(The Obama administration is anxious that repression will exclude and alienate the Muslim Brotherhood and its mass following from electoral politics, but not anxious enough to cut ties with its main strategic ally, the Egyptian high command. Instead, it is trying directly and through Egypt's acting vice president, Mohamed ElBaradei, to restrain the military from further provocations.)
Crackdown in Egypt Fans U.S. Fears By ADAM ENTOUS Wall Street Journal July 29 2013 WASHINGTON—The Obama administration increasingly fears that Egypt's military, ignoring American appeals, is deepening a crackdown that could spark a sustained period of instability and lead members of the country's Muslim Brotherhood to take up arms. In a series of private messages in recent days, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other American officials warned Egyptian military leader Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi that his clampdown on the Brotherhood risked driving the Islamist group back underground, say U.S. officials involved in the discussions. Despite those exhortations, Gen. Sisi called for massive demonstrations on Friday, which precipitated the deadliest single incident in the more than two years since Egypt's revolution. The U.S. also had sent messages urging calm to Brotherhood leaders, but officials said the group, like the military, showed little sign of backing down. At least 74 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured early Saturday when security forces fired live ammunition on Brotherhood backers during chaotic counter-demonstrations by both sides. On Sunday, the scene in Cairo was mostly calm and Western diplomats expressed hope that a European Union delegation, led by foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, would be allowed to visit with former President Mohammed Morsi on Monday. Such a visit, the first since Mr. Morsi's arrest, could be a sign that Gen. Sisi may be trying to lower the temperature and respond to American and international demands, U.S. officials said. The weekend's violence underscored a philosophical split between Washington and Cairo about how to handle the Brotherhood followers of Mr. Morsi, who was ousted by the military on July 3. The developments also reflected the limits of U.S. influence in Egypt despite $1.5 billion a year in aid to Cairo and decades spent building up military-to-military ties, U.S. officials acknowledge. As little as three weeks ago, U.S. officials thought demonstrations were starting to die down and that Gen. Sisi was open to reaching out to the Brotherhood. Saturday's violence, however, convinced many top officials in Washington that the outlook for reconciliation was increasingly bleak. Many administration officials are mystified by the harder line being taken by both Gen. Sisi and the Brotherhood. "None of us can quite figure this out," a senior U.S. official said. "It seems so self-defeating." Despite repeated U.S. appeals for the military to avoid harsh tactics, Egypt's interim civilian government moved toward reviving the police state that characterized the widely hated regime of longtime former President Hosni Mubarak. On Sunday, the government granted soldiers the right to arrest civilians, reviving sections of an emergency law under Mr. Mubarak. A day earlier, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said he planned to reconstitute a secret police unit that was responsible for decades of oppression under Mr. Mubarak. In the run-up to the coup, Gen. Sisi privately voiced his own concerns to U.S. officials about the prospects of a violent showdown between Islamists and non-Islamists, according to officials involved in the discussions. Gen. Sisi argued at the time that such anarchy could be triggered by massive street protests, these people said. U.S. officials now say Gen. Sisi's post-coup campaign against the Brotherhood risks igniting the very showdown that he told the Americans his coup was meant to head off. Exacerbating the dangers, U.S. and Egyptian officials say, has been a flood of arms into Egypt from the ungoverned eastern half of Libya, which has sowed instability, particularly in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. When Gen. Sisi met Mr. Hagel in Cairo in April, he specifically raised concerns about the flow of arms and asked the Pentagon chief to help press the Libyan government to more closely police the border, U.S. officials say. Mr. Hagel has been the primary channel for passing U.S. messages to Gen. Sisi, officials said. But U.S. officials say they think the biggest danger now is that the military's current tactics could be radicalizing some members of the Brotherhood by suppressing the group and by denying it a legitimate role in the country's political life. U.S. officials say the Muslim Brotherhood could wage a sustained civil disruption campaign in cities across the country, leading to widespread street clashes, and paralyzing the economy and the political process. Of particular concern to the Americans are radical elements within the Brotherhood who could turn to violence, U.S. officials said. A senior U.S. official said the U.S. doesn't know if the Brotherhood is preparing for an armed fight but added: "We're not discounting the possibility." "The danger of that goes up if they're driven underground," said another administration official involved in talks with Gen. Sisi and other Egyptian leaders. Mourad Mohammed Ali, a former spokesman for the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, said the group shunned violence. However, he warned that individual Brotherhood members who feel threatened may not always abide by that philosophy. In private talks between U.S. and Egyptian leaders, the U.S. has advocated what officials called an "inclusiveness strategy." It seeks to bring the Brotherhood back into the political process, offering its members a path forward that would give them a shot at holding elected office again. Administration officials say they fear Gen. Sisi was adopting a "suppression strategy," pointing to his plans to prosecute the former president and to his new security decrees. Mr. Mubarak, who was deposed in February 2011 after a previous wave of protests, stoked tension with the U.S. by seeking to suppress the Brotherhood. U.S. efforts to keep the two sides from a complete rupture has underpinned a series of American decisions since the military ousted Mr. Morsi, current and former officials say. Wary of exacerbating tensions and losing what limited leverage the U.S. has, the administration decided last week to sidestep labeling the removal of Mr. Morsi by the military a coup, a determination that could have compelled a cutoff of U.S. aid. The administration feared that if it had formally declared what happened a coup many Egyptians would have seen it as a sign that the U.S. was backing the Brotherhood and, thereby, would have emboldened the group to step up street protests, increasing the risk of clashes with the Egyptian military. A bigger factor for policy makers, officials say, was the conclusion that the U.S.'s goal of promoting democracy in Egypt wouldn't be advanced by calling it a coup because doing so would alienate the generals and other leaders who the U.S. is now counting on to foster an inclusive democratic process. At the same time, the U.S. has sought through quiet diplomatic channels to pull the Brotherhood back from the brink. Officials think Brotherhood leaders have been as inflexible as Gen. Sisi in some ways. The U.S. message to the Brotherhood, conveyed by American officials, Qatari emissaries and others, is that it can still have a political future in Egypt despite the coup, and should participate in reconciliation with the military and secular groups. "The Muslim Brotherhood needs to know that, regardless of what happened on July 3, that there is a place for them in the political future of Egypt," a senior Obama administration official said. To that end, the U.S. has urged the interim Egyptian government to allow the Muslim Brotherhood's political party to participate in planned parliamentary elections slated for next year. If the military doesn't agree, the Americans have warned Gen. Sisi that the violence will only fester, an official said. Fear of potential violence was underscored by the reaction to Mr. Morsi's downfall from al Qaeda-affiliated groups. Somalia's al-Shabaab said in a Twitter message this month that the Brotherhood should "turn to the one and only solution for change: Jihad," according to the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project, which monitors al Qaeda-linked websites. A message earlier this month on the Twitter account of the media arm of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, based in North Africa, said that the youth of Egypt should prepare for "a mountain of body parts and seas of blood." Critical Threats analysts also said they expected al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri, an Egyptian, to repeat his call for violence. Before the weekend crackdown, U.S. officials credited frequent U.S. contacts with Gen. Sisi with helping temper some of the military's actions. The violence over the weekend, however, has ratcheted up U.S. alarm and prompted the administration to deliver sharper warnings to Gen. Sisi and other leaders about the dangers of an escalation. Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday called Egypt's acting vice president, Mohamed ElBaradei, to urge civilian leaders to "exercise influence" on the military to let up the pressure and avoid further provocations. Many top Obama administration officials are particularly unnerved by the way the Egyptian military has treated Mr. Morsi and his top aides and ignored U.S. appeals for leniency. "OK, [Mr. Morsi and his advisers] weren't geniuses at governing. But they don't deserve to be thrown in jail like this," a senior Obama administration official said. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
