Back to Mubarak, And Worse

Analysis by Cam McGrath

Egypt's military rulers have set security solutions over political ones. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

 

"CAIRO, Aug 22 2013 (IPS) - Egyptian military leader General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said ousting the country’s first elected president was necessary “to preserve democracy” and resolve the political deadlock that had dangerously polarised the country. But six weeks after the coup he led, the notion that toppling Islamist president Mohamed Morsi would restore stability to Egypt has proven false.
Instead, the confrontations between the army and supporters of the ousted president have led to violent chaos and given the military a free hand to restrict freedoms and rebuild the apparatus of Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian regime. A court ordered the release of Mubarak himself on bail.

“The biggest threat facing Egypt remains the return of the police state. More specifically, the threat concerns not only the reconstitution of a police state, which never really left since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, but also the return of the implicit, if not overt, acceptance of the repressive practices of the coercive apparatus,” said political analyst Wael Eskander writing in the independent Jadaliyya.....

Security solutions “will only reinforce the Brotherhood’s rigidity… [and] further empower the coercive apparatus,” warns Eskander. “As extremist groups are pushed into hiding, the security leaders will find excuses to employ intrusive surveillance measures, interrogate, torture, and abuse, all with zero transparency and accountability.”

There are signs this is already happening. In short order, Egyptian security officials have restored Mubarak-era emergency laws, imposed a curfew, and issued a standing order to use live ammunition.
The interior ministry has also formally reinstated a number of state security departments dismantled following the country’s 2011 uprising. Among these are the notorious police units that were responsible for the investigation, forced disappearance and torture of thousands of Islamists and political dissidents during Mubarak’s rule.
Tarek Radwan, associate research director at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Centre, has not declared Egypt’s revolution dead, but sees alarming parallels emerging.
“If this picture sounds familiar, it is,” he wrote. “A Muslim Brotherhood driven underground, a leading military figure, an assertive police force, and submissive liberal bloc is perhaps the most apt description of pre-2011 Egypt.”"