Abdul Fattah is trained in democracy and Md. Morsi tried to destroy democracy. Democracy is not about voting alone.
Egypt General Has Country Wondering About Aims
Narciso Contreras for The New York Times
A poster of General
Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi inside a travel agency near Tahrir Square in Cairo.
General Sisi deposed President Mohamed Morsi on July 3.
By KAREEM FAHIM
Published: August 2, 2013
CAIRO — When Egypt’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi, promoted
Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi to defense minister nearly a year ago,
sweeping away an aging cadre of generals, many saw it as a triumph for
the Islamist president, and for a fledgling democracy.
Multimedia
Related
-
Egypt Says It May Shut Entrances to Camps (August 3, 2013)
-
Kerry Says Egypt’s Military Was ‘Restoring Democracy’ in Ousting Morsi (August 2, 2013)
-
Morsi’s Visitors Leave a Mystery on Where He Is (July 31, 2013)
Michael Kappeler/European Pressphoto Agency
General Sisi, right, with Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle of Germany with in August.
Pool photo by Jim Watson
General Sisi, shown in April, has been confronted
with sit-ins and protests by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mr. Morsi had seized back broad powers from the old guard, and General
Sisi, known to be pious, seemed to have a close relationship with the
new president, even sending Mr. Morsi a laudatory telegram. “The men of
the armed forces assert to your excellency their absolute loyalty to
Egypt and its people, standing behind its leadership as guardians of the
patriotic responsibility,” it read.
Mr. Morsi is now a prisoner of the military, deposed by General Sisi on
July 3 after mass protests against the president’s rule. And the
telegenic general, who has cast himself as protector of Egypt’s security
and its very identity, is riding a wave of muscular nationalism and
pro-military sentiment that has led his adoring fans to liken him to
former President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
The conflicting perceptions of General Sisi — seasoned officer
reluctantly answering a call to serve, ambitious man with a “sense of
destiny,” as one person who knows him put it — leave much of Egypt
wondering whether he intends to return the country to civilian rule, as
he has repeatedly promised, or to capitalize on public support for him
by seeking power, formally or informally, for himself.
The American-trained general has been confronted with weeks of
continuous sit-ins and protests by the now-deposed Muslim Brotherhood,
overseeing the two worst episodes of killings of demonstrators by the
security services since the 2011 uprising. The authorities have ordered an end to two sit-ins in Cairo, raising the specter of a broadening crackdown on the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood had counted on winning broader support against General
Sisi after Mr. Morsi’s ouster, and then after the death of scores of
protesters. While the Islamists have maintained their vigils and marches
around the country, General Sisi has so far managed to stir up enough
support among opponents of the Brotherhood to generate backing for an
even tougher crackdown.
“The army stands neutral before all factions,” General Sisi told
Egyptians in a recent speech, saying that coming elections would be
supervised “by the whole world.” But in the same speech, he asked
millions of people to take to the streets on his behalf, to fight
“violence and terrorism,” a reference to his Islamist opponents.
“Shoulder the responsibility with the army and the police,” he said.
When Mr. Morsi picked General Sisi as defense minister, the general was a
rising star, having served as the chief of military intelligence while
drawing notice among defense officials in the United States. In 2005, he
trained at the United States Army War College in Pennsylvania, where he
seemed especially drawn to a course dealing with civilian-military
relations, according to his adviser at the college, Col. Stephen J.
Gerras.
At the war college, General Sisi wrestled with the question of
“Democracy in the Middle East,” the title of a paper he wrote. More
searching than dogmatic, the 17-page paper seemed to be heavily
influenced by the war in Iraq and was critical of American attempts to
impose democracy in the region.
He criticized the practices of autocratic governments without ever
singling out Egypt, saying they rigged elections and controlled the news
media using “outright intimidation.” Religious leaders “who step beyond
their bounds in government matters are often sent to prison without
trial.”
The Arab world needed to create its own version of democracy, he said,
mentioning a moderate religious foundation, education and poverty
alleviation as critical elements. Islamist groups needed to be included
in the process, “including radical ones,” he said.
After President Hosni Mubarak was toppled, General Sisi served on the
army council that ran the country, where he was said to have run the
negotiations with the Brotherhood, the country’s most powerful political
force. He kept a low profile, but his name surfaced at least once in
the headlines, when he acknowledged to Amnesty International that the
military had subjected female protesters to “virginity tests” — and said
they had been performed to protect soldiers from rape allegations.
“The whole idea was absurd,” said Salil Shetty, the secretary general of
Amnesty International, who met with General Sisi. The general said the
practice would stop, but took the “paternalistic” view that Egyptians
would expect the army to protect soldiers from such allegations, rather
than the victims, Mr. Shetty said.
After he became defense minister, General Sisi worked to improve morale
in his military, which was still reeling from criticism of its
stewardship of Egypt after the fall of Mr. Mubarak in 2011. He raised
salaries and pensions, and doubled the size of apartments for officers.
The general, who showed up to work at 5 a.m., visited soldiers nearly
every day, jogging with them in shows of vigor and attention that the
military publicized.
An officer who had been wary of General Sisi at first, fearing he was
too close to Mr. Morsi, said the general’s “daring” had changed his
views. “He gave me the best training,” the officer said. “He adopted a
new approach toward my administrative problems, and he showed me
financial appreciation. What more do I want?”
At first, the defense minister “kept a very, very low profile,” said
Hossam Bahgat, a human-rights activist in Egypt. “His appearances were
at graduation ceremonies. There were almost no comments on politics or
public affairs. There seems to have been a very studied approach to his
public profile.
“Then, of course, things changed,” he said.
In November, Mr. Morsi declared his authority above the courts,
prompting fears that he was becoming autocratic. In December, the
president’s Islamist allies rammed through a new Constitution, ignoring
the complaints about the process and the charter from non-Islamists,
further polarizing the country. Mr. Morsi struggled to win cooperation
from Egypt’s extensive state bureaucracy, as his enemies began to
circle.
At the same time, General Sisi, showing a knack for politics, made new friends.
When police officers went on strike, General Sisi held public dinners
with senior police officials and sent emissaries to negotiate labor
issues. When food poisoning sickened hundreds of students at Al-Azhar
University, the prestigious center of Sunni Muslim thinking, Egyptians
protested against the Brotherhood, which had tense relations with
Al-Azhar’s leaders.
General Sisi stepped in, sending ovens, deep fryers and other kitchen
equipment in a convoy of military trucks, to show his solidarity with
Al-Azhar.
Mr. Morsi’s colleagues accuse General Sisi of working to undermine the
president, for instance, by stepping in after Mr. Morsi seized new
powers in November, and publicly inviting political leaders to a
dialogue. One aide accused him of a more serious betrayal, saying the
general had met with activists who were trying to depose the
president. The general’s politicking — with Al-Azhar, and political
leaders — was not just a friendly gesture, Mr. Morsi’s allies say. When
General Sisi announced the military intervention that toppled the
president, the leaders the general had courted were sitting at his side.
In his speech last week, General Sisi categorically rejected the
allegations, saying he had never “conspired” and had repeatedly warned
Mr. Morsi to change course. He and other leaders in the military,
Egypt’s most powerful institution and a virtual state within a state,
were increasingly alarmed by Mr. Morsi’s behavior, diplomats and
analysts said. The anger started with a slight in October, at an
anniversary celebration of the 1973 war with Israel. General Sisi found
himself sitting near Tarek al-Zomor, a guest of the president who had
been convicted of playing a role in the 1981 assassination of Anwar
el-Sadat.
“Instead of sitting with officers who had shed their blood, he was
forced to sit with the killer of General Sadat,” said a colleague of
General Sisi.
The military’s discomfort grew as the economy plummeted and, in
particular, as a dispute with Ethiopia over access to water in the Nile
grew more serious. One diplomat said General Sisi had started to come
under increasing pressure from mid-ranking officers to act.
The generals were also disturbed by investigations into their own
wrongdoing. As one of his first acts, Mr. Morsi created a fact-finding
commission to look into the deaths of protesters during the revolution
against Mr. Mubarak, up until June 30, 2012, the last day of military
rule. The report included victim testimony alleging torture by members
of General Sisi’s military intelligence branch. Mr. Morsi refused to
publicize the report, and no investigations into the military resulted
from it.
Analysts and people who know the general said they believed he was
serious about returning the military to its barracks. The second-tier
leadership he represented when he became defense minister “didn’t just
reject the old guard,” said Michael Wahid Hanna,
who studies Egyptian politics and the military at the Century
Foundation. “They also didn’t appreciate the incessant and direct
interference in politics.”
The general’s speech about terrorism raised doubts, though. “I’m very
surprised he’s choosing to be front and center,” Mr. Hanna said.
Mr. Morsi’s fall was in some respects the latest phase in the continuing
battle for supremacy between the military and the Brotherhood, marked
by frequent deal-making and, now, open conflict. In the end, Mr. Morsi
was outmaneuvered, by a general who appealed to notions of Egyptian
identity that he had accused the Islamists of betraying.
General Sisi said the Brotherhood had started to turn a conservative
nation against religion. But the general, and the army he commanded,
would ensure that “Egypt remains Egypt,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment