EDITORIAL Turmoil in North Africa This collection of essays brings

Virtual Special Issue
August 2013
Turmoil in North Africa: a radical
assessment of the uprisings since the end
of 2010
EDITORIAL
Turmoil in North Africa
This collection of essays brings together contributions to The Review of African Political Economy
(ROAPE) that have provided a radical assessment of the uprisings in North Africa since the end of
2010. The collection does two things. First, it accounts for the historical sequence of events that led
to the most astonishing processes of political turmoil in Egypt and Tunisia (and also Libya, where
there was clear imperialist military intervention – Bush et al. 2011). Second, the collection locates
the uprisings and toppling of dictatorships in an analysis of the relevant national political economies.
In doing this, the contributions contest and go far beyond the racialised and orientalist notion of
‘Arab exceptionalism’, where politics is seen to be shaped by persistent authoritarianism grounded
in cultural or Islamic values (for critique see Lockman 2004, for detailed case analysis of the uprising
see Achcar 2013).
It is now an important time to take stock and to try and understand turmoil in North Africa. There
are regular political assassinations and violent conflicts in Libya and continued and mounting dissent
with a self-declared pluralist Islamist government in Tunisia. But the ruling party, Ennahada, has
since election failed to convince widening and diverse critics that it is meeting challenges of
government. Critics have been especially vocal at every level of policy and this has culminated in
concern that the Tunisian government has been inactive in finding the perpetrators of
unprecedented assassinations of leftist politicians Chokri Belaid in February and Mohamed Brahmi in
July 2013. Those murders led to extensive national strikes, demonstrations and extensive social
mobilisation against the Islamist government’s failures of inclusiveness and transparency and calls
for the government to quit. Violent deadly clashes after the coup d’état in Egypt in July 2013 have
left commentators scrambling to explain the character of political transition from dictatorship as
Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters have been killed, arrested and prosecuted in ways
that exceed the years of Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship.
The articles here assemble explanations as to why the uprisings emerged when they did, and what
some of the contrasting dynamics have been between Tunisia and Egypt (see Ayeb 2011 in this
collection). They also locate the undercurrents and interrelationship between political and economic
struggles that drove the Egyptian uprising. They are struggles that the state in Egypt and Western
commentators have been keen to separate, as if politics and economics are hermetically sealed from
each other (see Abdelrahman 2012 in this collection). In particular, the essays assembled here
highlight why the July coup d'état should not be seen as revolutionary. Although the contributions
were written before the July 2013 unrest, they offer analysis that is grounded in political economy. It
is analysis that helps identify the competing social and economic interests that generated the 2011
uprisings and point to why entrenched interests did not easily vacate state institutions and positions
of privilege.
At the heart of the reasons why the uprisings emerged were struggles against the consequences of
neoliberalism (see Bush and Ayeb 2012). Market reform and the escalation of poverty went hand in
hand in Tunisia and Egypt. After 1987, the government of Egypt and the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) imposed liberalisation of rural markets and credit. Law 96 of
1992 reformed tenure, ending rights in perpetuity for more than a million farming tenants, thus as
many as 10 million Egyptians were impacted by measures that included raising rents by more than
400%, dispossessing farmers, and increasing insecurity and rural poverty.1 These reforms were often
imposed with violence and displays of brutality by security forces working alongside landowners.
Urban poverty also increased, especially after 2004, with the reforming zeal of Prime Minister
Ahmed Nazif.
The lie of trickle-down growth and sustainable development promised by the World Bank and
neoliberals culminated with economic crisis, increased unemployment and widespread poverty.
Neoliberalism increased the numbers of Egyptians living on less than a US$1.25 a day to more than
40% – and an even higher figure in the countryside. Angela Joya (2011, in this collection) highlights
the crisis of neoliberalism and Patrick Bond (2011, also in this collection) flags the continuing threats
from the international financial institutions to possibilities for democratic deepening in North Africa
after the 2011 uprisings. This Western challenge to democratic transition is highlighted by Dixon too
(2011, in this collection), and there is now concern in Egypt that International Monetary Fund (IMF)
modernisers will return (Gamal 2013). Dixon also writes about the role of Egyptian finance capital,
with support from international financial institutions, in ‘the latest wave of corporate consolidation
of the country’s agri-food system’, resulting in ‘greater food insecurity and political instability in
Egypt and in southern neighbouring countries’ (Dixon, 2013 forthcoming).
Western interference in Egypt continues. The US refuses to call the July 2013 military intervention a
coup d’état. That raises questions about possible complicity between Washington and the Egyptian
Generals, and also Tel Aviv. As Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt said, ‘Al-Sisi is not a national hero for
Egypt, but for all Jews in Israel and around the globe’ (see for example Middle East Monitor, 19 July
2013).
The Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings in 2010 and 2011 did not take place as some media
interpretations have claimed because of people’s access to social media, although it certainly helped
with social mobilisation and provided intelligence about police tactics and the whereabouts of
security forces. Neither did they take place in Tunisia because of the self- immolation of Mohamed
Bouazizi on 17 December 2010, or in Egypt because of the murder by police of Khalid Said in
Alexandria on 6 June 2010, although many thousands did join the ‘we are all Khalid Said’ media site.
Instead, the uprisings result from many years of often intense industrial and rural struggles.
In Egypt, the uprisings take place after more than a decade of political struggles against dictatorship
that generated new forms of political action and organisation involving a wide spectrum of conflict
and activism – many young and old getting directly involved in political struggles for the first time
and building on actions that mushroomed from 2000 onwards. Some of these worker actions are
documented in Rabab El-Mahdi’s essay (2012, in this collection) that shows the role played by
resistance to neoliberalism by workers and organised labour in foregrounding the overthrow of
Hosni Mubarak. In the Moroccan context, where conflict and political struggles against the
monarchy and capitalist development have been less reported, Zemni and Bogaert (2011, in this
collection) provide insight into the consequences of economic liberalisation that has led to new
forms of authoritarian politics structured around, among other things, political dynamics of high-end
urban development and integration of ‘the poor’ into the market and civil society.
A distinguishing feature of the protests that toppled dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt may be the
coming together of an intensity of struggles and their density (Korany and El-Mahdi 2012, 7). A
perfect storm of organised and unorganised protest emerged, toppling dictatorships. This was
simultaneously unexpected and expected. Characterising protest and struggles for democratic
opening and deepening is a theme that ROAPE will continue to explore in the next issues of 2013,
unpicking the relationships between structure and agency, organised and unorganised or leaderless
political struggles, and these will be key themes in a fortieth anniversary special issue.
Egypt continues to be in turmoil as the military coup d’état in July 2013 toppled President Morsi. He
had won the presidential election in 2012 with 52% of the vote, against 48% for Ahmed Shafiq, a
feloul (remnant) of the Mubarak dictatorship. Winning that election (where there was considerable
concern over its free and fair character) Morsi declared he would rule ‘for all Egyptians’: he did not.
The military intervention has dislodged the Islamist government – one that the Generals had, it
seemed, tried to work with – but, most of all, the intervention is against the interests that promoted
the uprising of 25 January 2011. These were interests that demanded ‘bread, freedom and social
justice’, as captured by the slogan of the time. It was for a redistribution of wealth, a reduction in the
opulence of the Mubarak household, and the erstwhile ruling National Democratic Party (NDP)
politics of spoils, where public assets were used for private gain. Morsi’s government did little to
change this, and although the NDP had long been disbanded, remnants remained, and they were not
necessarily antithetical to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mohamed Morsi nevertheless claimed that there was a ‘deep state’, where remnants of the old
regime made it tough to promote social justice, economic growth and employment creation. Yet
most Egyptians saw through this veil of half-truths and deception. There was a widespread view
held across the country and across many different social classes that the Muslim Brotherhood in
exile or in the political wilderness during dictatorship had cared for and about the poor. Now in
government, the poor had been forgotten and many who had voted for Morsi signed the Tamarrod
(rebellion) petition (declaring among other things no confidence in Morsi and calling for early
presidential elections) that led to his downfall following unprecedented popular mobilisation on 30
June 2013 and the coup d’état . Egyptians had grown wary very quickly of the behind-the-scenes
influence of Khairat al-Shater and other leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, and Egyptians
had become tired of Morsi’s hasty public utterances, and his speedy ‘policy’ statements – like one in
May that Egypt would be wheat self-sufficient in four years, something quickly denied by Ministry of
Agriculture officials, suggesting what he actually meant was that this was Egypt’s aspiration.
Popular discontent against Morsi emerged following rash presidential statements, including the 22
November 2012 constitutional decrees that involved sacking the prosecutor general and preventing
decisions made by the President from being subject to judicial review. Egyptians were also unhappy
with the debacle over the speed at which the new constitution was drafted and the limited
composition of the constitutional assembly that drafted it. A leading reason for sustained opposition
to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood was the failure, and lack of obvious will, to dismantle the
forces of law and (dis)order, the general intelligence service or mukhabarat, and the police. Systemic
police brutality and the routine use of torture continued as it had under the Mubarak dictatorship.
One illustration of this failure to deal with the Ministry of Interior and to control the military was the
massacre by police of 30 people in Port Said in January 2013 who were protesting the verdicts
passed against those implicated in the earlier deaths of 79 football supporters from the 1 February
2012 slaughter of fans of a game between Al Masry and Al Ahly. The deaths in 2012 were widely
seen as the result of a vendetta exercised by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF)
against the involvement of Al Ahly Ultras in the successful uprising in January 2011 and the defence
of Midan Tahrir against the police and hired regime thugs.
At every level, Morsi’s presidency and the advice he received from the Muslim Brotherhood failed to
meet expectations and early presidential promises. Of course the new president did inherit a weak
economy, a foreign debt in excess of US$30 billion, an economy too dependent upon rents from
Suez, gas and labour migration and capital outflow that the governor of the Bank of Egypt had,
during the weeks of the uprising, failed (intentionally?) to stop. We can still ask why Morsi and his
advisors could not grasp the need for a series of policies that might at least stall some opposition to
his presidency that spread quickly throughout Egypt. These measures might have included the
immediate dismantling of the Ministry of Interior, cessation of torture and use of military courts, and
the end to attacks on female protesters that had reached epidemic proportions. Policy might have
ensured a larger increase in the minimum wage, improved conditions for public sector workers, and
improved the management of – rather than sought to remove – fuel and food subsidies. It might also
have sought to secure the livelihoods of rural poor, defending the material interests of those living
under illegal Israeli occupation, rather than satisfying the US and Tel Aviv’s request to flood the
tunnels between Egypt and Gaza that provided lifelines to those incarcerated in the world’s largest
prison camp in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
One explanation for Morsi’s failure to do any of the above, or even initiate a series of more
moderate policies to curry legitimacy, is the coalition of interests he oversaw and the difficulty he
had in extending his authority over it. This coalition of interests included Islamist groups like the
Brotherhood, al-Wasat, and elements of the more radical Salafis. They included elements of the
ancien régime, notably remnants of Mubarak’s government who occupied ministerial positions. The
post-uprising ‘new Egypt’ was therefore not so much new as reconstituted. A new political elite
grappled with a mechanism to understand and manage the accumulation and reproduction and
expansion of capital, possibilities for direction and levels of investment, securing of profit margins
and control of labour. It might now be argued that the military was intent on hoping the
Brotherhood’s early popularity would generate a degree of political, economic, and social stability
that would return profitability of business enterprises and secure future levels of investment. Yet
this was difficult to conjure for personnel who were technically incompetent, worrying constantly
about the presence of feloul, yet perhaps still dependent upon them, unsure about Egypt’s regional
geostrategic dynamic and unable to promote hegemonic rule nationally without constant recourse
to coercion.
The Generals were banking on the view that Egyptians had grown tired of occupations and
demonstrations, and Morsi was seen as the person who might bring quiet to the street, get workers
back to the factories and return Egypt to normalcy. It was not recognised that this was a normalcy
that had generated the uprising in the first place. In addition, the persistence of unrest, permanent
street protest, and the enormous number of strike days – an estimated 7700 protests have been
accounted for between Morsi’s election and the start of June 2013 (Gamal, 2013) – probably led the
military high command to realise that the Muslim Brotherhood could not do what they had hoped
they would: there was no peace and quiet in Egypt and no secure investment climate. Instead, there
was an increasing authoritarianism, there was an increased use of police and security force brutality,
and there was a new criminalisation of worker protest and curbs on NGO activity that mirrored the
years of the previous dictatorship (CTUWS, 2013). It is notable that during some of the worst
violence against SCAF and police brutality the Islamists had earlier sided with the military against
revolutionary youth. This had been the case in November 2011 during the Mohammed Mahmoud
street battles and attempts to occupy the cabinet in December the same year. In government, Morsi
felt confident that he could affirm his role as Commander in Chief of Egypt’s armed forces, perhaps
assuming, as he had helped clear out some of the old guard generals, that al-Sisi would not oppose
him. However, it seems that Morsi overstepped his mark in areas that went beyond mismanaging
the domestic economy. The military had become worried about Morsi’s reluctance or inability to
quieten aggressive rhetoric in June 2013 by his advisors towards Ethiopia and Syria. Morsi called in
fact for a Holy War against Assad only three days after meeting US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Perhaps Egypt’s Generals became anxious that Morsi was leading Egypt into military action for which
there was little appetite and at a time when there was an escalating domestic political and economic
crisis (Press TV, 9 July 2013).
The unprecedented continuation of worker and in places farmer militancy – that included land
occupations, violent disputes over boundaries and irrigation, together with strong reaction to the
Islamisation of broadcasting and media outlets, inflation and Coptic defiance at discrimination and
violent attacks on churches and Christians – convinced the military of its role to reinstate ‘stability’.
On seizing power, General al-Sisi noted ‘We will build an Egyptian society that is strong and stable
that will not exclude any one of its sons’ (The Guardian, 4 July 2013), and the Generals have outlined
a ‘roadmap’ for new parliamentary and presidential elections and appointed Adly Mansour, Head of
the High Constitutional Court, as interim President.
The 3 July military coup, however, should not be seen through the prism of ‘binary alternatives’
between the Muslim Brotherhood on the one hand and the army on the other (El-Hamalawy 2013).
This is a narrative that has traction in Western media, even though the military has appointed a
civilian president and ex-head of the National Salvation Front Mohamed elBaradei as his vice
president with responsibility for foreign affairs. Islamists too like to polish the wrongdoing of the
military deposing a ballot-box president, adding to the idea of continued victimisation of the Muslim
Brotherhood. Of course there is evidence of this victimisation, not the least in the massacre of 51
Muslim Brotherhood supporters on 19 July 2013 as the military claimed the Islamists were trying to
enter the Republican Guard Club to rescue Morsi from house arrest (The Guardian, 19 July 2013);
the slaughter of what seems at least 100 on 26 July as the military tried to break up a Muslim
Brotherhood sit-in supporting the reinstatement of Morsi; and charges against Muslim Brotherhood
members for inciting violence, espionage and, in Morsi’s case, links with Hamas, who sprang him
from prison during the 2011 uprisings.
Mohamed Morsi’s regime was in terminal decline when the military coup took place. The popular
uprising on 30 June had generalised support that would have toppled Morsi. Morsi was intent on
clinging to office, but the power of the street could have pushed strongly for a more inclusive
government and early presidential elections. There would have been strong contestation, but the
overwhelming popular protest was to dislodge the Muslim Brotherhood, as they were seen even by
many hitherto supporters to have failed the majority of Egyptians. The Tamarrod initiative, which
now seems likely to have been assisted by funding from one of Egypt’s billionaire entrepreneurs, the
Naguib Sawiris, owner of the Orascom empire, was an amazingly extensive and well-run campaign to
gather as many signatures as Morsi got votes in the presidential election. The signatories went
beyond the 15 million, however, and the support was broad based and populist – banners on the 30
June demonstration were nationalist, with Egyptian flags replacing worker and trade union banners,
for example. The strategy to depose Morsi was working as people expressed their vehement critique
of the Brotherhood’s underachievement and their self-serving rhetoric: the military were not
necessary to remove Morsi, but the Generals were necessary to try and halt another popular
uprising.
The military of course had not been absent from Morsi’s government. General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi
was Minister of Defence and the military corporate machine continued to share between 20 and
40% of the Egyptian economy. We might see the coup as therefore seeking to do two things: first,
put a lid on permanent revolution from the street, something Morsi could not do, and second, to
(re)secure a new political elite to harness strategies for capital accumulation that continue from
where the Mubarak regime was removed.
The Muslim Brotherhood had been unsuccessful in bringing onside most business interests to join
their ruling coalition. They had tried to make an alliance with Naguib Sawiris, who refused and was
then ostracised as a Christian, labelled a feloul and then hit with claims for tax avoidance. One of
Mubarak’s business partners Hussein Salem, on the run, was encouraged to return, and a freeze on
the assets of Rashid Muhamed Rashid was lifted (Gamal, 2013). He had been Egypt’s Minister of
Foreign Trade since 2004, fleeing the country after the January 2011 uprising, refusing a post in one
of the transition governments that followed and then sentenced, in absentia, for embezzling public
assets. In this context it is unsurprising that, after July’s military coup, Naguib Sawiris said that he
and his wealthy brothers would be ‘investing in Egypt like never before’. His business conglomerate
empire includes telecommunications, cement and fertiliser plants, international construction,
tourism and real estate in Egypt and Europe. He criticised Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood for
bullying those that disagreed with them, including any businessman ‘who dared stand in their way’.
He noted that ‘My family and myself are going to be investing in Egypt like never before – any new
projects where we can invest, any new factories that we can open, any new initiatives that will
provide jobs for the young people of Egypt’ (Al Masry Al Youm, 15 July 2013). The influential
remnant and ex-foreign minister from Mubarak’s dictatorship, Amr Moussa, who has spent a lot of
time distancing himself from the erstwhile ruler, has also noted since the coup that it is safe for any
Mubarak associates who had gone into self-imposed exile to return: ‘Now they can come back. They
should come back’, he says (The Guardian, 23 July 2013).
Naguib Sawiris noted that international business should also invest now, as stability was forthcoming
and support for the military intervention was quick from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait,
which offered US$3 billion and US$4 billion respectively to the new government, with Saudi Arabia
offering US$5 billion (Al Masry Al Youm, 15 July 2013) – these figures put US support of Egypt’s
military of US$1.3 billion a year into perspective. It will now be interesting to see how quickly there
is a return to negotiations with the IMF over its stalled loan to Egypt, how quickly the neoliberal
promise of economic growth returns to disguise the continuing impoverishment of Egyptian workers
and farmers, and how soon the regional support for Israel, US and Saudi Arabia once more shapes
Egypt’s subordination to imperialism’s agendas.
This collection highlights the backdrop to many of the themes raised in this introduction. It highlights
the need to probe behind the ways in which politics and society in North Africa have been
characterised by many mainstream commentators. It highlights the centrality of political economy as
a method of analysis and of the need to explore patterns of capital accumulation and political
struggles for power and authority. These are themes at the centre of this journal’s analytical heft
that places dynamics and the understanding of class and power, inequality and injustice at its core.
We look forward to publishing future insightful articles into the contested arenas of the region’s
political economy.
Ray Bush
School of Politics and International Studies,
University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
[email protected]
Notes
1.
For more on the character and impact of Law 96, see Ray Bush ed., Counter Revolution in Egypt’s
Countryside, London: Zed Books, 2002.
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