02/19/13 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
So now we turn to IPSnews.net.
Of course, Gareth Porter has his great one, destroying the ridiculous myth that Hezbollah did the Bulgarian bombing last summer.
But also we've got Adam Morrow here and his co-author Khaled Moussa al-Amrani.
Political violence grips Egypt from all sides.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
I'm good, Scott.
Thanks.
I appreciate you joining us today.
So catch us up to date.
There's a bunch of different factions.
What are the names and what are they fighting about?
Sure.
Well, I mean, very broadly speaking, you've basically got the presidency, which is backed up by the Muslim Brotherhood and some other Islamist parties versus a largely secular opposition, which is made up mostly of socialists, liberals, basically all non-Islamist factions.
And so the Salafists are with the government, on the government side then?
Interestingly, yes.
The Salafists are definitely Islamists.
They're ultra-conservative.
But interestingly, the Salafist movement has kind of splintered over this, because you have one group of Salafists who are supporting the presidency, and then you've got the largest Salafist party, which is the Nour party, which is actually sort of, I wouldn't say aligning itself with the opposition, but is at least entering into these initiatives.
It has just recently proposed an initiative to solve the political impasse, and this initiative has been created in conjunction with the leading opposition force, which is the National Salvation Front.
So you actually have some Salafists who are not on the side of the opposition, but certainly cooperating with the opposition and discussing demands, and then you've got Salafists who are completely with the presidency and who accuse the opposition of, you know, putting its interests before those of the country.
So the Salafist rank-and-file is definitely split, but then again, the Salafists are sort of notorious for their lack of cohesion, in that there are many different diverse groups following different preachers, as opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has always been this very monolithic organization.
And now, the National Salvation Front, what are their demands?
What are their demands?
Okay, bear in mind, these are people, the National Salvation Front is headed up by Mohammed Baradai, who most Western audiences have heard of, because he's the former UN Atomic Energy Agency chief, and along with two presidential candidates that lost to Morsi in last summer's election, those being Omar Moussa and Hamdin Sabahi.
So those three, the sort of triumvirate, are the ones who are leading the National Salvation Front.
So you basically have a situation where a group of unelected people are sort of issuing demands to an elected president, which is interesting in and of itself.
What are those demands?
They include a new government.
They want to get rid of the current government of Prime Minister Hesham Handil, which was appointed by Mohammed Morsi.
They want that replaced with a government of national unity, which is more representative of the opposition, I guess.
They also want a serious modification of the recently approved constitution, Egypt's new constitution, which was approved by 65% of the voting public in a December referendum.
So they'd like to see that subject to a raft of amendments.
What are some of their...
They want a...
There's a prosecutor general that Morsi appointed sort of unilaterally in November, and they would like to see him removed as well.
Those are their three chief demands.
They've got several others.
Some would say that they're actually...
Their critics would say that they're actually aiming to unseat Morsi.
Their official statements, according to their official statements, all they want is these demands met.
These very...
And these are quite serious, major demands.
They want the government to be changed.
But like I said, some of their critics say that this is all just sort of cover, and that they're actually working to actually see Morsi step down.
Do you believe that?
Yeah, I do.
I do.
I think that is their end goal.
I think they sort of tasted blood.
I think after the massive turnout that they managed to pull, if you remember, in November and then again on the second anniversary of the January 25th revolution, and that was just a couple of weeks ago, they did manage to get tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets and different governorates, and they did manage to spearhead this enormous protest march on the presidential palace that, of course, ended violently, as they always do.
So I think that when they saw that they were able to mobilize that kind of street support, I think they sort of tasted blood, and I think it's certainly in the minds of many people who just can't get over the fact, that still can't accept the fact that Egypt has an Islamist president.
And I think that their best case scenario is, even if unstated, is to see early elections snap presidential elections, some kind of new election, and maybe the election of a new president.
Although, like I said, that particular demand remains unstated.
Right.
Well, and you've told us before, though, that there's no surprise whatsoever that Morsi won, that the Muslim Brotherhood has a support.
If not the vast majority of the people of Egypt actually supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, they were certainly the most organized opposition, the biggest, single, long-established...
They were the ones on the ground, ready to hit the ground running when the revolution happened, because they had spent decades of sort of preparing the ground for it.
That's true.
The big surprise wasn't so much that Morsi won, that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate won, as it was how well the runner-up did, which was Ahmed Shafi, if you remember, who was Mubarak's last prime minister, that he did as well as he did in the elections, elections which were ruled fair and transparent by international monitors and that sort of thing.
But according to the election results, Morsi took 13 million votes to Shafi's 12 million, roughly, give or take a couple hundred thousand.
But, I mean, that's how close it was.
So that was actually the big surprise of the presidential election, is that the anti-revolutionary forces could actually, you know, were actually much more of the public than people thought, that the country was almost close to being split between an Islamist rulership and a Mubarak-style, you know, leadership.
And meanwhile, Mohammed ElBaradei and the liberals came in dead last, right?
Yeah, they just don't have any support.
And I like him, because he was always debunking the war party's lies against Iran back when he was the head of the IAEA, and I hate the new guy.
So I kind of have a soft spot for ElBaradei, but apparently the people of Egypt don't.
Yeah, he never flew over here.
He returned to Egypt before the revolution amongst much fanfare.
I think it was 2010, and several thousand people turned out at the airport to greet him because he was pushing the constitutional reform issue back then.
His big thing was constitutional reform.
But he never took off.
He's backed by a bunch of, you know, sort of westernized liberal types here.
But in terms of mass grassroots support, he just never got it.
He tried a couple times.
He made several forays into local villages and that sort of thing to try to boost his popular credentials.
But if you see footage of the guy, actually, whenever he's among the public, he looks absolutely petrified.
And, you know, he's sort of been written off at this point, because he just doesn't have – he's just too out of step with the average Egyptian, which is, as we've seen according to election results, is, you know, pro-Islamist.
And he is quite liberal.
And he spent very much of his career abroad.
I think it was in Vienna.
So he's actually perceived as a foreigner by much of the Egyptian public, sort of see him as this, you know, as a more western than Egyptian at this point.
So the guy really doesn't – and he didn't even run in the presidential election, because I don't think he really would have gotten anything.
So yeah, so he's much less of a force to be reckoned with than possibly the other two members of the triumvirate, which are the two presidential candidates, both of whom did quite well, both of whom got several million votes in the first round, those being Omar Moussa and Hamdine Sabahi, who is a Nazirist.
Well, but still, a couple of million votes versus 12 million for Morsi, right?
That's true.
That's true.
Yeah, I mean, whatever his critics say, I mean, you can – you know, you just can't get around the fact that he does have democratic legitimacy in that he did win – you know, he won a presidential election fairly and squarely.
Yeah, now, well, I mean, that doesn't make him legit to me, but I can see how, you know, in Egypt it does.
It sounds like he's got – more or less he's got consent of the governed for now, anyway.
Although, you know, like you're talking about, some of these protests and violent turning protests have been absolutely huge.
I wonder, do you think that they really threaten his regime?
At first I did, but to be honest with you, after a couple of weeks of it, it now looks like they're sort of hurting – they've sort of hurt themselves, and that was sort of the point of the article that I just wrote.
I mean, these massive demonstrations and marches that they're calling for almost inevitably are leading to clashes with security personnel and stuff like that at this point.
They're almost inevitably leading to violence.
I mean, you have a lot of protesters who are engaging in these, you know, these so-called campaigns of civil disobedience where they're blocking public transportation, they're blocking traffic, they're attacking state institutions, and this is actually alienating them from much of the public.
I mean, all but the hardest core revolutionary, anybody but the hardest core revolutionary is going to resent that.
And what we've actually seen in the last couple of weeks, actually, the last couple of big demonstrations, is I've actually heard reports of people on the street attacking protesters.
You know, you've got guys sitting in traffic who need to get to work, and I'm talking about millions of people in the greater Cairo area now, and they can't get to work because you've got this small core of very hardcore activists who are out there, like I said, blocking traffic and doing this other stuff, blocking the metro line and this sort of stuff.
So I'm actually hearing stories now where just the public is sort of rising up against these self-proclaimed activists and getting into fistfights and attacking them and that sort of thing.
So I think, in a sense, and I think these things far from threatening the new Morsi government, I think it's actually, I think they've actually lost in terms of credibility on the street because of some of their recent protests.
Yeah, exactly.
I can see it now, you know, like the International Answer Coalition on the eve of the Iraq War taking up the whole protest, talking about free Mumia, like, and everybody else just wants to wring their neck.
Who cares about Mumia?
You know?
But this is the exact kind of thing that you're talking about, you know, come on guys, direct action.
We're, we feel good about ourselves being leftist activists, and all they're doing is screwing up their own agenda.
Exactly, and screwing up other people's everyday lives, you know?
So yeah, there's definitely that sort of dynamic going on.
You know, sort of the idea is that the time, you know, there was a time for mass protest to unseat the dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and there was 18 days of that, but now, two years later, I mean, we're well beyond that point, and people really need to be focusing on the electoral game, you know, the political game at this point.
You've got parliamentary elections that are supposed to be held within the next, you know, two or three months, and a lot of people, you know, a lot of critics of the opposition are saying, why are you spending all of your time with this, you know, very sort of this, you know, unproductive street protests, and all of this, and civil disobedience, and all of this other stuff, when you should be focusing on your upcoming electoral campaigns, and you should be trying to win over the public, and, you know, and trying to explain your position in advance of parliamentary polls.
Now, I know you've got to go, but let me ask you real quick.
I think you told me before that there's, you know, reason to sort of sympathize with their point of view, that the way the Constitution is written, that, you know, there's no point in participating, because they've already been frozen out from the get-go, and that's why they're so damn mad in the first place.
Sure, that would definitely be their argument, although the opposite side, and again, it's very difficult to sort of get to the truth behind what's going on, because you do have two different narratives that emerge, and it's very hard to figure out which one is the right one.
But, you know, the Islamists would argue that they were, that the liberals and leftists and all of those people were given every opportunity to participate in the Constitution drafting process, and it was only because they, you know, all of their demands weren't being taken into consideration that they staged two big mass walkouts from the Constituent Assembly, which had been passed with the drafting of the new Constitution, and that it was that they had been given a valid chance, they had been given a fair chance to give their input and to sort of negotiate with other factions and arrive at a mutually acceptable Constitution, and that they forfeited that, and just sort of tried to impose what they call a dictatorship of the minority.
And when they didn't have all of their requests met, they just sort of walked out en masse.
And a lot of people at the time thought that would end the Constitution drafting process, and that the Assembly wouldn't be able to function, but instead the Islamists were sort of like, well, okay, you know, if you want to play that game, then we're just going to go through with it anyway.
We'll just approve it anyway, and we'll hold the referendum anyway.
And the people did give it, 65% of voters did back it in the end.
So like I said, if I said in previous interviews, it looks like I was wondering whether, you know, sort of how they would deal with this, and it looks like they're just powering through.
You know, they're sort of letting these more rambunctious elements have their demonstrations and their marches and that sort of thing, and they're going to let them do that with sort of the understanding and the foresight that all the opposition is really doing, like I said earlier, is sort of alienating the public.
And I mean, so far, if you look back, I mean, they did get, despite the incredible opposition, they did get their referendum, you know, despite judges were saying they were going to boycott the referendum, and they weren't going to provide any judicial oversight, but they still got it.
They still got their referendum.
They still got the result that they wanted with a 65% approval rating, and it looks like they're going to get parliamentary elections in the next couple of months.
So I mean, they're just sort of, like I said, they're just sort of powering through and allowing the electoral, you know, the electoral process to take its course, despite all of these, you know, these repeated interruptions.
And I should add also that these strikes and protests and demonstrations and marches and all of this stuff are also really starting to impact the economy negatively.
So that's also badly affected their credibility.
You know, you've got tourism is declining badly, it's steadily declining because of all of the political instability, and you've got investors are getting spooked from the stock market, you know, so the stock market is ending down whenever you've got doubts of, you know, states of political violence or whatever.
So people are really becoming very turned off by the whole thing.
Yeah, well, that makes sense.
And now I know you heard Phil Giraldi say that he has CIA sources telling him that the Saudis are bankrolling troublemakers in the streets just to make everything worse in order to undermine Morsi, although it sounds like maybe, if anything, they're undermining Morsi's opposition.
But what do you make of that?
Right.
Yeah, no, I remembered you mentioned that.
And I actually sort of asked around about it, if anybody had heard anything like that.
And it was originally, I think he said Saudi and Qatar.
Now, like, I don't think it's so realistic in the case of Qatar, which is quite pro brotherhood, you know, with whom the brotherhood is a very good relationship, at least at least publicly.
Yeah, I'm not sure if he makes a lot more sense about Saudi, though.
Saudi is definitely I mean, they would have a reason to.
They were very pro Mubarak.
They supported Mubarak until the end.
They were very against his prosecution.
So that is not so, you know, that that can't necessarily be ruled out.
But that being said, I haven't heard any concrete, you know, evidence of that.
And it doesn't sound like it's working regardless.
It sounds like it's just blown up in their face if that's what they're trying to do.
It sounds like a dumb plan in the first place.
It sounds like they thought they had more public support than they actually did.
And it's just, you know, it's just poor.
They thought the whole country was sort of going to rise up at once and that they would get all these copycats would all join in and start attacking Muslim Brotherhood offices.
And that didn't really happen.
You do have a core of, you know, you know, tens of thousands, maybe even call them a hundred or two hundred thousand, you know, people who are staunchly anti Morsi, either from the left or from the pro Shafi'i, you know, right.
But these have to be weighed against, you know, the tens of millions of, you know, the silent majority, the tens of millions strong, silent majority in the countryside and elsewhere, all of whom are continuing to give President Morsi and his administration the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm sorry.
I know you got to go.
I've kept you way too long here.
Thanks very much for your time, Adam, as always.
Hey, my pleasure, Scott.
I look forward to doing it again.
Great.
Yeah, it'll be soon.
All right.
That is Adam Morrow from Interpret Service.
That's IPS News Dotnet reporting live from Cairo, as always, keeping us up to date on I don't know, two years out from the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
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