EDITORIAL Turmoil in North Africa This collection of essays brings
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EDITORIAL Turmoil in North Africa This collection of essays brings
Virtual Special Issue August 2013 Turmoil in North Africa: a radical assessment of the uprisings since the end of 2010 EDITORIAL Turmoil in North Africa This collection of essays brings together contributions to The Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) that have provided a radical assessment of the uprisings in North Africa since the end of 2010. The collection does two things. First, it accounts for the historical sequence of events that led to the most astonishing processes of political turmoil in Egypt and Tunisia (and also Libya, where there was clear imperialist military intervention – Bush et al. 2011). Second, the collection locates the uprisings and toppling of dictatorships in an analysis of the relevant national political economies. In doing this, the contributions contest and go far beyond the racialised and orientalist notion of ‘Arab exceptionalism’, where politics is seen to be shaped by persistent authoritarianism grounded in cultural or Islamic values (for critique see Lockman 2004, for detailed case analysis of the uprising see Achcar 2013). It is now an important time to take stock and to try and understand turmoil in North Africa. There are regular political assassinations and violent conflicts in Libya and continued and mounting dissent with a self-declared pluralist Islamist government in Tunisia. But the ruling party, Ennahada, has since election failed to convince widening and diverse critics that it is meeting challenges of government. Critics have been especially vocal at every level of policy and this has culminated in concern that the Tunisian government has been inactive in finding the perpetrators of unprecedented assassinations of leftist politicians Chokri Belaid in February and Mohamed Brahmi in July 2013. Those murders led to extensive national strikes, demonstrations and extensive social mobilisation against the Islamist government’s failures of inclusiveness and transparency and calls for the government to quit. Violent deadly clashes after the coup d’état in Egypt in July 2013 have left commentators scrambling to explain the character of political transition from dictatorship as Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters have been killed, arrested and prosecuted in ways that exceed the years of Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. The articles here assemble explanations as to why the uprisings emerged when they did, and what some of the contrasting dynamics have been between Tunisia and Egypt (see Ayeb 2011 in this collection). They also locate the undercurrents and interrelationship between political and economic struggles that drove the Egyptian uprising. They are struggles that the state in Egypt and Western commentators have been keen to separate, as if politics and economics are hermetically sealed from each other (see Abdelrahman 2012 in this collection). In particular, the essays assembled here highlight why the July coup d'état should not be seen as revolutionary. Although the contributions were written before the July 2013 unrest, they offer analysis that is grounded in political economy. It is analysis that helps identify the competing social and economic interests that generated the 2011 uprisings and point to why entrenched interests did not easily vacate state institutions and positions of privilege. At the heart of the reasons why the uprisings emerged were struggles against the consequences of neoliberalism (see Bush and Ayeb 2012). Market reform and the escalation of poverty went hand in hand in Tunisia and Egypt. After 1987, the government of Egypt and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) imposed liberalisation of rural markets and credit. Law 96 of 1992 reformed tenure, ending rights in perpetuity for more than a million farming tenants, thus as many as 10 million Egyptians were impacted by measures that included raising rents by more than 400%, dispossessing farmers, and increasing insecurity and rural poverty.1 These reforms were often imposed with violence and displays of brutality by security forces working alongside landowners. Urban poverty also increased, especially after 2004, with the reforming zeal of Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif. The lie of trickle-down growth and sustainable development promised by the World Bank and neoliberals culminated with economic crisis, increased unemployment and widespread poverty. Neoliberalism increased the numbers of Egyptians living on less than a US$1.25 a day to more than 40% – and an even higher figure in the countryside. Angela Joya (2011, in this collection) highlights the crisis of neoliberalism and Patrick Bond (2011, also in this collection) flags the continuing threats from the international financial institutions to possibilities for democratic deepening in North Africa after the 2011 uprisings. This Western challenge to democratic transition is highlighted by Dixon too (2011, in this collection), and there is now concern in Egypt that International Monetary Fund (IMF) modernisers will return (Gamal 2013). Dixon also writes about the role of Egyptian finance capital, with support from international financial institutions, in ‘the latest wave of corporate consolidation of the country’s agri-food system’, resulting in ‘greater food insecurity and political instability in Egypt and in southern neighbouring countries’ (Dixon, 2013 forthcoming). Western interference in Egypt continues. The US refuses to call the July 2013 military intervention a coup d’état. That raises questions about possible complicity between Washington and the Egyptian Generals, and also Tel Aviv. As Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt said, ‘Al-Sisi is not a national hero for Egypt, but for all Jews in Israel and around the globe’ (see for example Middle East Monitor, 19 July 2013). The Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings in 2010 and 2011 did not take place as some media interpretations have claimed because of people’s access to social media, although it certainly helped with social mobilisation and provided intelligence about police tactics and the whereabouts of security forces. Neither did they take place in Tunisia because of the self- immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010, or in Egypt because of the murder by police of Khalid Said in Alexandria on 6 June 2010, although many thousands did join the ‘we are all Khalid Said’ media site. Instead, the uprisings result from many years of often intense industrial and rural struggles. In Egypt, the uprisings take place after more than a decade of political struggles against dictatorship that generated new forms of political action and organisation involving a wide spectrum of conflict and activism – many young and old getting directly involved in political struggles for the first time and building on actions that mushroomed from 2000 onwards. Some of these worker actions are documented in Rabab El-Mahdi’s essay (2012, in this collection) that shows the role played by resistance to neoliberalism by workers and organised labour in foregrounding the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. In the Moroccan context, where conflict and political struggles against the monarchy and capitalist development have been less reported, Zemni and Bogaert (2011, in this collection) provide insight into the consequences of economic liberalisation that has led to new forms of authoritarian politics structured around, among other things, political dynamics of high-end urban development and integration of ‘the poor’ into the market and civil society. A distinguishing feature of the protests that toppled dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt may be the coming together of an intensity of struggles and their density (Korany and El-Mahdi 2012, 7). A perfect storm of organised and unorganised protest emerged, toppling dictatorships. This was simultaneously unexpected and expected. Characterising protest and struggles for democratic opening and deepening is a theme that ROAPE will continue to explore in the next issues of 2013, unpicking the relationships between structure and agency, organised and unorganised or leaderless political struggles, and these will be key themes in a fortieth anniversary special issue. Egypt continues to be in turmoil as the military coup d’état in July 2013 toppled President Morsi. He had won the presidential election in 2012 with 52% of the vote, against 48% for Ahmed Shafiq, a feloul (remnant) of the Mubarak dictatorship. Winning that election (where there was considerable concern over its free and fair character) Morsi declared he would rule ‘for all Egyptians’: he did not. The military intervention has dislodged the Islamist government – one that the Generals had, it seemed, tried to work with – but, most of all, the intervention is against the interests that promoted the uprising of 25 January 2011. These were interests that demanded ‘bread, freedom and social justice’, as captured by the slogan of the time. It was for a redistribution of wealth, a reduction in the opulence of the Mubarak household, and the erstwhile ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) politics of spoils, where public assets were used for private gain. Morsi’s government did little to change this, and although the NDP had long been disbanded, remnants remained, and they were not necessarily antithetical to the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohamed Morsi nevertheless claimed that there was a ‘deep state’, where remnants of the old regime made it tough to promote social justice, economic growth and employment creation. Yet most Egyptians saw through this veil of half-truths and deception. There was a widespread view held across the country and across many different social classes that the Muslim Brotherhood in exile or in the political wilderness during dictatorship had cared for and about the poor. Now in government, the poor had been forgotten and many who had voted for Morsi signed the Tamarrod (rebellion) petition (declaring among other things no confidence in Morsi and calling for early presidential elections) that led to his downfall following unprecedented popular mobilisation on 30 June 2013 and the coup d’état . Egyptians had grown wary very quickly of the behind-the-scenes influence of Khairat al-Shater and other leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, and Egyptians had become tired of Morsi’s hasty public utterances, and his speedy ‘policy’ statements – like one in May that Egypt would be wheat self-sufficient in four years, something quickly denied by Ministry of Agriculture officials, suggesting what he actually meant was that this was Egypt’s aspiration. Popular discontent against Morsi emerged following rash presidential statements, including the 22 November 2012 constitutional decrees that involved sacking the prosecutor general and preventing decisions made by the President from being subject to judicial review. Egyptians were also unhappy with the debacle over the speed at which the new constitution was drafted and the limited composition of the constitutional assembly that drafted it. A leading reason for sustained opposition to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood was the failure, and lack of obvious will, to dismantle the forces of law and (dis)order, the general intelligence service or mukhabarat, and the police. Systemic police brutality and the routine use of torture continued as it had under the Mubarak dictatorship. One illustration of this failure to deal with the Ministry of Interior and to control the military was the massacre by police of 30 people in Port Said in January 2013 who were protesting the verdicts passed against those implicated in the earlier deaths of 79 football supporters from the 1 February 2012 slaughter of fans of a game between Al Masry and Al Ahly. The deaths in 2012 were widely seen as the result of a vendetta exercised by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) against the involvement of Al Ahly Ultras in the successful uprising in January 2011 and the defence of Midan Tahrir against the police and hired regime thugs. At every level, Morsi’s presidency and the advice he received from the Muslim Brotherhood failed to meet expectations and early presidential promises. Of course the new president did inherit a weak economy, a foreign debt in excess of US$30 billion, an economy too dependent upon rents from Suez, gas and labour migration and capital outflow that the governor of the Bank of Egypt had, during the weeks of the uprising, failed (intentionally?) to stop. We can still ask why Morsi and his advisors could not grasp the need for a series of policies that might at least stall some opposition to his presidency that spread quickly throughout Egypt. These measures might have included the immediate dismantling of the Ministry of Interior, cessation of torture and use of military courts, and the end to attacks on female protesters that had reached epidemic proportions. Policy might have ensured a larger increase in the minimum wage, improved conditions for public sector workers, and improved the management of – rather than sought to remove – fuel and food subsidies. It might also have sought to secure the livelihoods of rural poor, defending the material interests of those living under illegal Israeli occupation, rather than satisfying the US and Tel Aviv’s request to flood the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza that provided lifelines to those incarcerated in the world’s largest prison camp in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. One explanation for Morsi’s failure to do any of the above, or even initiate a series of more moderate policies to curry legitimacy, is the coalition of interests he oversaw and the difficulty he had in extending his authority over it. This coalition of interests included Islamist groups like the Brotherhood, al-Wasat, and elements of the more radical Salafis. They included elements of the ancien régime, notably remnants of Mubarak’s government who occupied ministerial positions. The post-uprising ‘new Egypt’ was therefore not so much new as reconstituted. A new political elite grappled with a mechanism to understand and manage the accumulation and reproduction and expansion of capital, possibilities for direction and levels of investment, securing of profit margins and control of labour. It might now be argued that the military was intent on hoping the Brotherhood’s early popularity would generate a degree of political, economic, and social stability that would return profitability of business enterprises and secure future levels of investment. Yet this was difficult to conjure for personnel who were technically incompetent, worrying constantly about the presence of feloul, yet perhaps still dependent upon them, unsure about Egypt’s regional geostrategic dynamic and unable to promote hegemonic rule nationally without constant recourse to coercion. The Generals were banking on the view that Egyptians had grown tired of occupations and demonstrations, and Morsi was seen as the person who might bring quiet to the street, get workers back to the factories and return Egypt to normalcy. It was not recognised that this was a normalcy that had generated the uprising in the first place. In addition, the persistence of unrest, permanent street protest, and the enormous number of strike days – an estimated 7700 protests have been accounted for between Morsi’s election and the start of June 2013 (Gamal, 2013) – probably led the military high command to realise that the Muslim Brotherhood could not do what they had hoped they would: there was no peace and quiet in Egypt and no secure investment climate. Instead, there was an increasing authoritarianism, there was an increased use of police and security force brutality, and there was a new criminalisation of worker protest and curbs on NGO activity that mirrored the years of the previous dictatorship (CTUWS, 2013). It is notable that during some of the worst violence against SCAF and police brutality the Islamists had earlier sided with the military against revolutionary youth. This had been the case in November 2011 during the Mohammed Mahmoud street battles and attempts to occupy the cabinet in December the same year. In government, Morsi felt confident that he could affirm his role as Commander in Chief of Egypt’s armed forces, perhaps assuming, as he had helped clear out some of the old guard generals, that al-Sisi would not oppose him. However, it seems that Morsi overstepped his mark in areas that went beyond mismanaging the domestic economy. The military had become worried about Morsi’s reluctance or inability to quieten aggressive rhetoric in June 2013 by his advisors towards Ethiopia and Syria. Morsi called in fact for a Holy War against Assad only three days after meeting US Secretary of State John Kerry. Perhaps Egypt’s Generals became anxious that Morsi was leading Egypt into military action for which there was little appetite and at a time when there was an escalating domestic political and economic crisis (Press TV, 9 July 2013). The unprecedented continuation of worker and in places farmer militancy – that included land occupations, violent disputes over boundaries and irrigation, together with strong reaction to the Islamisation of broadcasting and media outlets, inflation and Coptic defiance at discrimination and violent attacks on churches and Christians – convinced the military of its role to reinstate ‘stability’. On seizing power, General al-Sisi noted ‘We will build an Egyptian society that is strong and stable that will not exclude any one of its sons’ (The Guardian, 4 July 2013), and the Generals have outlined a ‘roadmap’ for new parliamentary and presidential elections and appointed Adly Mansour, Head of the High Constitutional Court, as interim President. The 3 July military coup, however, should not be seen through the prism of ‘binary alternatives’ between the Muslim Brotherhood on the one hand and the army on the other (El-Hamalawy 2013). This is a narrative that has traction in Western media, even though the military has appointed a civilian president and ex-head of the National Salvation Front Mohamed elBaradei as his vice president with responsibility for foreign affairs. Islamists too like to polish the wrongdoing of the military deposing a ballot-box president, adding to the idea of continued victimisation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course there is evidence of this victimisation, not the least in the massacre of 51 Muslim Brotherhood supporters on 19 July 2013 as the military claimed the Islamists were trying to enter the Republican Guard Club to rescue Morsi from house arrest (The Guardian, 19 July 2013); the slaughter of what seems at least 100 on 26 July as the military tried to break up a Muslim Brotherhood sit-in supporting the reinstatement of Morsi; and charges against Muslim Brotherhood members for inciting violence, espionage and, in Morsi’s case, links with Hamas, who sprang him from prison during the 2011 uprisings. Mohamed Morsi’s regime was in terminal decline when the military coup took place. The popular uprising on 30 June had generalised support that would have toppled Morsi. Morsi was intent on clinging to office, but the power of the street could have pushed strongly for a more inclusive government and early presidential elections. There would have been strong contestation, but the overwhelming popular protest was to dislodge the Muslim Brotherhood, as they were seen even by many hitherto supporters to have failed the majority of Egyptians. The Tamarrod initiative, which now seems likely to have been assisted by funding from one of Egypt’s billionaire entrepreneurs, the Naguib Sawiris, owner of the Orascom empire, was an amazingly extensive and well-run campaign to gather as many signatures as Morsi got votes in the presidential election. The signatories went beyond the 15 million, however, and the support was broad based and populist – banners on the 30 June demonstration were nationalist, with Egyptian flags replacing worker and trade union banners, for example. The strategy to depose Morsi was working as people expressed their vehement critique of the Brotherhood’s underachievement and their self-serving rhetoric: the military were not necessary to remove Morsi, but the Generals were necessary to try and halt another popular uprising. The military of course had not been absent from Morsi’s government. General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi was Minister of Defence and the military corporate machine continued to share between 20 and 40% of the Egyptian economy. We might see the coup as therefore seeking to do two things: first, put a lid on permanent revolution from the street, something Morsi could not do, and second, to (re)secure a new political elite to harness strategies for capital accumulation that continue from where the Mubarak regime was removed. The Muslim Brotherhood had been unsuccessful in bringing onside most business interests to join their ruling coalition. They had tried to make an alliance with Naguib Sawiris, who refused and was then ostracised as a Christian, labelled a feloul and then hit with claims for tax avoidance. One of Mubarak’s business partners Hussein Salem, on the run, was encouraged to return, and a freeze on the assets of Rashid Muhamed Rashid was lifted (Gamal, 2013). He had been Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Trade since 2004, fleeing the country after the January 2011 uprising, refusing a post in one of the transition governments that followed and then sentenced, in absentia, for embezzling public assets. In this context it is unsurprising that, after July’s military coup, Naguib Sawiris said that he and his wealthy brothers would be ‘investing in Egypt like never before’. His business conglomerate empire includes telecommunications, cement and fertiliser plants, international construction, tourism and real estate in Egypt and Europe. He criticised Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood for bullying those that disagreed with them, including any businessman ‘who dared stand in their way’. He noted that ‘My family and myself are going to be investing in Egypt like never before – any new projects where we can invest, any new factories that we can open, any new initiatives that will provide jobs for the young people of Egypt’ (Al Masry Al Youm, 15 July 2013). The influential remnant and ex-foreign minister from Mubarak’s dictatorship, Amr Moussa, who has spent a lot of time distancing himself from the erstwhile ruler, has also noted since the coup that it is safe for any Mubarak associates who had gone into self-imposed exile to return: ‘Now they can come back. They should come back’, he says (The Guardian, 23 July 2013). Naguib Sawiris noted that international business should also invest now, as stability was forthcoming and support for the military intervention was quick from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait, which offered US$3 billion and US$4 billion respectively to the new government, with Saudi Arabia offering US$5 billion (Al Masry Al Youm, 15 July 2013) – these figures put US support of Egypt’s military of US$1.3 billion a year into perspective. It will now be interesting to see how quickly there is a return to negotiations with the IMF over its stalled loan to Egypt, how quickly the neoliberal promise of economic growth returns to disguise the continuing impoverishment of Egyptian workers and farmers, and how soon the regional support for Israel, US and Saudi Arabia once more shapes Egypt’s subordination to imperialism’s agendas. This collection highlights the backdrop to many of the themes raised in this introduction. It highlights the need to probe behind the ways in which politics and society in North Africa have been characterised by many mainstream commentators. It highlights the centrality of political economy as a method of analysis and of the need to explore patterns of capital accumulation and political struggles for power and authority. These are themes at the centre of this journal’s analytical heft that places dynamics and the understanding of class and power, inequality and injustice at its core. We look forward to publishing future insightful articles into the contested arenas of the region’s political economy. Ray Bush School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK r.c.bush@leeds.ac.uk Notes 1. For more on the character and impact of Law 96, see Ray Bush ed., Counter Revolution in Egypt’s Countryside, London: Zed Books, 2002. References Abdelrahman, M. 2011. “A Hierarchy of Struggles? The ‘Economic’ and the ‘Political’ in Egypt’s Revolution.” Review of African Political Economy, 39 (134), 614–628. Achcar, G. 2013. The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising. London: Saqi. Al Masry Al Youm. 2013. “Egypt billionaire Sawiris family to invest ‘like never before’.” July 15. Ayeb, H. 2011. “Social and Political Geography of the Tunisian Revolution: The Alfa Grass Revolution.” Review of African Political Economy, 38 (129), 467–479. Bond, P. 2011. “Neoliberal threats to North Africa.” Review of African Political Economy, 38 (129), 481–495. Bush, R., G. Martiniello, and C. Mercer. 2011. “Humanitarian Imperialism.” Review of African Political Economy 38 (129): 357–365. Bush, R., and H. Ayeb. 2012. Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt . London: Zed Books. Center for Trade Union & Workers Services (CTUWS). 2013. The Condition of Egyptian Workers One Year After the Brotherhood’s Rule: One Year of Trade Union Freedom Violations During Morsi’s Regime . Helwan, Egypt: CTUWS. http://www.ctuws.com/uploads/2013/Reports/One-Year-Of-Trade-Union-FreedomViolations-During-Morsi-s-Regime-En.pdf Dixon, M. 2011. “An Arab Spring.” Review of African Political Economy, 38 (128), 309–316. Dixon, M. 2013 (forthcoming). “The Land Grab, Finance Capital, and Food Regime Restructuring: The Case of Egypt.” Review of African Political Economy. El-Mahdi, R. 2011. “Labour Protests in Egypt: Causes and Meanings.” Review of African Political Economy, 38 (129), 387–402. El-Hamalawy, H. 2013. “Is the Egyptian Revolution Aborted? Interview with Hassam El-Hamalawy.” Conducted by Bassam Haddad. July 12. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12889/is-the-egyptianrevolution-aborted-interview-withGamal, W. 2013. “Military-Business Alliances in Egypt Before and After 30 June: Interview with Wael Gamal.” Conducted by Bassam Haddad. July 20. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13070/militarybusiness-alliances-in-egypt-before-and-af Korany, B., and R. El-Mahdi. 2012. “The Protesting Middle East.” In Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and Beyond, edited by B. Korany and R. El-Mahdi. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Joya, A. 2011. “The Egyptian Revolution: Crisis of Neoliberalism and the Potential for Democratic Politics.” Review of African Political Economy, 38 (129), 367–386. Lockman, Z. 2004. Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Middle East Monitor. 2013. “Israeli ambassador calls Al-Sisi a ‘national hero for all Jews’.” July 19. http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/6617-israeli-ambassador-calls-al-sisi-aqnational-hero-for-all-jewsqPress TV. 2013. “Morsi Ousted to Stop Plan for Sending Egypt Military to Attack Syria’s Assad.” July 9. http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/07/09/312975/morsi-ousted-to-stop-plan-for-syria/ The Guardian. 2013. “Mohamed Morsi Ousted in Egypt’s Second Revolution in Two Years.” July 4. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/03/mohamed-morsi-egypt-second-revolution The Guardian. 2013. “Gunfire in Cairo – Anatomy of a Massacre.” July 19. http://www.indiaeveryday.in/fullnews-gunfire-in-cairo--anatomy-of-a-massacre-1005-5692942.htm The Guardian. 2013. “Egypt’s Old Guard Takes the Reins After Overthrow of Mohamed Morsi.” July 23. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/23/egypt-old-guard-mubarak-ruler Zemni, S., and Bogaert, K. 2011. “‘Urban renewal and social development in Morocco in an age of neoliberal government.” Review of African Political Economy, 38 (129), 403–417.