Muslim Brotherhood's unlikely new ally? Egypt's military
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood have made their peace with a military elite that hounded them for decades.
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For the moment Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood's get-out-the-vote machine are working toward one common goal: Getting a "yes" vote on the constitution come Dec. 15. Their public messaging is all about the wonders of democracy and how protesters are thugs seeking to deny the will of the people. An umbrella group of secular-leaning political forces, from leftists to Christians to refugees from the Mubarak regime, are organizing to oppose the vote, but superior organization has been the Brotherhood's trump card in every election since Mubarak fell, and it's hard to see the outcome being any different this time, particularly with evidence that the military is on side with the movement's plans.
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Staff writer
Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East. Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.
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Muslim Brotherhood's unlikely new ally? Egypt's military
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The swift adaptation of the military to the Brotherhood, and vice versa, is a reminder of the resilience of authoritarian orders.
The Egyptian military hierarchy is often described as hostile to the Brothers, but that case is frequently overstated. What the Egyptian military wants is the ability to conduct its own affairs without civilian meddling, and to continue to expand a sprawling business empire that ranges from refrigerator factories to water-bottling plants to high-end condominium development. Mubarak provided that platform until he fell. Now, if the Muslim Brotherhood is offering a similar deal, who are Egypt's officers to complain?
There have been plenty of efforts to induce the military to cooperate. While two years ago Brotherhood leaders would talk about the baleful role the military played in Egyptian political life and bitterly complain about US backing for the army, the draft constitution includes protections of the military's long-established perks that seem the result of a remarkable detente between the Muslim Brotherhood and the officers.
The second sentence of the preamble to the draft hails the military's support for the January 25 revolution – a remarkable piece of historical revisionism for the beginning of a document that's supposed to undergird the building of a democratic political culture in the country. Article 197 of the draft takes control of the military's budget out of the hands of the legislature, and Article 198 says "civilians shall not stand trial before military courts except for crimes that harm the armed forces." That caveat is big enough to drive a truck through.
For Morsi and his allies, the bitterness stemming from the years many of them spent in jail and the torture some of them suffered appears to be behind them. The structures of Mubarak's Egypt are durable and intact, and if they can be turned towards securing the Brotherhood's own position and ability to further Islamicize Egypt, then they will remain.
After 80 years of setbacks, struggles, and an eventual policy of gradual and cautious movement to their ultimate goal, the Brothers are now rushing headlong into a constitution that will move Egypt in a sharply more Islamist direction.
Constitutions aren't worth much when they divide nations, but that's what is happening in Egypt now. President Morsi seems convinced he has the backing for his play to prevail and doesn't seem concerned about the damage it's doing to national cohesion.
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