Egypt

Egypt's interim government was accused of attempting to return the country to the Mubarak era on Monday, after the country's interior ministry announced the resurrection of several controversial police units that were nominally shut down following the country's 2011 uprising and the interim prime minister was given the power to place the country in a state of emergency. Egypt's state security investigations service, Mabahith Amn ad-Dawla, a wing of the police force under President Mubarak, and a symbol of police oppression, was supposedly closed in March 2011 – along with several units within it that investigated Islamist groups and opposition activists. The new national security service (NSS) was established in its place. But following Saturday's massacre of at least 83 Islamists, interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim announced the reinstatement of the units, and referred to the NSS by its old name. He added that experienced police officers sidelined in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution would be brought back into the fold.

Amid all the contending forces of July 2013 in Egypt — revolutionaries, liberals, Islamists, Mubarak supporters, and the military — one thing is clear. Cynical talk by Western liberals and leftists of the Arab revolutions as dead, of an “Arab winter,” of the triumph everywhere of fundamentalism, etc., etc., has been called into question by events. Given Egypt’s centrality to the Arab world, the decisive repudiation of the Muslim Brotherhood there could have regional implications. Once again, the Arab masses have shown the world, here in the most populous and important Arab country, that the 2011 revolutions are ongoing. As the Lebanese Marxist Gilbert Achcar concluded in his just-published book, The People Want, “The Arab uprising is just beginning.”

This Saturday, Egypt’s authoritarian neoliberal state — sustained by the military and the old security apparatus of the Mubarak regime, with crucial support from the US government — once again displayed its violent nature. As tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters marched in Cairo to demonstrate against the ouster of President Morsi, security forces opened fire on protesters for the second time in just three weeks, killing over one hundred and injuring hundreds more.

At a press conference for revolutionary forces Thursday, Tamarod, a grassroots campaign that gathered 22 million signatures demanding that Mohamed Morsi resign, said that it supports the military in its "war against terrorism." The campaign also called for protests aimed at expelling US Ambassador Anne Patterson from Egypt, to signal rejection of the policies of the United States towards Egypt after 30 June and the ouster of Morsi. El-Sisi's call for Friday mass demonstrations has been turned down by some revolutionary anti-Morsi groups, such as the April 6 Youth Movement and the Revolutionary Socialists.

“Please, shoulder your responsibility with me, your army, and the police and show your size and steadfastness in the face of what is going on,” al-Sisi. What the American trained (and financially backed) al Sisi is doing is overtly telling the Mubarak supporting thug squads it’s open season on the pro-Morsi (pro-democracy) Egyptians all across the country. His statement “stand with me, your army and the police” is painfully clear: do what you like, we will not get in your way. Even though the pro-Mosri demonstrators won’t be the perpetrators of the violence (they will and have been the victims of it) it will be them who are attacked by the military in it’s wake. What he wants, what his backers in D.C. and London want, is violence, unmitigated, ugly violence, which will create the pretext they need to use the army to crack down on the protesters in a brutal and unrestrained way.

“We are not alone. The whole world is going through a revolutionary phase that will take us to a new era. Brazil. Egypt. Turkey. Chile. Greece. Spain. It is obvious that people now understand that ballot boxes are just a means for the elite to monopolize power. People express their real opinions in the street. All of this is threatening the hegemony of powerful states. Regimes are trying to contain revolutionary moments everywhere. June 30 in Egypt is just one example… It is our responsibility not to let our revolution be stolen from us again. Glory to the people! The revolution continues!”

The contemporary Egyptian Revolution commenced after a popular uprising on January 25, 2011, whereby millions of protesters from diverse socio-economic, political and religious backgrounds demanded the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian army's ousting of the democratically-elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in a military coup on July 3, 2013, marked a new phase of the revolution. This new phase has gripped the attention of humanity as the differing paths become clear. Will the popular progressive forces of workers, grassroots women, students, cultural workers, journalists and the secular elements of religious tolerance be able to build a new form of politics to break the power of the military and entrenched social and economic forces? Or, will the military along with their external allies and bankrollers in the United States and Saudi Arabia thrust the society into civil war?

So to the question, “Is it a good thing that Morsi has been deposed through a popular uprising, even if it was supported by a junta that should be next?” the answer is invariably yes. But that is not at all the correct question to ask. The correct question is: NOW THAT A POPULAR UPRISING HAS RESULTED IN MORSI'S DOWNFALL, WILL THE EGYPTIAN PEOPLE, WHETHER THEY ARE AGAINST OR FOR THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, MANAGE TO REPLACE MILITARY RULE WITH THE RULE OF THE PEOPLE? Why is it so important that we ask the right question? Given the degree to which the Egyptian military does the bidding of the US government, a good deal of the answer relies upon us, exercising our agency the way that the Egyptian people have. If there's an affirmative answer to the question, "Will the Egyptian people manage to bring down the military as a first step towards true democracy?" it probably involves the American people fighting for true democracy here in the United States as well.

Eschewing the romanticism associated with revolution and the sentimentality connected to seeing the “masses in motion,” it has to be concluded that between February 2011, when Mubarak was ousted, and July 3, 2013, when the military officially reassumed power, there was no revolutionary process at all, in the sense that there was no transfer of power away from the class forces that dominated Egyptian society. No restructuring of the state; no new democratic institutions and structures created to represent the will and interests of the new progressive social bloc of students, workers, farmers, women’s organizations etc.; and no deep social transformation. In fact, the rapes and sexual assaults that occurred during the recent mobilizations were a graphic reminder that sexist and patriarchal ideas still ruled, untouched by this so-called revolutionary process.

The new Egyptian cabinet has been sworn in along with the interim prime minister and his deputies. Interim President Adly Mansour is swore in the 35 ministers with three deputy prime ministers during a quick ceremony. Interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi is putting together a cabinet largely of technocrats and liberals after the army toppled President Mohamed Morsi on July 3. El-Beblawi had nominated five women for Cabinet posts, including the health, information and environment portfolios. If confirmed, that would be the highest number of women to serve in ministerial posts in living memory. Three women were sworn in on Tuesday. Al Jazeera's Nicole Johnston, reporting from Cairo, said that there were many familiar names in the new cabinet, with seven holding posts in the previous cabinet.

Police used tear gas to drive back protesters, some hurling rocks, who had blocked a main route in the capital. The clashes came as a senior US envoy visited Egypt, saying it had been given a "second chance" at democracy. William Burns met interim leaders but was snubbed by rival groups, including Mr Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, the first cabinet to take office since Mr Morsi was ousted has been sworn in in a televised ceremony. Mr Morsi was ousted on 3 July in what many have said was a military coup. The army says it was fulfilling the demands of the people after mass anti-Morsi protests.

This time the Egyptian people did not wait 41 years to bring down what could be called the Sadat-Mubarek government. With a little help from their friends in the military, they did it in less than a year. Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government is history. As in 2011 when their mass demonstrations forced out Hosni Mubarek, once again, in extraordinary numbers, the Egyptian people took to the streets of Cairo and virtually every other Egyptian city to protest the policies of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Mohamed Morsi. Two years ago, impressive enough at the time for sure, it was over a million people who converged on Cairo’s Tahir Square forcing Mubarek, a long time key American partner in the Middle East, from power.