11/26/12 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
We're going back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest on the show is Adam Morrow.
He's a reporter for Interpress Service News Agency.
That's IPSnews.net.
IPSnews.net.
He writes with Khaled Moussa al-Amrani.
I still haven't spoken to him.
I should talk to him sometime.
But anyway, Adam is on the phone joining us live again from Cairo.
Hi, Adam.
How are you?
Good, good, Scott.
Glad to be back.
How are you doing?
I'm doing good.
First of all, your latest article is called Gaza Assault Shows a New Egypt.
This is, of course, very important.
I know it has been your specialty and your focus over the last year, almost two years now, the new foreign policy of the new post-Arab Spring Egypt.
That, of course, is extremely important.
But we have to start the show today, of course, with the news about the president of Egypt, the new president of Egypt, Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his extraordinary power grab, at least according to Western media.
I was wondering if you could tell us what the hell is going on.
Well, yeah.
No, it's just the way you phrased the question, actually, I think is very indicative.
This idea that the way it's being portrayed in the Western media is this sort of naked power grab where Morsi woke up one morning and decided that he wanted to vastly increase his powers at the expense of his political opponents.
And as always, there's far more to the story than that sort of simple reading of events.
Morsi had his reasons for doing what he did, which you sort of have to look back at Egypt's recent history in order to understand Egypt's post-revolution history over the course of the last 18 months.
And basically, I mean, his primary reason for doing this is because you have this judiciary that still has many elements of the of the ousted Mubarak regime in it that have that have worked tirelessly to sort of undo any of the any of the major changes that he does.
For example, in just days before the presidential runoff, if you remember that this summer between Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, just days before that, the ruling military council ordered the dissolution of the of the of the lower house of the People's Assembly, the lower house of parliament of Egypt's parliament, the People's Assembly, which had which had been largely taken by Islamist parties, mostly the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party.
Now, they did that they they dissolved the assembly based on a ruling by the supreme constitutional court here.
And that that supreme that that decision basically undid, you know, Egypt's first first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections.
And and and talk is that they that the same court was basically planning to do the same thing, hope aims to do the same thing to the upper house of parliament, which is also held largely by Islamists, and the constituent assembly, which is tasked tasked with writing a new constitution.
So the reason Morsi did this basically is, is in order to protect the elected institutions from dissolution by this, by this judicial set by the judiciary.
But like I said, many critics still see as being largely controlled by elements of the former regime.
So that's the main reason for doing this.
And again, his his his powers, which you know, this decree that he issued on on Thursday, which basically puts his decisions, makes his decisions immune from possible judicial challenges.
You know, was there was there was a, you know, he did have a valid reason for it.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So yes, it's very important.
Of course, I'm against all presidents and all presidential power grabs.
But of course, there's always the seen and unseen.
And what's most important is not just president grabs power, it's who grabs it from.
And as you're saying, it's been, you know, the default power in the nation is the military.
So pretty much anything he's doing, as you say, the court has been seen as a front for the military regime in the first place.
It seems to me seems like whatever he can do to limit the power of the military and take that power for himself and whoever he's claiming to represent the Muslim Brotherhood and whatever other interests seems like he could be picking a very serious fight, right?
Doesn't he have to walk a very close tightrope?
The military are after all the ones with the guns.
The military are the ones with the guns.
But legally speaking, they've sort of been out of the picture that you remember the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which played such a big role in the transitional, you know, which governed Egypt for 18 months following the revolution, has been officially out of power since, well, first of all, when Morsi won the election in late June, he assumed executive control.
He assumed executive authority from the from the ruling council.
And then about sometime in August, he suddenly, if you remember this, he suddenly dismissed, he very abruptly dismissed the leaders of the military council and basically ended, you know, military rule and basically took legislative, basically assumed legislative powers to himself because the parliament, as I had mentioned earlier, had been dissolved earlier.
So right now, he does have judicial and legislative powers.
The military does not technically have any power.
Like you said, they do hold the guns, but they hold the economy as well, don't they?
Sorry?
They control the economy of the country.
All the major industries are owned by the military, correct?
I wouldn't say all major industries.
I don't know exactly.
And it's actually something that's quite hard to sort of get to get exact figures about because it's been shrouded.
It was shrouded in secrecy for so long under the Mubarak regime to the extent that it was illegal for journalists and stuff here to talk about, to write about, to write about the military in any way.
So it's very difficult to know exactly, exactly how deep their tentacles extend into into the economy here.
Quite, it's quite deep, but it isn't, but it's hardly total.
And I don't, I don't really think they're, you know, I don't really think their influence over large swaths of the economy necessarily, you know, doesn't necessarily translate necessarily into political power.
Like I said, right now, technically, they really do not have a political role to play, or at least they shouldn't, according to the Constitution and to the law.
For example, the purge of the judiciary or purging of the judicial system from Mubarak era officials has been a very long standing demand of, of revolutionary forces.
And what's interesting about the Morsi's latest decree was that he also replaced the prosecutor, a very unpopular prosecutor general who was also who was also appointed by Mubarak in 1996.
So this is also this also has to do with purging the judiciary of Mubarak era officials.
And what's interesting now is you have a lot of liberal and leftist forces who are Morsi's natural adversaries or rivals are now sort of in the same camp with the Mubarak loyalists against against Morsi and against this latest decision.
Again, all these groups that had been calling to purge the judiciary for the last 18 months, they've been, they've been constantly calling to purge the judiciary and to get rid of this prosecutor general are now actually against Morsi and are now are now siding with Mubarak loyalists against his latest decision.
You're saying the leftists who've been pushing for the removal of the head prosecutor now complaining now that he's been removed, and they're siding with the former regime is against the Brotherhood.
I don't want to overstate that, because I think a lot of liberal and leftist groups would be absolutely appalled to be, you know, to be to be accused of being sort of on the same side of Mubarak loyalists.
But that is the case.
I mean, they basically want a purge of the judiciary.
They wanted the prosecutor's prosecutor general's removal, but they didn't want, but but they didn't want the president to be beyond judicial, you know, to have no judicial to not be subject to judicial oversight, which which is late, which is decree on Thursday, basically basically states.
All right.
But now.
So tell me this.
All the emergency laws have been appealed and all of that.
Is it the case that the average Joe arrested in Cairo has a better, much better shot at a fair trial now?
Is he is he certain to be free from torture, et cetera?
Well, I'll tell you, I mean, I would say that he definitely stands a much better chance to be free from torture, as you said, only because there's so much the police are so unpopular and there's so much attention that's been put on the police are very much under the spotlight.
And if any incident of torture does happen, it's it's seized on by, you know, by activists and by the media and made it made a much bigger thing of.
Whereas under Mubarak, you know, this stuff would happen and nobody would know about it, you know, because the press was controlled and everything.
So they really can't get away with that sort of behavior anymore.
Although that being said, there have been reports of torture happening, you know, since Morsi has taken over.
He's sort of taken some flack because there have there have been these these reports of residual torture still happening at that police station.
However, I have to qualify that by saying that he's he's worked very hard to try to replace.
There are still elements of the old police force that are still around.
I mean, the police force was so vast, you know, the interior ministry was so vast that it can't be expected that overnight, you know, the new the new administration would be able to purge all of these elements from these from these institutions.
So stuff does happen.
So I mean, stuff is definitely still bad.
Stuff is still happening, but certainly not to the extent that it used to.
And again, if it does happen, it gets it gets a lot of it gets a lot of media attention, you know, civil, you know, what human rights groups and the media will jump on it immediately and make a big deal of it.
All right, well, it sure sounds like you have a lot of pretty positive things to say about the results of the revolution so far.
Not that everything's perfect, but I think when you and I talked, I don't know, let's say a year and a half ago, we're not so optimistic.
Right, right, right.
Well, I mean, it's still far from still still quite difficult to be optimistic.
There are tomorrow there are two massive rival demonstrations planned for Cairo.
Fortunately, they won't be happening in the same place.
This has happened in the past and has led to has led to, you know, violence and clashes and that sort of thing.
But two rival two rival demonstrations have been planned for different different districts of Cairo tomorrow.
What you know, one of one of which will be attended mostly by liberal and leftist groups, along with Mubarak loyalists.
And that and those are those will be people who will be demonstrating against Morsi's decree.
And there will be another there'll be another rival rally that will happen elsewhere in Cairo.
And that that that will be that will be attended by Morsi's supporters, you know, supporters of his of his decree.
So a lot of people just waiting and seeing to see how many people turn out.
You know, it's sort of like an impromptu.
You know, the two the two rallies are sort of like it will serve as an impromptu referendum to see, you know, to see which side sort of has more support.
And I'm suspecting I'm predicting that the pro Morsi side is actually going to be able to field a lot more people than the than the anti Morsi.
Again, the liberal and leftist and the anti Morsi people do have a much louder voice than their than their political rivals.
So it's often it's easy to think that, you know, that the country is divided in two when in fact, you know, that the country is split in half over a particular issue, when in fact, it's actually, you know, one side is actually much, much less representative than one might think from reading from reading the media, you know what I'm saying?
Like one might think that liberal like half of half of Egypt are liberals.
And when in fact, I would I would venture to guess that less than 10% of the total total population could be could be classified that way.
Yeah.
Well, now, so tell me a little bit more about this Morsi guy.
I mean, is there a politician in the region or maybe in America that you would compare him to who reminds you of?
Is he a Nouriel Maliki type?
Or is he more like George W. Bush?
Or are they the same?
Man, that's hard to say.
I think it's still still be there's still unknown.
You know, I think it's still a big on I think there's still a big question mark.
He has done some questionable stuff.
Two things that sort of strikes two things that strike me as having been a little bit questionable is his acceptance of a loan.
He's just negotiated a few almost five billion dollar loan from the IMF, which is which is a bit questionable considering what you know, considering what the IMF actually represents.
And and the other is his support for the revolution in Syria, which many people would argue is, you know, is is is sort of part and parcel of the Zionist project in the Middle East.
A lot of people a lot of people would argue with that.
But but, you know, by by basically coming out on the side of the Syrian revolution, he's he's coming out on the you know, on the American, you know, with the American access against Iran.
Put it into that context.
Well, I mean, the American policy was turned the other way around.
The American policy is to support the Saudis, the Qataris and their friends in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Syria.
Yeah, definitely.
And the Muslim Brotherhood is very, very close to both Saudi and Qatar, I think more to the latter than the former.
But but yeah, that's true.
Although that being said, I think it's quite interesting to see what just happened in Gaza and how we were all bracing here to see another cast lead like offensive.
If you remember 2008, 2009, Israel's cast lead assault, which lasted for 21 days and killed fifteen hundred Palestinians.
And during that time, Egypt left it kept its border tightly sealed, kept its border with the Gaza Strip tightly sealed, didn't even allow injured people into the country to get to, you know, to receive medical treatment.
And that has contrasted sharply with Morsi's Egypt this time around, where, you know, where they opened the border.
They came out very strongly against Israel.
And I think that had something to do with the fact that Israel stopped after after, you know, after one week and that a cease fire was agreed.
I mean, the way Netanyahu speaking, it sounded like he wasn't going to stop until they had assurances that Hamas was incapable of firing rockets at them.
And that didn't happen.
That didn't happen at all.
They they they they they managed to hammer out the cease fire and Hamas and its missile firing abilities remain intact, as you know.
So I don't think I think there would have been a dramatically different outcome to this latest offensive if Mubarak was still around and not Morsi.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, and at least it's got to be in theory, from the point of view of the Israelis, they certainly even if he really is as reliable as Mubarak, I guess they can't count on that as much as they they were certain they could count on Mubarak.
Right.
But again, what's right?
They could certainly count on Mubarak to keep down the masses.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, yeah, you know, to prevent any sort of, you know, sort of anybody, any popular demonstrations, again, you know, to just keep keep public opinion in place, whereas now post revolution, you always have the possibility of a million, two million Egyptians suddenly hitting the street and making demands, whether those demands are, you know, have to do with domestic political scene or whether those demands have demands happen to do with events in Palestine.
So it's dramatically changed the equation.
All right.
Now, I know that Morsi got a lot of credit internationally for brokering the peace deal.
Did he get a lot of credit domestically?
He did, but it was so quickly eclipsed by this by this declaration, you know, which some people suspect that maybe the timing of the declaration had to do with the ceasefire.
And it was because of this newfound diplomatic clout, you know, that he had managed to achieve on the world stage because of the ceasefire, that he decided to do it when he did.
But that, again, the exact reasons for why he did it now are still are still open to debate.
Interesting.
All right.
Now, so what were the popular demonstrations like during the Gaza war?
I hate to call it a war because a war is when two armies are fighting.
It's the great Bill Hicks used to say.
But during the late Turkey shoot, what was the the mood like in Cairo?
And is that where the demonstration started or not until the power grab thing?
Well, no, it was kind of weird.
It was very confused because you had some very weird stuff happening on the domestic front as well.
You had this re-eruption of clashes in downtown Cairo on, you know, on the now infamous Mohammed Mahmoud Street, if that rings a bell.
It was it was the site of four days of clashes exactly one year ago.
And you basically had a bunch of protesters going there to commemorate the clashes that happened last year when under the military council, dozens of people were gunned down.
So you had you had people commemorating that about it just just as the Gaza thing started.
You had people going there to commemorate the one year anniversary of those clashes.
And those ended up turning violent themselves.
And those led to several days, more, more, you know, several more days of of running street battles between activists and and police.
And that coincided almost exactly with with events in Gaza.
So so so people were sort of leery about hitting the streets at that point because they didn't want to encourage the violence that was already going on.
You know, I mean, the Islamists in general will only hit the streets as long as with good reason, because they don't want any sort of instability.
They don't want they want to maintain maximum stability.
That's the that's what Morsi is promising everybody that he's he's here to bring political stability and that sort of thing.
So so the Gaza stuff was was very muted, although there were very strong demands, the statements that were coming out of political parties across the board.
And again, it's it's it's it's politically I mean, you you sort of have to just because of the you know, the political climate here, if Israel starts beating up on Palestinians, you you sort of have to if you want to maintain any sort of political standing or your, you know, your street credibility, you absolutely have to come out and condemn that sort of behavior.
And everybody did, you know, but there were no there were no massive demonstrations.
I think there would have been if the fighting had continued, if the violence had continued and the death toll had mounted, you would have you would have seen stuff.
But like I said, Egypt was also very, very attracted by stuff that was going on domestically at the time.
And I even wondered at the time if these weird clashes that I like I mentioned, had the were followed this one year anniversary of the Mahmoud Street clashes.
I almost wondered if if there wasn't some kind of relation that if this wasn't some kind of attempt to sort of destabilize Egypt, so it wouldn't be able to deal with what was happening in Gaza.
And and again, this latest round of clashes that I that I just mentioned, weren't really supported by any political parties.
It was weird.
It was just this very weird, you know, you got a lot of young activists who weren't affiliated with particular political parties, that the authorities here said that several of them had been arrested, confessed to having been paid to, to start trouble to start throwing Molotov cocktails at police.
So So I mean, I wonder, I don't know, I don't know for sure.
But I wonder if that was some kind of attempt to sort of destabilize the domestic situation.
Like I said, so Egypt wouldn't be able to respond to, to events in Gaza.
But again, it's very hard to tell.
It's very hard to tell these days.
Yeah, well, Middle Eastern politics, that's a lot of factions fighting hard to keep track of who's interested in to do what all the time.
It seems to me strange, Adam, that after all this time, the Rafah border is still pretty much closed.
The the people of Egypt is it seems like that would be one of the most obvious of their central demands would be open this border, lift the siege, whether that's what Israel wants or not.
Yeah, yeah, that's a very good question.
Actually, people have been so focused on this, on this latest decree and all of the you know, this huge showdown between the judiciary and the presidency, that nobody's really focused on the border and the and the and the Gaza issue.
That's kind of what I mean is like all this time, I understand what you're saying about, you know, they've been very distracted by these minor issues here in the most recent kind of short term, but it's, you know, it's been almost two years now.
Oh, yeah, no, no, no, I agree completely.
I mean, Gaza has always been at the forefront of my, you know, I've, I've, I was, I was always surprised that it didn't, you know, that immediately after last year's revolution, they didn't open the thing, you know, the military council kept the kept the border shut, for the most part, it made some exceptions, but for the most part, it maintained the Mubarak era policy of keeping the border closed.
Now, I know during the last this this last round of bloodletting in in, in Gaza, the seven days, I know the border was open, I know they were letting in they were they were letting in a lot of medical stuff.
I know a lot of activists who participated in convoys went in there.
As far as I know, they were allowing injured Palestinians to come in to seek treatment.
What the final upshot though, is whether whether things have sort of returned to the status quo in the days since, or whether there is a new policy regarding the border and whether it will be kept completely open.
That's a very, very good question.
Because what we're waiting for most of all is for the people what people want, what what certainly what the Brotherhood wants, what Hamas wants, what the people of Gaza want, is is for the border to act as any other international border where you've got, you know, where you can, you can have commercial transactions going on, you can have big truckloads full of cement and building supplies, just, you know, coming in just as they would between two other, you know, any other two countries.
Or, you know, and I and I don't know if that's, if that is the case yet.
That's a very good question.
I'll definitely find out for you.
Okay, good.
Well, I'll keep calling you because you sure always know at least some kind of answer to my questions when I ask them.
I really appreciate it.
But I gotta say, Scott, it's just, it's really getting overwhelming with all of the stuff that's going on here.
I mean, I've lived in Egypt for about 16 years.
So I spent a long, you know, I had at least I had more than 10 years of, you know, of living here under Mubarak.
And things happen, you know, it was such a slow news cycle for so long, because, you know, because nothing ever changed.
Whereas Egypt post revolution, man, it's like every every couple of days, some incredible breaking, you know, some incredible new thing happens to some new incredible political showdown domestically, or there's some sort of, you know, some some eruption, some regional problem that takes place, but it's, it's quite overwhelming.
I'll do my best to answer your question, Scott.
Hey, I think you're doing great, man.
I think you're doing great.
I hope people go and take a look at IPS news.net.
Latest is Gaza assault shows a new Egypt.
Thanks very much again, Adam.
Thanks, Scott.
Talk again soon.
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