Although I wouldn't go so far as to say that Egypt is calm today so far
today there has been a lot less actual violence than there was
overnight. In Cairo Tahrir Square has be left largely deserted as the
revolutionaries return to their homes and prepare for the long task of
rebuilding their nation. The Muslim Brotherhood continue to occupy their
protest camp in Nasr city but provided they behave peacefully and don't
engage in violence I don't see any need to remove them.
Unfortunately the main reason why the violence has stopped is that the
Muslim Brotherhood has simply ordered its members to stop carrying out
violence. The main part of this order was the decision by the
Brotherhood's first deputy leader Khairat El-Shater to answer his arrest
warrant by handing himself into the military. With all parties
describing El-Shater as; "Going quietly and peacefully" this was clearly
an attempt to lead by example by sending out the message to rest of the
Brotherhood that they should also be peaceful and quiet. As El-Shater
was the Brotherhood's initial choice for its Freedom and Justice Party
presidential candidate ahead of Mohamed Morsi this also seems to be an
attempt by El-Shater to convince the military that he should be the
Brotherhoods representative in the government of national unity. I'm not
sure how this will go down with the Brotherhoods actual leader Mohammed
Badie. While it is obviously great news not to have further violence
going on my worry is that rather than realising that violence is wrong
the Brotherhood have retreated simply because they realised they were
going to lose. That means the potential for further violence is always
there.
This period of relative calm has allowed the events of last night to
become somewhat clearer. The Egyptian health ministry puts the
nationwide death toll at 36 with 1076. These include the 10 that were
killed in Cairo at the Republican Guard HQ, the state-TV HQ and the
October 6th bridge. There were also 3 reported deaths in Ismailiya, 1 in
Suez and 1 in Assuit. The death toll also includes 5 five police
officers and 1 soldier who were killed in El-Arish in the Sinai. The
worst of the violence though appears to have taken place in Egypt's
second city Alexandria where 12 people were killed and more than 300
injured. This reflect the more challenging security situation outside of
the capital.
Being Egypt's second city Alexandria lacks the symbolic Tahrir Square
and the predominately Muslim Brotherhood neighbourhood of Nasr city so
there are no natural places for the opposing groups to congregate. Also
it lacks the big buildings of state such as the Presidential Palace. As
the military have rightfully deployed their best people to the capital
to defend those key buildings the police and soldiers in places like
Alexandria are less skilled and less well equipped. Therefore from what
I've seen last night's violence in Alexandria took the form of Muslim
Brotherhood supporters roaming the streets and attacking the army
wherever they encountered them. The army obviously responded in order to
protect themselves and members of the public joined into help them.
Therefore the obvious solution would be for the army/police to withdraw
from the streets in areas like Alexandria so the Brotherhood don't have
anyone to attack. Of course without police/army on the streets the
Brotherhood might turn their attention to attacking government buildings
like local police stations and Court houses or engaging in sectarian
attacks. Therefore the army/police should take up defensive positions
around those key buildings including Churches and those Churches should
work with their congregations to ensure they have a place of refuge.
Depending on how the situation calms down the police/army can then
restart limited patrols using things such as 'Thunder Runs.' This
involves driving a convoy of vehicles through an area at speed with
sirens blazing making as much noise as possible to remind troublemakers
that the army/police are still there but without providing a static
target that can be attacked.
The risk of sectarian attack was demonstrated perfectly by the shooting
and killing of a Coptic Christian priest in El-Arish. Although the Sinai
is clearly a hot-bed of Islamist activity this type of incident and the
general collapse of law and order in places like Alexandria will come
as no surprise to people who have been following Egypt's revolution.
After all it is one of the main reasons that Morsi had to go - he was so
engrossed in forcing through an Islamist agenda and playing at being a
world statesman that he failed to notice that Egypt was collapsing
beneath his feet.
Also in El-Arish the Muslim Brotherhood are excitedly circulating video
footage of the army opening fire on a group of their members as they
prayed. This highlights what I've been saying all along about the
Brotherhoods plan for their "Day of Rejection." They carry out terror
attacks against the police/military in order to provoke a violent
reaction out of them. They then use that reaction to portray themselves
as the victims of oppression. The El-Arish video shows that in microcosm
because having seen 6 of their colleagues killed earlier in the day the
police in El-Arish were likely to be the most angry of all of Egypt's
police officers.
15:00 on 6/7/13.
Edited at around 16:45 on 6/7/13 to add:
The next part of this post I planning to write revolves around the
resumption of Hosni Mubarak's trail and its implications for the
formation of a government of national unity and necessity for an interim
justice system. These are obviously hugely complex issues so I will
tackle later this evening because I'm still trying to get my head around
them.
In the meantime I'm just marvelling at Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's
response to events in Egypt. Firstly he winds up all his opponents by
loudly condemning Egypt's secular military's removal of an
authoritarian, Islamist President. This along with the covering up of a
Court ruling banning the redevelopment of Gezi park gets his opponents
out on the streets in protest. Erdogan then uses those protests in an
attempt to reach out to Egypt's interim rulers by offering to give them
advice on riot control. You can't help but be impressed really.
Edited at around 18:40 on 6/7/13 to add:
Another big development of the day has been the resumption of the trial
of former President Hosni Mubarak over the killing of protesters during
the time of his downfall. This has obviously been going on for the best
part of two and a half years so really needs to progress without further
delay. However the specific timing seems to be a very sensible attempt
to move the national discussion on from the downfall of Morsi in order
to stop Egypt tearing itself apart. One point that was trying to be made
was the comparison between the downfall of Mubarak and the downfall of
Morsi. I think this is a valid comparison because during the time of his
downfall I watched Mubarak order thugs onto the streets to beat up and
kill people who disagreed with him. I have just spent the last week
watching Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood order thugs onto the streets
to beat up and kill people who disagreed with him.
The main purpose though seems to be to provoke discussion about law and
order in the new Egypt. In bringing down Mubarak the Egyptian people
fought for freedom and democracy but instead ended up with a lot of
lawyers. This can be a form of tyranny all of its own because lawyers
are very good at arguing over very small and very technical points.
Unfortunately in doing this they often lose sight of the bigger picture.
This was something we saw during the early stages of Mubarak's first
trial when there were around 200 lawyers all trying to prosecute him
individually. This obviously caused chaos and delayed proceedings
immensely. There were similar problems during the elections and over the
drawing up of the constitution where people were constantly asking the
Courts to consider minute points of law but without an elected
government or a written constitution the Courts had nothing to base
their rulings on.
Therefore this time round until a government can be elected and a new
constitution can be written and ratified Egypt really needs an interim
criminal justice system so it is able to maintain law and order on the
streets. With no elected government to write and enforce the laws this
sadly means military justice which can be a very rough form of justice. I
probably more than most appreciate the importance of a fair and
equitable criminal justice system. However I also appreciate that for
such niceties to exist there first needs to be a security structure to
allow civil society to flourish. This is exactly what is currently going
on in Mali. First there was a genuine military coup which led to the
collapse of civil society (government, the Courts etc). This security
vacuum was then exploited by extreme Islamist terrorists who took over
the entire north of the country. This meant that France's first job was
to sweep away the terrorists to order to create space. The United
Nations (UN) is currently in the process of deploying peacekeepers in
order to maintain that space so a new civil society can grow within it.
For that reason I think the Egyptian military needs to be given the
power to arrest, try and detain people until such a time as a new
government is elected and a new constitution is ratified. If those
conditions are not met the Egyptian military will not give up those
powers.
While it is acceptable for the military to enforce the law it is most
certainly not acceptable for them to write the law. For that Egypt needs
a civilian government of national unity and seems to be making swift
progress. While it has not been officially confirmed it is highly likely
that Mohamed ElBaradei has been sworn in as Egypt's interim Prime
Minister. Despite entirely false claims by the Muslim Brotherhood that
ElBaradei is a CIA agent I thoroughly approve of this appointment. Not
only is ElBaradei highly intelligent and level headed his time spent at
the UN means that he is both highly skilled in high level politics and
has a lot of useful contacts. This last point is very important because
the fact that people in the international community already know him
means they are more likely to trust him.
Along with interim President Mansour and the military ElBaradei's first
job is going to be to decide what form this government of national unity
will take. Initially the military suggested a government made up of
technocrats (a big UN buzzword). However although it was clearly damaged
under Morsi's mis-rule I think that the Egyptian civil service is
capable of running its own departments without much interference from a
minister. Therefore I think that any ministers holding posts in this
interim government should be limited to settling inter-departmental
disputes and hiring and firing senior staff with the simple majority
approval of the Prime Minister, President and Military. This frees up
the ministers to be much more political. While the Ministry of Defence
obviously goes to the military other positions can be handed out to
representatives of the different cross sections of Egyptian society. So
for example there will be a Christian representative, a Salafi
representative, a Muslim Brotherhood representative etc. Obviously
working out what exactly are all the cross sections of Egyptian society
is hugely complicated but a good place to start would be the political
parties that contested the election for the Peoples Assembly. However on
this occasion one party means one representative regardless of size or
share of the vote.
Once this government of national unity is formed one of its first tasks
should be to draw up a set of what are know as "Common Laws Offences."
These are criminal offences that don't have a statutory basis meaning
lawyers don't spend ages at trial arguing over the specific
interpretation of words such as "reasonable" or "honest." Instead they
focus on whether an individuals behaviour goes against values that are
common to us all. Murder is the prime example because I don't think
there is any religious or social group in Egypt that thinks it is OK to
kill someone unless of course it was done in self-defence. Other
examples would be theft, rape, sexual assault and what we in the UK term
"affray" which basically means fighting in a public place.
Once these common law offences have been drawn up there is then the
question of how they are enforced. As military justice can be very rough
justice I think that with the possible exception of murder in the first
instance the offender should be given a type of formal caution. That is
to say that after arrest and the grounds for that arrest has been
verified by a ranking officer in a timely (no more then 72 hours) the
offender is told they've been convicted of the offence. However all that
happens is that they are photographed and fingerprinted and those along
with the conviction go on the official record. The offender is then
freed but if they have a weapon like a firearm on them that is obviously
kept by the military.
If the person is arrested for a second time for the same offence they
then go in front of a military-style tribunal made up of a panel of an
odd number of Judges. They then get to argue their case and if the
Judges believe them to be innocent they are set free. If they are found
to be guilty they will be sent to an, ideally, civilian prison for a
standard fixed term eg 3 months for affray, 6 months for theft, 1 year
for sexual assault, 2 years for rape, 3 years for murder etc. If they're
convicted, released and then convicted for a third time the sentences
get doubled.
Obviously this system will only last until an elected civilian
government is in place and a constitution has been ratified. At that
point all records of the cautions will be erased and those in detention
can appeal their convictions to a civilian Court.
(Originally Posted on 6/7/13)
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