The Legacy of Egypt’s Arab Spring
PODCASTSFeb
16, 2021MICHAEL WAHID HANNA, ELMIRA BAYRASLI
Ten years after a popular uprising overthrew a dictator, Egypt largely
appears to be back where it started. Why were Egyptians’ democratic hopes
dashed, and can they still be realized?
Project Syndicate · The Legacy of Egypt’s Arab Spring | Michael Wahid Hanna
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Elmira Bayrasli: Welcome to
Opinion Has It. I’m Elmira Bayrasli
Archive recording: It was the year of
people power, of revolution ...
Archive recording: From Tunisia to
Egypt, from Libya to Syria.
Archive recording: We’re in this ’til
the end, even if it means we’re going to die ...
EB: The Arab Spring. A decade ago, the
phrase evoked a sense of hope and renewal. But the anti-government protests,
uprisings, and armed rebellions it described left many countries in the Middle
East worse off. Nowhere is this truer than Egypt.
Archive recording: Egyptians filled
Tahrir Square in the center of Cairo.
EB: Of course, tens of thousands of
protestors did not flood Tahrir Square in early 2011 without reason.
Archive recording: For 18 straight days,
millions of Egyptians demonstrated in the streets and squares of the country’s
cities ...
Archive recording: In Tahrir Square, the
liberated zone, the anti-Mubarak protesters will tell you fear has been
defeated. There’s no turning back.
EB: Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year presidency
had been built on strong-arm tactics, cronyism, and an alliance with the West.
When the protests erupted, Mubarak’s regime initially responded with violent
repression.
Archived recording: Consequently, the
demands and chants shifted to a simple and very clear one: “...the people
demand the fall of the regime.”
EB: Mubarak’s position turned out to
be weaker than he thought.
Archive recording: Breaking news out of
Egypt that the vice president of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, has just announced that
President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down.
Omar Suleiman and translator: President
Mohammed Hosni Mubarak has decided to waive the office of the president of the
Republic and instructed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to run the
affairs of the country.
EB: After parliamentary elections in
November 2011, a democratic future is seen as within reach, but ten years
later, with the military firmly back in charge, are Egyptians any better off?
[ringing]
Michael Wahid Hanna: Hello?
EB: Hi, Michael.
EB: Here to discuss Egypt’s situation
and prospects is Michael Hanna.
MWH: I’m on my phone right
now because I need ...
EB: Michael is a senior fellow at the
Century Foundation and a non-resident fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and
Security.
MWH: There we go. Okay.
EB: He joins us from Brooklyn.
Michael, I want to start by talking about the situation in Egypt back in 2011.
Hosni Mubarak had been in power for nearly 30 years and he survived multiple
assassination attempts. What conditions made his rule vulnerable?
MWH: Well, you know, people
have since thought the conditions that could lead to an uprising were obvious
all along, you know, growing inequality, an economy that wasn’t providing for
its people, severe repression, our rising tide of Islamist sentiment. I mean,
all of these things existed more or less for, you know, many, many, many years.
So, all of those vulnerabilities were not new in 2011. You know, in 2010, if
you asked most people, “Is Egypt on the cusp of a revolution?”, the answer
would have been no. We had all become somewhat inured. We would sort of, in pro
forma fashion, talk about all the ways in which Egypt had vulnerabilities. But
the assumption really, I think for most people, was that Egypt would muddle
through.
EB: You’ve said that Mubarak created a
controlled opposition as a safety valve to ensure stability. What did that look
like and how did it help bring about his downfall?
MWH: Well, you know, there,
there have been forces, obviously trying to open space for dissent and
opposition for many years. The goal of the Mubarak regime was to sustain their
regime. And this was an approach that was adopted, which was essentially to
have many of the trappings of democratic life, but obviously not an actual
democracy. So, there was a parliament, there were elections, opposition
candidates won some of those elections. So, you have this constellation of
parties that engaged in politics, but obviously they didn’t hold real power.
And so this was the sense of a controlled opposition. Most of these parties
were co-opted. We wouldn’t call them a true opposition. You also saw the rise
in those, you know, those ten years, really prior to the uprisings, you saw the
rise of a semi-free press. The press started to expand its boundaries a little
bit. We saw more direct dissent and criticism, but within red lines, you know,
you didn’t go near the president’s health. You didn’t talk about his son. You
didn’t talk about succession and the very obvious plan to install Gamal Mubarak
as his father’s successor. You know, if you stayed away from those very
sensitive topics, you could say some things. You could engage in criticism of
other aspects of the government. And so you had these kinds of, what I have
called, safety valves. You also had different kinds of safety valves in the
sense that the regime would let people protest about things like the Iraq War
or in support of Palestinians during the second intifada. But all of these
things that the Mubarak regime adopted as ways to control, co-opt, and manage
opposition, I think in the end laid many of the building blocks that eventually
helped propel the uprising forward.
EB: One reason the protests were so
effective is that they had support from such a broad swath of the population,
but this was, in Michael’s words, a bond of the lowest common denominator. And
once Mubarak was out of power, it quickly crumbled. So, too, did the foundation
on which a stable democracy could be built.
MWH: You know, you did have
this broad cross section of the Egyptian people out in the streets, but that
tactical alliance was pretty shallow. You know, what is it exactly that they
agreed upon? There were slogans. “Bread, Freedom, [and] Social Justice” was
one. Another slogan focused on “Dawla Madaniyya,” a civil state. This was a
kind of ineffectual rapprochement between Islamists and non-Islamists, because
civil state doesn’t mean a whole lot. And so, you know, you could all tout this
very shallow expression about support for a civil state in distinction to a
military state, a military-led state. And that’s something that comes to
prominence immediately after Mubarak’s fall. But the relevant, salient issue
here is that these groups didn’t agree on a whole lot. And some of these
groups, more importantly, didn’t have programmatic political ideas, you know,
beyond the aspirational, beyond the hope of getting rid of Mubarak and chanting
slogans. It’s a very different thing to translate that into political life and,
even more so, to translate that into governance. These were things that became
very clear over time as, as massive failings. And they laid bare the kind of
autocratic trap that had really gripped the Arab world, in which, you know, civil
society, other kinds of institutions like political parties that could support
a healthy functioning political space, had been repressed for many, many
decades. And so when the time came for these kinds of organizations to try to
fill this huge vacuum, they couldn’t. They didn’t exist.
EB: This contributed to a messy
transition.
Archive recording: The defense minister,
Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, heads the High Military Council, which is in charge.
EB: The High Military Council, which
rules Egypt’s powerful military, is officially called the Supreme Council of
the Armed Forces or the SCAF.
Archive recording: It’s expected to
dissolve both houses of parliament soon and manage a transition to elections
with a civilian head of the constitutional court.
EB: The SCAF promised to rule for six
months, or until general elections were held, whichever came first, but
protesters continued to push back and face brutal repression.
Archive recording: Reports from Cairo’s
main morgue say at least 33 people have been killed. More than 1,500 have been
wounded in the military government’s crackdown. Some of the dead were
reportedly killed by live ammunition fired by Egyptian forces. Protestors have
also been attacked with rubber bullets, tear gas, and physical abuse.
EB: Meanwhile, Egypt’s Islamist
liberal and secular nationalist groups continue to argue. Finally, in November
2011, parliamentary elections gave voters the chance to pick their side.
Archive recording: Nine months after
their revolution pushed dictator Hosni Mubarak from power, millions of
Egyptians returned to the streets today, but this time to vote.
Archive recording: Over 50 political
parties are contesting the elections, along with thousands of candidates
running as independents.
EB: The Muslim Brotherhood, an
Islamist party, came out on top.
MWH: The Muslim Brotherhood
had a robust political organization that existed throughout Egypt. It had a
political party that had for many years engaged in electoral politics and
contested parliamentary elections. It wasn’t new to them. And the Muslim
Brotherhood were the only true opposition party, effectively. Most of the other
parties that engaged in parliamentary elections in the Mubarak era were
co-opted opposition parties. When Mubarak fell, they had this massive organizational
advantage that they used and, you know, they have a base, they have a real
constituency within Egyptian society. Then, many other Egyptians were willing
to give them a shot. They had seen them oppose Mubarak previously. They thought
that they would, as they had campaigned on many years previously, you know,
that they would combat corruption and they were something different. And so
there was another segment of society that was not members of the Muslim
Brotherhood, not even Islamists, but were willing to give them political
support in this first post-Mubarak election.
EB: That support persisted through the
2012 presidential election, which was won by Mohamed Morsi.
Archive recording: Egypt has a new
president this evening, Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Archive recording: This is the first
time modern Egypt will be headed by an Islamist. Morsi is also the first in
modern times not to come from the military.
EB: As Egypt’s first democratically
elected leader, Morsi promised inclusive reforms.
Mohamed Morsi, archive recording
(translated from Arabic): We will work to ensure that the Egyptian value
system, in its civilized tradition, incorporates universal values that pertain
to freedom.
EB: The dawn of a new age of Egyptian
democracy appeared to be coming, but that age never arrived. Michael, you’ve
written extensively on the failures of both the Muslim Brotherhood and of its
leader, Mohamed Morsi, whose choices, you have argued, drove the transition off
course. What were their biggest mistakes and why were they so disastrous for
Egypt’s democratic prospects?
MWH: Yeah. You know, one
thing that I would tell lots of people often in that period of 2011, 2012, was
that, you know, these elections were a reflection of what remained at the end
of the Mubarak era. This was a reflection of the end, more so than a reflection
of where Egypt was necessarily going. And so it wasn’t surprising that the
Muslim Brotherhood were where they were at that time. My argument to the
Brothers and others looking, and from the outside, trying to help, and Egyptian
political actors was that the landscape you see now is going to change. If you
look at other post-autocratic transitions, politics looks incredibly different
five, ten, 15 years down the road. Don’t assume that this is what it’s going to
look like. You know, I think the Brothers basically assumed that they were
Egypt. They were the opposition, they were going to run the country and now was
the time to really grab all of the levers of power. And in so doing, they, I
think, they fundamentally crippled the trajectory of politics, because they
sowed a huge amount of distrust. A lot of my focus on that period and on the
Brotherhood’s role is because there was an opening in 2011 after the fall of
Mubarak. It was genuine. It was an opening that had transformational potential
and as opposed to trying to create the framework to both sustain civilian-led
politics and to begin a process of reform and, crucially, linking up with other
civilian actors in a way that could build trust, such that civilians would push
politics forward and not turn to the military, which, you know, I think is the
kind of original sin of the transition from the start after Mubarak fell. And
the Brotherhood didn’t choose to do that.
EB: This failure proved lethal for
Egypt’s democratic transition. On July 3, 2013, amid widespread protests, the
military staged a coup.
Archive recording: Jubilation erupting
on Tahrir Square as the news spread that President Morsi had been deposed.
Archive recording: In a speech to the
nation, the head of the military said they were responding to the calls of the
people. The military also blamed Morsi for failing to unite Egyptians.
Archive recording: Millions of citizens
have taken to the streets in Cairo, but is this a people’s coup or one
strong-armed by the military?
EB: Morsi was arrested, a new interim
government was formed, and the Brothers were outlawed. General Abdul Fattah
al-Sisi, Morsi’s own minister of defense, led the coup. A year later, he became
president and has ruled the country with an iron fist ever since.
Archive recording: Sisi has gone after
free expression, civil society, and rivals both in the political and military
realms.
EB: With the consolidation of Sisi’s
military-backed regime, Egypt’s uprising appeared to have failed. Michael, many
have argued that Egypt’s politicized and overreaching military was a major
structural barrier to democracy. Given its historical role in the country, was
a coup inevitable?
MWH: No, definitely not.
You know, I think it’s the product of decisions and decision-making and myopia
on the part of all of Egypt’s political actors, you know, the generals, the
Brothers, the other non-Islamist opposition who thought also that they could,
you know, strike their own deal with the military. A lot had to happen for a
coup to take place. You know, ironically, when Sisi came into power as defense
minister, it was widely seen as a sign that the Egyptian military wanted to
step back, that they didn’t want to be a kind of frontline political actor and
that they were, you know, happy to let, at least on many, many issues, let
civilians rule as long as they stayed away from the kind of issues of
sovereignty and national security and national defense. And, of course, that’s
not what happened at all, but it took steps. It took decisions. It took certain
actions to lead the Egyptian military back directly into Egyptian political
life in a way that was, you know, that Egypt hadn’t seen for many decades,
since the heyday of the free officers under Nasser, when Egypt was rightly
described as a military state. When Morsi is elected president, there are
inbuilt tensions and suspicions between and among these groups. You know, the
military is traditionally quite suspicious of the agenda of the Muslim
Brotherhood, believing it to be transnational, believing it to be,
fundamentally, a danger to Egyptian national security, and of course, a long
history of friction. So, you know, so that is an underlying reality, but I
don’t think it is, or was inevitable at the time, that Egypt would so quickly
see a military coup. I think that that took a lot of doing.
EB: So forces within Egypt are only
part of the story. If you take a look, Egypt’s neighbors have also had an
impact. How have regional players influenced recent political developments in
Egypt?
MWH: Egypt has been a
declining regional power for many decades. There's no question about that. The
Gulf states have obviously come to fill some of the void left by the collapse
of the old Arab state system. I mean, if we look at, some of the pillars of
that system are Egypt and Iraq and Syria. It’s not surprising that the Gulf has
stepped in and Egypt has been quite reliant on the Gulf. Its Gulf patrons
enabled the coup of 2013. The financial-aid package that effectively was $20
billion of assistance from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Kuwait made the coup
possible. Without the reassurance of that financial assistance. I’m not sure
that the coup would have happened. And, you know, since that time, there have
been serious frictions between Saudi Arabia and Egypt and the United Arab
Emirates and Egypt. It hasn’t been a particularly seamless relationship, and
that’s not surprising, because Egypt doesn’t see itself as a kind of secondary
inferior power. And it’s a very difficult position for Egypt to be in, this position
of reliance.
EB: Today, Egypt largely appears to be
back where started. In fact, it may even be worse off. More Egyptians live in
poverty, are unemployed, or languish in prison for their political beliefs than
ten years ago.
Archive recording: Many Egyptians
welcomed President Sisi’s military coup in 2013, but he has produced a rule
that is far more repressive than anything that happened even under President
Mubarak.
EB: As long as these conditions
persist, the possibility of another uprising can't be ruled out. But Michael
says that the transformational openings witnessed in 2011 are rare and
difficult to predict.
MWH: You know, the
conditions exist that could produce uprisings in many places and in many, in
many times, but they are the state of exception. They are not the norm. You
know, we don’t see revolutions, we don’t see uprisings. And of course, it is
such a complex and unpredictable coming together of various factors that
produces these events. And so we can note risk factors. We can say, here are
all the reasons why instability could happen, but I don’t think we can go too
far beyond that, because, you know, I can note all of the various risk factors
that exist in many countries in the region. And more often than not, they don’t
give rise to instability in a sense.
You know, repression is quite powerful.
It’s not a predictor of good governance by any stretch. In fact, usually it is
the opposite, but if you hold all of the course of power, and you have at least
the grudging acquiescence and support of the state and the security sector, you
can do a lot. You see that in Syria, where violence has destroyed the state,
but it has maintained the Assad regime in place, you know, at unfathomable
costs. There are reasons to think that another uprising isn’t as likely. People
are scared and tired. A lot of people became quite jaundiced about the
experience and saw the instability ushered in by the uprising and the toppling
of Mubarak as a setback to their own personal security and wellbeing. So,
there’s some alienation with the experience, you know. The capacity to organize
and to engage in political life is very limited at the moment. There isn’t
Egyptian politics at the moment, and those who engage in and try to engage in
politics do so at great risk, because the state has made clear that it is
willing to use violence and repression to squelch that kind of activity.
EB: So, given the issues you
mentioned, another Egyptian revolution seems pretty unlikely anytime soon.
Still, there are many that say that the country’s Arab Spring was less of a
failure and more of an ongoing process. Did the uprising lead to any positive
political or social changes that can still be seen today?
MWH: Yeah, I mean, was it a
failure? Well, I think if when we were in Tahrir Square ten years ago, if we
were told that this is where Egypt would be ten years into the future, I think
we all would have thought that was failure. You know, there’s, there’s no
reason to be definitive, to say that it’s done nothing, it has had no impact. It’s
not to say any of those things, but ten years on, the aspirations that really
animated the uprising, those have been dashed. They haven’t come to pass. You
know, that being said, of course, the uprising and its aftermath have led to
much reconsideration. I think people have gone into introspection about what
went wrong. So at that level of political experience, I think there is value.
Perhaps in the future, if there are political openings in terms of people being
better equipped to deal with that possibility. And of course, I think discourse
changed. You know, I think we saw that period of openness and dissent and
vigorous political contestation also had reverberations elsewhere on women’s
rights, on movements against sexual harassment, on LGBTQ rights. Things that,
you know, didn’t really exist in any meaningful way in Egyptian discourse. You
know, I think some of those things have gotten traction among some segments of
Egyptian society over time. And we see this now with, you know, effectively, a
renewed campaign against sexual violence and sexual harassment happening right
now. It’s not that it has had no impact or left no imprint, but in political
terms, in terms of what it produced structurally, of course, it’s been a
disappointment. It is an ongoing process. It will have reverberations many
years henceforth. But as we look at Egypt, now it’s hard to be anything but
dismayed at where it has ended up ten years since.
EB: Michael, thank you so much.
MWH: Thanks for having me.
EB: That was Michael Hanna, a senior
fellow at the Century Foundation, and that’s it for this episode. Thanks for
listening. We’d love to hear what you think about it. Please rate and review
our podcast. Better yet, subscribe on your favorite listening app. You can also
follow us on Twitter by searching for @prosyn. That’s P R O S Y N. Until next
time, I’m Elmira Bayrasli.
Opinion Has It is produced and edited by Kasia Broussalian. Special thanks
to Project Syndicate editors Whitney Arana and Jonathan Stein.
Opinion Has It is supported by listeners like you. Thank you.
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Michael
Wahid Hanna is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and a
non-resident senior fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York
University School of Law.
Writing for PS since 2016
3 Commentaries
Elmira
Bayrasli is the co-founder and CEO of Foreign Policy Interrupted and the author
of From The Other Side of The World:
Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places.
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