Tuesday 3 September 2013

Egypt - Realty Check

In the last few days (now the situation has calmed a bit after the arrest of the high profile people in the Muslim Brotherhood), more than 800 Egyptians (Morsi supporters) were killed and more than 5000 wounded !! On one hand the head of Egyptian Army - Gen Abdul Fatah Al Sisi - says that the country should move towards restoring democracy however Mohammed Morsi, who was ousted in June, was the first democratically elected president of Egypt. So why oust a president who was elected by the people and create a turmoil in the economy and then try to restore democracy ! We all know that Morsi was partially responsible for his downfall. However when we do a bit of retrospection, Mohammed Morsi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (largest Islamic institution in the Middle East, that came in to setup since the world war I - Currently headed by Mohammed Badei) and currently the allegations are that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization however one has to understand where this allegation comes from - 

The Muslim Brotherhood is also the parent organization of the Palestinian militant group Hamas that rules the Gaza strip and is a bitter enemy of Israel. In 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty, considered as the first treaty that Israel signed with an Arab country. Since then Israel and Egypt have been a friendly nation and the Military in both the nations have been supportive of each other. Now if Mohammed Morsi were to continue in power, Israel is the first country to get nervous. It already has problems to tackle with civil war in Syria, Lebanon, and the ongoing Palestinian saga. Now i guess, i am able to figure out where everything is heading. Israel would never want the Islamist group to run the country and if Israel does not want then US would not want the same (Egypt army was aided by billions of US funds - US never leaves the Arab countries on their own huh !!). Although US and the EU no longer support Egypt and so is Israel but there are no signs of Israel showing bitterness with Egypt.

I am not sure where this is going to end for democracy and the Arab world never go together (Turkey is not part of the Arab world and what is happening in Turkey is more correlated with what is happening in Brazil and Tunisia is just setting up itself as a republic and forming a constitution - a long way to go before i can modify my claim). However it will be great to see how the public anguish is going to shape the economy. The same people who elected the Morsi are now fed up of what is happening in the country (with both the Islamist and the Army) and just want peace leave aside democracy. EU has started to rethink on the $5 bn loan and other support that it was supposed to lend to Egypt and Egyptian government bonds have hit an all time low on demand for higher yield. Looking back, did Egypt needed an up-spring when it ousted the then president - Mubarak (2.5 years ago) and is all this suffering going to pay off !! I don't think I have an answer to this exclamation however i can vouch to claim that the outrage (against suffering) is now not just on the streets but also in the minds of the people and I am just afraid that it will not be very far when the history could be blamed by the future generation.

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