Egypt's Rebels Who Lost Their Cause?

Some critics in Egypt have wondered whether Tamarod's cosy relationship with the military and its growing jingoism is a sign that the movement sold out its revolutionary ethos to become a loyal lapdog to the SCAF.
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Can the bizarre political alliance between anti-Morsi rebels and the Egyptian military last, especially as Tamarod turns on the army's biggest benefactor, the United States?

Tamarod is the Arabic for "Rebellion" and, in its early phases, the Egyptian movement which bears this name certainly lived up to it. It is a sign of how far Egypt has come that a nationwide grassroots campaign should have such a, well, rebellious name in a country once famed for its apparent placidity and conformity.

Dreamed up by five activists in a small apartment in the middle-class Cairo district of al-Dokki, the audacious campaign strove, through a nationwide petition, to withdraw confidence from Egypt's now-former president Mohamed Morsi.

"There was a sense of depression amongst the people, and they didn't believe that the Muslim Brotherhood would go without bloodshed," Tamarod's Hassan Shahin, 23, told me at a dusty and down-at-heel old-world café a stone's throw away from Cairo's emblematic Tahrir Square.

Although the young revolutionaries behind Tamarod believed that their campaign would make a large splash, they did not expect it to be quite so enormous. "We had confidence in the Egyptian street, but we were surprised by just how many people got involved," admits Shahin.

Tamarod says it managed to collect some 23 million signatures (a figure which has not been independently verified), which is only a couple of million short of the total number of votes both Morsi and Shafiq collected in the second round runoff.

I put to Shahin the criticism that Tamarod and other supporters of Morsi's ouster were anti-democratic to get his views on the matter. "Morsi had an illusory democracy. He abused the constitution, represented just the Brotherhood, and used its militias to terrorise," he asserted.

Although Morsi had been elected in what was billed as Egypt's first democratic election, he barely pulled through the vote, and it was partly thanks to the rallying of Egypt's revolutionary forces behind him that he managed to defeat the army's candidate, ex-military-man-turned-politician Ahmed Shafik.

Like millions of Egyptians, I recall how baffled I was that these two unpopular men, one of whom (Morsi) was also obscure, managed to defeat all the candidates that had led the opinion polls, including poll toppers Abdel-Moneim Aboul Fotouh, Amr Moussa and Hamdeen Sabahi.

Moreover, the democracy he presided over was something of a mirage, given that the military stood like a director in the wings and the power of the presidency remained largely unchanged, leaving the door widen open for abuses. And abuse it Morsi did, flagrantly, in the service of the Brotherhood, ultimately alienating the rest of society.

Nevertheless, there were many options that should've been explored following the mass protests on 30 June, the first anniversary of Morsi's presidency, instead of the army rushing in to remove the president, such as a referendum on his rule.

But Shahin believes that Morsi's ouster averted a greater disaster. "What happened on 30 June was a popular revolution supported by a patriotic army," he maintains. "If the army hadn't intervened the situation would've escalated into a civil war."

Others fear that Morsi's removal and the subsequent crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood are more likely to plunge the country into the cauldron of bloody conflict. Shahin dismissed these concerns. "There are risks ahead but it is impossible that there'll be a civil war," he said.

Shahin's cheerleading of the army was both surprising and troubling. Surprising because a year and a half earlier the young revolutionary was out protesting against this very same "patriotic army." Shahin even quite literally got trampled upon by the heavy boot of military rule when he attempted, on 28 December 2011, to aid a woman who was being brutally beaten and dragged away by soldiers, exposing her torso and blue bra, in an iconic moment which symbolized everything that was wrong with the direct interim rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

"Even if there were errors committed by SCAF, it was the president's job to establish the right foundations for Egyptian democracy," argued Shahin. "We need to differentiate between the institution of the army and a group of leaders who made mistakes."

He suggested that the problem was not with the military per se but with Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi's leadership of the SCAF during the first transition. Shahin praised Tantawi's successor, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who has become a popular hero since ousting Morsi and asking the people for a "mandate" to combat "violence and terrorism".

"People will not be cheated by the army. It is a patriotic institution," he reiterated.

Although I do not doubt that the army is "patriotic" -- it would be a catastrophe if it were not -- it is also the reason why Egyptians have been deprived of democracy and many of their freedoms for the past six decades.

Since our conversation, which took place days before the bloody dispersal of two pro-Morsi camps in Cairo leaving hundreds dead, I have wondered whether Shahin had any cause to regret his stance.

But from a first reading of the movement's actions it would seem not. Unlike Egypt's human rights organizations and other revolutionary political groups, Tamarod heeded al-Sisi's call for a "mandate."

Following the bloody purge, Mahmoud Badr, another co-founder of Tamarod showed little sign of regret or doubt. "What Egypt is passing through now is the price, a high price, of getting rid of the Brotherhood's fascist group before it takes over everything and ousts us all," he claimed in an interview with Reuters.

Some critics in Egypt have wondered whether Tamarod's cosy relationship with the military and its growing jingoism is a sign that the movement sold out its revolutionary ethos to become a loyal lapdog to the SCAF.

My reading of the situation is that Tamarod is largely in an alliance of convenience with the military, after concluding that, for the time being, SCAF is Egypt's king-maker. But like Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood before, the young activists are bound to learn the hard way that, once their paths diverge, the king-maker will likely transform into the king-breaker. And early signs of cracks are already emerging.

This began with Tamarod's alarm over the revival of a number of Orwellian state security department which had been shut down thanks to the 2011 revolution, which the movement described as signifying the "return of Mubarak's state security".

The movement also rejected, on Monday, some of the recommendations of a panel tasked with proposing amendments to the constitution.

A more serious sign of confrontation ahead is Tamarod's latest campaign to cancel U.S. aid to Egypt and the Camp David peace deal with Israel.

Personally, I can see the rationale and sympathize with the need to end the culture of dependency on U.S. aid, especially as it encourages a culture of corruption and patronage and much of the money flies straight back to the United States anyway. But demanding the tearing up of the peace treaty with Israel is reckless and dangerous, and will do neither Egypt nor the Palestinian cause any good.

Moreover, with the military the largest recipient of American assistance in Egypt and the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement one of the main bulwarks of the country's foreign policy, not to mention a binding treaty obligation, this latest move looks likely to put the young activists on a collision course with the generals.

And with Tamarod signaling its intentions to form a political party, the honeymoon period will soon end and the group will again live up to its name of being rebels and join forces with the other revolutionaries they abandoned.

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