The blood-thirsty Egyptian Defense Minister and ruler Al-Sisi
Egypt is now under control of the reactionary militarists. All the forces that had been swept away have returned.
Is it a temporary roadblock to fundamental change? The last final kicks of the dying old horse? Yet the massacres have become so routine that the state of mind of the army commander Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi is becoming questionable.
Without a doubt, the forces of yesterday are running the show, with reports that a judge has now ordered the release of Hosni Mubarak, the deposed former military dictator.
It’s a sad period in Egypt’s history. Egyptians had endured more than 40 years of military-dominated authoritarianism under the regime of Gen. Anwar Sadat and then Gen. Mubarak.
Finally the Egyptians seized the opportunity when changes were sweeping across north Africa to demand for change through protest centered around Tahrir Square.
Egyptians forced the army to shove Mubarak to the sidelines, even though recent events and his reported re-emergence, may suggest he was never entirely out of the picture.
The Egyptians held an election, free and fair, which was won by The Muslim Brotherhood, an organization long suppressed by the military regimes dating back to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s.
After the Brotherhood’s victory, the army was reluctant to hand over power, suggesting that it would not report to the new president, Mohammed Morsi. This attempted coup before Morsi was even sworn in fizzled. After Morsi was sworn in the military started working feverishly to undermine his administration.
The military still exerts influence over the administrative apparatus of state, and soon, there was serious shortage of gas and long lines began to form at stations. Electricity was also in short supply as were consumer items.
The military also worked with the political parties that had been defeated at the polls to organize mass protests that immobilized Egypt. The defeated political class was not willing to wait until the next election.
Now the army had the excuse to launch the coup d’etat that it had tried even before Morsi’s swearing in. The new argument was that the Egyptian masses had forced the army’s hand. Mohamed El Baradei, a defeated presidential candidate, and once a respected nuclear scientist and Nobel Prize winner jumped on board and was appointed vice president.
The real power remained and still remains with the men with the bullets. General Al-Sisi, the army commander and chief of staff, soon ordered security forces to violently break up the anti-coup protests and camp cities that mushroomed in Cairo when he seized power.
Some of the victims were reportedly shot in the head by snipers. Since the massacres by the government forces started, even the state organs now report that close to 1,000 people have been killed. The Brotherhood reports that those killed or wounded number in the thousands.
El Baradei quickly resigned from his pact with the devil. The other opposition parties that are still in bed with Gen. Al-Sisi naively think that he will crush the party that won the election, through mass murder, and then hand over power to the opposition.
Talk about living in wonderland.
The acts by the Egyptian security forces, against unarmed civilians, qualifies as crimes against humanity. The soldiers and the senior commanders, starting with Al-Sisi must face justice at the end of the day. If the International Criminal Court (ICC) does not announce an investigation into the state-sanctioned murders then it must also drop the trial of Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and simply pack up. The court’s credibility has already eroded; it will cease to exist if no action is taken against Al-Sisi.
It’s shameful that Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, looking only at their short-term self interests, support the butcher of Cairo’s murderous military regime, ignoring the crimes carried out in broad daylight before international media.
Saudi Arabia, a retrograde monarchy where women are still suppressed and convicts beheaded is hardly the kind of mentor that Egypt needs. Kuwait can’t offer any lessons in popular democracy. Israel’s leadership clearly doesn’t care how many unarmed Egyptians are killed.
Moreover, even with the promised billions from Saudi Arabia, money alone can’t rescue restore stability in Egypt or confidence in its economy. The Saudis won’t write a check perpetually. They also can’t bottle up discontent as the Al-Sisi sanctioned massacres continue.
No long-term solution is possible without the participation of the party that won the elections and its leader Mohammed Morsi.
For now, Al-Sisi’s army has monopoly on arms. But Egypt is located in a region awash in weapons. Al-Sisi is behaving like the crazed disgruntled employee at a gas factory walking around threatening others with a lit lighter.
He risks, in the long-run, turning Egypt into another Syria and inviting radicalized warriors from around the world. If he truly believes he can kill off all the supporters of The Brotherhood then he is even more deluded than he already appears.
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