Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists support US-backed military coup - World Socialist Web Site

Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists support US-backed military coup - World Socialist Web Site 

Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists support US-backed military coupBy Johannes Stern 16 July 2013

As the army tightens its grip on Egypt, the reactionary implications of the July 3 coup are becoming ever more apparent. Pseudo-left groups who backed the coup--Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists (RS) and their co-thinkers, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the US and Britain’s Socialist Workers Party (SWP)--stand exposed as counterrevolutionary organizations.

They are responding by trying to cover up their complicity in the army’s moves to re-establish the political structures that existed before the overthrow of the Mubarak dictatorship, and by seeking to deny the obvious reality that a coup has taken place.

Early last week, the Egyptian military massacred at least 51 protesters in Cairo, wounding hundreds. Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) members have been arrested, including President Mohamed Mursi. 

The army junta, led by General Abdel-Fatah Khalil al-Sisi, is cobbling together a new government to enforce austerity policies demanded by international finance capital even more ruthlessly than Mubarak and Mursi before him.

The new government will largely consist of generals, ex-Mubarak regime officials, bankers and free-market economists who aggressively advocate repression against their political opponents and will impose the conditions demanded by a new loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The loan will lead to cuts to bread and fuel subsidies on which millions of impoverished workers and peasants depend.

During the coup, the RS functioned as a front group for the Egyptian military and its imperialist backers as part of the Tamarod (“Rebellion”) alliance. By backing the coup, Tamarod provided the military with the opening it needed to oust Mursi and create the conditions for a crackdown against the working class.In recent days, detailed accounts in the bourgeois media have showed how, in the absence of a revolutionary leadership in the working class, old Mubarak regime elements were able to use Tamarod to derail the mass movement and help them carry out the coup.On July 10, the New York Times ran an article reporting that remnants of the Mubarak regime were heavily involved in “preparing for the coup.”

 The Times writes: “Working behind the scenes, members of the old establishment, some of them close to Mr. Mubarak and the country's top generals, also helped finance and organize those determined to topple the Islamist leadership, including Naguib Sawiris, a billionaire and an outspoken foe of the Brotherhood; Tahani el-Gebali, a former judge on the Supreme Constitutional Court who is close to the ruling generals; and Shawki al-Sayed, a legal adviser to Ahmed Shafiq, Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, who lost the presidential race to Mr. Mursi.”

The article explains how these elements sought to rely on Tamarod to realize their aims. “Mr. Sawiris, one of Egypt's richest men and a titan of the old establishment, said…that he had supported an upstart groups called ‘tamarrod’” and “donated use of the nationwide offices and infrastructure of the political party he built, the Free Egyptians. He provided publicity through a popular television network he founded [Orascom Television] and his major interest in Egypt’s largest private newspaper,” Al Masry Al Youm .

Tamarod was never anything besides a platform for the bourgeois opposition and a brainchild of more secular sections of the ruling elite opposed to the MB on various political and economic issues, including questions of lifestyle. From the beginning, Tamarod aimed to rely on the military to oust Mursi and hand back power to former Mubarak allies.According to the Times, the former judge Gebali said in a telephone interview that “she and other legal experts helped tamarrod create its strategy to appeal directly to the military to oust Mr. 

Morsi and pass the interim presidency to the chief of the constitutional court.”Moreover, a July 15 account in the Times, titled “Egyptian liberals embrace the military, brooking no dissent,” acknowledges that this backing for the military coup is bound up with a rightward swing in the affluent milieu of Egyptian liberal and “left” forces. It notes that “the vast majority of liberals, leftists and intellectuals in Egypt have joined in the jubilation at the defeat of Muslim Brotherhood, slamming any dissenters.” 

They support the army, claiming it is needed to protect the homeland against retaliatory terrorist attacks by the MB.Summing up this rightward shift, Rabab el-Mahdi, a scholar at the American University in Cairo, declared: “We are moving from the bearded, chauvinistic right to the clean-shaven, chauvinistic right.” Another political scientist, Amr Hamzawy, described the celebration of the military takeover after the mass shooting as “fascism under the false pretense of democracy and liberalism.”

These accounts shed light on the reactionary character of the RS’ efforts to cover for the coup. These include the recent interview with RS spokesman Hossam El Hamalawy published on July 12 on the Jadaliyya web site. Hamalawy begins by downplaying the fact that there was a coup in Egypt. He cynically declares that he is “not really interested in getting into this semantics game about whether it is a coup or not. Because it seems this has become the obsession of most of the spectators and the commentators at the moment, as well as the revolutionaries.”He adds, “So when you say that this is a military coup (or period), and you just stop there, you give the wrong impression that the military had woken up one day and decided to take over. 

So that is why I am really cautious when it comes to using these terms, and I actually do not want to indulge a lot into the description.”Hamalawy’s attitude reflects the indifference and hostility of the RS’ middle class elements to the democratic and social aspirations of the working class. Dismissing the question of whether a reactionary coup has even occurred, he is effectively indicating that he considers the difference between revolution and counterrevolution as merely a trivial question of words.

In fact, Hamalawy and the RS are conscious of the counter-revolutionary character of their allies. In the interview, Hamalawy states that “the camp that was anti-Morsi basically contained this mish-mash of groups. Those who lined up against Morsi included the opposition parties from the National Salvation Front [(NSF)], and that would include Hamdeen Sabahi’s al-Tayyar al-Sha‘bi, El Baradei’s al-Dustur Party, as well as remnants of the Mubarak regime represented by Amr Mousa and others. 

Even among the anti-Morsi camp, there was definitely a presence also by the fuloul [i.e., members of the old Mubarak regime] represented by the supporters of [General] Ahmad Shafiq, the supporters of the deceased General Omar Suleiman, and by elements from the Egyptian upper class that are definitely against Muslim Brotherhood (but they are for the return of the old regime, or the Mubarak regime as it was).”

Hamalawy seeks to conceal the counterrevolutionary character of the RS’ collaboration with Tamarod by dishonestly claiming that these forces were not “the ones calling the shots. It would be a great mistake to say that it was the counterrevolutionaries who were at the top of or spearheading the movement.”This is simply an absurd lie. As a military dictatorship rapidly takes shape in Egypt, it is obvious that the Tamarod movement was a political instrument of counterrevolutionary forces that mounted a coup aiming to restore the old Mubarak regime.

 In fact, Hamalawy’s own account shows that the RS cooperated closely with the forces that he acknowledges were “counterrevolutionaries.”He says, “In so many governorates and provinces it was different political and revolutionary groups that took up the task of collecting the signatures from the people on the streets. It was not just some online operation. Some were done in coordination with the centralized committee of Tamarod, and other initiatives were done totally independent from it. So it would be difficult to put your finger on what exactly Tamarod is thinking.

 I mean, which Tamarod? Do you mean the Tamarod of the three cofounders and their official Facebook page? Or do you mean the local activists on the ground? So to say that the activists from the beginning had the intention of handing the country over to the military is also false.”Hamalawy’s attempt to introduce a certain distinction between the political program of Tamarod’s leadership and that of its “local activists on the ground” is a fraud.

In fact the RS wrote countless documents praising Tamarod as a “way to complete the revolution.” Its members campaigned for Tamarod in the streets. At the same time, the RS kept close ties to the Tamarod leadership, issuing joint statements supporting its program.On May 28 the RS cheered Tamarod leaders Mahmoud Badr and Mohamed Abdel-Aziz at their headquarters in Giza. Badr and Abdel-Aziz later flanked General al-Sisi as al-Sisi announced his “road map” for the coup on July 3. It included all of Tamarod’s key demands, such as the dissolution of the Islamist-dominated upper house of parliament; the appointment of the chief of the judiciary as president; and the appointment of a free-market technocratic government.

Immediately after the military takeover, the RS hailed the coup as a “second revolution” and sought to mobilize protesters to “protect their revolution” against the MB. In a statement on July 6, the RS asked the junta to take “immediate steps to achieve social justice…and write a civil, democratic constitution which entrenches the values of freedom and social justice.”

The RS’ fraudulent attempt to portray a US-backed military coup against the MB as a “second revolution” for social justice and democracy is all the more grotesque in that, only one year ago, the RS supported the MB as a revolutionary force against the military.In the first presidential elections after the revolutionary ouster of Mubarak, the RS supported the MB candidate, Mursi, against General Ahmed Shafiq, the preferred candidate of the military and the remnants of the Mubarak-regime.

 In a statement titled “Down with Shafiq... Down with the new Mubarak,” the RS claimed that a Mursi vote was a means to defend “democratic and social gains” of the revolution against the “counterrevolutionary candidate” Shafiq.When Mursi became president, the RS and their international allies praised Mursi and the MB to the skies. At the ISO’s Socialism 2012 conference, RS leader Sameh Naguib declared that “the victory of Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, is a great achievement in pushing back the counterrevolution and pushing back this coup d’état... 

Whenever there is the threat of counterrevolution, the Islamists will run toward the masses, will mobilize in the hundreds of thousands against the military regime.”The RS’ support for Mursi and the MB was in line with their long-standing orientation to Islamist politics. When the Islamists were in opposition under Mubarak, the RS advanced the slogan “Sometimes with the Islamists, never with the State.” 

Were the RS to state their position honestly, their slogan would be “Sometimes with the Islamists, always with the state and US imperialism.”While the RS never give any explanation for their extraordinary political shifts, there is one striking consistency in their political line: the RS’ twists and turns always mirror the shifts in American foreign policy.Since the beginning of the protests against Mubarak in January 2011, the RS always supported the section of the Egyptian bourgeoisie backed by the US to suppress the working class. 

Initially, the RS joined with ElBaradei and other bourgeois factions in calling not for the downfall of the US-backed regime, but asking Mubarak to allow “democracy, civil liberties and free and fair elections,” in a joint statement issued on January 21.After the protests developed into a mass revolutionary movement of the working class that toppled Mubarak, the RS spread illusions in the US-backed military that had taken power. They claimed that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces junta “aims to reform the political and economic system, allowing it to become more democratic and less oppressive.”

When renewed mass protests erupted against the junta, the RS opposed a “second revolution,” and--in line with the policies of the US state department, which established open relations with the Islamists--shifted to support Mursi and the MB.The political oscillations of the RS in line with the policies of the US State Department are rooted in the class interests the RS represents. It speaks for corrupt sections of the Egyptian middle class, closely tied to the bourgeois state and to imperialism.Its membership is largely drawn from among Western-oriented students, academics and journalists working for Western-backed Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), think-tanks and media outlets.

 Its most prominent members—such as Hamalawy, Naguib or Gigi Ibrahim—studied or teach at the American University in Cairo.Others, such as Ahmed Ali or Haitham Mohammadein, work for NGOs like the Budgetary and Human Rights Observatory or the Nadim Center for the Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence. These NGOs cooperate with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization directly funded by the US government.In a report last week titled “US bankrolled anti-Mursi activists,” Al Jazeera revealed the close financial ties between this petty-bourgeois NGO milieu and US imperialism. 

Citing documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, it established that the Obama administration “quietly funded senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for toppling of the country’s now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi.”The list of US organizations funding “anti-Mursi activists” includes the NED; the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI); the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL); and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Egyptian Revolution is only two and a half years old, but the RS are already exposed as servants of the Egyptian bourgeoisie and of world imperialism. At every stage of the Egyptian revolution, they have allied themselves with reactionary forces seeking to suppress the working class in order to improve the conditions for international finance capital in Egypt.Socialist-minded workers and youth in Egypt and internationally must draw the necessary conclusions from the record of pseudo-left groups like the RS. 

A revolutionary struggle for democratic rights and social equality requires the independent mobilization of the working class on a socialist program against such reactionary forces.

MILITARY COUP D'ETAT IN EGYPT Murder of Nascent Democracy

, by MOHAMMAD PERVEZ BILGRAMI
MOHAMMAD PERVEZ BILGRAMI analyses the scenario in Egypt leading to the ouster of the first ever, democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi.

In this Section African Union Suspends Egypt US Role in Egypt's Army Coup Exposed Muslim Ummah shouldn't Feel Discouraged President Morsi Victim of Western Conspiracy Is Obama Backing ElBaradei? Prosecution of Supporters Reminds of Mubarak Repressive Regime: MB FJP Headquarters Sealed Off without Due Process

Egypt’s first ever, democratically elected President Mohammad Morsi was ousted in a military coup on 3 July, almost a year after his empowerment. The Head of Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) and Defence Minister, General Abdul Fatah Khalil el-Sisi, who was appointed by Morsi last year, overthrew the President. It is pertinent to add that the US Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel spoke to General Sisi a day earlier, viz. on 2 July, and conferred Obama Administration’s consent to carry out the coup d’état.

Al-ʾIkḫwān Al-Muslimūn, popularly known with its English acronym “Muslim Brotherhood” (MB), was long suppressed by the military dictators of Egypt. The group remained outlawed under the then-president Gamal Abdel Nasser until the 2011 “revolution”. The Arab Spring demonstrations against the despots provided the organisation with an opportunity to come out from the closet. MB en-cashed the opportunity in the first ever free and fair, democratic process of electioneering in the country and won both the Parliamentary and Presidential elections after the popular uprising that ousted long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak from power.

Most of the experts are of the opinion that the full revolution never took place in Egypt as the whole bureaucracy, judiciary and other organs and institutions remained intact with the old regime left-over. After the removal of Mubarak, the revolution was stalled by Egyptian judiciary and military by just ousting Mubarak, his family and few close associates. The deep state cahoots never allowed President Morsi to perform freely and always created hurdle in the smooth functioning of the state.

Mubarak-era judiciary headed by the-then head of Supreme Constitutional Court, Ahmad el Zend declared the first freely elected parliament unconstitutional on the eve of Presidential election and later on barred all the Government efforts for the re-election of the assembly until the orchestration of successful coup d’état.

The deep-state in Egypt that remained vigorous, even after the fall of Mubarak, actively participated in the coup d’état. They have posed every hurdle in their armoury to stop the progress of democratically elected government in the country. Those who tolerated 30 years of Mubarak dictatorship could not tolerate a year of democratically elected Morsi government, because they never liked democracy to flourish in Egypt or elsewhere in the Muslim world.

National Salvation Front (NSF), a loose umbrella of liberals and Nasserites, always undermined the rise of MB in power as they could not digest the popularity of MB that had swept all the elections in post-Mubarak Egypt. The undemocratic liberals of NSF knew that they cannot beat MB in free and fair elections so they backed or even urged military leadership to stage a coup against the democratically elected government. Mohamed El Baradei, Amr Moussa and Hamdeen Sabahi could not cross even the first stage of Presidential race and are now vying for the political leadership of the country in an undemocratic way.

MB, the oldest and widely popular social organisation of the country, and its political wing Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) are deeply entrenched in Egyptian society. Decades of extreme oppression and torture could not quash the base of the organisation usually known for the charity, with chain of schools, hospitals and other public service utilities where state authorities have failed to deliver.

Most of the top leadership of MB, including deposed President Mohammad Morsi, are arrested and slapped with travel bans by the authorities. The broadcasting channels affiliated with MB and other Islamic organisations are off air since the coup d’état declaration. State run Al-Ahram news network reported that the crews of MB-owned Misr 25 were arrested, with staff at other channels allegedly evacuated from their offices. It is ironic that the so-called democratic liberals of Egypt are not only supporting the coup but trying to legitimise the undemocratic moves of the deep-state.
After decades of oppression and hardship and, acceptance of democratic process as the legitimate path to power, many Brotherhood supporters are angered and disillusioned by what is essentially the overthrow of a democratically elected president. They have made electoral legitimacy the most pertinent form of democratic legitimacy. The weeping Morsi supporters at Raba’a El-Adwyia mosque Square in Cairo tell the story itself.

In response to the army’s statement, Morsi delivered a recorded speech to a Brotherhood sit-in at the same Raba’a Al Adawiya Square, where they have been camped out since 30 June. He claimed in the speech to still be president, but is currently under house arrest. Similar to the speech a day before, he urged civilians and the military to uphold the law and not to accept the coup, which he said would turn Egypt backward.
Syrian Dictator, Bashar Al-Assad was among the first world leaders to congratulate the Egyptian Army for overthrowing President Morsi. Israel, on the other hand, is relieved after the fall of MB-led Government in Egypt so as the other monarchs of the Middle East. Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas of Fatah, the partner in “peace” with Israel, also congratulated the coup leaders of Egypt. 

The statements from the United States and the European Union did not even call the coup a coup; they were merely expressing concern and asking the soldiers to go back to a civilian rule as soon as possible.

Suffice to say, that although currently vilified, the Muslim Brotherhood is still the most significant part of Egyptian polity that will not simply go away after whatever happened since 30 June till today. It remains to be seen that the coup staged by General Al-Sisi will make him a “Pervez Musharraf” of Egypt or he will be compelled to reverse his decision before the time trickles out. 

Washington asserts its authority in Egypt
By Chris Marsden 
16 July 2013
US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns arrived in Cairo for two days of talks with the leaders of Egypt’s new military-backed government, amid reports that the US Navy has despatched ships and Marines to the Red Sea Coast.

Burns met interim President Adly Mansour and Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi. His visit was marked by mass protests by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and deposed President Mohamed Mursi, chanting “Down with the military regime! Down with the dictator! President Mursi, no one else!”

Last Thursday, Reuters stated that two US Navy ships patrolling in the Middle East had been moved closer to Egypt’s coast in recent days, citing Marine Corps Commandant General James Amos’ conversation with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
“Egypt is [in] a crisis right now,” Amos said. “When that happens, what we owe the senior leadership of our nation are some options.”

Amos said the USS San Antonio, an amphibious transport dock, and the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship, had moved further north in the Red Sea to make the movement of helicopters and other equipment easier. “Why? Because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.

DEBKAfile, which is close to Israel’s Mossad, claimed Sunday that the despatch was aimed at disciplining Israel and “as a deterrent to the generals in Cairo”—placing assault ships carrying 2,600 Marines off the coast that would “step in” if “Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his generals… took their persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood too far.”

A genuine concern for the US is the danger that the generals may succeed in transforming popular opposition to their rule into an all-out civil war—either due to the clampdown against their Islamist opponents or, in the longer term, due to the measures they intend to impose on the working class. However, this implies support for the generals, rather than opposition. The Obama administration is in fact playing a pivotal role in securing the regime created by the July 3 coup—diplomatically, financially and now militarily.

Burns’ official mission is to urge “an end to all violence and a transition leading to an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government”. He would discuss the transition roadmap and “the need to transition to a democratically-elected government as soon as possible, and the immediate need for all political leaders to work to prevent violence and incitement,” the State Department said.

To assume the pose of an “honest broker”, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki has supported German demands for an “end to all restrictive measures” against Mursi and other MB leaders. However, the US has still refused to designate the July 3 events as a coup, so that it can continue providing $1.3 billion in aid to the Egyptian military. Its polite urgings to the military come amid a massive, escalating clampdown.

Senior Brotherhood leader Essam El-Erian has said 240 Morsi supporters, jailed since a deadly clash with army troops a week ago, have had their detentions extended in a closed hearing in prison. He asked, “How could there not be a single lawyer for 240 defendants? This constitutes a serious violation of all the principles of the rule of law.”

An indication of the social forces behind the prosecution of the Brotherhood is the fact that investigators have questioned Mursi and others over their escape from Wadi Natrun prison during the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak.

The US is also ensuring that the regime is adequately financed through its regional allies, the Gulf Monarchies.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait have together pledged $12 billion in aid to Egypt so far, with $5 billion provided by the Saudi regime. On Saturday President Barack Obama discussed Egypt with King Abdullah.

Coup leader Al-Sisi clearly felt confident enough to defend his power grab, declaring Friday that Mursi had “entered into a conflict with the judiciary, the media, the police and the public opinion. Then [he] also entered into a conflict with the armed forces,” making comments about the military that “were considered a stab to the national pride.”

Pandering to US interests is a major factor shaping the transitional regime being set up under the auspices of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) as a civilian front.

Interim President Mansour appointed Al-Beblawi, a former finance minister and liberal economist who has worked with international financial institutions, as prime minister. El-Beblawi has named another liberal economist, Ahmed Galal, who has a PhD from Boston University, as his finance minister.

Nabil Fahmy, a former ambassador to the United States, is the new foreign minister.

The junta’s repression is so naked that the Salafi al-Nour party has declined to join the interim government. However, it is backing the regime from outside. “We are outside of the road map, but not outside of the political scene,” Nour deputy leader Bassam Zarqa told Al Jazeera.

It was left to Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and leader of the nominally liberal opposition, to take the post of interim vice president for foreign relations and provide a cover for SCAF’s manoeuvres. He has no mandate to speak of, but his role was made clear when Khaled Dawoud, a spokesman for the National Salvation Front, said ElBaradei was no longer the head of the umbrella grouping because “he is now a vice president for all Egyptians.”

Washington has again given its imprimatur to these sordid affairs, describing itself as “cautiously encouraged” by the timeline set down by the military for a new constitution and a new government by early next year.
The constitution being drafted is an anti-democratic monstrosity. Its new provisions include dropping the existing stipulation of a 50 percent share of seats for workers and farmers in parliament and the omission of any protection of the right to strike. The state can also legislate some form of forced labour, if this is deemed necessary. Military trials for civilians are also possible.
Islam and Sharia law as “recognized sources in the doctrines of the people of the Sunna and Jam’aa”—i.e. Sunni Islam—”are the main source of legislation.”

Of equal significance is the type of economic measures being considered, which would ruin vast layers of the population.

Foreign reserves have fallen by almost 60 percent since Mubarak’s fall, leaving just $14.9 billion in the state’s coffers—the equivalent of just three months of imports. This is to be rectified through a savage assault on working people.

In 2012 al-Beblawi described the Egyptian budget as “abnormal,” being made up of “things we do not make use of.” He suggested targeting not only wages, but also subsidies on fuel and wheat to pay back foreign lenders in a move that will drive millions into penury. Energy subsidies presently make up 33 percent of Egypt’s budget.

A quarter of Egyptians already live below the poverty line. Official employment is at 13 percent—3.5 million, but real youth unemployment probably stands at 82 percent. Fully 21.4 percent of the 27.3 million strong work force are temporary workers, and at least 46.5 percent of those employees work in the unofficial sector with no job security.

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