generalspeaking

 After The Deluge

"The Ministry has given instruction to all forces to use live ammunition to confront any assaults on institutions or the forces.
"The cabinet expressed its determination to confront the terrorist actions and sabotage by elements of the Muslim Brotherhood organization. These actions are carried out as part of criminal plan that clearly arms at toppling down the state."
Egypt's Interior Ministry statement

The death toll mounts. As it is meant to do by the Muslim Brotherhood who, while screaming bloody murder at the international governments torn between defending and deploring the actions of a state military that has removed a legally elected government through a democratic process producing a dreadfully flawed outcome, know that if they condemn the source of the conflict they identify the guilty party and inflame Islamophobic claims.

A national state of emergency and nighttime curfew has been declared. And finally and yet again the Muslim Brotherhood may yet be outlawed. Its assets will now be vulnerable to confiscation; at least those that can be accessed. Outlawed or not the Muslim Brotherhood has wide, deep and far-flung channels leading throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. It has its representatives, offices and supporters everywhere.

Egyptian men walk through debris and rubble inside the burnt down mosque of Rabaa al-Adawiya on August 15, 2013 in Cairo, Egypt. (KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)

And that includes an all-inclusive state, one meant specifically for the shelter of Jews, but which also provides haven to Christians and Muslims. A Jewish state that has extended citizenship to all those whom it considers citizens, although it knows full well that loyalty to a Jewish state is a fragile enterprise among its Arab population. Just how fragile can be readily assessed by the fact that thousands of Israeli Arabs have now protested on behalf of the Brotherhood and Mohammed Morsi's reinstatement.

As for General Sisi; the protesters say, disparagingly, that he is in the hands of the Jews, he is a plaything of the Israeli military: Sisi "Are you Jewish or what?" In east Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount, in the northern city of Nazareth, led by Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, thousands rallied on behalf of Morsi and the Brotherhood. Within Egypt those rallies are being violently suppressed. Within Israel, authorities look on.


Government buildings and churches are being torched in Giza and elsewhere in the country. The two sit-in protest camps have been dismantled, the dead set aside in makeshift morgues decomposing in the stifling heat, the wounded cared for, and further protests fulsomely encouraged by the Brotherhood leadership not yet in detention. Crowds of Brotherhood faithful continue to throng the streets, rioting, wild in the exultation of serving Islam.

According to the Brotherhood website Ikhanwanweb pro-military "militias" have been attacking Brotherhood faithful. But the simple fact is ordinary Egyptians who are sick and tired of all the violence and the disruption to their weary lives are attempting to protect their neighbourhoods from the wild predations of the pro-Morsi youth intent on destruction and mayhem. Those are the "militias", volunteers setting out to meet in conflict with their political/religious opposites.

In Alexandria violent scuffles between pro- and anti-Morsi groups set against one another have resulted in atrocities. A picture of Defence Minister Gen.Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi displayed on a taxi was enough to merit stabbing the taxi driver to death. He was improvident enough to appear in the middle of a protest by the Muslim Brotherhood, shouting insults against the military.

Those neighbourhood watch groups set up at the call of the youth movement Tamarod for the protection of private property and government buildings mark the unfortunate beginning of what is clearly now the initiation of a civil war. Attacks on Coptic Christian churches are ongoing; some hundred or so now having been impacted, including monasteries and Coptic schools and shops.

This will be a long, bitter Egyptian antithesis to the hopeful Arab Spring.

Labels: Conflict, Egypt, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, August 17, 2013