04/02/13 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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I'm Scott Horton.
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All right, so our next guest on the show today is the great Adam Morrow, a journalist for Interpress Service in Cairo, Egypt.
Welcome back to the show, Adam.
How are you doing?
Good.
I'm good, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining us here today.
And, you know, I was hoping that we could start at least with maybe if you could sort of give us a thumbnail on Egypt after two years of revolution, and at least somewhat independent, certainly compared to under the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
And, I don't know, just sort of tell us what the hell is going on here and how well the revolution seems to be doing, and then I'll see if I can find some good places to follow up.
Does that sound fair?
Sure, sure.
Well, let's see.
The Arab world's most populous nation's transition to democracy has been a confused one so far.
As things currently stand right now, we have – we don't – there's no parliament.
Egypt lacks a functioning parliament at the moment, or at least a lower house of parliament, because if you recall the middle of last year, the lower house of parliament, or the people's assembly, was dissolved upon the orders of the military based on a ruling by the judiciary, Egypt's judiciary, that ruled basically that the legislation by which the parliamentary elections had been conducted was unconstitutional.
And if you recall, that parliament, that lower house of parliament, had been held by about 75 percent of Islamist members.
It had been a sweeping victory for Islamist parties last year, the chief of which was the Muslim Brotherhood, along with maybe 25 percent Salafist parties, had managed to capture a full three quarters of the assembly.
And that assembly only stayed in place for about two months or so, if I recall correctly, before being dissolved, again, based on a ruling by the judiciary.
Now, critics of that move basically accused the judiciary of still being under the control of people who were – of judges who were basically appointed by Mubarak.
So you have this ongoing standoff now between a presidency that was democratically elected, if you recall also last year, in which we saw Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, winning by a very narrow margin.
We now see that democratically elected presidency facing off with this Mubarak-era judiciary, which has remained in place and hasn't really been subject to any kind of changes.
I mean, the same people are still in the judiciary that were there before the revolution.
The presidency also faces an extremely hostile media, mostly in private hands, media organs that mostly belong to wealthy businessmen, all of whom were quite close to Mubarak or certainly had associations with the regime, and who are all immensely anti-Islamist and anti-Muslim Brotherhood.
So we see this intense media campaign against Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi until now.
Legislation – since the dissolution of Parliament last year, legislative authority has been in the hands of the Shura Council, which is the upper house of Parliament, which is usually reserved for, you know, has a more consultative role.
But since Parliament's dissolution, it's had the power to make laws.
So as you can see from this extremely brief thumbnail, the situation is very confused.
You have multiple – you know, you have multiple players.
You have a liberal and leftist camp that had originally been very anti-Mubarak, but which has recently in the last couple of months has cozied up to Mubarak loyalists, basically, with both of them joining forces against the elected president.
So the situation is confused and promises to become even more so.
There are efforts being – efforts are underway now.
There's been talk of parliamentary elections, but still you have this judicial deadlock over – again, over the terms and regulations governing elections with this judiciary basically saying that these – that all of – that the laws governing elections are unconstitutional and therefore need judicial approval, and all of this is basically served to delay elections further.
So now people are saying it's not – it won't be until September or October at the earliest that we'd see fresh parliamentary elections.
And at the same time, also, you have the same camp, as many members of the same camp, are also calling for early presidential elections in hopes of seeing Morsi unseated.
All right.
Well, so – Sorry, I know it's – I know it's a lot to digest, but a lot has happened in the last two years.
It has not been the smooth transition that a lot of people had hoped for, and it actually – we've seen – it's actually served to – after the incredible national unity that we saw during the 18 days of the Tahrir Square uprising, we're now – Egypt is now in a state of incredible political polarization, unprecedented political polarization.
Yeah, well, now, I guess one of the things to hit on there is what you say about how the liberals, the people who Hillary Clinton probably would have preferred came out on top, that kind of thing, that they've now gone back to an alliance with the regime because they prefer them to the Muslim Brotherhood, even though at least the Muslim Brotherhood apparently believes in – at least as long as it benefits them, they believe in regular elections, and you would think that – I don't know.
To me, that's like a pretty unfortunate thing.
If they're willing to – if the liberal revolutionary types are willing to abandon elections as their – one of their primary qualifications for who they'll ally with politically, you know what I mean, compared to the old regime.
Well, absolutely.
It's definitely unmasked.
I mean, this is a tendency that I've seen elsewhere.
You've got these groups that are nominally liberal and never tire of talking about democracy and people power and that sort of thing, but then when they get – when an Islamist leadership is inevitably elected, they actually end up sort of revealing their very undemocratic nature.
It's the same story that's happened elsewhere.
It's like we call for democratic elections and then we get all up in arms when an Islamist candidate inevitably wins, based on the public – based on the popular will.
So yeah, a lot of these groups that call themselves liberal and leftist and all this stuff have, yeah, have ended up showing a very undemocratic face in all of this.
It's true.
All right, and now – so Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood and their role in the presidency so far, and I guess – wait, yours – I'm sorry.
I lost track at the part where you said who dominates the upper house.
Old regime types still dominate the upper house.
Is that right?
No, no, no.
The – there were also democratic elections for the upper house as well.
In the wake of the revolution, we saw democratic elections that were judged to be free and fair and transparent and everything for both houses of parliament.
Both of those elections were dominated by Islamists, with the lower house garnering about 75 percent Islamist.
And the upper house, I can't remember, but similar figures.
Similar figures for the upper house, which is called the Shura Council, and which is currently endowed with legislative powers now.
So it is in the hands of the Islamists.
Legislative – basically, you've got legislative authority and presidential authority are both in the hands of Islamists, and you've got the judicial authority remains in the hands of people who were, I mean, appointed by Mubarak.
Right.
Okay.
And now, so is it just that the Muslim Brotherhood, just like any other politician in the same position, pretty much a group of politicians in the same situation, that they're just inept and the economy is in bad shape and so everybody's just mad about everything kind of thing is what it looks like?
Exactly.
Or is it that there really, you know, would-be tyrants and they're taking every advantage they possibly can of the power that they've grabbed?
Or what, you know?
Well, basically, as it stands now, to put it very simply, I don't think it's possible – you talked about like an ineptitude or an incompetence in dealing with economic issues.
A lot of people complain or are complaining, you know, Morsi's been in power for eight months now and the economy hasn't improved and the security situation hasn't improved and this, you know, this plethora of issues that sort of – that haven't seen any improvements to them.
But I think that's very unfair.
I think that's very disingenuous because Morsi hasn't really been allowed a chance to govern yet.
He hasn't been given a chance because the opposition from day one has pounced on everything he's done and has tried to encourage strikes and has tried to encourage demonstrations and has tried to encourage what they're calling civil disobedience campaigns.
So, for me anyway, for an impartial observer, it's very difficult to judge the performance of Morsi or the Muslim Brotherhood or the Islamist legislature because, as far as I can tell, they haven't been left alone to sort of do their thing.
Do you know what I mean?
I mean, they've spent the last eight months putting out fires, basically, that are constantly being lit by increasingly radical opposition elements.
So, I find it very disingenuous for the opposition to basically try to make Morsi's tenure as difficult as possible, make things as difficult as possible for the Morsi administration, and then turn around and then say, you know, why haven't you managed to improve the economy or why haven't you managed to improve the security on the streets and that sort of thing.
So, again, in a nutshell, it's really difficult to assess whether they're competent or not because they've been faced with such an overwhelming attack on the part of opposition elements.
Alright, and now, although the constitution that they wrote and ratified, I think when we talked before, you said, yeah, they kind of pushed it a bit there and the people protesting about how far they pushed it, you know, really did have a point.
It wasn't like they were just saying, now is an Islamic emirate run by Sheikh Morsi forever or something like that.
They still want to have a constitutional government of some form, with different branches and et cetera like that, like a peace westerners, for example, you know, and could serve for some measure of fairness and accountability inside the country.
But I forgot what my point was or my question was going to be.
Let me just follow up on what you've said so far, though.
The constitution is a good example of what I just said about sort of the Islamists not really being given a chance.
It's a good case in point because at the time of the constitutional referendum, which was last December, everybody, basically all of the opposition was jumping on this draft constitution, which had been drafted almost exclusively by Islamists because all of the secularist people walked out of the constitutional, walked out of the constituent assembly that had been tasked with drafting it.
So it was very much an Islamist creation.
Everybody in the lead up to the referendum, you know, there was a lot of talk about how bad this draft constitution was, how it gave the president dictatorial powers, how it violated freedom of expression, and how it was, you know, some people even had constitutional law experts coming on television saying this is the worst constitution in the world and da-da-da-da-da.
And then it ended up passing with a 64% approval rate.
And ever since then, all of those problems have, you know, we haven't really heard, everybody sort of shut up about it after that.
Nobody, you know, it looks like, what it seems like to me, I'm not a constitutional expert, but what it looks like to me was that that was vastly, vastly exaggerated, the flaws in this constitution, that actually the new national charter is really very respectable and, you know, there are no outstanding, it's not extremely Islamist, for example.
A lot of, even opposition people admitted that this is a far less Islamist or, you know, theocratic or religious constitution than we had expected.
All of those initial complaints have sort of evaporated in the couple of months since the constitutional referendum.
So it looks like that was all vastly blown out of proportion, all of these complaints and criticisms about the constitution, and that that was another example of the opposition just basically exaggerating or trying to make trouble, trying to trip up the, you know, trying to trip up the referendum, trying to get people to vote down the referendum, when, in fact, the constitution, like I said, really, it looks like, you know, in hindsight, after two or three months, it looks like the constitution is actually a very respectable one.
Well, I think this is an important point for Americans to understand, too.
I don't know everything about the Muslim Brotherhood.
I'm sure I'd hate living under a government run by them.
They seem to me like worse than the average Republicans, but just by a little bit, right?
They seem to me like Pat Robertson types, if you had to make a parallel to American politics.
They're pretty bad right-wing Republicans, but they're not the Taliban, and they're not bonfire radicals like Ayman al-Zawahiri or anything like that, either.
And I don't know how much independence you'd say they have gained from the American empire in the last couple of years since the revolution, but they're certainly not, you know, all of a sudden now the forces of the bad guys in the clash of civilizations that the neocons have tried to force on us or anything.
There's every reason why America ought to be able to continue to get along, even with a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt for the long term, correct?
Let me just make a quick point about that as well.
The Brotherhood actually represents the most moderate face of Islamism in Egypt.
Not only is it the most organized and sort of has the longest history, the longest organizational history, having been in existence for 80 years, but it also does represent the center.
This is something that people don't realize, you know, because the bulk of Egyptians, as we saw in parliamentary elections, the vast majority of Egyptians do want an Islamist leadership.
That's not to say that they want a hardcore Taliban-style leadership or anything like that, but they do want an Islamist, you know, they do want a leadership that is sort of rooted in Muslim values and traditions.
And the Brotherhood really represents, like I said, the most moderate choice, you know, the middle.
You also have Salafists who are much more conservative and much harder core in terms of, you know, how people dress and what people, you know, what people drink and, you know, all of these social issues.
So again, and I think the, we talked about this before, I think the turnout, the results of the parliamentary elections definitely illustrated that, definitely showed that very well, where you basically have 50% going to the Muslim Brotherhood, and that's the center, that's your Islamist center.
And then you've got 25% on the right, which are your Salafist parties, which are quite hardcore, or far right, if you want to phrase it that way.
And then you've got another 25% on the left, and these are the leftist and liberal camps.
And that, you know, that's basically a good way to sort of see the Egyptian electorate, you know, and again, the Brotherhood does stand in the middle of that and has proven itself to be very moderate.
When Morsi first started, when Morsi first announced his candidacy, or even shortly after his assumption of the presidency, they've been very, very quick to stress, the Brotherhood has been very, very quick to stress that they weren't going to make any radical changes, either in terms of sort of Egypt's social environment, you know, they weren't going to start pushing dress codes and they weren't going to start closing bars and they weren't going to start doing any of this stuff.
And nor were they going to take any radical steps in terms of foreign policy, you know, they weren't going to suddenly cancel Camp David or declare war on Israel or, you know, or restore relations with Iran or, you know, they announced their intention to respect Camp David, they would continue the so-called strategic alliance with the U.S.
So in retrospect, I mean, I know it's very easy to exaggerate and see these things, you know, very quickly become taken way out of proportion, that sort of thing, with people hearing about the Muslim Brotherhood in power, when in fact it actually is, within an Egyptian context, I do think they are a force for moderation rather than anything else, albeit an Islamist one.
All right, now tell me if you can at all, do you have even a guess, what's the American government's view of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Do they still work with these guys, they think, or they're very worried, or what do you think they think?
I think they've actually been reassured by the moderation that the Brotherhood has shown.
I think the Brotherhood does want to challenge America in the long term.
I think they do, of course, they have serious issues with Israel, they have serious issues with the occupation of Palestine, they have serious issues with the siege on the Gaza Strip, you know, they have major, major problems, needless to say, with American foreign policy in the region, but they know, they're smart enough and pragmatic enough to know, that they can't simply assume power and then immediately take on the United States.
They know that they can't take on the United States or try to be an effective force for change in the region until their own backyard is put in order.
Do you know what I'm saying?
And as it stands now, the economy's in shambles, you have these grievous social issues that are tearing the country apart, you've got the police are refusing to deploy on the streets, so you have this huge issue of domestic insecurity, where you actually have increasing examples of vigilante justice that have been taking place in the last couple of weeks and months, where you've seen basically people taking the law into their own hands, and basically, you know, local security groups have started to step in, you know, just to fill the security vacuum.
So Egypt is facing these deep, deep, deep issues that absolutely have these serious domestic concerns that have to be taken care of, economic and otherwise, that simply have to be taken care of, and that's going to take at least a decade.
That's going to take at least a decade before they can even imagine, you know, challenging American hegemony in the region or Israeli military superiority or Israeli policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
So their main thing right now is to focus, at least for the next ten years, is to focus on domestic issues and to try to get Egypt's economy back on its feet, to get tourists coming back to Egypt to secure the Suez Canal traffic.
You know, all of these very practical issues are definitely on the top of their agenda, and nobody's thinking right now about seriously challenging, you know, the American empire or anything like that right now.
So in that respect, I think the U.S. does think, at least in the short and medium term, they definitely have a pragmatic player that, you know, that they can sort of rely on, again, temporarily at least, but, you know, a partner that's not going to pose any threat to them or their policies in the region.
Well, you know, it's a shame the way that, yeah, or challenging Israeli policies in Palestine at all has to just get thrown in there with the rest of those issues that way and dismiss that easily.
But it really is that simple, huh?
I mean, or I guess a better way to phrase it would be, could you sum up any progress on the opening of the Gaza Strip as it's taken place over the last two years?
If you remember the summer of last year, Morsi began to take tentative steps towards opening the border completely to all human traffic and commercial traffic.
And that was an amazing, you know, that was an awesome step that he began one by one.
He began gradually undoing Mubarak-era restrictions on the Rafah border crossing and things like that.
Now, what happened in early August, immediately afterwards, okay, immediately after he started taking these first tentative steps towards opening the border, you had this very, very dramatic attack very close to the border, very close to Rafah, in which 16 Egyptian border guards were killed.
I don't know if you remember that.
It was during Ramadan.
And until now, nobody knows who did it exactly.
The only party that would have benefited in any way was Israel from that, although there's no hard evidence that they were involved.
But what the attack basically had, the immediate effect of the attack, was to basically, you know, reseal the border and halt any movement towards opening it up.
Okay, that was the end result of that attack, was basically to stop any progress towards opening up the border.
So that's extremely suspicious.
And an interesting thing, recently, just within the last couple of weeks here, you've started to get the Egyptian opposition has been starting to use Hamas as a way, as a means of sort of tarnishing Morsi's image, as basically you're getting increasing hints or suggestions by these unnamed military sources and that sort of thing that Hamas itself was responsible for the attack, which would basically serve to incriminate not only Hamas, but to incriminate the Muslim Brotherhood, because Hamas is an ideological offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
So Hamas is now sort of being used as a political pawn, you know, against the Muslim Brotherhood here by Morsi's domestic opponents in Egypt.
And this is, I just, I think this is, I see this as the lowest of the low to actually accuse the Hamas resistance group in Gaza of targeting Egyptian soldiers, because there's absolutely no, they have absolutely no interest in doing that.
All it did was work against their interests and end up stopping the gradual opening of the Rafah border.
You know, so they had nothing, no interest in doing that whatsoever.
The only party, again, the only party that would have had anything to gain from that attack was Israel.
So these accusations against Hamas, which also are completely unsubstantiated, there's been no evidence that's been produced, I think are really, you know, at the height of cynicism, you know.
Well, the no evidence part is the important part, although I can see a motive there.
All governments need enemies, and if Hamas is the only thing protecting the poor Palestinians from the Egyptians and the Israelis, then that is good for Hamas.
It could be, you know, in some circumstances anyway.
I mean, right, they're no different than George W. Bush, who likes to pretend he's protecting you from terrorism all day, or Hosni Mubarak, or anybody else.
Sure.
No, I agree completely that governments always have traditionally needed some kind of boogeyman in order to make the public, you know, beg for protection from the, you know.
And like I said, Hamas is very much being used by Morsi's political opponents in Egypt, being used as such a boogeyman.
You're seeing crazy reports in some, the more radical, you know, the more radical quarters of the opposition press saying things like, on their front page, saying things like, President Morsi has 5,000 Hamas commandos that his beck and call, you know, who are ready to enter Egypt to sow chaos when necessary.
You know, crazy things like this that are extremely transparent.
I mean, you'd think they would be transparent to anybody with a thinking, you know, with a mind capable of independent thought can see right through this sort of thing.
But you'd be surprised how many people in Egypt, unfortunately, buy into it, you know.
Yeah.
Well, you know, especially when everything is chaotic, it's hard for people to know what to believe.
There's definitely been an intention to sort of sow chaos, so people are confused.
And that's becoming increasingly evident.
The state of the media right now, I mean, there's intense controversy.
I mentioned the media as another one, like the judiciary is one of these major parties, one of these major players that the Morsi presidency is contending with.
Because, like I said, most of these media organs, most of these big private media organs are in the hands of wealthy businessmen who benefited during the Mubarak era and who had obvious associations with the Mubarak regime.
And these are all, without exception, extremely anti-Morsi.
And the anti-Morsi propaganda at this point, for their part, has reached a fevered pitch just in the last couple of weeks.
All right.
Well, now, I think I mentioned to you before that Phil Durrell, the former CIA officer and writer for the American Conservative Magazine, I mentioned on this show, but now he's gone ahead and written a piece about it for the American Conservative Magazine, saying he hears from his CIA sources, you know, his old friends in the CIA, how that works, that the Saudis are helping to bankroll some of this chaos on the streets of Cairo due to their enmity with the Muslim Brotherhood, in an attempt to undermine Mohammed Morsi.
I have no evidence of that, and I haven't really heard much in that regard.
But I wouldn't rule it out, because the Saudis make no secret of their antipathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood, which is, quite frankly, I mean, if the Saudis don't like the Muslim Brotherhood, I think that speaks in the Brotherhood's favor.
I mean, that suggests to me that they're on the level, if the Saudis hate them so much.
And you also have similar sounds coming out of the United Arab Emirates, out of the UAE, you're hearing vitriolic attacks against Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
The only Gulf country that backs them, that supports them, at least officially, is Qatar.
And I think Morsi was just in Qatar last week, or possibly the week before, for the big Arab League meeting.
He was there.
He went to Qatar for the first time as president, like a week ago, and sat down with the emir there.
And I know the emir of Qatar actually visited Egypt shortly after Morsi's election, when he visited Gaza, if you remember that.
That was about six or seven months ago.
But aside from Qatar, the big players in the Gulf, specifically Saudi and the United Arab Emirates, definitely, definitely make no secret of their antipathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood.
That being said, I haven't heard specifically, or I haven't seen evidence, or anything like that, that Saudi money is being pumped into Egypt in order to destabilize the Morsi administration.
But like I said, I wouldn't rule it out.
It would make sense.
All right.
Well, with that, I'll let you go.
But I really appreciate your time, as always, on the show, Adam.
Sure, Scott.
Hope to talk to you again soon.
Thank you very much.
Everybody, that is Adam Morrow from InterPress Service.
That's IPSnews.net.
And you know what?
I'm sorry, because I never give proper credit to his co-author.
And even still, I'm going to mispronounce his name, but I'm going to say it.
He writes in partnership with Khaled Moussa al-Amrani at InterPress Service, IPSnews.net.
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