A very Egyptian coup

Liberals applauding a military coup? OK, it happened in Portugal in 1974, but that ousted a dictator, not an elected president.

Yet the people with whom most liberals would most readily identify in Egypt seem to be the ones on the streets hailing what in plain English is a military coup.

The reasons for this curious turn of events lie in the deep suspicion in which secular Egyptians hold political Islamists.

I recall meeting Egyptian liberals at Liberal International congresses. They were members of opposition parties tolerated in the Mubarak era so long as they remained unthreatening to the regime and of limited effect.

They wanted to see democracy in Egypt but were worried that, as the only organised political force of any significance, the Muslim Brotherood would win, and would need only to ‘win once’, before imposing a religious regime that would allow even less opposition than did Mubarak.

Indeed, on grounds of free speech, religious freedom and women’s rights, I well remember Egyptian liberals saying they would prefer the Mubarak regime any day to a Brotherhood government.

Therefore the problem arises of how both these substantial currents of opinion can be accommodated within one democracy when each believes the other to be a mortal threat to its interests and well-being.

Tunisia seems slightly more successful in ushering in democracy after the Arab spring, and in Morocco the king has resolved to be a constitutional monarch.

In Egypt, the army may end up holding the ring for longer than it planned.

Iraq – ten years on – and the Liberal Democrats

Ten years ago, the last time the Labour Party enjoyed a double-digit poll lead, a remarkable thing happened in the Liberal Democrats, which if certain people have their way will never happen again. It was the story of how a party, from the bottom to the very top, seized the zeitgeist and found itself, somewhat to its own amazement, the right side of an era-defining political moment.

I was one of those (alongside Martin Tod) when James Graham and Donnachadh McCarthy got the party’s Federal Executive to show some leadership, possibly for the only time in the existence of that body. All of us were members of the FE at the time; unfortunately neither James nor Donnachadh are members of the Liberal Democrats any more. (That in itself speaks volumes).

Charles Kennedy had to be dragged, almost kicking and screaming, to the march. However, his more nuanced approach was repeatedly proved right in subsequent political debate. Detailed policy resolutions at both 2002 Federal Conferences (current FCC please note...) set out a composited position. A January 2003 Federal Executive resolution maintained that there was no evidence to justify Liberal Democrats backing a war. The FE then, uniquely, unanimously voted to support a resolution from James and Susan Kramer backing both the march and an organised official party presence on it.

Kennedy’s aides were reportedly particularly nervous at being closely aligned with pro-Palestinian campaigns, some of them tending towards the radical. Co-operation from key party staff to organise the presence was in short supply (with the usual combination of veteran campaigners and young Liberals coming up trumps). Then, after two weeks’ tension, Kennedy said yes to David Frost... and everything changed.

At that time, I was a councillor in West Oxfordshire, and helped set up a local Stop the War group in an area with significant numbers of forces personnel. A public meeting in Witney, at which I shared the platform with one David Cameron, saw some moving accounts from Forces families of the effects of their loved ones serving in a war they could not support. It was thus perplexing that Kennedy insisted, immediately after the invasion, on a position that opposed the war but supported the troops, which was confusing to many and convinced virtually no-one.

And, as James Graham has recorded at some length, the amazing coalition of Liberals of all parties and none rather imploded against a sea of recriminations, largely at the way the party appeared to be instructed to disobey the decision of the party. [The full documents of the recrimination can be spared – for now.] By contrast, very many Liberals old and new felt reinvigorated by the high-visibility campaign.

Ten years on, and it barely seems conceivable that the Liberal Democrats could do another Iraq. Indeed, Nick Clegg and his former strategy advisor Richard Reeves have (overtly and covertly) suggested that all those left-leaning liberals who joined over Iraq should leave the party and go somewhere else. (The fact that many of those instrumental in the efforts over Iraq predate Clegg let alone Reeves in active politics, of course, is clearly forgotten). More sadly, there is no political party to which the vast majority of those people could now turn.

Were fate and international events to throw up a parallel situation today, indeed, what might happen? The answer is far from clear, especially as, since their accession to government, the Liberal Democrats have scarcely discussed foreign policy at all and appear to have largely forgotten about the wider world. One thing is true, though: any military action in the Middle East in particular is likely to be the subject of considerable anguish against the backdrop of an increasingly overtly pro-Israeli Liberal Democrat leadership and the prism of the coalition. The vituperative responses to careless statements from parliamentarians about Palestine, and the almost crazed response to serious challenges to the leadership such as that seen at Gateshead over the NHS Bill, do not give rise to much hope.

One significant test of the party’s international outlook will come when the party follows the Trident alternatives review and decides whether it goes into the general election pledged to a reduced deterrent, or – as a majority of activists currently think – none. A metaphor for the party’s strategy: the squeezed middle ground of centrism, or a return to the radical roots the party has followed since the days of Grimond.

While the need for the party to develop its own economic vision is critical, the dangers to the Liberal Democrats of 2013 posed by international events are great indeed.

Africa: we never learn

The current fighting in Mali is once again leading westerners to interpret events in simplistic terms: the global battle against Al Qaeda. But these blind and arrogant perceptions have a high cost. When on previous occasions western governments have intervened in northern Africa, their policies have proved counter-productive, fuelling a hatred and distrust of Europe and America, which in turn has massively helped the Islamist cause.

That is the analysis of TV documentary maker Adam Curtis, in this fascinating account of events over the past twenty years in Somalia and Algeria. It is a lengthy essay accompanied by clips from various TV documentaries, but repays patient study.

Curtis concludes:

...America’s intervention in Somalia had created the very thing it feared.

And the same thing is happening now all across the northern part of Africa. In Mali, in northern Nigeria with Boko Haram, and in Algeria with the remnants of the GIA. In every case what are local struggles for power are being simplified by Western politicians and commentators into part of a global battle against “Al Qaeda”.

It is true that there are extreme Islamists involved who proudly announce that they are joined together into a global movement. But the reality is that that kind of extreme Islamism has failed everywhere. Ever since Algeria in the early 1990s none of the extremist salafist-jihad groups have managed to take power and create the kind of society they yearn for. The reason for their failure is simple – the growing urban middle classes throughout the Arab world don’t want it. You only have to look at the battles now tearing Egypt apart to see that happening.

Instead our politicians and allied terror experts fall for the Islamists’ attempts to aggrandise themselves – and in the process become the Islamists’ PR agents. It means the western elites are helping to promote a failed revolutionary movement while ignoring the signs of what might be the future for Africa – the new systems of multi-party democracy being built from the grassroots in places like Somaliland. Without aid, and without the west imposing centralised forms of control.

This raises an interesting question. If our politicians, journalists, military and various think tank ‘experts’ persist in clinging to simplistic notions and repeating the same mistakes, why do we persist in taking them seriously?

Young liberals undermine Muslim Brotherhood

If you think the British Liberal Democrats have a tough fight on their hands, consider our fellow liberals in the Arab world. The Arab Spring has provided much hope and reform, but has also been exploited by the Muslim Brotherhood to try and create strict Islamic states. Fortunately, local liberals are fighting back.

In an interview with the Dutch newspaper Metro (English translation here), Rabih Fakhreddine of the Lebanese party Future Movement (a member party of Liberal International) and Vice-President of IFLRY (International Federation of Liberal Youth) is interviewed about the engagement of young liberals in the democratisation processes following the Arab Spring.

In the interview, Fakhreddine says that, although there are many liberal parties throughout the Arab world, they have had little time to organise compared with the decades the Muslim Brotherhood has had. But they are not deterred. “When the voters will become disappointed in the Muslim Brotherhood, however, we will be there.”

He adds, “We maintain strong ties with liberal parties and leaders from around the world,” and the two Dutch liberal parties VVD and D66 have been prominent supporters. If you would like to add your support, contact Liberal International or IFLRY.

The end of optimism

TV documentary maker Adam Curtis always has something interesting to say, and his latest blog post is no exception.

He analyses current events in the Middle East from an historical perspective and suggests that the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and the Israeli right enjoy a symbiotic relationship.

Western liberals find the situation in Gaza and Egypt incomprehensible. It is comprehensible, says Curtis, but only if you look at it in a wider context:

A context that western liberals really don’t like to think about because it makes them very depressed. It is the great shift of our time – the collapse of the dream that politicians could change the world for the better. A dream that was replaced by a conviction that politicians were untrustworthy and always become corrupted by power.

The collapse of that optimistic vision of what politics could achieve then left the way open for powerful, reactionary forces to take power who don’t want to change the world. Instead they want to manage the world and hold it stable – backed up by the threat of violence. A threat to which they have become increasingly addicted.

This has happened not only in America and in Britain – but all over the world. And I want to tell the story of how it happened in the Middle East. It is the intertwined story of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in the Gaza strip and the reactionary right-wing nationalist groups in Israel.

All three groups are driven by an angry, pessimistic vision of the world, of human nature – and the inability of politicians to transform things for the better. It’s a fascinating story because it shows how the underlying similarities led those groups to become tightly locked together – helping each other cement their ruthless grip on their people – and freeze out any progressive alternatives.

Curtis’s blog is a long essay supported by video clips but it repays patient study. So pour yourself a drink first – you’ll need it.

Did Morsi “only need to win once”?

Today’s disturbances in Egypt over President Morsi’s attempt to put himself beyond the jurisdiction of the courts reminded me of a bleak conversation I had with an Egyptian liberal at a Liberal International congress some years before the Arab Spring.

He explained that, while he wanted to see democracy in Egypt, he was worried about what it might bring, given the Muslim Brotherhood’s popularity and organisational ability.

This body might, he said, “only have to win once” so that once elected it would then entrench itself, abolish democracy, and impose a religiously-inspired dictatorship that would make the Mubarak government look benign by comparison.

There was some limited political pluralism in the Mubarak era – liberal parties could exist though were rarely allowed to win election to anything – and the fear that Morsi aims to snuff out even this political space must be what has driven an impressively-sized crowd onto the streets.

Egypt is not Syria or Libya, and certainly not Saudi Arabia – it has long had some political and religious liberty and some freedom for women.

But it is struggling with how to reconcile a desire for democracy with its religious traditions and it has no real model to follow, given that history and circumstances in Turkey are very different.

As the Middle East’s most populous and influential country, how Egypt eventually resolves this will be important for whether the Arab Spring breaks through against dictatorships elsewhere to bring lasting change or falls back into repression but simply conducted by different people.