President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi hesitated before the coup, but experts question whether Egypt's military could have been contained
Then-Egyptian Defence Minister Abdel Fatah al-Sisi attends a welcome ceremony at Almaza military Airbase in Cairo shortly before launching a coup, .22 May, 2013 (AFP)
By MEE staff
Published date: 30 June 2023
On the 10th anniversary of Egypt's coup, experts are split as to whether the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi was an inevitable outcome of tensions between democracy and the military, or if it could have been prevented.
On 3 July 2013, Egypt's military led by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed Egypt's first democratically elected president from power. The day marked the beginning of a purge of Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood leaders that would morph into a wider crackdown on dissent targeting journalists, businesspeople and secular opponents of the military-led government.
The foremost cause of the collapse of Egypt's democratic transition was the military, Sharan Grewal, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of a forthcoming book on Arab militaries and the Arab Spring, said. "It was aggrieved by democracy."
Grewal noted how Egypt's military actively stoked popular concerns about Morsi's tumultuous rule. Elected by narrow margins, the Muslim Brotherhood-backed leader was viewed with uncertainty by the country's secular opposition, some businesspeople and many in Egypt's sizable Christian minority.
The military has played a dominant role in Egypt since overthrowing the monarchy in 1952. Former presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak were all army men.
"The mere presence of a politicised military like Egypt's made negotiations more difficult between the government and opposition," Grewal said. "For the secularists, why work with Morsi when you can work with the military and kick him out?"
"In Egypt… this empowered military… ultimately terminated the democratic transition," he said.
But David Kirkpatrick, a journalist with the New Yorker who served as the New York Times' Cairo bureau chief during the 2013 coup, challenged the notion that the democratic transition's fate was sealed.
"There was going to be conflict between the Egyptian military and a democratic transition. How that conflict gets resolved… I hesitate to say is anything but inevitable," he said at an event alongside Grewal hosted by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) on Friday.
'Dismay and despair'
Kirkpatrick said the military was plagued by "fissures" over how to act in response to discontent with Morsi's presidency.
A telling case of the uncertainty in the months leading up to the coup, he said, was "dismay if not despair" in the ranks of Egypt's National Salvation Front - the united secular opposition to Morsi - that a coup might not take place at all.
'If Sisi and the generals didn't get a green light [from the US], they certainly got a yellow light'- David Kirkpatrick, New Yorker Magazine
"From the moment of Mubarak's ouster up to the coup there were repeated attempts by the military to reassert their power, and time and time again they would back down," he said.
Sisi himself had secured the powerful position of defence chief under Morsi, and a transition to democracy wouldn't have been "totally unappealing" to him if it guaranteed his position and privileges, Kirkpatrick added.
Kirkpatrick said Sisi's hesitation to launch the coup even after he consolidated support within the army ranks puts a focus on the influence of external actors. "Had the Gulf not been tacitly offering an enormous amount of money, would Sisi have pulled off a coup? I have some doubts about that."
In the wake of the Arab Spring, Egypt was an epicentre in a battle between Gulf states for influence over the Middle East, with Qatar throwing its weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood and the UAE and Saudi Arabia looking to crush the movement.
The Gulf states have since moved to patch up ties. Qatar, along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, has deposited billions of dollars in Egypt's central bank to aid Sisi's cash-strapped government. More recently, Gulf states have demanded a return on their investments.
'Conflicting US messages'
The US also sent mixed messages in the lead-up to the coup. The Obama administration's earlier decision to pull away from Mubarak as he faced popular protests was viewed as a betrayal by other Middle Eastern autocrats.
"Morsi was hearing from Obama some actual support for democracy and he naively thought that the US government was unitary," Kirkpatrick said.
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But Washington was torn whether to back the democratically-elected Morsi or Sisi, as some in the intelligence and defence agencies likely pushed for, particularly as protests against Morsi grew.
"Sisi and the generals around him were hearing two conflicting messages from the US. If they didn't get a green light, they certainly got a yellow light," Kirkpatrick said.
"It's not impossible to imagine that a different posture from the US might have had a different outcome," he added.
But Washington was torn whether to back the democratically-elected Morsi or Sisi, as some in the intelligence and defence agencies likely pushed for, particularly as protests against Morsi grew.
"Sisi and the generals around him were hearing two conflicting messages from the US. If they didn't get a green light, they certainly got a yellow light," Kirkpatrick said.
"It's not impossible to imagine that a different posture from the US might have had a different outcome," he added.
Egyptians flee across Mediterranean
When Sisi announced Morsi's ouster, he pledged to bring "national reconciliation" to the Arab world's most populous country. Instead of a promised roadmap to future elections and stability, Sisi has imposed an authoritarian rule that experts say surpasses anything Egypt witnessed under Nasser, Sadat or Mubarak.
Meanwhile, Egypt's economy is sinking. Surging inflation and a currency crisis have thrust the middle class into poverty and more Egyptians are making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe.
Egyptians were the most common nationality detected crossing the central Mediterranean in the first half of 2022, accounting for 20 percent of nationalities, according to the most recent data from the European Union's border agency Frontex.
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Sisi has tried to portray himself as reaching out to the opposition amid the economic crisis. He launched a national dialogue initiative widely decried by rights groups.
The government has hinted that presidential elections would be held later this year, but few expect them to be free or fair, with the family members of Sisi's only declared challenger arrested. Egyptian authorities have put an estimated 60,000 political prisoners in jail.
The anniversary of Egypt's coup comes as its neighbours see their own hopes for democracy erode.
In Tunisia, President Kais Saied has consolidated power in an authoritarian slide, courting the US-trained and funded military for support.
Meanwhile, Sudan's short-lived democratic transition has collapsed and Sudanese are trapped by brutal fighting between the army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and a paramilitary force led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Sisi has tried to portray himself as reaching out to the opposition amid the economic crisis. He launched a national dialogue initiative widely decried by rights groups.
The government has hinted that presidential elections would be held later this year, but few expect them to be free or fair, with the family members of Sisi's only declared challenger arrested. Egyptian authorities have put an estimated 60,000 political prisoners in jail.
The anniversary of Egypt's coup comes as its neighbours see their own hopes for democracy erode.
In Tunisia, President Kais Saied has consolidated power in an authoritarian slide, courting the US-trained and funded military for support.
Meanwhile, Sudan's short-lived democratic transition has collapsed and Sudanese are trapped by brutal fighting between the army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and a paramilitary force led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
10 years later: Why are Egyptian human rights ignored?
Cathrin Schaer
DW
Egyptian activists complain that the international community often talks about Egypt's crisis-ridden economy but says far less about its dreadful human rights situation. Why is one seen as more important than the other?
This week marks a decade since the coup that installed Egypt's current government. On July 3, 2013, Egypt's military removed the country's first democratically-elected president from power and set up an interim government.
At that time, with Egypt's politics and economy in turmoil, a senior general in Egypt's all-powerful military, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, told his fellow citizens that the military had ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi because he failed to create "a national consensus." But, el-Sissi promised, the military had no interest in retaining political power and would facilitate a return to democratic civilian rule.
A decade later, el-Sissi is still in power. And in many aspects, the situation for ordinary Egyptians is worse than ever. The economy is in crisis, saddled with foreign debt, surging inflation and a currency that has depreciated by nearly half. An estimated third of Egypt's 105 million people live in poverty, and the most populous Arab nation is currently selling off or leasing government-owned assets, like Telecom Egypt, public transport or ports, in order to finance its foreign debt obligations.
How does Egypt get away with it?
There are a number of factors, says Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
Located at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe, Egypt is in a very strategically significant location and, with its large population and big military, has long been considered an important regional power. As such, Egypt also has a long tradition of playing different international allies off against one another.
"So when Egypt is pressured by the Gulf states, they could turn to the US, and when pressure came from there, they could turn to French," Kaldas noted. "This often comes up in meetings. If you go to meetings at foreign ministries or at international financial institutions and talk about conditionality [on human rights] somebody will say, 'well, what if they just go to that other place instead and we lose access?'"
Threat of mass, irregular migration
There are also other reasons, Kaldas adds. Despite el-Sissi's authoritarian ways, Egypt has been a comparatively stable country in the Middle East, especially when compared to places like Syria or Yemen — and its neighbors like it that way. "That makes it easier to justify injecting cash into the Egyptian state in the hope that it will maintain that stability," he explains. "Additionally, the other big factor is this: Egypt is a 100 million people on the Mediterranean."
For Europe, unremittingly haunted by the specter of irregular migration and the potential populist political reaction to it, "that is a very big deal," Kaldas said.
But none of those reasons are actually a good enough excuse not to say anything about human rights in Egypt, Kaldas and others argue. What is often missing in these debates is the existential connection between human rights, political stability and economic circumstances.
Cathrin Schaer
DW
Egyptian activists complain that the international community often talks about Egypt's crisis-ridden economy but says far less about its dreadful human rights situation. Why is one seen as more important than the other?
This week marks a decade since the coup that installed Egypt's current government. On July 3, 2013, Egypt's military removed the country's first democratically-elected president from power and set up an interim government.
At that time, with Egypt's politics and economy in turmoil, a senior general in Egypt's all-powerful military, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, told his fellow citizens that the military had ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi because he failed to create "a national consensus." But, el-Sissi promised, the military had no interest in retaining political power and would facilitate a return to democratic civilian rule.
A decade later, el-Sissi is still in power. And in many aspects, the situation for ordinary Egyptians is worse than ever. The economy is in crisis, saddled with foreign debt, surging inflation and a currency that has depreciated by nearly half. An estimated third of Egypt's 105 million people live in poverty, and the most populous Arab nation is currently selling off or leasing government-owned assets, like Telecom Egypt, public transport or ports, in order to finance its foreign debt obligations.
The el-Sissi government has promoted national "mega-projects" critics say are unnecessary, like a whole new capital city outside Cairo
Image: Friedrich Stark/IMAGO
At the same time, el-Sissi has tightened his grip on power. Independent journalists and anti-government activists have been harassed or arrested. One formerly jailed Egyptian activist told the investigative journalism website, Coda Story, that they had seen military officers stop people on the street, check their phones and then arrest them after finding they had posted, liked or joked about the Egyptian government or military on social media.
Freedom House, the US-based democracy monitor, classifies Egypt as "not free" and the country's freedom rating with the watchdog, already meager, has slowly eroded over the past five years, going from 26 out of 100 in 2018, to 18 out of 100 this year.
For comparison, Morocco scores 37 out of 100, while Germany gets 94.
Egypt has become a world leader in capital punishment and new laws, including one that forces non-governmental organizations to register with the state, have seen space for civil society or activism shrink even further.
A balanced approach needed
Observers say that Egypt's regional neighbors and Western allies take an unbalanced approach to these issues. Egypt's economic issues are regularly mentioned while the country's rapidly worsening human rights record gets far less attention, they suggest.
In early 2022, over 170 members of various European parliaments wrote an open letter to their own top diplomats and ambassadors to the United Nations' Human Rights Council, asking that a special body be established to monitor the deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt. The letter came just before the annual meeting of the council.
"We are extremely concerned about the international community's persistent failure to take any meaningful action to address Egypt's human rights crisis," the politicians wrote. "This failure, along with continued support to the Egyptian government and reluctance to even speak up against pervasive abuses has only deepened the Egyptian authorities' sense of impunity."
But a year later, shortly before the next annual meeting of the council, seven human rights NGOs published another open letter, which found that there had been "no consequential follow-up ... despite the fact the human rights situation in Egypt has further deteriorated," the letter, signed by seven organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders, said.
At the same time, el-Sissi has tightened his grip on power. Independent journalists and anti-government activists have been harassed or arrested. One formerly jailed Egyptian activist told the investigative journalism website, Coda Story, that they had seen military officers stop people on the street, check their phones and then arrest them after finding they had posted, liked or joked about the Egyptian government or military on social media.
Freedom House, the US-based democracy monitor, classifies Egypt as "not free" and the country's freedom rating with the watchdog, already meager, has slowly eroded over the past five years, going from 26 out of 100 in 2018, to 18 out of 100 this year.
For comparison, Morocco scores 37 out of 100, while Germany gets 94.
Egypt has become a world leader in capital punishment and new laws, including one that forces non-governmental organizations to register with the state, have seen space for civil society or activism shrink even further.
A balanced approach needed
Observers say that Egypt's regional neighbors and Western allies take an unbalanced approach to these issues. Egypt's economic issues are regularly mentioned while the country's rapidly worsening human rights record gets far less attention, they suggest.
In early 2022, over 170 members of various European parliaments wrote an open letter to their own top diplomats and ambassadors to the United Nations' Human Rights Council, asking that a special body be established to monitor the deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt. The letter came just before the annual meeting of the council.
"We are extremely concerned about the international community's persistent failure to take any meaningful action to address Egypt's human rights crisis," the politicians wrote. "This failure, along with continued support to the Egyptian government and reluctance to even speak up against pervasive abuses has only deepened the Egyptian authorities' sense of impunity."
But a year later, shortly before the next annual meeting of the council, seven human rights NGOs published another open letter, which found that there had been "no consequential follow-up ... despite the fact the human rights situation in Egypt has further deteriorated," the letter, signed by seven organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders, said.
Sanaa Seif has campaigned tirelessly for her brother's release — he's just one of hundreds of thousands
Image: Kin Cheung/AP/picture alliance
Visiting Germany last summer, Sanaa Seif made similar complaints. The sister of Egyptian dissident, Abdel-Fattah, one of the most high-profile political prisoners in the Arab world, Seif met politicians in Berlin while advocating for his release. She wasn't allowed to disclose who she met though. "It doesn't make sense to me when I see German politicians shy away from talking about human rights," Seif told DW at the time. "It's like they don't want to rock the boat."
Visiting Germany last summer, Sanaa Seif made similar complaints. The sister of Egyptian dissident, Abdel-Fattah, one of the most high-profile political prisoners in the Arab world, Seif met politicians in Berlin while advocating for his release. She wasn't allowed to disclose who she met though. "It doesn't make sense to me when I see German politicians shy away from talking about human rights," Seif told DW at the time. "It's like they don't want to rock the boat."
How does Egypt get away with it?
There are a number of factors, says Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
Located at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe, Egypt is in a very strategically significant location and, with its large population and big military, has long been considered an important regional power. As such, Egypt also has a long tradition of playing different international allies off against one another.
"So when Egypt is pressured by the Gulf states, they could turn to the US, and when pressure came from there, they could turn to French," Kaldas noted. "This often comes up in meetings. If you go to meetings at foreign ministries or at international financial institutions and talk about conditionality [on human rights] somebody will say, 'well, what if they just go to that other place instead and we lose access?'"
An Egyptian frigate made in Germany: Arms sales to Egypt boosted Germany's weapons exports to record levels in 2021
Image: Joerg Waterstraat/picture alliance
Egypt has also been proficient at building bilateral ties by doing huge arms deals, Kaldas explains. An annual French report on weapons sales published in late 2022 shows that Egypt has been the top importer of arms from France since 2012. Egypt is also one of Germany's biggest buyers of arms. The volume of weapons exports to Egypt has increased under el-Sissi and made the country into the third-largest arms importer in the world.
Egypt has also been proficient at building bilateral ties by doing huge arms deals, Kaldas explains. An annual French report on weapons sales published in late 2022 shows that Egypt has been the top importer of arms from France since 2012. Egypt is also one of Germany's biggest buyers of arms. The volume of weapons exports to Egypt has increased under el-Sissi and made the country into the third-largest arms importer in the world.
Threat of mass, irregular migration
There are also other reasons, Kaldas adds. Despite el-Sissi's authoritarian ways, Egypt has been a comparatively stable country in the Middle East, especially when compared to places like Syria or Yemen — and its neighbors like it that way. "That makes it easier to justify injecting cash into the Egyptian state in the hope that it will maintain that stability," he explains. "Additionally, the other big factor is this: Egypt is a 100 million people on the Mediterranean."
For Europe, unremittingly haunted by the specter of irregular migration and the potential populist political reaction to it, "that is a very big deal," Kaldas said.
But none of those reasons are actually a good enough excuse not to say anything about human rights in Egypt, Kaldas and others argue. What is often missing in these debates is the existential connection between human rights, political stability and economic circumstances.
At the same activist Sanaa Seif was meeting German politicians behind closed doors in 2022, the Egyptian president was being feted in Berlin
Image: Michael Kuenne/ZUMA/picture alliance
"The problem is that, fundamentally, Western states often fail to appreciate the shortsightedness of their approach," Kaldas states. "It's not so much that they're getting stability in exchange for looking the other way on human rights violations. The human rights violations are actually contributing directly to Egypt's economic instability. Egypt's economic crisis is because [el-Sissi's] strategy of the last decade has been to leverage the Egyptian state recklessly to finance his consolidation of power and his patronage network."
"Available funds do not flow into productive investments for the future, but seep into economically questionable infrastructure projects and serve, at least indirectly, to finance police-state repression," Stephan Roll, head of research into Africa and the Middle East at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, wrote in a December 2022 paper called "Loans for the President."
The Egyptian military has benefited most from this money, much of it from foreign lending, and has in fact grown larger and richer under el-Sissi. "This was a decisive factor in President Sissi's consolidation of power," Roll notes. "For him, the loyalty of the armed forces has been the most important prerequisite for enforcing wide-ranging police-state repression … Tens of thousands of political prisoners and a dramatic number of death sentences and executions even by Egyptian standards are an expression of this development."
Both Roll and Kaldas suggest a similar solution: Recognize the links between the money going into Egypt and the state's human rights abuses. "It's not the role of an external power to force Egypt to become a democracy," Kaldas concludes. "But the task is to just stop subsidizing the autocracy and making it easier for Egypt to be a dictatorship."
"The problem is that, fundamentally, Western states often fail to appreciate the shortsightedness of their approach," Kaldas states. "It's not so much that they're getting stability in exchange for looking the other way on human rights violations. The human rights violations are actually contributing directly to Egypt's economic instability. Egypt's economic crisis is because [el-Sissi's] strategy of the last decade has been to leverage the Egyptian state recklessly to finance his consolidation of power and his patronage network."
"Available funds do not flow into productive investments for the future, but seep into economically questionable infrastructure projects and serve, at least indirectly, to finance police-state repression," Stephan Roll, head of research into Africa and the Middle East at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, wrote in a December 2022 paper called "Loans for the President."
The Egyptian military has benefited most from this money, much of it from foreign lending, and has in fact grown larger and richer under el-Sissi. "This was a decisive factor in President Sissi's consolidation of power," Roll notes. "For him, the loyalty of the armed forces has been the most important prerequisite for enforcing wide-ranging police-state repression … Tens of thousands of political prisoners and a dramatic number of death sentences and executions even by Egyptian standards are an expression of this development."
Both Roll and Kaldas suggest a similar solution: Recognize the links between the money going into Egypt and the state's human rights abuses. "It's not the role of an external power to force Egypt to become a democracy," Kaldas concludes. "But the task is to just stop subsidizing the autocracy and making it easier for Egypt to be a dictatorship."
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