Egyptians mourn
over bodies wrapped in shrouds at a mosque in Cairo on August 15, 2013 (AFP
Photo / Mahmoud Khaled)
By: Pepe Escobar
Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/op-edge/egypt-protests-terror-muslim-brotherhood-526/
Egypt's
‘bloodbath that is not a bloodbath’ has shown that the forces of hardcore
suppression and corruption reign supreme, while foreign interests - the House
of Saud, Israel and the Pentagon - support the military's merciless strategy.
Stop. Look at the
photos. Linger on dozens of bodies lined up in a makeshift morgue. How can the
appalling bloodbath in Egypt be justified? Take your
pick. Either it’s Egypt’s remix of Tiananmen Square, or it’s the bloodbath that
is not a bloodbath, conducted by the leaders of the coup that is not a coup,
with the aim of fighting “terror”.
It certainly was
not a crowd clearing operation – as in the New York Police Department ‘clearing’
Occupy Wall Street. As a Sky journalist tweeted, it was more like “a major
military assault largely on unarmed civilians”, using everything from bulldozers
to tear gas to snipers.
Thus the scores
indiscriminately killed – with crossfire estimates ranging from the low
hundreds (the “interim government”) to at least 4,500 (the Muslim Brotherhood), including at least
four journalists and the 17-year-old Asmaa, daughter of top Muslim Brotherhood
politician Mohamed El Beltagy.
El Beltagy,
before being arrested, said, crucially, “If you do not take to the streets,
he [as in General Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi, the leader of the coup that is not a
coup who appointed the interim government] will make the country like Syria.”
Wrong. Sisi is
not Bashar al-Assad. Don’t expect passionate Western calls for “targeted
strikes” or a no-fly zone over Egypt. He may be a military dictator killing
his own people. But he’s one of “our” bastards.
What we say goes
Let’s look at the
reactions. The lethargic poodles of the European Union called for “restraint”
and described it all as “extremely worrying.” A White House statement
said the interim government should “respect human rights” – which can be
arguably interpreted as the Manning/Snowden/droning of Pakistan and Yemen
school of human rights.
That pathetic
excuse for a diplomat, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, at least
was blunt: “Egypt is an important partner for NATO through the Mediterranean
Dialogue.” Translation: the only thing we really care about is that those
Arabs do as we say.
A man grieves as
he looks at one of many bodies laid out in a make shift morgue after Egyptian
security forces stormed two huge protest camps at the Rabaa al-Adawiya and
Al-Nahda squares where supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi were
camped, in Cairo, on August 14, 2013 (AFP Photo / Mosaab El-Shamy)
Stripped of all
rhetoric – indignant or otherwise – the key point is that Washington won’t cut
its $1.3 billion annual aid to Sisi’s army no matter what. Wily Sisi has
declared a “war on terror”. The Pentagon is behind it. And the Obama
administration is tagging along – reluctantly or not.
Now let’s see
who’s in revolt. Predictably, Qatar condemned it; after all Qatar was
bankrolling the Morsi presidency. The Islamic Action Front, the political wing
of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, encouraged Egyptians to keep protesting to
“thwart the conspiracy” by the former regime – as in Mubarakists without
Mubarak.
Turkey – which
also supports the Muslim Brotherhood - urged the UN Security Council and the
Arab League to act quickly to stop a “massacre”; as if the UN and the
Saudi-controlled Arab League would interrupt their three-hour-long expense
account lunches to do anything.
Iran – correctly
- warned of the risk of civil war. That does not mean that Tehran is blindly
supporting the Muslim Brotherhood – especially after Morsi had incited
Egyptians to join a jihad against Assad in Syria. What Tehran has noted is that
the civil war is already on.
Let’s aim for the kill
“Byzantine” does not even begin to explain the blame
game. The bloodbath that is not a bloodbath happened as the Sisi-appointed
“government” had promised it would engage in a military-supported “transition”
that would be politically all-inclusive.
Yet, fed up with
six weeks of protests denouncing the “coup that is not a coup,” the
interim government changed the narrative and decided to take no prisoners.
According to the
best informed Egyptian media analyses, Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Baha Eldin
and Vice President for foreign affairs Mohamed ElBaradei wanted to go soft against
the protesters, while Interior Minister Gen. Mohammad Ibrahim Mustafa and the
Defense Minister - Sisi himself - wanted to go medieval.
The first step
was to pre-emptively blame the Muslim Brotherhood for the bloodshed – just as
the Muslim Brotherhood blamed Jemaah Islamiyah for deploying Kalashnikovs and
burning churches and police stations.
An Egyptian woman
mourns over the body of her daughter wrapped in shrouds at a mosque in Cairo on
August 15, 2013 (AFP Photo / Khaled Desouki)
A key reason to
launch the “bloodbath that is not a bloodbath” this Wednesday was an
attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to march on the perennially dreaded Interior
Ministry. Hardcore Ibrahim Mustafa would have none of it.
Sisi’s minions
appointed 25 provincial governors, of which 19 are generals, in perfect timing
to “reward” the top military echelon and thus solidify the Egyptian “deep
state”, or actually police state. And to crown the “bloodbath that is
not a bloodbath,” Sisi’s minions declared martial law for a month. Under
these circumstances, the resignation of Western darling ElBaradei won’t make
Sisi lose any sleep.
The original
spirit of Tahrir Square is now dead and buried ,
as a Yemeni miraculously not targeted by Obama’s drones, Nobel Peace Prize
winner Tawakkul Karman, pointed out.
The key question
is who profits from a hyper-polarized Egypt, with a civil war pitting the
well-organized, fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood against the
military-controlled “deep state”.
Both options are
equally repulsive (not to mention incompetent). Yet the local winners are
easily identifiable: the counter-revolution, as in the fulool – diehard
Mubarakists – a bunch of corrupt oligarchs, and most of all the deep state
itself.
Hardcore
repression rules. Corruption rules. And foreign domination rules (as in Saudi Arabia,
who’s now paying most of the bills, alongside the UAE).
Internationally,
the big winners are Saudi Arabia (displacing Qatar), Israel (because the
Egyptian army is even more docile than the Brotherhood), and – who else – the
Pentagon, the Egyptian army’s pimp. Nowhere in the Milky Way this House of
Saud/Israel/Pentagon axis can be spun as “good for the Egyptian people”.
Sheikh Al-Torture is our man
A quick recap is
in order. In 2011, the Obama administration never said, “Mubarak must go”
until the last minute. Hilary Clinton wanted a “transition” led by CIA
asset and spy chief Omar Suleiman – widely known in Tahrir Square as “Sheikh
al-Torture”.
Reporters run for
cover during clashes between Muslim Brotherhood supporters of Egypt's ousted
president Mohamed Morsi, and police in Cairo on August 14, 2013 (AFP Photo /
Mosaab El-Shamy)
Then a Washington
inside joke was that the Obama administration had gleefully become a Muslim
Brotherhood cheerleader (allied with Qatar). Now, like a yo-yo, the Obama
administration is weighing on how to spin the new narrative - the ‘loyal’Egyptian
army courageously wiping out the “terrorist” Muslim Brotherhood to “protect
the revolution.”
There was never
any revolution to begin with; the head of the snake (Mubarak) was gone, but the
snake remained alive and kicking. Now it’s met the new snake, same as the old
snake. Additionally, it’s so easy to sell to the uninformed galleries the
Muslim Brotherhood = al-Qaeda equation.
Pentagon supremo
Chuck Hagel was glued on the phone with Sisi as the July 3 “coup that is not
a coup” was taking place. Pentagon spin would want us to believe that Sisi promised Hagel he would be on top of
things in a heartbeat. Virtually 100% of the Beltway agreed. Thus the official
Washington spin of “coup that is not a coup.”Tim Kaine from Virginia, at
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even extolled those model democracies,
the UAE and Jordan, in their enthusiasm
for the “coup that is not a coup.”
It’s essential to
outline the five countries that have explicitly endorsed the “coup that is
not a coup.” Four of them are GCC petro-monarchies (members of the Gulf
Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-Revolution Club); Saudi Arabia,
the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain. And the fifth is that little monarchy, Jordan, the
GCC wants to annex to the Gulf.
Even more
pathetic than Egypt’s so-called liberals, some leftists, some Nasserists and
assorted progressives defending Sisi’s bloodlust has been the volte-face of
Mahmoud Badr, the founder of Tamarrod – the movement that spearheaded the
massive demonstrations that led to Morsi’s ouster. In 2012, he blasted Saudi
Arabia. After the coup, he prostrated himself in their honor. At least he knows
who’s paying the bills.
And then there’s
Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, the Vatican of Sunni Islam. He
said, “Al-Azhar…did not know about the methods used for the dispersal of the
protests except through media channels.” Nonsense; he has repeatedly
praised Sisi
Egyptian Muslim
brotherhood supporters of Egypt's ousted president Mohamed Morsi evacuate a
wounded man during clashes with riot police at Cairo's Mustafa Mahmoud Square
after security forces dispersed supporters Morsi on August 14, 2013 (AFP Photo
/ Str)
Feel free to adore my eyelashes
There’s no other
way of saying it; from Washington’s point of view, Arabs can kill each other to
Kingdom Come, be it Sunnis against Shiites, jihadis against secularists,
peasants against urbanites, and Egyptians against Egyptians. The only thing
that matters is the Camp David agreements; and nobody is allowed to antagonize
Israel.
So it’s fitting
that Sisi’s minions in boots asked Israel to keep their drones near the border,
as they need to pursue their “war on terror” in the Sinai. For all
practical purposes, Israel runs the Sinai.
But then there’s
the cancellation of a delivery of F-16s to Sisi’s army. In real life, every US
weapons sale across the Middle East has to be “cleared” with Israel. So a case
can be made that Israel – for the moment - is not exactly sure what Sisi is
really up to.
It’s quite
instructive to read what Sisi thinks of “democracy” – as demonstrated
when he was at the US War
College. He’s essentially an Islamist – but most of all he
craves power. And the MB is standing in his way. So they have to be disposed
of.
Sisi’s “war on
terror” is arguably a roaring success as a PR stunt to legitimize his run
for a popular mandate. He’s trying to pose as the new Nasser. He’s Sisi the
Savior, surrounded by a bunch of Sisi groupies. A columnist wrote in Al-Masry
Al-Youm that Sisi doesn't even need to issue an order; it’s enough to “just
flutter his eyelashes”. The Sisi-for-president campaign is already on.
Anyone familiar
with US-propped 1970s tin-pot Latin American dictators is able to spot one.
This is no Savior. This is no more than an Al-Sisi-nator – the vainglorious
tin-pot ruler of what my colleague Spengler bluntly defined as a banana republic
without the bananas.
About: Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar is
the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and
TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging
from the US to East Asia
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