Update on Egypt 1

Khalil Hamra/Associated Press

Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world, and its revolution in February 2011 was the capstone event of the Arab Spring, inspiring demonstrators in Libya, Syria and elsewhere.

But in June 2012, a series of events threw the country’s troubled transition to democracy deeper into confusion as Egypt’s two most powerful forces — the military establishment and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group — moved toward a showdown. A swift series of steps by the military and its allies in the judiciary left many observers in Egypt and the West wondering if they were witnessing a subtle military coup, or even a counterrevolution.

For decades, the Brotherhood had been the primary opposition to the military dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. When the unrest of the Arab Spring came to Egypt in January 2011, it was young liberal activists who ignited the protests, but it was the Brotherhood’s decision to join that gave them critical mass. Yet it was the military that ousted Mr. Mubarak the following month and took direct control. 

The generals were hailed initially as the nation’s heroes, a feeling that gradually turned to dismay as questions arose over whether they truly intended to hand over power.

The Brotherhood and the Military in Conflict

The Brotherhood was the clear winner in the parliamentary elections that ended in January 2012, holding roughly half of the seats. In March, the Brotherhood reneged on a promise not to seek the presidency. Its initial candidate was rejected by the courts on the basis of a Mubarak-era conviction, and the party’s back-up candidate, Mohamed Morsi, took his place.

In a first round of voting in May, the winners were Mr. Morsi and Ahmed Shafik, a retired Air Force general who had been Mr. Mubarak’s final prime minister. Mr. Shafik campaigned on promises to bring back law and order and to rein in “dark forces,’' a reference to Islamists. Liberals and secular activists, who had split their votes among two failed candidates, despaired at finding themselves caught between the military and religious conservatives.

On June 24, Mr. Morsi was declared by election regulators as the winner of the presidential elections. According to election officials, Mr. Morsi won 51.7 percent of the runoff vote on June 16 and 17; his opponent, Mr. Shafik, won 48.3 percent.

Judges and the Military Act

In June, days before the presidential runoff, the military and its allies on the judiciary took steps that critics charged amounted to a coup. The military council ordered Parliament dissolved after the court ruled that the law under which it had been elected was partly unconstitutional. In the same stroke, the military assumed legislative power and severely limited the authority of the presidency.

The charter the generals issued gives them control of all laws and the national budget, immunity from any oversight and the power to veto a declaration of war. The generals also seized control of the process of writing a permanent constitution.

When the polls closed on June 17, independent observers said that Mr. Morsi had narrowly won. But it was not until June 24 that the nation’s election commission confirmed that he was the official winner, handing the Brotherhood a symbolic triumph and a new weapon in its struggle for power with the ruling military council. According to the commission, Mr. Morsi won 51.7 percent of the runoff vote and Mr. Shafik won 48.3 percent.

On July 8, Mr. Morsi unexpectedly ordered that Parliament reconvene, in a direct challenge to the military and to the courts, which the next day both reaffirmed their actions in dissolving the body. But the authorities made no move to prevent the legislators from gathering for a brief session on July 10.

In late July, Mr. Morsi named Hesham Kandil as prime minister. Mr. Kandil, who is known as a religious Muslim but is not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was plucked from relative obscurity. The American-educated engineer headed the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation under the interim cabinet appointed by the Egyptian military.

Morsi’s First Crisis: An Attack in the Sinai

On Aug. 5, masked gunmen opened fire on an Egyptian Army checkpointin the northern Sinai Peninsula, killing 15 soldiers who were preparing to break their Ramadan fast. The gunmen then seized at least one armored vehicle and headed toward Israel, apparently in an attempt to storm the border, witnesses and officials said. An Israeli military spokesman said a vehicle exploded at the border, and another was struck by the Israeli Air Force at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip. It was the deadliest assault on Egyptian soldiers in recent memory.

The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said that the attack should serve as “a wake-up call” to Mr. Morsi about the growing danger in the Sinai and the border between the two nations. With the relationship between Egypt’s new Islamist leader and Israel still in its fragile infancy,the terrorist attack presented a critical opportunity — and a crucial test. Several high-ranking officials inside Israel’s government and numerous independent experts on Israel-Egypt relations said that the attack was the best evidence yet that the two countries are both threatened by lawlessness in the Sinai Peninsula.

The killings of the Egyptian soldiers, which represented Mr. Morsi’s first real crisis, have aggravated the political clash between the Muslim Brotherhood, on one side, and its more secular rivals including Egypt’s powerful military leaders.

Mr. Morsi abruptly canceled plans to attend the funeral of the 16 soldiers after protesters shouting anti-Brotherhood slogans chased the country’s prime minister from an earlier prayer service.

Mr. Morsi’s vulnerability stems from his closeness with Hamas, an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that governs the Gaza Strip. Mr. Morsi had promised to ease restrictions on Gaza by opening the border crossing and allowing goods, now smuggled, to pass through the border.

After the attack, some of Mr. Morsi’s critics cast his relationship with the group as a liability. Officials said that militants based in the Sinai carried out the attack, along with Palestinians who infiltrated the country through smuggling tunnels from the Gaza Strip. Despite the accusations, the Egyptian authorities have provided no information about the identities of the attackers, though they have said that an intense manhunt is under way for them. And though attention has recently been focused on the smuggling tunnels, many analysts here said Sinai itself is a more pressing source of concern as a place where militancy has taken hold after years of neglect by the government and heavy-handed treatment by the security services.

Three days after the attack, Egypt was reported to have launched its first airstrikes in decades in the restive Sinai Peninsula, deploying attack helicopters to strike at gunmen after the shootings of 16 Egyptian soldiers.

Morsi Ousts Military Chief

On Aug. 12, President Morsi forced the retirement of his powerful defense minister, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi; the army chief of staff, Sami Anan; and several senior generals. The stunning purge seemed for the moment to reclaim for civilian leaders much of the political power the Egyptian military had seized since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Mr. Morsi appeared to look to the support of a junior officer corps that blamed the old guard for a litany of problems within the military and for involving the armed forces too deeply in the country’s politics. They included Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, whom Mr. Morsi named as Field Marshal Tantawi’s replacement.

Mr. Morsi also nullified a constitutional declaration, issued by the military before he was elected, that eviscerated the powers of the presidency and arrogated to the military the right to enact laws. It was not immediately clear whether he had the constitutional authority to cancel that decree.

Mr. Morsi also named a senior judge, Mahmoud Mekki, as his vice-president. During the Mubarak era, Mr. Mekki fought for judicial independence and spoke out frequently against voting fraud.

While the leadership shuffle was proceeding, the Egyptian military pressed its campaign against the Islamists thought to have carried out the previous week’s attack in the Sinai Peninsula. At least five gunmen were killed in a village in the North Sinai, according to security officials and witnesses cited by Reuters. Strewn about the rubble were chemicals for making explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, the officials said.

U.S. and Egypt Step Up Talks on Security

In the wake of the attack that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers in early August, the United States and Egypt were negotiating a package of assistance to address what administration officials described as a worsening security vacuum in the Sinai Peninsula.

President Morsi balked in July when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta each separately pressed him to act more aggressively against extremists operating in Sinai. But after the attack, Egypt appears to have overcome its sensitivities about sovereignty and accelerated talks over the details of new American assistance, which would include military equipment, police training, and electronic and aerial surveillance, administration officials said.

While the American military has long had ties to its Egyptian counterpart, the deeper, more direct effort now under discussion could bind the United States and Egypt more closely against the shared threat of extremism. It could also overcome reservations among some in Washington about Mr. Morsi’s affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization long reviled by American officials for its anti-Western views and Islamist politics.

The Pentagon is discussing a variety of options for sharing intelligence with Egypt’s military and police in Sinai. They include intercepts of cellphone or radio conversations of militants suspected of plotting attacks and overhead imagery provided by aircraft — both piloted and drones — or satellites, the officials said.

The State Department’s annual terrorism report, released in July, said the northern Sinai had become “a base for smuggling arms and explosives into Gaza, as well as a transit point for Palestinian extremists.”

Compounding American concerns, the officials added, is the presence of an international peacekeeping force in Sinai that includes about 700 American soldiers. The force is not authorized to fight extremists and is not part of the discussions on expanded assistance, but its troops and civilians have encountered the lawlessness in the region, including the threat of kidnappings.

In College Paper, Chief of Egyptian Army Criticized U.S.

As a student at the United States Army War College in Pennsylvania, Gen. Sedky Sobhi, the new chief of staff of Egypt’s armed forces, argued in a paper that the American military presence in the Middle East and its “one sided” support of Israel were fueling hatred toward the United States and miring it in an unwinnable global war with Islamist militants.

The paper, written seven years ago by the general, offered an early and expansive look into the thinking of one member of the new generation of military officers stepping into power as part of a leadership shake-up under Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi.

General Sobhi’s sharp rebuke of American policy was especially striking because he now oversees the military institution that has been the closest United States ally in the Arab world, relied on by American officials as a critical bulwark in support of Israeli security and against Iranian influence. Despite decades of military collaboration, he urged a full pullout of American forces from the region.

Scholars say his paper is even more significant in part because many of its themes reflect opinions widely held by Egyptians, their new president and people throughout the region — an increasingly potent factor in regional foreign policy, as Egypt and other countries struggle toward democracy.

Recent Developments

Aug. 12 President Morsi forced the retirement of his powerful defense minister, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi; the army chief of staff, Sami Anan; and several senior generals. The purge seemed for the moment to reclaim for civilian leaders much of the political power the Egyptian military had seized since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Mr. Morsi also named a senior judge, Mahmoud Mekki, as his vice-president.

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