More on Morsi and the Egyptian economy

↪ Morsi Manages Egypt’s Economic Decline - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East — www.al-monitor.com — Readability

Nervana Mahmoud's take on the Egyptian economy:

Morsi’s rush to secure political power has cost him a lot on the economic front. However, he doesn't have to save the economy to survive as president. He just has to manage its decline well enough to prevent an acute dip toward bankruptcy and default. That is why his buzzwords for 2013 will probably be “appeasement,” “loyalties,” and “subsidy cards.” It would not be a step forward for Egypt’s economy; neither easy nor pretty. Sadly, the real game is survival, and not “renaissance."

Mubarak was arguably ousted not because thousands poured into Tahrir Square, but because most elements in society were united against him. If Morsi succeeds in managing a declining economy and securing loyalties, he can avoid the same fate. That is what autocrats in Iran and Sudan have been doing successfully for decades. It is not what many brave youth aspired to achieve, but it is the ugly new reality (with a retro-’70s flavor) that they have to accept if the opposition leaders continue to be divided, elitist, and disengaged from the rural regions of Egypt.

In Latitude: Egypt, Pound for Pound

↪ Morsi Borrows From Mubarak's Playbook to Manage Egypt's Currency Crisis - NYTimes.com

My latest piece for the IHT's Latitude, looking at Morsi's recent handling of the economy and the cost of his rushed decision-making on the constitution and economic policy. 

New Yorker: Where is the MB leading Egypt?

↪ Peter Hessler: Where is the Muslim Brotherhood Leading Egypt? : The New Yorker

Too bad it's behind a paywall, because Peter Hessler's Letter from Cairo in the latest issue of the New Yorker is the best piece on Egypt the magazine has had in a long time. I've met Peter once (he came to interview me over a year ago when he arrived in Cairo) and I've been eagerly waiting to see his reporting. I knew his China reporting was excellent and that he spoke Chinese very well. I was impressed that he took the time to learn Arabic before starting to write about Egypt, as well as taking the time to get to know the country. It's a luxury few journalists have nowadays.

The piece is reported over the last month in particular, with scenes from the protests at Ettihadia and other events. It's pretty brutal on the Brotherhood's behavior, largely rightly — it has not fallen for the false "balance" that some other outlets have in their coverage of the most recent crisis. Tracking the Brotherhood's claims and acts, he lists many instances of dubious or duplicitous behavior while not taking the hysterical anti-MB version of events either.

Here's an excerpt lifted from the iPad edition:

Morsi and the Military

↪ Morsi and Egypt's Military - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Good piece by Yezid Sayigh on Egypt's military and the deal it made with Morsi on the constitution, which grants it unprecedented autonomy:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s detractors have repeatedly accused it of concluding a secret deal with the EAF to allow it to assume office. But Egypt is nothing like Sudan, for example, where a tight-knit alliance between the National Islamic Front and Gen. Omar al-Bashir reshaped state power as well as the legal and constitutional frameworks, and moreover purged non-Islamists from the military from 1989 onward.

In any case, the deal in Egypt is anything but comfortable. The Brotherhood and Morsi may interpret the constitutional provisions relating to the EAF as demarcating and separating the military and civilian spheres, as a precursor to asserting civilians’ political preeminence. But the formal autonomy granted to the EAF extends well beyond its own “professional” affairs — such as doctrine and arms procurement, or even the defense budget — and will be very hard to roll back in future.

This is not a challenge for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood alone, nor is it a problem only of their making. The transfer of power from military rulers to civilians always involves compromises backed by explicit and implicit understandings: whoever won last year’s parliamentary and presidential elections was going to have to grapple with the EAF’s privileged position. And with the exception of the Tahrir Square revolutionaries and Constitution Party head Mohamed ElBaradei, none of the principal political parties or presidential candidates since the ouster of Mubarak proposed curtailing the EAF’s prerogatives and immunities any further than Egypt’s new rulers have done.

One point of disagreement I have is with another passage:

Unlike other parts of the state apparatus, the EAF sees itself as an autonomous institutional actor with a privileged political role. This was made evident on Dec. 11, when Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi invited Morsi, cabinet ministers and a wide spectrum of “political parties and forces” and public figures to what he called a “social dialogue.” Although El-Sisi’s spokesperson insisted that this was not a “national political dialogue,” issuing the invitation was an unmistakably political act, undertaken unilaterally and without prior consultation with either the president or the head of the cabinet of which the defense minister is a part.

Actually I think other parts of the state apparatus — the Interior Ministry, the judiciary, the ministry of foreign affairs, the intelligence services — see themselves as deserving of similar autonomy, they're just less able to get their way. And al-Sisi's invitation for dialogue was as much about the army's interference as the sense, at the time, that the crisis and division was unnecessary and dangerous.

Chuck Hagel in The Onion

↪ Israel Vows To Use Veto Power If Chuck Hagel Confirmed As U.S. Secretary Of Defense | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

JERUSALEM—Top-ranking government officials in Jerusalem confirmed Tuesday that Israel would exercise its longstanding, constitutionally granted veto power over American policy if U.S. lawmakers confirmed retired congressman Chuck Hagel as the United States’ next Secretary of Defense. “In light of Mr. Hagel’s worrying remarks on Israeli-Palestinian relations and questionable classification of Israeli interests as ‘the Jewish lobby,’ we consider him a highly inappropriate choice for Defense Secretary who stands far out of line with our national priorities, and therefore we are prepared to swiftly and resolutely use our official veto power over this U.S. action,” said Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev of the legal maneuver that the small Middle Eastern nation has employed to block U.S. Cabinet nominees, U.S. legislation, U.S. international relations, and U.S. domestic policy over 1,400 times in its 64-year history. “Because congress does not possess the necessary nine-tenths majority to override an Israeli veto, they’ll have no choice but to head back to the drawing board and provide a Defense Secretary whom we find more suitable.” Sources confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had sent the White House a list of three individuals the Israeli leader considered appropriate to head the American military from which U.S. President Barack Obama could choose

It's funny because it feels true.

I haven't commented on the Hagel nomination because there's already so much out there. A sample:

• What's at stake in the Hagel affair
• Why Obama Should Nominate Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense
• Chas Freeman Speaks out on Anti-Hagel Smear Campaign
• Chuck Hagel and the Ghost of AIPAC Past
• Eliot Engel: "Hagel has an endemic hostility towards Israel!"
• Sullivan’s Takedown of the Wash Post’s Anti-Hagel Editorial
• Haggling Over Hagel

JERUSALEM—Top-ranking government officials in Jerusalem confirmed Tuesday that Israel would exercise its longstanding, constitutionally granted veto power over American policy if U.S. lawmakers confirmed retired congressman Chuck Hagel as the United States’ next Secretary of Defense. “In light of Mr. Hagel’s worrying remarks on Israeli-Palestinian relations and questionable classification of Israeli interests as ‘the Jewish lobby,’ we consider him a highly inappropriate choice for Defense Secretary who stands far out of line with our national priorities, and therefore we are prepared to swiftly and resolutely use our official veto power over this U.S. action,” said Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev of the legal maneuver that the small Middle Eastern nation has employed to block U.S. Cabinet nominees, U.S. legislation, U.S. international relations, and U.S. domestic policy over 1,400 times in its 64-year history. “Because congress does not possess the necessary nine-tenths majority to override an Israeli veto, they’ll have no choice but to head back to the drawing board and provide a Defense Secretary whom we find more suitable.” Sources confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had sent the White House a list of three individuals the Israeli leader considered appropriate to head the American military from which U.S. President Barack Obama could choose.

Next up in Brotherhoodization: labor unions

↪ All Unionized and Nowhere to Go - Sada

Enlightening piece by Joel Beinin on Decree 97, discreetly passed by President Morsi a few days after his November 22 legal coup — with the intent to lock out the independent unions born in the years just prior and just after the 2011 uprising and take control of the old state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation:

This is characteristic of the Muslim Brotherhood’s recent political practice. Rather than reform institutions and power centers of the Mubarak regime, it has sought to extend its control over them. But as in other spheres, they do not have a concrete program or enough trained personnel to manage ETUF. Therefore, they are dividing control of the organization with Mubarak era figures. Their common interest is first and foremost bureaucratic—to maintain their positions. The Brothers also seek to limit the extent of independent trade unionism, as it constitutes a potential opposition to their free market ideology.

Very much worth reading.

Update: Karim Maged also signals this piece by Dina Bishara in FP.

Qatar extends $2.5bn lifeline to Egypt - FT.com

↪ Qatar extends $2.5bn lifeline to Egypt - FT.com

Qatar swoops in to buffer against the impact of Morsi's economic mismanagement:

Sheik Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, Qatari prime minister, said his country had given Egypt a $500m grant and another $2bn loan to help control the currency and support the dwindling foreign reserves, a day after Cairo resumed talks for a crucial $4.5bn loan from the International Monetary Fund.

“That is a decent amount of money. It will stabilise the foreign exchange market a little bit,’’ said Mohamed Abu Basha, Egypt economist at EFG-Hermes.

“It will allow the government a breathing space where they do not have to worry a lot about the currency during the IMF negotiations.’’

The Qataris — who have pledged at least $10bn to Egypt and have now delivered some $2bn before this — mostly as deposits in the Central Bank. One day they will cash in on all of this aid.

Syria: The fall of al-Moushat Academy

↪ Le Monde.fr : Syrie - La chute d'Al-Mouchat

This report by Florence Aubenas on the fall of al-Moushat Academy near Aleppo, Syria's elite military academy, is incredible. It details the sectarian tensions inside of the academy growing over the last year, culminating as rebels began to lay siege to it. Over time, officers and cadets would break apart along sectarian lines inside the academy compound. They survived on nearly nothing for weeks, unable to go out during the day due to sniper fire, fighting each other for scraps of food at night. The Alawites in particular appear to have had a gradual descent into Apocalypse Now style madness, paranoid about their Sunni fellow officers and shouting the "Bashar is God". Just incredible reporting:

A Al-Mouchat, on enterre au bulldozer les morts de la première attaque, cinq par cinq. Chaque nuit, les désertions s'accélèrent. On brûle les portes et les fenêtres pour essayer d'avoir moins froid dans les lignes de défense. « Faites ce que vous voulez, mais restez, supplie un gradé. Sinon, Al-Qaida va vous égorger. » Les réserves de nourriture sont épuisées. Harcelé par les tirs rebelles, l'hélicoptère chargé du ravitaillement largue les vivres du mauvais côté des murs. Le haut commandant insulte le pilote par radio. L'autre rigole : « Tu as faim ? C'est pas mon problème. Baise ta mère. » Sur la base, on mange n'importe quoi, de l'herbe, des cigarettes. On boit l'eau de pluie.

Le site est en permanence sous la lunette des snipers rebelles. Plus personne ne bouge, ils sont terrés le jour durant, là où chacun peut, par groupes de deux, trois parfois, se méfiant les uns des autres. Des ombres ne commencent à bouger qu'après le coucher du soleil. Toutes vont vers les cuisines, espérant voler quelque chose. « On était comme des chiens entre nous, à se tirer dessus pour un peu de riz. On avait la haine au coeur.» Entre les déserteurs, les morts et les blessés, il ne reste plus qu'une centaine de militaires. Eugène, officier chrétien, est avec deux élèves alaouites. « Ils avaient deux balles dans la poche pour être sûrs de ne pas être pris vivants. Ils ont combattu jusqu'à la mort, en chantant pour Bachar. »

Next up in Brotherhoodization, the governors

I'm burying most of this post after the jump considering its rather dry subject-matter.

In my post on Egypt's recent cabinet shuffle, I noted the importance of nominating Mohammed Bishr, a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure who had previously been governor of Menufiya governorate (one of the FJP's biggest electoral challenge) to the Local Development portfolio. I see (via Beltone's newsletter) that he will have expanded powers in this post, notably the selection process of new governors — most or all of which will come from the ranks of Islamists:

Click to read more ...

The EU and its aid to Egypt

↪ #SOSEgypt - Save our Spring

This is a petition urging the EU to show greater scrutiny in dishing out pledged aid to Egypt:

On the 15th of November, only a week before President Mursi issued a dictatorial decree granting him immunity from law, the EU pledged €5 billion financial support to Egypt. This is European taxpayer’s money.

President Morsi is following the same policies of Mubarak in repressing his opponents, in just the first 100 days of his presidency; Egyptian police were behind at least 88 cases of torture, seven cases of sexual assault and the deaths of 34 people. Outspoken media personalities are being intimidated protesters violently attacked and killed, and religious freedoms constrained . In the absence of constitutional safeguards, violations of basic human rights and civil liberties may well get worse. Europe can't turn a blind eye to the abuses that the Egyptian government is responsible for.

Despite requests from European members of Parliament and GOs the EU - to date- has not made clear how it will condition its support to the Egyptian government on the respect of internationally agreed human rights and liberties. The EU must monitor laws in the making, and condition development aid to the Egyptian government on the respect of rights and liberties, such as social justice, rule of law, gender equality, labour rights, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of association.

Of the EU aid package most if handled by the EIB and EBRD in terms of project finance and specifically earmarked loans. But at least €700m of the remainder is EU-administered aid that is directly contigent on two broad sets of conditionalities:

1. Economic reform measures, broadly defined as those agreed to under the forthcoming IMF agreement;

2. "Good governance" — an ill-defined term.

The EU missed the ball completely in December when it chose, largely because of lack of interest of member states and the personal preference of EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, not to say much about Morsi's legal coup and the rush over the constitution. Yet EU officials had previously pledged to abandon the old Mubarak-era approach and to be vigilant towards the new Morsi administration. It's what they said, yet they've repeatedly failed to even speak out beyond meaningless bromides such as urging "an inclusive constitution" — meaningless because there was no attempt to actually do that, or even buy time for negotiations by delaying the referendum. And then there are concerns over future human rights issues where the recently adopted constitution constrains them and ongoing ones regarding police violence, Islamist groups (including the MB) use of violence against protestors, concerns over media freedoms, etc. We've had more silence since then.

Once the IMF deal is approved (and perhaps before it) the EU will be under great internal pressure to deliver this aid because of Egypt's dire economic predicament. While it continue to flout its own promises of conditionality?

Though I know the river is dry

An independent Egyptian-Palestinian production needs help to finish post-production ahead of its festival release later this month:

Starring Kais Nashif (Paradise Now) and directed by Omar Robert Hamilton (founding member of the Mosireen Collective in Cairo), the film tells the story of a man's return to Palestine, years after a fateful choice sends him to America.  

WATCH THE TRAILER

As well as being selected to world premiere at the prestigious Rotterdam Film Festival, the project was awarded a post-production grant from the Doha Tribeca Film Festival and will have it's MENA premiere there in November 2013.  

The production costs of the shoot were raised through a successful crowdfunding campaign that attracted $14,000 of support from 100 individuals. Now, because there are so few funding sources for independent films from the Arab world, the race is on to raise $7,500 in 9 days to give Though I Know the River is Dry  the post-production it deserves. 

VIEW THE CAMPAIGN

I helped these guys out, pitch in if you can.

On Egypt's new cabinet lineup

Some notes about Egypt’s new cabinet, appointed yesterday, seem in order. The shuffle had been expected but postponed several times, and despite Prime Minister Hisham Qandil’s pledge to make the shuffle a purely technocratic one, the presence of new Muslim Brotherhood figures in cabinet posts and the absence of any opposition politician suggests a consolidation of the Morsi administration’s grip on the government. For months, Brotherhood officials had complained of resistance in the administration, including from cabinet members. Of course, the previous cabinet had been appointed jointly by SCAF and Morsi — at the time a necessary compromise.

Click to read more ...

The origins of Rai

The video above shows Algerian pop legend Cheb Khaled's first song, at the tender age of 14 in 1974. It comes via Ted Swedenburg, who has an epic history of Rai — the Maghrebi style of music born in Algeria in the 1970s — and discovered that Cheb Khaled's song came several years earlier than what he had hitherto believed to be the inventors of the rai sound, Messaoud Bellamou and Boutaiba Sghir. The whole essay is fascinating, lavishly illustrated with album covers and music — a must-read for anyone interested in Maghrebi or Arabic music.

(h/t Abu Aardvark.)

Bassem Youssef gets the NMA treatment

This morning I wrote about the Bassem Youssef case — I have a couple of updates about it. One is so funny it deserved its own post — the above NMA.tv rendition of the case. I particularly love the conspiracy theorizing bit.

Also, from Moftasa, a worthwhile post on President Morsi's foreign policy advisor's move to distance the presidency from the lawsuits being filed left and right to defend Morsi — in some cases by third parties, but also by officials themselves. And that this may only be coming because the State Dept. is raising the Bassem Youssef issue.

Faultlines and Pelham on Sinai

Our friend Anjali Kamat of al-Jazeera has a terrific new documentary on Sinai that was released a week ago — you can watch the whole thing above. It looks at some of the issues regarding the armed militants operating in the territory, whether their threat is exaggerated, continuing heavy-handed repression of local populations by security forces, international interest in the area, and more.

After you watch it, you might want to read Nic Pelham's latest NYRB piece on the peninsula, on the uprising of the Bedouin. Here's what's at stake:

Enriched and empowered by the tunnel economy, Gaza’s Islamists and Sinai’s Bedouin obtained the means to protect their assets, and by 2011 the tribes had stashed sufficient quantities of weapons to arm defense squads large enough to outgun Egypt’s policemen, who are limited by the Camp David Accords to carrying light arms. When Egyptians rose up against Hosni Mubarak’s rule in January 2011, armed Bedouin tribesmen turned on the Egyptian security apparatus, ransacking their bases and chasing them from the peninsula. Freed from the grip of the regime, they enjoyed their first taste of autonomy and regional power in the land bridge linking Africa and Asia.

Two years on, the Bedouin have acquired real power across the peninsula. They have launched raids on Israel, hobbled and threatened to oust the multinational force that is supposed to protect the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty, and disrupted the region’s supply of gas, which passes via pipeline through their terrain. The Suez Canal on their western borders, through which 8 percent of the world’s sea-borne trade sails, falls within the range of the Bedouins’ antiaircraft missiles; so do shipping lanes in the Mediterranean and Red Sea.

Links 1-5 January 2013

First links of the year, after a long period in December when I did not post any (well, aside from Twitter anyway — remember there's always more there.)

• BBC iPlayer - Afternoon Drama: The Reluctant Spy: Episode 1
  Radio play set in backdrop of Egyptian uprising.
• Brotherhood may pay price for currency fall | Egypt Independent
  Inflation is back.
• Jordanie. Comment Aman passe-t-il au travers des soulèvements dans le monde arabe ? - France Culture
• Boycott the Muslim Brotherhood - قاطعوا الإخوان المسلمين
  Site calling for boycott of MB-affiliated businesses.
• Bored Japanese trucker gets kicks from Syria war tourism | THE DAILY STAR
• Islamists ‘ban’ smoking in Sinai | GulfNews.com
• Al-Azhar: Ministry-proposed bonds at odds with Sharia | Egypt Independent
  Shooting down flagship MB proposal.

Click to read more ...

That Yasser Borhami video

As I'm clearing old tabs I didn't get around to reading/posting in December when I was traveling, this Jadaliyya piece on Salafi Sheikh Yasser Borhami's take on the constitution — and his explanation of why the text of Article 219 in particular is a triumph for hardliners — is worth reading. They've also translated a video that made the rounds last month and earned a rebuke from al-Azhar itself. Worth watching to catch up on this issue, and read this and this for context on al-Azhar.

The most dangerous 18 minutes that Borhami said about the Eg from nahdaproject1 on Vimeo.

Note also that Borhami uses the word "Nasareen" — "Nazarinthians" — to refer to Christians, which in Egypt is considered quite rude.

"It's time for Bassem Youssef"

I was at a very nice Zamalek dinner party on Friday evening (thanks HS!). As the sumptuous meal (which included what I am reliably told are the best warrraq 3einab in town) reached its end, the guests began to agitate. It was 11pm. "It's time for Bassem Youssef!" exclaimed one of them.

Everyone got up from the dinner table and made their way to the coach to watch Egypt's answer to Jon Stewart launch the 2013 season for his "The Show Show", whose late 2012 performances have already gotten him into trouble with the authorities — he is being sued for showing insufficient respect to President Morsi in his, er, satire. To this pretty anti-Morsi crowd, Bassem Youssef has become an icon — as the NYT picked up upon in a recent piece. Youssef has already done some great satire on the Muslim Brotherhood's apparently meaningless Nahda program and occasionally stops the jokes to say some quite serious things, such as telling Salafi sheikhs that they are not religious figures in the eyes of many outside of their followers. (Indeed, most of them are clowns, albeit dangerous clowns.)

Abu Jamajem has some translated segments for those who don't speak Arabic, but follow this YouTube account for someone going through the trouble of subtitling every episode. If there's one place to get the pulse of the liberal view in Egypt, Bassem Youssef's show is it. I wonder how long it will be, though, when like Jon Stewart he starts taking occasional aim at his own side — after all political satire only keeps its edge when it accords equal ridicule to all who deserve it. Although of course one must note that even in the US there is no conservative Daily Show — only a fake conservative spinoff in the Colbert Report. The Salafis, like the Tea Party, are simply too naturally ridiculous to be intentionally funny.

A New Green Zone in Sanaa

↪ A New Green Zone in Sanaa | Middle East Research and Information Project

Noted Yemen expert Sheila Carapico writes of the Sheraton Sanaa's new management, the State Department:

The managerial acquisition of the Sheraton campus formally more than doubles the ostensibly diplomatic presence of the US Embassy on the outskirts of Sanaa. In a time when water is running out, electricity fails daily, Finnish tourists are abducted by armed thugs in the city center and kidnappings are no longer a lark, German democracy brokers need armed escorts, students of Arabic no longer study in Yemen, humanitarian organizations register alarm over catastrophic malnutrition, academic researchers have been tarred by pseudo-scholars hunting AQAP, no one quite knows the location of supposed US military bases in and around Yemen (the Seychelles, Ethiopia, inside the country?), and the aspirations of pro-democracy forces remain to be addressed, COM needs a facility adjoining the Embassy grounds -- itself already a spacious fortified complex of barriers, set-backs, reception areas, offices, sports facilities, the ambassador’s residence, dormitories, high-tech security and ecologically improbable lawns -- to accommodate American consultants and experts.

On one level, the State Department’s leasing of the Sheraton property across the street from the Embassy compound merely regularizes a reality whereby more advisers earning hazard pay increments than tourists braving instability are venturing to Sanaa. On another level, the long-term leasing of a property designed and maintained for expatriate luxury and safety signifies the opening of a new American Green Zone in the Arabian Peninsula. This, in turn, is a major step toward a full-fledged US imperial presence in Arabia. It is bound to be fraught with hazards.

Read the whole thing for her thoughts on Rules of Engagement as a second-rate but eerily prescient movie.

Morsi and the deep state, cont.

↪ Egypt: The president, the army and the police - Egypt - Ahram Online

This is a new line of attack in the anti-Morsi media — apparently grounded in some truth — regarding changes to regulations on buying land in Sinai. The conspiracy theory version is that there is a grand scheme to allow Palestinians from Gaza to resettle in Sinai or render permanent Gaza's division from the West Bank and turn Sinai into Gaza's hinterland. The more interesting aspect of this, however, are the lingering signs of tension between the military and the Morsi administration. As this report shows, on some issues it's clear who calls the shots:

A recent decree issued by Minister of Defence Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi restricting the right to buy property in Sinai to second-generation Egyptian citizens had come against the wish of the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to a military source.

The decree, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity, was issued after the minister became aware of a Palestinian-Qatari scheme to buy territory in Sinai “supposedly for tourism related projects."

The source added that the minister “informed” the president before taking he took the decision “with  unprecedented support from within the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the wider military community.

"Many of us [officers and soldiers] died to retrieve this land; we did so not knowing that Morsi would one day compromise the country's right to Sinai - for whatever reason. Whatever the reason, Sinai is a red line. We will support our Palestinian brothers in every way possible but Sinai is not for sale," the source said.

Of course the presidency is denying this, saying the new orders came from Morsi. Read on from some acid quotes on intelligence and security from a presidential aide.