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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment