{"id":346,"date":"2013-10-28T17:53:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T17:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cornellilj.org\/?p=346"},"modified":"2013-10-28T17:53:11","modified_gmt":"2013-10-28T17:53:11","slug":"egypt-the-enemy-of-my-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/2013\/10\/28\/egypt-the-enemy-of-my-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt: The Enemy of My Enemy, Vol. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CC Image Courtesy of Gigi Ibrahim<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Enemy of My Enemy: How the Revolution Died in Egypt<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Jordan Calazan Manalastas*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Christopher Hitchens who in 2011 said that Egypt is not so much a country with an army, as it is an army with a country.[1] Had Hitchens lived to see today, he would have witnessed his worry of Egypt\u2019s Revolution being \u201cpartially aborted\u201d[2] materialize instead along the lines of infanticide. Hardly one year after the inauguration of the Revolution\u2019s first elected president, the Egyptian military, led by General Sisi, ousted the Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and suspended the constitution.[3] Now, amid strained and bloody unrest in the wake of a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em>, the military regime has set its sights on Morsi\u2019s ideological cronies, the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One wonders whom, if anyone, to villainize. To be sure, the military toppling of a duly elected leader, followed by suppression of the remnant opposition, does not look like democracy. However, Morsi\u2019s attempt to exalt himself above the constitution[4] also did not help the credibility of an organization that touts, \u201cQur\u2019an is our law. Jihad is our way.\u201d[5] And this is to say nothing of the violence meted out like clockwork from both sides. Whether it is the process or the substance of democracy at stake, one can say at least that the Revolution\u2019s spirit has been sufficiently neutered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Coup or Not to Coup?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is something vaguely Orwellian in U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry\u2019s assessment that the Egyptian military \u201cdid not take over, to the best of our judgment\u2014so far.\u201d[6] And, in true Orwellian fashion, the effects of doublespeak are not confined to a bubble of semantics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Obama Administration has done the bare minimum of cutting, if only slightly, U.S. aid to Egypt\u2019s military, depriving an increasingly brutish regime of some of its favorite toys (like F-16\u2019s and Apache helicopters).[7] What the Administration has not<\/em> done, still, is to call the coup<\/em> a coup<\/em>, gingerly eluding the U.S. law[8] that withholds all<\/em> funds to governments usurped by military ambition. To the extent that this act of willful blindness permits the United States to further fund the Egyptian military, the Administration has lent the regime the livery of legitimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is tempting to defend the Administration\u2019s deliberate ignorance as a tacit endorsement of a problematic, yet justified<\/em>, military endeavor. According to this narrative, democracy is not built in a day; to make a democratic omelette, it\u2019s necessary to break a couple eggs. Certainly Morsi\u2019s presidency smelled rotten from the start. Among his chiefest sins in the eyes of his detractors were his attempts to exempt his acts from judicial scrutiny[9] and to privilege Shari\u2019a<\/em> law over secular concerns.[10] Within months, critics had bequeathed to Morsi the contemptuous title of \u201cEgypt\u2019s new pharaoh.\u201d[11] By the summer of his first year, mass protests called for Morsi\u2019s removal; dutifully, the military obliged. The coup<\/em> of 2013 was, in this light, not so much the negation<\/em> as it was the extension<\/em> of the long, protracted labor pangs of revolution. If it is true, as Ozan Varol<\/span><\/a><\/span> has suggested, that a coup<\/em> may be conducive to democracy,[12] then perhaps the Egyptian military is but the ward against a revolutionary hijacking by the Brotherhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Coup of One\u2019s Own<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One wishes there were wisdom in John Kerry\u2019s estimation, in July, that the Egyptian military is \u201crestoring democracy.\u201d[13] However, as the regime prolongs its honeymoon, that optimism looks troublingly indefensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, there is the problem of opacity: the aptly titled Court of Urgent Affairs banned the activities and seized the assets of the Muslim Brotherhood, offering little legal basis.[14] Further, when the military regime convened a group to scrawl a surrogate constitution, the Brothers were conspicuously uninvited;[15] Brotherhood leaders had a previous engagement behind bars.[16] Added to these democratic blunders are the detention of Mohammed Morsi at an undisclosed location[17] and the release of ex-dictator Hosni Mubarak from prison.[18] This point cannot be overstated\u2014this is the very same tyrant against whom the Revolution was waged. Thus, while General Sisi claims to act for the people, his record has erred thus far on the side of the ancien r\u00e9gime<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While opponents of the coup <\/em>languish in detention, the military has stacked civilian bodies by the hundreds.[19] General Sisi\u2019s reign has brought the reinstatement of emergency law[20] and the smothering of dissident media,[21] as well as the appointment of former generals to provincial governorships.[22] The result is a portrait of Egypt that looks oddly similar to what the Revolution railed against. One thinks of Chile\u2019s Pinochet or Argentina\u2019s Videla, who seized power in the face of an unpleasant Marxist threat, only to prove their respective regimes equally disagreeable (if not more).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between a military Scylla and an Islamist Charybdis, we see the latter subverting within<\/em> the law and the former perverting without<\/em>. The United States has had no recourse but to insist, almost impotently, on a more \u201cinclusive\u201d democratic process. Perhaps it is the luxury of a stable Western state to tolerate contrarian elements. In Egypt, however, such a prospect seems bleak. One sees already in Egypt the ugly symptoms of extremism in the Islamist attacks on Coptic churches.[23] Thus, what we have is a democratic deadlock, where the enemy of one\u2019s enemy is still the enemy, and both sides have forfeited the claim to act in the Revolution\u2019s name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a PDF of this article in formal, law-journal format, click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citation: <\/strong>Jordan Manalastas, The Enemy of My Enemy: How the Revolution Died in Egypt<\/em>, 1 Cornell Int\u2019l L.J. Online 50 (2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Jordan Manalastas is a J.D. candidate at Cornell Law School, where he is the Cornell International Law Journal<\/em>\u2019s Associate on Middle Eastern Affairs and a research associate for the Legal Information Institute. He holds an A.B. in political theory from the University of California, Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1] Christopher Hitchens, What I Don\u2019t See at the Revolution<\/em>, Vanity Fair (Apr. 2011), http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/politics\/features\/2011\/04\/hitchens-201104.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2] Id.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3] See<\/em> Egypt Crisis: Army Ousts President Mohammed Morsi<\/em>, BBC News (July 4, 2013), http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-middle-east-23173794.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4] See<\/em> English Text of Morsi\u2019s Constitutional Declaration<\/em>, Ahram Online (Nov. 22, 2012), http:\/\/english.ahram.org.eg\/News\/58947.aspx (\u201cPrevious constitutional declarations, laws, and decrees made by the president . . . are final and binding and cannot be appealed by any way or to any entity. Nor shall they be suspended or canceled and all lawsuits related to them and brought before any judicial body against these decisions are annulled.\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5] Ramashray Upadhyay, \u2018Muslim Brotherhood\u2019 \u2013 An Ideological Protectorate of Saudi Arabia?<\/em>, Ikhwan Web (Dec. 29, 2009), http:\/\/www.ikhwanweb.com\/article.php?id=22363 (\u201cDedicated to the credo \u2013 \u2018The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope,\u2019 Muslim Brotherhood gradually emerged as one of the internationally known militant organizations.\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6] Michael R. Gordon & Kareem Fahim, Kerry Says Egypt\u2019s Military Was \u2018Restoring Democracy\u2019 in Ousting Morsi<\/em>, N.Y. Times, Aug. 2, 2013, at A7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7] See<\/em> Deb Riechmann & Lolita C. Baldor, Egypt Not Expected to Be Hit Hard by U.S. Aid Cuts<\/em>, AP The Big Story (Oct. 12, 2013), http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/article\/egypt-not-expected-be-hit-hard-us-aid-cuts-0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8] See<\/em> 22 U.S.C. \u00a7 8422(b)(3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9] See<\/em> English Text of Morsi\u2019s Constitutional Declaration<\/em>, supra <\/em>note 4, at art. 1; Richard Spencer, Violence Breaks Out Across Egypt as Protesters Decry Mohammed Morsi\u2019s Constitutional \u2018Coup\u2019<\/em>, Telegraph (Nov. 23, 2012), http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/9699801\/Violence-breaks-out-across-Egypt-as-protesters-decry-Mohammed-Morsis-constitutional-coup.html.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10] See <\/em> Edmund Blair, U.S.-Based Rights Group Says Draft Egypt Constitution Flawed<\/em>, Reuters (Oct. 8, 2012), http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2012\/10\/08\/us-egypt-constitution-idUSBRE8970RA20121008 (\u201c[Human Rights Watch] said article 36 of the draft constitution threatened equality between men and women by saying the state should ensure equality as long as it did not conflict with \u2018the rulings of Islamic Sharia.\u2019\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11] Spencer, supra<\/em> note 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12] See<\/em> Ozan Varol, The Democratic Coup d\u2019\u00c9tat<\/em>, 53 Harv. Int\u2019l L.J. 292, 295 (2012).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13] Gordon, supra<\/em> note 6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14] See<\/em> Maggie Michael, Egypt Brotherhood Ban Opens Way to Wider Crackdown<\/em>, AP The Big Story (Sept. 23, 2013), http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/article\/egypt-bans-muslim-brotherhood-group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15] See<\/em> Tom Perry, Egypt Sends Mursi to Trial as Constitution Advances<\/em>, Reuters (Sept. 1, 2013), http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2013\/09\/01\/us-egypt-protests-mursi-idUSBRE9800EI20130901.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16] See<\/em> Egypt Detains Muslim Brotherhood Spokesman<\/em>, Al Jazeera (Sept. 17, 2013), http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/middleeast\/2013\/09\/2013917145337941661.html.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17] See<\/em> id.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18] See<\/em> Matt Bradley & Tamer El-Ghobashy, Egypt Releases Mubarak From Prison<\/em>, Wall St. J, Aug. 22, 2013, at A9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19] See<\/em> Egypt: \u201950 Dead\u2019 in Clashes Amid Rival Demonstrations<\/em>, BBC News (Oct. 6, 2013), http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-middle-east-24421069 (\u201cHundreds of Islamist protesters have died in violence since the Egyptian military deposed Mr. Morsi in July, 13 months after he was elected as president.\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[20] Alex Ortiz, Egypt Extends Emergency Law, Citing Security Concerns<\/em>, CBS News (Sept. 12, 2013), http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-202_162-57602710\/egypt-extends-emergency-law-citing-security-concerns\/.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[21] See<\/em> Al-Jazeera Takes Legal Action Against Egypt\u2019s Government for Closing Offices, Arresting Staff<\/em>, CBS News (Sept. 12, 2013), http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-202_162-57602610\/al-jazeera-takes-legal-action-against-egypt-government-for-closing-offices-arresting-staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[22] See<\/em> Tom Perry, Egypt Restores Ex-Generals\u2019 Role in Provinces<\/em>, Reuters (Aug. 13, 2013), http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2013\/08\/13\/us-egypt-protests-governors-idUSBRE97C0VE20130813.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[23] See<\/em> Islamists Seize Town in Southern Egypt and Attack Christians<\/em>, N.Y. Times, Sept. 6, 2013, at A5.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n

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