political polarization on steroids,” said Jeffrey Martini, a
Middle East specialist at the RAND Corporation. “You’ve got both sides
trying to banish each other from politics.”
In Tunisia, the birthplace of the uprisings, the moderate Islamist party
now in power has been unable to build sufficient consensus to draft a
new constitution, and opposition leaders have been assassinated. And in
the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, overwhelming force by the ruling
Sunni monarchy has failed to silence dissent by the country’s Shiite
majority.
Political exclusion has also afflicted Egypt’s transition. After winning
post-revolutionary elections, Mohamed Morsi, the now-deposed president,
and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood faced fierce opposition from
those who accused them of perverting democracy as a way of monopolizing
power.
Throughout the region, the upheavals have so far failed to address the
demands of millions of ordinary citizens who had clamored for change —
for jobs, food, health care and basic human dignity. If anything, their
grievances have worsened.
“Most Middle East economies buffeted by the Arab Spring were already
going in the wrong direction,” said Joshua M. Landis, director of the
Center of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Economic
distress caused by swelling youth populations, joblessness, rising
prices and drought, he said, had done as much to cause the uprisings as
political oppression.
In many ways, he said, “the Arab Spring is the canary in the mine shaft
for a broader problem — fragmented countries, too much population
growth, terrible education systems, too little water — these countries
are the losers.”
The current turmoil has left many Arab activists disillusioned with the
movements for which they had invested tremendous effort and often risked
their lives.
This is increasingly the case in Syria, where an originally peaceful
pro-democratic uprising has evolved into a sectarian civil war, with
extremist rebel groups that reject democracy playing an increasing role
on the battlefield.
“In the beginning it was a real revolution — I was excited to work, I
bought a weapon from my own pocket and sold land to buy ammunition,”
said Soheil Ali, who until recently led a small rebel group in northern
Syria. “Now it is completely different.”
Mr. Ali quit the fight in frustration over what he called corruption
among the rebels’ nominal leaders and the tendency of some groups to
stockpile arms instead of fighting to topple their common adversary,
President Bashar al-Assad.
Historians note that fundamental political change anywhere can take
decades or generations. The Prague Spring of 1968 may have failed, for
example, but it was a catalyst for changes in Eastern Europe that led to
the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
The European revolutions of 1848, a series of popular upheavals that
were the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history,
affected more than 50 countries but soon collapsed under the repression
of military forces loyal to royalties and aristocracies. Nonetheless,
they sowed the seeds of progressive political ideas that would help
shape European history for the next hundred years.
Historians said that given the repressive autocracies among Arab
countries, the convulsions in Egypt and elsewhere were painful but
inevitable.
“I am not writing these transitions off; I just think we’re heading into
a period of extreme unrest,” said Mona Yacoubian, a senior Middle East
adviser at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research group in
Washington.
Others noted that such turmoil often obscured subtle but profound
societal changes. For example, Zaid al-Ali, a constitutional expert
based in Cairo, said it had now become normal for citizens of Arab
Spring countries to insult their rulers — unthinkable only a few years
ago.
“This dynamic of free expression, of political liberalization where now
you have lots of political parties and people expressing themselves
freely, this will lead us in a positive direction in the long run,” he
said.
Mohammed al-Sabri, an opposition leader in Yemen, where protests pushed
the longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh from power last year, said
this general sense of empowerment was the most significant
accomplishment of the uprisings so far.
“The elites and the leaders in any society, whether it is revolutionary
or not, can resign and say, ‘I’m done,’ ” he said. “But the people
cannot resign.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 15, 2013
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a constitutional expert based in Cairo who said it had now become normal for citizens of Arab Spring countries to insult their rulers. He is Zaid al-Ali, not Ziad.
Chaos in Egypt
Fierce and Swift Raids on Islamists Bring Sirens, Gunfire, Then Screams
By KAREEM FAHIM and MAYY EL SHEIKH
Narciso Contreras for The New York Times
Mohammed Abdel Moneim/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Narciso Contreras for The New York Times
Narciso Contreras for The New York Times
Aly Hazzaa/El Shorouk Newspaper, via Associated Press
Sabry Khaled/El Shorouk Newspaper, via Associated Press
Mohammed Asad/Associated Press
Ali Sabaa/European Pressphoto Agency
Narciso Contreras for The New York Times
The military-backed government in Egypt had hinted at a milder clearing
operation that would last days. But when it came, protesters appeared
stunned by its fury.
Death Toll in Egypt Clashes Climbs to 525
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ALAN COWELL
Muslim Brotherhood supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi,
called for demonstrations on Thursday, a day after security forces
stormed two protest camps in a bloody assault that set off a violent
backlash across Egypt.
Death Toll in Egypt Clashes Climbs to 525
CAIRO — The death toll from Egypt’s bloody crackdown on supporters of
the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, soared beyond 500 across the land
on Thursday with more than 3,700 people injured, the Health Ministry
said, in a further sign of the extent and the ferocity of Wednesday’s
scorched-earth assault by security forces to raze two pro-Morsi protest
camps in Cairo.
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Fierce and Swift Raids on Islamists Bring Sirens, Gunfire, Then Screams (August 15, 2013)
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U.S. Condemns Crackdown but Announces No Policy Shift (August 15, 2013)
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News Analysis: Arab Spring Countries Find Peace Is Harder Than Revolution (August 15, 2013)
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Cameraman for British Network Is Killed in Cairo (August 15, 2013)
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Despite the growing tally of dead, however, Muslim Brotherhood
supporters of Mr. Morsi urged followers to take to the streets on
Thursday, a day after the assault on the camps set off a violent
backlash across Egypt and underscored the new government’s determination
to crush the Islamists who dominated the free elections over the past
two years.
Mohamad Fathallah, the Health Ministry spokesman, told the official Al
Ahram Web site that the toll so far stood at 525 with 3,717 injured. He
said the biggest concentration of killings, numbering 202, had been in
the larger of the two protest camps in Nasr City suburb, with 87
recorded in the smaller Nahda Square camp near Cairo University. A
further 29 deaths were reported from the Helwan area on the outskirts of
Cairo with 207 from other areas around the country.
The call for renewed demonstrations — threatening further violent
confrontation on the streets — came as an overnight curfew, ignored by
some pro-Morsi figures who gathered at a mosque and other places, drew
to a close and gave way to a brittle, muted calm in the city.
“We will always be nonviolent and peaceful. We remain strong, defiant
and resolved,” Gehad El-Haddad, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood,
wrote in a message on Twitter. “We will push forward until we bring down
this military coup,” he said, referring to the ouster of Mr. Morsi six
weeks ago.
The attack on Wednesday, the third mass killing of Islamist demonstrators since the overthrow, followed a series of government threats.
But the scale — lasting more than 12 hours, with armored vehicles,
bulldozers, tear gas, birdshot, live ammunition and snipers — and the
ferocity far exceeded the Interior Ministry’s promises of a gradual and
measured dispersal.
The violence spread to other cities, and Adli Mansour,
the figurehead president appointed by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi,
declared a state of emergency, removing any limits on police action and
returning Egypt to the state of virtual martial law that prevailed for
three decades under President Hosni Mubarak. The government imposed a 7
p.m. curfew in most of the country, closed the banks and shut down all
north-south train service.
On the streets Thursday morning, the authorities continued to tamp down
fires and clean up the debris of the razed protest camps. The city was
quieter than usual, witnesses said, as some residents had their first
glimpse of the damage.
The Interior Ministry said that 43 security personnel died, news reports
said, and there were indications that the tally was still mounting.
At one landmark mosque, relatives stood over the bodies of up to 240
dead, shrouded in white and laid out in neat rows. The ice keeping the
bodies chilled was melting as household fans played over the makeshift
morgue. Many of the bodies seemed to be badly burned. One man slumped
against a pillar, his face contorted in grief. By Muslim tradition, the
deceased are usually buried within 24 hours of dying.
On Wednesday, at least one protester was incinerated in his tent. Many
others were shot in the head or chest, including some who appeared to be
in their early teens, including the 17-year-old daughter of a prominent
Islamist leader, Mohamed el-Beltagy. At a temporary morgue in one field
hospital on Wednesday morning, the number of bodies grew to 12 from 3
in the space of 15 minutes.
“Martyrs, this way,” a medic called out to direct the men bringing new
stretchers; the hems of women’s abayas were stained from the pools of
blood covering the floor.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the main Islamist group behind Mr. Morsi,
reiterated its rejection of violence on Wednesday but called on
Egyptians across the country to rise up in protest, and its supporters
marched toward the camps to battle the police with rocks and firebombs.
Clashes and gunfire broke out even in well-heeled precincts of the
capital far from the protest camps, leaving anxious residents huddled in
their homes and the streets all but emptied of life. Angry Islamists
attacked at least a dozen police stations around the country, according
to the state news media, killing more than 40 police officers.
They also lashed out at Christians, attacking or burning seven churches,
according to the interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim. Coptic Christian
and human rights groups said the number was far higher.
The crackdown followed six weeks of efforts by Western diplomats to
broker a political resolution that might persuade the Islamists to
abandon their protests and rejoin a renewed democratic process despite
the military’s removal of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected
president. But the brutality of the attack seemed to extinguish any such
hopes.
The assault prompted the resignation of the interim vice president,
Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize laureate and former diplomat who had
lent his reputation to selling the West on the democratic goals of the
military takeover.
“We have reached a state of harder polarization and more dangerous
division, with the social fabric in danger of tearing, because violence
only begets violence,” Mr. ElBaradei wrote in a public letter to the
president. “The beneficiaries of what happened today are the preachers
of violence and terrorism, the most extremist groups,” he said, “and you
will remember what I am telling you.”
The violence was almost universally criticized by Western governments. A
spokesman for President Obama said the United States was continuing to
review the $1.5 billion in aid it gives Egypt annually, most of which
goes to the military. The spokesman, Josh Earnest, said the violence
“runs directly counter to pledges from the interim government to pursue
reconciliation” with the Islamists.
He said the United States condemned the renewal of the emergency law and
urged respect for basic rights like the freedom of assembly and
peaceful demonstrations. But he stopped short of writing off the interim
government, saying the United States would continue to remind Egypt’s
leaders of their promises and urge them “to get back on track.”
International condemnation of the military-based operation continued
unabated. In Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, an
ally of Mr. Morsi, called for an early meeting of the United Nations
Security Council to discuss what he labeled a “massacre.”
In Paris, President François Hollande summoned the Egyptian ambassador
to condemn the “bloody violence” and to “demand an end to the
repression,” the presidency said in statement. Mr. Hollande said
“everything must be done to avoid civil war,” the statement said.
Analysts said the attack was the clearest sign yet that the Egyptian
police state was re-emerging in full force, overriding liberal cabinet
officials like Mr. ElBaradei and ignoring Western diplomatic pressure
and talk of cutting financial aid.
“This is the beginning of a systematic crackdown on the Muslim
Brotherhood, other Islamists and other opponents of a military coup,”
said Emad Shahin, a professor of political science at the American
University in Cairo.
“In the end,” he added, “the West will back the winning side.”
The attack Wednesday began about 7 a.m. when a circle of police officers
began firing tear gas at the protest camps and obliterating tents with
bulldozers. Although the Interior Ministry had said it would move only
gradually and leave a safe exit, soon after the attack began several
thousand people appeared trapped inside the main camp, near the Rabaa
al-Adawiya mosque. Snipers fired down on those trying to flee, and riot
police officers with tear gas and birdshot closed in from all sides.
“There is no safe passage,” said Mohamed Abdel Azeem, 25, a wholesaler,
who had braved sniper fire to reach a field hospital.
For a time in the late afternoon, the Islamists succeeded in pushing the
police back far enough to create an almost safe passage to a hospital
building on the edge of what remained of their camp. Only a roughly
20-yard stretch in front of the hospital doors was still vulnerable to
sniper fire from above, and a series of Islamist marchers from around
the city flowed back into the encampment, bolstering its numbers.
But shortly before dusk, soldiers and police officers renewed their push, and the Islamists were forced at last to flee.
Three journalists were reportedly killed in the fighting: a cameraman
for Sky News, the news network based in Britain; a reporter for a
newspaper based in the United Arab Emirates; and a reporter for an
Egyptian state newspaper. Several others were arrested.
Egyptian state news media played down the violence, reporting that the
police were clearing the camps “in a highly civilized way.” In a
televised address, Mr. Ibrahim, interior minister under Mr. Morsi and
now under the new government, said his forces “insisted on maintaining
the highest degrees of self-restraint.”
In a televised statement, Hazem el-Beblawi, the interim prime minister
and a Western-trained economist who had been considered a liberal, cited
the Islamists’ supposed stockpiling of weapons and ammunition to argue
that the use of force was justified to protect the rights of other
citizens.
Michael Wahid Hanna, a researcher on Egypt with the New York-based
Century Foundation who was visiting Cairo, asked, “Is this closer to
being resolved tonight than last night?”
“Obviously not. I don’t think anybody has thought this through fully.”
Hundreds Die as Egyptian Forces Attack Islamist Protesters
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
The scale and brutality of the attack on supporters of the ousted
president, Mohamed Morsi, was the clearest sign yet that the old
Egyptian police state was re-emerging in full force.
COPY http://www.nytimes.com
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