Fugitive Brotherhood
"The Brotherhood will become a secret organization, will go underground once again and join ranks with extremist organizations. Younger members will take up arms against the government and you will see an armed secret organization in Egypt."
Raafat Sayed Ahmed, head, Yafa Center for Arab studies think-tank
That's the problem with reactions, they're almost involuntary in nature, so immediate they're reactive at the gut level and once expressed, impossible to retrieve, to consider in a level-headed attempt to evaluate what their outcome may possibly be. Perhaps, on the other hand, the rage and the violent protests encouraged on the part of the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were expressed through a feeling of potent power, that their righteousness is so favoured by Islam it cannot but be supported by the highest of celestial powers.
God, it appears evident, has a way of permitting his creatures to work out their own problems however they will. And as it happens, the might of the Egyptian military aided by the police is simply greater than that of the Muslim Brotherhood. Besides which, as it also happens, the greater majority of Egyptians are not enthralled by the Islamist agenda and in light of the crisis and failure of the Brotherhood and President Mohammad Morsi to advance the fortunes of the country, they have elicited their disgust and disavowal.
"It looks like it's over with the Brotherhood. Brotherhood families are grieving over their dead or busy trying to see how they can visit loved ones in detention or others who are injured. The animosity on the streets is exhausting them and allies are abandoning them", was the listlessly gloomy assessment put forward by Sameh Eid, a former member of the Brotherhood.
Well, it would seem that the Brotherhood chiefs calculated quite erroneously with respect to the final effect their camp-outs at strategic squares on opposite ends of Cairo would produce. As planned, they became living springboards for constant, daily demonstrations. Succeeding in the process, to cripple much of the city which would have much preferred that life go on in a more predictable, reasonable manner. An experiment in Islamist rule was tried and it failed, spectacularly.
Reasonable people decided en masse, that it was back to square one. Recognizing that the benevolent tyrant that they had unseated with their original mass protests looked pretty good in retrospect, after their experience with Mohammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, The Mubarak rule had an element of solidity to it, tourism was booming, industry was growing, unemployment while present was nothing compared to what followed, and the country was being bled of its economy. Egyptians were tired of struggling with rising costs and rising lawlessness.
The security forces gave ample warning to the Brotherhood, to its tens of thousands of faithful that the sit-ins must be dismantled, the squares and the streets and the bridges cleared of blockages to return to normal civil flow. In response, Brotherhood elite inspired their followers not to be intimidated, to remain, to continue protesting, more than willing to sacrifice them to what they knew full well would follow. In the deaths that did follow, the Brotherhood had their evidence of brutality to show to the world.
When Brotherhood followers were left dead in their hundreds other Brotherhood and Islamist supporters attacked police stations and government buildings, churches and homes and businesses of Christians throughout the country. They would not retreat, but they planned to spread chaos, to force the police to abandon their posts just as they had done when the original 2011 uprising mass protests had taken place.
Now, Mohammed Badie, his 38-year-old son killed in one of the protest crack-downs, has been detained again, along with other high-ranked heads of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammad Morsi's detention has been refreshed, and he will face charges of conspiring with Hamas to effect a prison break-out that released him and other Brotherhood heads from incarceration, along with charges of complicity in the death and torture of protesters outside his Cairo palace in December.
A campaign to cleanse various government ministries, departments and state media of Brotherhood supporters -- to dismantle a network President Morsi had established while in office, suffusing government with Brotherhood faithful -- is now underway. Government employees known to have taken part in sit-ins or protests are being brought before disciplinary panels; they will testify to the reasons they abandoned their work stations.
Demonstrations and numbers of protesters have diminished markedly in recent days. Government authorization of the use of deadly force and the coldly calculated demonstration of just how that could go down sufficed to persuade followers of the utter futility of pursuing that same agenda. Despite their protestations of faith, and willingness to sacrifice themselves for Islam, the Prophet and Allah.
Raafat Sayed Ahmed's prediction has already taken place. It took place even while Mohammad Morsi was in office and the Brotherhood was in control of government. The Brotherhood has long since made common cause with the Sinai's Bedouin Salafists, al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and Gamaa Islamiyah. It's a natural connection for them, all concerned with a similar goal of installing Islamism and Sharia law throughout the land.
The increasingly lawless Sinai, permitted to run wild under Morsi's presidency has now unleashed its malignant rush to commit slaughter against Egyptian police, and the military, and to launch cross-border attacks into Israel. Some Brotherhood adherents remain loyal to their pathological intent to return as speedily as possible to take up Egyptian government control again. The harsher they are treated, the more determined they become.
The future? "The more killings, the more foolish actions by those behind the coup, means more pressure on the military and more strength for us", boasted Islam Tawfiq, a fugitive Brotherhood member.
Labels: Conflict, Egypt, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 21, 2013
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