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For Egyptian men giving service in the country's military is a rite of passion toward adulthood. It is  a prized memory of unity and fraternity. Egyptians think fondly of their military as a national institution that transcends a country's military purpose; the assurance of defence, and when the times demand it, belligerent offence. That Egypt's military combining with other armies of the Middle East fought wars with a tiny neighbour whose existential determination triumphed over their aggression is in a state of amnesiac forgiveness.

And while the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces has remained loyal to its one-time leader and president having decided in his wisdom that flogging the dead camel of defiant rage over the presence of a non-Muslim country in the Middle East came to no good and would come to no good, opting instead for peace, the people themselves harbour a deep-seated resentment while forgiving the military for its decisiveness in the matter of withholding itself from further military confrontation on that front.

Even the now departed Mohammad Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood, swallowed his bile sufficiently to assure a hovering United States from whom the military received a yearly stipend of over a billion U.S. Treasury dollars, heeded that line, albeit coldly and with the aplomb of a Pharaoh.  With the certainty of one of those ancient long-gone imperial entities he also ruled as though unanswerable to the greater public of Egypt.

It has been claimed that an estimated 17 million Egyptians  spoke their unrestrained judgement on June 30 on Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood interests he represented, dropping all pretence of a larger, democratic Egyptian agenda. The original protesters who succeeded in persuading the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces that they had no more patience with former President Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian rule at a time when the economy, employment and public security were relatively in balance, became hugely offended to discover that tyranny had simply taken on a new persona.

Hosni Mubarak left his post peacefully, unwilling to bring further turmoil to his country. His love for Egypt was exceptionally authentic. Mohammed Morsi's love for Egypt has been tempered by his greater love for all that the Muslim Brotherhood intended to achieve, and it was given priority over the well-being of the country in all its manifold troubles, growing and festering under his reign of indifference to its ever-heightening emergencies.

The emergencies, with his fall from grace and position, have now been sidelined for the more immediate emergencies of restoring some semblance of order to the country, political and social. The Muslim Brotherhood -- infuriated at the military under General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose warning shots across the bow of statehood they studiously ignored -- launched a double-pronged attack against those millions who took to the streets to insist on Mr. Morsi's removal, and the military which arranged it.

Inciting its followers to resist the coup, much as the Arab world in general, empathizes with the plight of the Palestinians, "resisting the occupation", arms have found their way into the possession of Brotherhood supporters. And a campaign, desperate and determined in its logistical details, was launched in the Sinai, known for its lawlessness having grown under Mohammed Morsi's rule, has enlisted the jihadist credentials of the Bedouin Salafists, the Islamic Jihad brigade, and the Brotherhood's grandchild, Hamas.

On those fronts the Brotherhood is counting on a pincer-like movement of "resistance", to weaken the military by assaults from within its towns and cities led by Egypt's immense populations of poverty-stricken and Brotherhood-supporting fundamentalists, while the combined contingents of hardened militias loyal to the Brotherhood with their shared Islamist credentials hope to move on Cairo and "resist" the military, toppling its power and its influence.


General al-Sisi has called upon those faithful to Egypt, not to Islamism's Sharia-led caliphate-in-waiting, to express their support for the direction taken by the Egyptian military in a show of force by numbers, not violence. Seeking the moral authority by public acclaim to stand fast against the onslaughts of all that the Muslim Brotherhood can mount, to overcome the existential insult and threat to Egypt's position within the 21st Century world of today.

Labels: Conflict, Egypt, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, July 25, 2013