CBC: Does the deep state exist? Journalist Bruce Livesey investigates

Nov 18, 2019

By Bruce Livesey

Is Donald Trump facing impeachment because of the “deep state”?

He and his supporters certainly think so, pointing to the parade of military officers, CIA personnel, former diplomats and other members of the U.S. government eager to testify against Trump over the Ukraine scandal.

“Another whistleblower coming in from the Deep State!” Trump tweeted in October, after learning that a foreign policy official with knowledge of the Ukraine matter was willing to testify.

The term “deep state” now appears in major media and is heard throughout Washington — whereas before, it was only whispered by nutty conspiracy theorists. In a recent New York Times feature,Trump’s War on the ‘Deep State’ Turns Against Him, the reporters examine how “the deep state has emerged from the shadows” to defy the White House’s efforts to stymie the march to impeachment.

Meanwhile, bookstores are stocking new volumes with “deep state” in the title. And a television thriller Deep State, refers to a president “who tweets like a teenage girl” while being undermined by sinister forces.

But what exactly is the so-called “deep state”? And does it really exist?

“For me, the deep state is a theatre or playing field of political actors operating behind the scenes, either in concert with, or in opposition to, state government policy,” said Professor Ryan Gingeras of the department of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. to CBC Radio’s IDEAS.

“Different constituencies use it in different ways,” adds Nancy MacLean, historian at Duke University and author Democracy in Chains: the Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.

“For the most part it’s a term used by the political right… to signify those parts of the state that don’t fall into willing compliance with the president’s agenda.”

Yet many might be surprised to learn that the term originated in Turkey.

“The Republic of Turkey, in some respects, began as a conspiracy — a conspiracy within the Ottoman imperial army at the very end of the First World War,” said Gingeras, an authority on Turkey’s history.

‘Deep state’ origin

After the Turkish military began a series of coups starting in 1960, the term “deep state” emerged within Turkey to describe the army’s often powerful and stealthy role in governmental affairs.

“For the longest time, people [in Turkey] talked about the ‘deep state’ as if it was an actual institution within the Turkish government that operated behind the scenes,” Gingeras said.

“And it was an institution that was made up of lots of different actors, ranging from military officers to members of the intelligence community, elements of organized crime, as well as private citizens who operated in conjunction with one another to essentially negate government policy.”

The notion gained further credence in 1996 when a Mercedes sedan crashed into a truck on the outskirts of the small town of Sursuluk in western Turkey, killing three of its four passengers. Among the passengers was a deputy chief of Istanbul’s police department, a member of Turkey’s parliament, and Abdullah Çatlī, a contract killer for the Turkish secret service, a leader of the Grey Wolves terrorist organization and one of Europe’s most wanted men.

“In the subsequent investigation, it was discovered that Çatlī possessed a diplomatic passport under an assumed name, signed by the interior minister,” said Gingeras.

“[It] was discovered was that he been hired by the Turkish government to engage in a series of conspiratorial and violent acts, including murder… And it confirmed in people’s mind… a sort of shadow government or a shadow body was acting in the interest of the state. But in highly illegal and violent ways.”

Yet Turkey wasn’t the only Middle Eastern country where the idea of the “deep state” has been applied: in Egypt, after the military came to power in a 1952 coup which overthrew a parliamentary democracy, the term took root there as well. The military is the dominant power in Egyptian society, controlling not only security but most of its economy.

By 2011, the Hosni Mubarak regime had fallen into disrepute after years of corruption and failing to meet Egyptians’ basic needs. When the Arab Spring broke out that year, citizens took to the streets to demand the Mubarak family’s removal from power.

The following year, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohamed Morsi, was elected Egypt’s first new civilian president.

“The mistake that Egyptians made at the time is to believe that it was over, [that] the struggle to regain a free Egypt had succeeded,” said Dr. Wael Haddara, a Canadian physician and medical professor at Western University, who was a close advisor to Morsi.

“The mission was accomplished and so people lowered their guards. What had happened in reality is that the military, and to a lesser extent security forces, were just regrouping to regain the upper hand once more.”

Indeed, Haddara says the military quickly undermined Morsi’s capacity to rule. He not only didn’t control the military, he also didn’t control the judiciary, police or state media.

“The Minister of Finance withheld information about government finances, the governor of the Central Bank of Egypt refused to engage with mechanisms to secure financing from the IMF,” said Haddara.

“In fact, there were many acts of sabotage throughout the year he was in office.”

With Morsi facing growing unrest in the streets, the Egyptian military initiated a coup in July 2013, and installed Morsi’s defence secretary, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as new ruler. Morsi was arrested on charges of espionage, and in his subsequent trial in the summer of 2019, collapsed and died.

‘War merchants’

The journey of the term “deep state” to North America is a remarkable one. It didn’t fully arrive here until it was borrowed by an obscure Canadian-born academic, Peter Dale Scott, an English professor at the University of California in Berkeley.

Dale Scott was fascinated with the JFK’s assassination, the Vietnam War and 9/11, and became convinced that a so-called “deep state” played a determining role in these events. His books soon began finding an eager audience within elements of the emerging alt-right. Dale Scott was a repeat guest on Infowars, hosted by the far-right gadfly, Alex Jones.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, an itinerant former Goldman Sachs executive and documentary filmmaker, adopted the view that the “deep state” was undermining the capacity of the U.S. government to govern for the general population. He went seeking a candidate to run for president in 2016, focusing on Donald Trump, who embraced the same view.

But long before Trump’s arrival, the idea of secretive powers manipulating the U.S. government had been articulated by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. In his 1961 farewell address, he famously declared: “We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.”

Eisenhower went on to issue his prescient warning: “Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government… We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications… In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

Today, the U.S. arms industry is dominated by half a dozen of giant contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing — all of which have factories in key Congressional districts.

“I call them war merchants, or merchants of war,” said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the U.S. military, and was chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell. As he told IDEAS, “They have incredible influence over the national security decision-making and the foreign policy decision-making in Washington.”

Wilkerson says America’s involvement in wars, extending from Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, to its current wars around the globe, is greatly due to the power of the military industrial complex.

But the rise of multinationals and globalization has also meant individual governments face enormous pressure to bow to their economic power. Many academics believe we are now living in the era of the “captured state”, wherein corporations now exert outsize influence behind the scenes on governments, and shape which policies and laws should be implemented.

The influence of James McGill Buchanan Jr.

Nancy MacLean, a historian at Duke University, has focused her research on the work of an obscure Nobel Prize-winning economist, James McGill Buchanan Jr., whose writings deeply affected Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, a Kansas-based oil giant.

“[Buchanan] is probably the most influential thinker about democracy in our modern era,” said MacLean.

“And yet he is almost unknown to the public.”

MacLean says Buchanan was a libertarian who was opposed to government intervention in society, pressing for rescinding progressive laws, regulation, social programs and equity legislation.

MacLean documented how his ideas influenced Charles and his brother David Koch, who together built the powerful Koch political machine.

“The Koch political network now rivals the major political parties in the United States at election time,” said MacLean.

“It surpasses some of them in its funding and its operations. They fund quite literally hundreds of organizations.”

Canada falls prey to oil industry power

Indeed, much of the Trump agenda is borrowed from the Koch network, while key administration personnel used to work for it. But does this sort of corporate capture extend to Canada?

Kevin Taft, former leader of Alberta’s Liberal Party and the author of Oil’s Deep State, believes so. He’s documented the power the oil industry has on both the Alberta and federal governments.

“Part of the strategy for the industry is to focus on public institutions and turn those institutions into instruments of the industry,” Taft said.

He notes that even parties that were more critical of the energy sector, such as the NDP, fall prey to its power.

“It was really clear to me when I was in the legislature that the New Democrats were determined to hold the oil industry to account,” said Taft. “They called consistently for higher royalties, for better environmental standards and for more upgrading of the raw material in Alberta before it was shipped abroad.

“So I was really startled the night of the (2015) election victory for Rachel Notley when she immediately began making speeches about her friends in the oil industry and how she wanted a message to go out to the oil industry that everything was going to be OK, we were going to collaborate with them.”

Taft says the election of Stephen Harper in 2006 saw the oil industry gain its closest ally in the highest office in the land.

“Harper was closely tied and remains closely tied to Big Oil,” said Taft. “He would make no bones about it… How that played out over the years that he served as prime minister is that the portion of the federal civil service that has anything to do with the oil industry was brought closer and closer to the industry.”

After Justin Trudeau’s election in 2015, the new prime minister has also worked to allay the fears of the oil industry, in particular when he purchased the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline last year.

“The purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline was just a sign to me of the raw flexing of the oil industry’s muscle,” Taft told IDEAS.

“The industry really really wants this pipeline. It wasn’t prepared to finance it itself, and yet it was able to put enough pressure to get the federal government to buy it for them.”

Original Link: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/does-the-deep-state-exist-journalist-bruce-livesey-investigates-1.5363412

The Middle East Eye: By thwarting the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia shot itself in the foot

Oct 23, 2019

By Wael Haddara

Back in March, before the untimely passing of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, I had written about his approach to foreign policy, which combined values with pragmatism and allowed for a delicate balance in the turbulent world of Middle East international affairs.

One of the examples I cited was his attempt to manage the conflict in Syria through a quartet composed of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran. His rationale for including Iran was that it was a major and significant player in the Syrian conflict, and that it was essential to have it as part of the solution to avoid further escalation.

Confrontational approach

I received some critical feedback, namely that Morsi’s proposal was seen by the Saudis to be empowering Iran. At the time, Saudi leaders, though paying lip service to the idea of a quartet, persisted in obstructing any real work through this mechanism.

We now know that Saudi leaders favoured a confrontational, muscular approach to Iran, including the dismantling of the Iran nuclear deal, the enactment of further sanctions, and military strikes, all carried out by the US. All of this, of course, was before a strike on Saudi oil facilities resulted in the loss of half of that country’s oil production.

But back to Syria: six years after the coup that removed Morsi from office, Iran is among the key actors in Syria in control of the country. The ascendancy of Tehran has taken place despite an unfettered Saudi policy of regime change in Syria.

If the objective of excluding Iran from talks on the future of Syria was intended to weaken Iran, the course of action pursued by the Saudis has resulted in exactly the opposite – and Syria is not the only theatre where Saudi strategy on Iran has failed.

Losing the war

In Yemen, the Iran-supported Houthis recently claimed to have killed 500 Saudi soldiers and captured a staggering 2,000, in addition to equipment from a military convoy. Regardless of the veracity of that specific claim, it is clear that Saudi Arabia has lost the conflict in Yemen.

Saudi forces have engaged in acts of aggression alleged to be war crimes, and Saudi strategy has produced one of the worst humanitarian crises in theatres of war in modern times.

Lebanon is another country where Iran has leverage and where Saudi Arabia’s strategy to change the balance of power has failed – if kidnapping and forcing the prime minister’s resignation can be elevated to the level of strategy.

Saudi and Emirati foreign policy, including support for counter-revolutions across the Arab world, was ostensibly aimed at strengthening their domestic and regional positions. Saudi leaders seem to consider democratisation in general – and Islamists in particular – as the greatest threat to the stability of their regime, and indeed, a bigger threat than Iran.

A democratically elected government that could have leveraged Egypt’s natural strengths was removed, and societal cohesion was fractured in favour of a military authoritarian regime. The result has been a severely weakened Egypt, unable or unwilling to offer any support on regional conflicts.

Manifest failure

Now, the Saudis have been forced to accept that a belligerent approach to Iran is likely to be unproductive and unsustainable – or, as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz put it bluntly: “Saudi Arabia recognizes its weakness and is ready to talk to the Iranian foe.” But Riyadh now approaches these negotiations from a position of manifest failure: of its regional strategy, of its defences, and of its ability to develop an effective coalition.

Could things have been different? In 2012, there was a real potential for an effective axis against Iranian regional ambitions, with Turkey-Egypt-Saudi Arabia representing an overwhelming combination of population, wealth, military readiness and credibility. Yet, effective as that alliance might have been against Iran, it would eventually have highlighted the fact that one of the three countries remained mired in a mediaeval governance system.

Saudi Arabia has succeeded in its objective of aborting, or at least significantly impeding, the Arab Spring. But in the course of doing so, it has left itself vulnerable and weakened. It need not have been this way.

Original Link: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/thwarting-arab-spring-riyadh-shot-itself-foot

The Middle East Eye: The 89-year-old who threatened the Egyptian regime even in death

Sep 25, 2017

Photo: In November 2005, then Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef shows his finger, covered in ink after voting, as he walks away from a polling station a school in the populated suburb of Nasr City in Cairo (AFP)

Wael Haddara is an educator, associate professor of medicine at Western University, Canada, and a leader in the Canadian Muslim community. In 2012-2013, he served as senior advisor to President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt.

This month marks the 88^th anniversary of the death of Omar Al-Mukhtar, the leader of the Libyan resistance to Italian occupation in the past century. Al-Mukhtar was executed for sedition by the occupying Italians on 16 September 1931.

In his famous eulogy of Al-Mukhtar, the celebrated poet Ahmad Shawqi predicted that his martyrdom would forever call Libyans to claim their freedom, and his blood would forever be an obstacle in the path of reconciliation between the occupier and the occupied.

It is a measure of the power of ideas and the impact of human resistance that when Al-Mukhtar was finally captured, at 73 years of age, the Italians chose to conduct his trial in secret and to bury him in an unmarked grave, guarded by an Italian sentry.

Oppressors are afraid of ideas, and of the men and women who believe in them, regardless of their frailty, advanced age or even whether they are dead or alive.

The frail man surrounded by security

This month also marks the death of another man, Mohammad Mahdi Akef. He was a former Egyptian parliamentarian, and the seventh man to serve as the general guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Under his leadership in 2004, the Muslim Brotherhood issued the first truly comprehensive reform programme in Egypt, and in 2005 led the Muslim Brotherhood to its largest electoral victory prior to the 2011 Revolution.

In 2009, he was ranked as #12 in the 500 most influential Muslims, selected by scholars for a book issued by the Royal Islamic Center for Strategic Studies.

Following the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, he was arrested at the grand old age of 85 years and held, like many of Egypt’s 40,000 political prisoners, under brutal conditions.

According to his family, he was diagnosed with cancer last year, and despite declining health, was held, nearly incommunicado, by the Egyptian regime.

Akef was widely celebrated for refusing to be nominated for a second term as the Brotherhood’s guide, vacating the post in 2010 after the election of Muhammad Badie and he remained one of the few leadership figures that appealed to a wide cross-section of Islamists.

His repeated court appearances over the past four years evoked images of Omar Al-Mukhtar in his captivity: white-haired, wrapped in a white blanket; a frail old man who must yet be surrounded by heavy security.

Troubling questions

Akef seems to frighten the repressive regime in Cairo almost as much as the Italians were frightened by Al-Mukhtar. It has presided over four years of intense repression that includes as its victims tens of thousand of political prisoners, thousands of political exiles, and in its arsenal the widespread use of extra-judicial killings and systematic and pervasive torture.

Despite all this repression and semblance of control, the authorities refused to allow the funeral of an 89-year-old man to proceed on Friday. Only immediate family was allowed and the burial took place within hours of his passing.

Akef’s ordeal and ultimate death raise many troubling questions for both Egyptians and Westerners. What has become of the people of Egypt in the 85 years since Shawqi so eloquently eulogised Al-Mukhtar?

Where is the discourse of freedom, liberty and principle that made Shawqi’s poetry celebrated and Al-Mukhtar’s death an inspirational memory?

There were occasional muted calls for clemency for Akef, but little else. And over the course of the four years of his inhumane imprisonment, not a single Western government issued a statement opposing his incarceration or appealing for his release.

This silence, despite the fact that even by the laughable Egyptian standard of justice, he was acquitted on all charges in January 2016 and yet continued to be detained, for another 20 months, until his death.

The cost of silence

While Akef was the oldest political prisoner in Egypt, there are others in similar circumstances, whether because of age or health. Their ongoing detention, like the treatment Akef received both in life and in death, can only be described as reflecting the fright the Egyptian regime has of men and women who stand on principles.

Judge Mahmoud al-Khudeiri, one of the leading figures of the movement for an independent judiciary, continues to be imprisoned despite ailing health and advanced years.

But the silence of the international community towards the ongoing abuses in Egypt goes beyond the egregious cases of Akef and Al-Khudeiri. Human Rights Watch recently released a report on torture by Egyptian authorities, calling it endemic and possibly amounting to crimes against humanity. This silence by the international community is not without a cost.

It does not take much insight to realise that endorsing or financing the Egyptian regime invites the enmity of the people suffering its brutality or that repressiveness provides the perfect atmosphere for radicalisation.

Western democratic governments appear to have made the determination that the risk from this course of action is tolerable and the profits from continuing to embrace dictatorship far more desirable.

The assumption seems to be that the regime is unlikely to lose any time soon and that, even if it does, whoever replaces it will still crave the backing of the “international community” regardless of this deafening silence. This is far from a safe bet.

The better bet

This is a regime that prefers to assassinate young people than to bring them in court; that is holding an elderly woman in solitary confinement to put pressure on her even more elderly father; that has openly taken control of the judiciary; that has used the judiciary to issue mass execution sentences without consideration of individual cases; and that craves praise for releasing one activist as a “favour” to Donald Trump while continuing to indefinitely hold tens of thousands.

We now see that it is also a regime that feels threatened by an 89-year-old man not only in his dying days, but even at his funeral. This is a regime that understands that its hold on power is precarious and fears that every day might prove to be its last. We would do well to take note.

The events of the last few years have changed the people of the Middle East. In Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, the old patterns have not held. If ever there was a time to bet on the people and not their oppressors this would be it.

Original Link: https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/node/66261

The Colour of Canadian Values

Sep 29, 2016

Candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party are once again competing in the area of identity politics. In a move with similarities to Trump’s vetting of immigrants, one leadership contestant called for the screening of immigrants for “anti-Canadian” values. Mercifully, there are now multiple voices from Conservatives that are calling out these attempts as dangerous. Tellingly, though, the primary concern for some on the right is not whether or not those sorry excuses for policy are correct or not, but rather that they are likely to damage the Conservative “brand,” and hence cost votes.

But the reality is, this kind of call to protect “us” civilized Canadians from the “immigrants” who do not share “our” values, is resonating (recent poll showing many approve) with many Canadians. It’s not hard to see why otherwise reasonable people feel that way. A respected colleague pointed out on his social media page that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does say that “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” What are those principles, if not values?

There are two criticisms of testing immigrants against “Canadian values” that I would have thought were self-evident, but clearly they’re not. So let me take a stab at pointing them out.

Are “Canadian values” or “principles,” changing or immutable? When I came to Canada as a 14-year-old immigrant, Sunday shopping was prohibited because it was the “Lord’s day” and the Criminal Code still had something called “gross indecency.” Same-sex unions, let alone marriages were not recognized, a fetus had rights (Tremblay v Daigle), abortions were somewhat challenging to obtain (R v Morgentaler) and the Supreme Court had ruled against medically assisted dying. All of that has now changed.

And so, without a doubt, it is obvious that Canadian values change over time and not in insignificant ways. The next obvious question then becomes, who has the right to contribute to the debates that lead to those monumental changes?

I have observed this allergy to requests for accommodation made by “immigrants.” Examples of accommodation requests include the changes to the RCMP uniform to allow turbaned Sikhs; schools allowing the kirpan; and the debate around the wearing of niqabs in citizenship ceremonies. The irony is that those requests universally relate to individuals being accommodated, whereas the changes outlined above (abortion, sexuality, etc.) alter the very fabric of society. Yet the former elicit charges of being anti-Canadian, while the latter are immune from such charges.

Let me take this a step further. It seems fairly clear that all immigrants are not created equal. Diane Ablonczy, former minister of State and Member of Parliament, was born in the United States to American parents and is married to a Hungarian immigrant. Bill Vander Zalm was born in the Netherlands and became Premier of British Columbia. C.D. Howe is such an iconic name that few recall he was born, raised, and educated in the United States. Svend Robinson was another American immigrant who became a Canadian politician. Henry Morgentaler was a Polish immigrant to Canada. Each of these individuals held very strong views about how Canada must change, and fought to create that change in the social and political fabric of this country. At no point in time was the “Canadian-ness” of any of them, or of their values raised or questioned.

Which brings up the elephant in the room: is this really about a specific set of values, or about a privileging of the right of people from specific ethnicities or geographies to define, for the rest of us, what “Canadian-ness” means? In brutal honesty, is this simply about colour? Is the message: white immigrants can weigh in on whatever debate they wish, but coloured immigrants should shut up?

This issue of “Canadianizing” people has arisen before. For a long time, it was the official policy of the Canadian government to take children away from their parents and put them in boarding schools in order to “assimilate” them into Canadian culture and to ensure that their alien language, customs, and traditions eventually disappear or become entirely subsumed within the Anglo-French tradition. Thankfully, we now recognize that the outlook that underlined that policy also enabled and justified incredible abuses.

There is a crisis of meaning and identity that is sweeping through the world today. Many countries are grappling with defining who they are in a shrinking and ever-diverse world that is defined by myriad languages, cultures, traditions, faiths, and outlooks. In Canada, like elsewhere, we have much work to do to reconcile competing—sometimes mutually exclusive—perspectives on how our society should be defined and doing so in a peaceful manner that helps bring out the best in all of us. This is a real and tangible challenge, but it has very little to do with immigration and much to do with the fact that we are no longer bound by unitary conceptions of “the supremacy of God and the rule of law.”

AlJazeera: Egypt’s military government endures – but at what cost?

Feb 16, 2016

Wael Haddara is a Canadian-Egyptian physician who served as former senior adviser to former President Mohamed Morsi.

One of the great lessons for the Egyptian military from Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year reign must have been that it cannot allow executive power to wander too far from its own control. The military coup against Mohamed Morsi was about more than just wresting power from an Islamist president. It was about regaining control of the country from civilian control. This was first threatened under Mubarak’s dynastic succession scheme and then after the uprising of January 25, 2011.

To accomplish this re-appropriation of power, the military engineered a coup through a coalition of forces, some civilian, with shared interests, to give it a veneer of respectability. Immediately after the coup, however, the military quickly began to concentrate all economic power under its control.

Contrary to the military’s hopes, it’s been nothing but bad news for the Egyptian government recently.

To start with, it has had to contend with a wheat crisis. The General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) held a tender for wheat and the prices presented well above market prices, so the GASC was eventually forced to seek suppliers outside the tender process.

Wheat crisis

The poor tender competitiveness was the result of supplier confusion over the accepted amount of ergot fungus in imported wheat. While the GASC claimed that the international standard of 0.05 percent was acceptable, the agriculture ministry turned away a shipment of French wheat for containing exactly that amount.

In an about-face, the ministries of supply and agriculture held a joint news conference to assure suppliers, but so far the market is not reassured. The ministries apparently refuse to put that commitment into writing and so traders are attempting to factor the risk into the price of the wheat. The French supplier whose shipment was turned away is now threatening legal action and Egypt remains without a supplier.

Does this mean Egypt is heading towards a potentially explosive food crisis? No. The crisis will be averted, but not without significant financial and political cost to the Egyptian government. Markets have been rattled and the memory of the government’s capricious behaviour will linger.

In other news, GM, the company that manufactures 25 percent of Egypt’s cars, announced a temporary suspension of operations in Egypt due to the lack of dollars. Central Bank policies aimed at shoring up the perennially weakening Egyptian pound and shutting down black market speculation have resulted in chronic shortage of dollars.

This problem is also likely be resolved at some point in the not-too-distant future. Information has already been leaked that the government has factored in a devalued pound in next year’s budget.

While this will help to shore the country’s foreign reserves, it merely delays the fundamental problem in light of the ongoing trade deficit and plummeting productivity.

Cashflow problems

Egypt is heavily dependent on three sources of hard currency, none of which are performing particularly well: expatriates’ remittances, tourism and foreign direct investment. Transfers by Egyptian workers abroad have been hit hard by the plunge in oil prices.

Tourism has shrunk in the wake of travel bans following terrorist attacks in Sharm, Hurghada and the Western desert. Foreign direct investment is facing a number of problems related to infrastructure, power generation and the staid Egyptian bureaucracy.

The government has been aggressively marketing Egypt’s economic potential, with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi personally meeting trade delegations and committing to various deals. But true to the pattern of unrelenting bad news, the body of an Italian graduate student, Giulio Regeni, turned up in the middle of a visit by an Italian trade delegation.

In response, the delegation cut short its visit and subsequent reports by Italian authorities indicated “inhuman” torture inflicted on him. That incident has cast a pall on Egypt’s relations with a number of partners, and momentum is gathering to hold the Egyptian government accountable not only for this death, but for similar disappearances, torture and deaths of hundreds of Egyptians.

On the domestic front, a number of developments are equally worrisome. The Ahly Ultras, members of a hardcore fan association for Egypt’s leading football team, seem to be on a path of increasingly likely confrontation with the state.

But hardcore football groups are not the only opposition forming against the regime. A disagreement between a doctor at a local Cairo hospital and a low-ranking policeman resulted in an assault by a gang of policemen on a group of doctors at Matariya hospital.

That incident has spiralled out of control, with the doctors at the hospital embarking on a strike and doctors nationwide voting on a general strike soon. The issue ostensibly is doctor safety.

Sisi’s extravagance

Sisi himself has not emerged unscathed from the missteps and miscalculations besetting the Egyptian regime in these past few weeks. Desperate to achieve more budgetary controls, he delivered a speech big on austerity in which he appealed to Egyptians to economise and tighten their belts. On his way to the speech, his motorcade drove over 4km of red carpet laid out for his reception. The president endured bitter criticism for the extravagance.

But this was not the only example of the state marching out of sync with the demands being placed on the people. Ignoring austerity and budgetary constraints, the minister of justice recently ordered a 10 percent pay rise for judges – that’s on top of the 30 percent raise they received last summer.

Is all this a sign that the regime is crumbling? Hardly. But it may be a sign of something far more ominous.

At best, it signals a lack of co-ordination between the different organs that make up the state. The left hand not only knows not what the right hand does, it is busy slapping it away.

This lack of co-ordination has multiple root causes but may simply be due to the fact that Egypt is back under military government.

The military has proved itself incompetent at governing and this incompetence was on prominent display first in the 1950s and 1960s when Gamal Abdel Nasser appointed military officers in charge of almost every aspect of the state, and most recently in the 2011-2012 transition under SCAF.

Lack of co-ordination

But there is a more terrifying possibility. The lack of co-ordination may signal low-level resistance, infighting and the crumbling of the June 30 coalition. The most dangerous aspect of such resistance is that it does not seek to replace the current ruling arrangement, but it is rather only a fight for a greater slice of the pie.

The military may be discovering that force does not equal power and that authority is different from influence. Mini-crises such as the wheat fiasco, the suspension of GM operations, and the brutal murder of Giulio Regeni may signify little more than the different elements of the June 30 coalition attempting to assert that they too have influence and must be given consideration.

Why is this ominous? Because if the military buckles in to their demands, the country will continue to hurtle towards financial ruin and societal disintegration, as it has in an accelerated fashion for the past 15 years, and reconstitute the environment in which revolution becomes once again both necessary and possible.

If the military does not acquiesce, there are no signs that segments such as the oligarchs, the judges or the security services are willing to sacrifice their own self-interest.

Their resistance will continue, at huge cost to the country, and the military will find the job of governing impossible. Eventually, we will again have a situation where the forces arrayed against the regime are more, and stronger than those for it.

In any case, the struggle between those various former partners is unlikely to conclude before the country has incurred significant monetary, political and societal costs. If economic recovery and political stability seem elusive, both appear far less likely in the near future.

Original Link: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/2/19/egypts-military-government-endures-but-at-what-cost

Wael Haddara and The Egyptian Presidency

Feb 18, 2014

Presidential Elections

In 2012 Haddara went through one of the most difficult periods of his life when his mother passed away. He, his father and brother traveled to Egypt for the funeral and to be with family. While on this trip Presidential Candidate Morsi, who had not met Haddara but heard about his previous advice to the party, called on him for help. Haddara was reluctant as he was in a period of grieving but in the last couple days of his trip it was arranged for them to meet.

Haddara spent several weeks in Egypt, helping Morsi to frame messages. Morsi needed advice on how he was being portrayed to the West.

He arrived home just before the election, which Morsi won by a slim majority, which meant there’d be a run-off vote. Morsi called Haddara in London and asked for more help.

Despite his wife and kids’ objections, Haddara went back. He was still consumed by his mother’s death, making at life at home and work painful.

“I went back to work (at the hospital) and I’d find myself crying . . . completely unprovoked, standing there and a memory washes over you. So I took off.”

Presidential Office

As Mohamed Morsi won the first fair elections and became Egypt’s first democratically elected president, one of his obstacles was a great difficulty in overcoming communication barriers in order to share his view with western governments and his counterparts.

President Morsi developed an appreciation for Haddara’s assessments and advice – he was critical, he was intelligent and most of all he could wear the hat of someone from the west and of an Egyptian. Haddara was unique – a person who was invaluable to President Morsi. A major aspect of President Morsi’s challenges was not only dealing with issues on the ground domestically but it was presenting a new Egypt that could be understood in the global political discussion.

But as this was all developing Haddara had to make a clear decision because he was becoming invested in the future and success of this government and it would take sacrifices to be a special advisor to the President; his family and medical career would be impacted. Yet his love for Egypt and his belief in democracy drew him in.

Haddara spent a year globe-trotting, writing speeches, setting up interviews for Morsi, and working at the hospital.

End of the Presidency

Many stories could be told about what happened in the year of Morsi’s presidency before the military coup d’état but after July 3, 2013 Haddara’s role as a special advisor to the President was over. But it did not take long before he heard from officials from western governments who wanted his opinion on what was taking place post-coup. Haddara had become the bridge building between two political worlds.

Today Haddara does not actively speak on Egypt but he is regularly invited as an intellectual thinker on Egypt pre and post-coup by think tanks, universities, governments, and human rights groups.

“My ongoing work is raising awareness about the coup and the abuses urgently happening in Egypt.”

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