veiled4allah

is this the new democracy in Egypt?

Abu Aardvark:

Well. Lovely. Democracy... marching along... and beating the shinola out of anyone who isn't marching in ranks, while groping as many available protesting women as possible.

What's that about? Read on:

Kifaya men were dragged into the crowds of Mubarak supporters, beaten badly about the face and kicked repeatedly when they fell to the ground. In one instance, Kifaya member Ragab Mahdi, a young woman, was trapped against the grate for an underground garage with riot police between her and the pro-Mubarak men. As the riot police began to move aside to allow the men through, she screamed, "What are you doing, they're going to kill us." An Egyptian journalist off to the side urged the police to intervene, but was told, "Our orders are to allow this to happen." After the men beat her for a few minutes, older men in suits working with the attackers told them to back off and, her clothes torn and her body bruised, she was bundled into a taxi and taken to safety... ...One woman trying to leave the building was pounced upon by Mubarak loyalists who punched and pummeled her with batons and tore her clothes. As police looked on, the woman screamed, then vomited and fainted. Another clash occurred when demonstrators placed Kifaya stickers onto placards emblazoned with Mubarak's face and waved them in the air, chanting, "Leave, leave Mubarak!" An Associated Press reporter on the scene said plainclothes state security investigators were beating, groping and verbally harassing demonstrators, particularly women. About a dozen people, mostly women, were violently cornered and surrounded by nightstick-toting plainclothes police. Some began beating demonstrators. The AP reporter was grabbed and pulled by the hair... ...Two days after Laura Bush and Suzanne Mubarak held their summit meeting about the necessity of girls' and women's "empowerment" in the Middle East, Mubarak's hired thugs battered and sexually assaulted women protestors and reporters, as they did during the 2003 anti-war protests and during parliamentary elections. AP reporter Sarah al-Deeb is no stranger to Mubarak's thuggery, this is the umpteenth time she gets assaulted while doing her job. Women were pulled by the hair, punched and kicked, and dragged on the ground until their clothes came off, while policemen stood by watching. To all the women and men who had their bodies violated while peacefully demanding self-rule today: your pains are not forgotten, your bravery humbles us, your souls edify us. Your blood is on the hands of this despotic regime, until the day of reckoning

Via Needlenose Update: Al-Jazeera reports on the reformists' latest campaign, to demand apologies from the Egyptian government for the molesting of the women. The article also describes more about the reformist movement.

when 'democracy' isn't

What is democracy if not a system that allows the people to express their free choice in who will represent or rule them? Democracy is a process rather than an outcome. A democratic process may produce what we consider an undesirable result, if that is what the people want. The problem for the U.S. is that in the Middle East, Islamist parties are very popular and would be likely to do well if not win a free election. Since that's an undesirable result, the U.S. has tended to not support democracy in the Middle East after all. This may be by supporting undemocratic regimes that keep Islamists in check and looking the other way from the fact that these countries are not democratic. Or it may be by supporting elections that are not truly free because major (Islamist) parties are not allowed to run. That's what looks to be happening in Egypt as it prepares to move towards more democracy.

When Egypt's strongman President Hosni Mubarak announced Feb. 26 that Egypt would, for the first time in its history, hold multi-candidate presidential elections, some in the international community hailed the move as courageous. Others, particularly in the United States, called it a resounding victory for the Bush administration's "forward strategy for freedom." It was neither... ...Nour's arrest was not unique. An estimated 15,000 Islamists languish in Egypt's jails, political prisoners who have no recourse to due process or a fair trial thanks to the now 24-year-old Emergency Laws governing the country. While the Bush administration has rightly expressed outrage over the imprisonment of Nour, a secularist, America has for decades remained silent about the Egyptian regime's consistent suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest and most influential opposition group. This despite the fact that the mainstream Islamist opposition long ago unequivocally committed itself to non-violent, peaceful participation in the country's political life. Those of us who work for political reform in the Arab world were heartened by President Bush's bold inaugural speech, in which he pledged to make the spread of democracy the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy. No longer, Bush assured us, would the United States excuse or tolerate dictatorship. He neglected to mention why it always had. Democratization in the Middle East has always presented a unique and confounding dilemma. While U.S. policymakers have the stated desire of promoting democracy, they have also aimed to curb the growing power of the Islamists -- the group that stands to gain most from the democratic atmosphere the United States is trying to foster in the region. The fear of the Islamists coming to power through democratic elections makes spreading democracy in the Arab world a less desirable objective. This dilemma is especially relevant in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood continues to be banned from electoral participation. Details of who will be able to run for president remain unclear, but it is unlikely that the Muslim Brotherhood will be allowed to contest the elections. Candidates will most likely need the endorsement of a legal political party and clearance by parliament, where Mubarak's ruling party commands more than 90 percent of the seats. If President Bush is serious about democracy -- and it appears that he is -- his administration must develop a more coherent stance toward the phenomenon of political Islam. Simply by virtue of their street legitimacy and mass support at the grass-roots level, the Islamists cannot be wished away. Moreover, it is impossible to imagine how Egypt could ever join the ranks of the world's true democracies if it fails to incorporate the political group that commands the largest electoral constituency in the country. Islamists, for their part, have proven their commitment to peaceful democratic participation in Morocco, Yemen, Kuwait and Jordan, where they are powerful forces in parliament. Islamists in Turkey, for example, have demonstrated their impressive ability to adapt to social and political realities, in the process becoming poster-boys for Islamic moderation. Turkey's Islamist politicians were once fiery advocates of disengagement with the West. Today, the ruling Islamic-leaning Justice and Development party is, in an ironic twist, the most pro-European Union, pro-American and pro-democratic political party in Turkish history. Jordan's experience is also worth noting -- a rare example of more than five decades of peaceful coexistence, and often close cooperation, between Islamists and the ostensibly secular Hashemite monarchy. The lesson here is clear. Free elections, the expansion of political space and other institutional mechanisms that encourage conflict resolution through peaceful means push Islamic parties to become more moderate in their goals and aims.

In general, I think that the Middle East tends to see America's message as "You can have elections - as long as you choose the candidates we want". That isn't really a free election, or democracy, and it makes us look hypocritical. If we want to develop better relations with the Middle East, we need to get past this hypocrisy and genuinely engage with Islamist groups. If people feel that they have a voice in the system and an opportunity to bring about change, they are less likely to turn to violence to achieve their aims.

Egyptian engineers call for political reform

As I've mentioned previously, a good measure of how free a country is, is how free citizens are to form labor unions to advance their interests in the workplace. For this reason, I've been posting occasional stories about the labor movement in various Middle Eastern or Muslim countries, found via LaborStart, a great resource for international labor stories. The Gulf News is reporting on the struggles of the engineer's union in Egypt:

Engineers in Egypt are organising a march to the People's Assembly and threatening to go on strike if their demands for reform are not met. Currently, many political activists and trade unionists are cautiously optimistic. They expect a positive response from the government, especially as countries in the region are facing external pressure to liberalise. As such, the activists seem to be trying to strike while the iron is still hot. The Engineer's Union was put under government supervision and prevented from holding elections since 1995... ...The story goes back to a sweeping victory for candidates from opposition parties, especially the Islamists, at the Union's council elections before the government imposed custody nine years ago. Consequently, nearly 140,000 engineers of the 320,000 Union members were denied their right to vote. It is noteworthy that Egyptian trade unions had witnessed remarkable activity since the early 1980s, after the government restricted the formation of political parties by imposing the Emergency Law. The government then resorted to imposing judicial custody on the doctors, engineers, lawyers and pharmacists' unions when elections brought control over them to the hands of members from the opposition... ...A lot of engineers see that the problems of their Union are part and parcel of wide-scale problems suffered by the country in general, such as the laws restricting freedom. At a time when the country's political parties are weakened by the various restrictions and interference imposed by the government, professional unions are considered an important place for practicing public work. Consequently, the Union's liberation from government control is a primary requirement for political reform.

Egyptian jihad?

Hossam El Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist who covers militant Islamic groups for the Cairo Times. On the second anniversary of 9/11, he looks at Gama'a Islamiya (Islamic Group), one of the major terrorist groups in Egypt, in Forgive Me, Government, For I Have Sinned. Gama'a Islamiya is closely affiliated with the group Al Jihad (also known as Islamic Jihad and Egyptian Jihad), which was responsible for the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981. Gama'a Islamiya is linked to the original plot to bomb the WTC in 1993 as well as the horrific massacre of 70 tourists at Luxor in 1997. As Hamalawy reports, Gama'a Islamiya declared a truce with the Egyptian government in 1997 (before the Luxor attacks, in fact) and in the last several years its leadership have publically renounced violence. It was around this same time that Al Jihad seems to have merged with al-Qa'ida. The long-time leader of Al Jihad is Ayman Zawahiri, now better known for being Bin Laden's "right hand man". Some analysts think that Zawahiri is the real brains behind al-Qa'ida while Bin Laden is merely its public face. For instance, Jane's Intelligence Review wrote "Indeed, the genesis of what the USA thinks it is coming to grips with may well lie more in Egypt than in Saudi Arabia.". Similarly, the Middle East Institute believes that the May bombings in Riyadh are similar in nature to the 1997 Luxor attacks and that both show Zawahiri's hand. An organization called DefenseWatch goes even further, arguing that Egyptian Al Jihad has more or less taken over al-Qa'ida. Gama'a Islamiya and Al Jihad have roots in Egypt going back to the late 1960s and early 1970s and are a radical offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is probably Egypt's most senior Islamist group, dating all the way back to 1928. Gama'a Islamiya and Al Jihad take much of their ideology from Syed Qutb (see my previous discussion of Qutb's followers here). The history and development of this movement from the Muslim Brotherhood to Al Jihad is traced in Karen Armstrong's book, The Battle for God. Whether or not al-Qa'ida is actually a Saudi façade on what is now a primarily Egyptian organization, as the sources cited above claim, the Egyptian components of it are clearly quite important and deserve to be studied in their own right.