Tragedy is being compounded in Egypt with the armed police mowing down nearly 600 people in Cairo on Wednesday and injuring around 4,000 others, although the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood that was targeted claims that over 2,000 people were killed.
The fiercest day of violence since the July 3 ouster by the military of President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first leader to be elected in a fair ballot, betokens a politically worsening situation, leaving little room for political manoeuvre. This is why the next moves by the Brotherhood bear careful watching.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been Egypt’s most significant and best organised political entity since its founding in 1928, with no peer in Egypt in organisational terms other than the Army. As it remained underground on account of repression by the country’s secular military rulers from the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser, it has developed resilience and military skills, which it has revealed on more than one occasion over its long history. What happens in Egypt next is likely to depend primarily on how the Brotherhood, which came to power through an election a year ago but lost it after the military intervention, reacts to the fierce suppression it is now facing.
This would count for more than anything else. The battle lines are drawn. The Army, that enjoys backing outside of the Islamist constituencies and has been supported in the violence it has unleashed against the Brotherhood, has made up its mind that Mr Morsi will not be allowed to return and the MB’s threats or “terrorist acts” would be met with exemplary violence. In this situation, America’s room for manoeuvre is limited.
US President Barack Obama, interrupting his holiday, came out to criticise the shooting of unarmed civilians, but few are impressed. The Americans have cancelled next month’s joint military exercises with Egypt, but probably that is as far as it can go. If it cuts off the $1.5-billion aid to the military, it will risk alienating its key ally in Egypt which made a non-aggression deal with Israel way back in 1979. Thus, aid withdrawal by the US can render Israel, so critical in American calculations, more vulnerable.
Egypt influences the Arab-speaking world in a big way, but the military’s action has found favour with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE, influential countries that are extremely wary of political Islam. Thus, chances of Islamist unrest spreading beyond Egypt may not be high for now. To that extent, any calls for taking the Egyptian question to the UN Security Council, as Turkey has suggested, may be premature. All things considered, however, nullifying a fair election through military intervention, even if it was won by the Islamists, sticks in the throat of many.