Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Confronts The Military Leadership

In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood Confronts Military Leadership

September 15, 2011 | 1158 GMT

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MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie in Cairo on March 16

Summary

The Egyptian public is growing more distrustful of Egypt’s military leadership, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). This has led the country’s largest Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), to become more vocal about its grievances, particularly regarding elections, the writing of the constitution and the SCAF’s relationship with Israel. The MB is a historically cautious group, but it currently faces an unprecedented opportunity to increase its political power — an opportunity that the MB fears may soon be closing in light of the SCAF’s recent moves. The SCAF will likely accept the MB’s new stance for now, as too harsh a response could unite the disparate elements of the Egyptian public against the military.

Analysis

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has begun assuming a far more confrontational demeanor toward the country’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), a shift away from the conciliatory stance the MB had previously taken. Several grievances against the SCAF are contributing to the MB’s shift. The MB fears that the military council will again delay parliamentary elections — currently expected to take place in November. The group also opposes the SCAF’s recent reinforcement of laws designed to limit dissent and the military’s plans to affect the formation of Egypt’s next constitution. Internally, MB leadership also is under rising pressure from its followers to speak out against the SCAF’s relationship with Israel.

Since the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak, the MB has been careful to avoid antagonizing the SCAF. The events of the past month appear to have changed that. The turnout for a protest in Alexandria on Sept. 16, after calls for the protest by certain MB members, will say a lot about how the situation has evolved. The changing dynamic between the SCAF and Egypt’s largest Islamist group will place larger pressures on the military, which is seeking to preserve the regime, but also will create additional risks for the MB, an organization that has operated with extreme caution for much of the past several decades.

Egyptian Anti-Israeli Sentiment

In the past month, anti-Israeli sentiment has been rising in Egypt among nearly all segments of society. This theme has moved to the forefront of many demonstrations for the first time since the uprising against Mubarak. The initial trigger was the Israeli response to the Aug. 18 Eilat attacks that emanated from the Sinai Desert: an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike that left six members of the Egyptian security forces dead. The SCAF expressed anger over the incident, but for strategic reasons, Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel trumped popular demands for a more severe reaction. The SCAF did not even go so far as recalling its ambassador. This created bad publicity for the SCAF at home.

The anti-Israeli sentiments that continued after the fallout from Eilat directly led to the Sept. 9 storming of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. Who exactly organized the diversion of protests to the embassy from Tahrir Square remains unknown. The MB had officially boycotted the Sept. 9 Tahrir protests, but STRATFOR sources in Egypt claim that the MB was prominent in the gathering outside the embassy. What is clear is that the military allowed the protests outside the embassy  to build to a near crisis situation before it dispatched commandos to rescue the remaining Israeli staff.

Israel thanked Egypt for its help on the issue, but the reports that SCAF leader Mohamed Hussein Tantawi had failed to talk with the Israelis during the affair — and even forced U.S. officials to wait for hours before answering their phone calls — show that the SCAF is not simply going to side with these two allies over its own citizenry without pause. Nonetheless, Egyptians perceived the military as having rushed to save the Israelis, while not valuing the lives of the Egyptians killed by the IDF strike in August. The MB issued a statement after the storming of the embassy that called the actions of the protesters justified and cited what it called an insufficient Egyptian response to the IDF strikes following the Eilat attacks, putting the group in opposition to the SCAF on two significant issues.

The SCAF viewed the actions of Sept. 9 differently than it had previous protests and sit-ins, as shown by its Sept. 10 announcement that it was reinforcing the emergency laws that predate its assumption of power. Virtually all Egyptians are united in their opposition to the Mubarak-era emergency laws, which grant the military the legal authority to detain protesters without cause and try them in military courts. The MB has only recently begun to address the issue with a greater sense of urgency. Essam el-Erian, deputy chairman of the MB-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party, has said that the MB would “not allow” parliamentary elections to be held so long as the emergency laws were still in place.

Parliamentary Elections

The timing of elections is another issue that has greatly contributed to the change in the MB’s posture toward the SCAF. Elections were supposed to be held in September, but the military pushed them back when it released its list of electoral laws July 20 (no exact date was established, but they were expected for November). Now there is a rising sentiment that the SCAF will again push elections back, and the MB is under pressure to vocally oppose such a move.

The Egyptian government previously pledged to open nominations for parliamentary elections on Sept. 27. A leading Alexandria-based MB member, Hasan ElBrence, said Sept. 13 that if the SCAF turns back on this pledge, the MB will protest. Speaking at a popular rally in Egypt’s second largest city, ElBrence reportedly said of his group, “We were raised on the idea of martyrdom, and we are more than happy to offer new martyrs and begin new protests and strikes in Tahrir Square if the will of the people is denied.” (It should be noted that ElBrence’s reference to “martyrdom” is not a threat to adopt jihadist tactics; rather, he is saying the MB is prepared to risk a potentially brutal SCAF crackdown when it takes to the streets.) Hussein Ibrahim, the secretary general of the Alexandria wing of the Freedom and Justice Party, said Sept. 13 that the interim government is trying to foment a counterrevolution. Ibrahim’s is just the type of charge the MB would have avoided making in the first few months following Mubarak’s ouster.

Then there is the long-running debate over the military’s plans to implement a set of “supra-constitutional principles” during the writing of Egypt’s next constitution. The MB has opposed this from the outset and has openly criticized the SCAF for the plan. The SCAF has never admitted the objective of the supra-constitutional principles, which would be to prevent a freshly elected parliament — potentially composed largely of Islamists — from overly influencing the nature of the new constitution. This debate has now taken on a new twist. Allegations have been made that the SCAF intends to appoint the 100-person committee responsible for writing the constitution, rather than allowing the eventual parliament to select members from its ranks. This would decrease the utility of the supra-constitutional principles, since in theory the people charged with drafting the new document would be under the influence of the SCAF.

The MB is internally divided on how to proceed. The group’s history as Egypt’s “loyal opposition” has made it exceedingly cautious in nature, but it currently faces an unprecedented opportunity to increase its political power. Now, the MB increasingly sees that opportunity closing in light of the SCAF’s recent moves. The MB has thus begun to make a gamble, increasing its public opposition to the SCAF while hoping that the military’s reaction is not so severe as to wipe out any potential gains for the MB.

The SCAF has not indicated its intent regarding elections, but its strategic relationship with Israel is extremely unlikely to change, as is its desire to influence the writing of the constitution and the enforcement of the emergency laws (even if it nominally abandons them at some point). The SCAF has shown that while it will tolerate a certain amount of dissent, it is willing to adopt harsher tactics in the face of open opposition. The SCAF’s overall strategy thus far, however, has been to play different groups off one another. Adopting too harsh a tone now would risk uniting the opposition, which is exactly what the SCAF will seek to avoid.

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