Two Scenarios on Egyptian Succession and One Vision of the Brotherhood

By Jonathan Winer

The similarities between the course of events in Egypt today, and in Iran thirty years ago are obvious: millions of ordinary people take to the street with the sole goal of removing a long-ruling local autocrat who has strong ties to Western powers but is seen as having been deaf the voices of his own people and democracy.

The US then, under Jimmy Carter, as now, under Barack Obama, supports democracy, freedom, and the right of local populations to determine their own destiny.

The autocrat's solid control of the country, backed by the military he commands, rapidly disintegrates. No half measures are accepted -- and suddenly, he is gone.

The question becomes -- what next?

Leaving aside wars for independence from foreign powers, popular revolutions have tended to run in either of two scenarios:

Scenario One: a transitional government proves to be weak, and after a series of violent twists and turns, coups, imprisonments, and executions, a replacement autocrat -- aristocratic, theocratic, or charismatic -- emerges. Come meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Examples include: France 1789 (Napoleon); Haiti 1804 (from Touissant to Aristide, in endless destructive cycle); Mexico 1910 (from Porforio Diaz to 75 years of one-party rule by the PRI); Russia 1917 (Stalin); Germany 1918 to 1933 (Weimer to Hitler); Cuba 1933 (against Machado) and 1956-1959 (Batista to Castro); Ethiopia 1974 (Mengistu); Iran 1979 (Khomeini/Khameini); Russia 1999 (Putin and Putinism); Kyrgyzstan 2005 (Bakiev).

Scenario Two: following mob protests destabilizing the entrenched autocrat, a transitional government steadies the country long enough to allow for a move towards a genuinely democratic government, involving multiple popular interests, without permanent one-party rule by a small insider clique. There are, unfortunately, fewer cases of this, and several of them were in important respects wars for independence from perceived foreign control. Perhaps the best examples include: Turkey 1908 (Young Turk Revolution, which led to Ataturk, but evolved into democracy); Portugal 1974 (the Carnation Revolution, establishing a real democracy); Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania 1979 (the Singing Revolution); Czechoslovakia 1979 (Velvet Revolution); Romania 1979; Indonesia 1998; Georgia 2003 (the Rose Revolution, but the extent to which a democracy has succeeded Shvardnadze is open to debate in light of Saakashvilli's use of the legal system to crack-down on dissent).

There are forces visible in Egypt which provide hope for scenario two, and legitimate anxiety about scenario one.

Positive elements include the mix of secular and religious in Egypt, a complex media environment in which no single voice controls, the role of new media in moderating efforts to impose a single vision on society -- a huge development since the Iranian revolution of 1979 -- and a diverse group of commercial interests who may be unwilling to see their property subsumed to someone else's political agenda.

Alternatively, one can look at the risks of two types of autocratic succession. In the first, a familiar one by Middle East standards, a successor military ruler emerges to replace Mubarak. Whatever instabilities may occur along the way, at the end of the day, we have seen that movie before, and it tends to be one in which the ruler's main goal is retaining power, and revolutionary tendencies of all forms are suppressed in the name of real politik. Such a ruler would probably not be very good for the people of Egypt. Corruption, stagnation, and injustice are likely elements of such a regime, but that kind of government in Egypt would at least be familiar to them, and to other governments.

Then there is the example of Shi'ite Iran, and the question of whether the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood might emerge as a ruling political party. Have its leaders evolved from religious revivalists to democratic reformers? Are they interested in gaining power in Egypt only and maintaining a pluralistic society, imposing a theocracy, or do they have the goal of bringing about a more global form of political Islam featuring theocracies everywhere there are Muslims?

One interesting view, is that of Ian Johnson, a Pulitizer Prize winning reporter, formerly with the Wall Street Journal, whose thoroughly researched book on the Brotherhood, "A Mosque in Munich," was published last year.

Johnson visited the Muslim Brotherhood's headquarters in Cairo and described the scene as follows:

"Inside the apartment, the group's militancy is apparent. Pictures of martyred brothers hang on the wall, such as Shiekh Ahmed Yassin, the head of Hamas killed by Israel in 2004. . . The man in charge is the Muslim Brotherhood's 'supreme guide,' Mahdi Akef. . . 'From this small place we run Islam to the world,' Akef says . . . Akef is keen to be accepted by governments and wants the Brotherhood to participate int he political system. He still wants to impose Islamic law, or sharia, in Egypt, but says he would do so slowly, building up support at the grassroots level rather than imposing it from above, as was done in Iran."

Akef retired at age 81 from running the Brotherhood last year, but his attitudes are provocative enough. In 2005, he made statements that supported those of Iran's Mahmoud Amadinejad,writing that he wanted to "expose the false American rule which has become a nightmare of a new world order." In the words of Akef, "He who announces himself party to their alliance is a 'democrat', while he who opposes their methods in the fight against terrorism is a 'terrorist'." He also then used the term "the myth of the Holocaust," as follows:

"Western democracies have criticised all those who adopt a view different from that of the people of Zion about the myth of the Holocaust," said Akef.

While Egyptian, not foreign political institutions will determine what comes in next in Egypt, those on the outside urging the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood in succession talks in Egypt may want to keep such statements in mind.

Following years of research that involved interviews with the Brotherhood's leadership in a number of countries, Johnson has reached his own conclusions about the Brotherhood and its larger role internationally., "the Brotherhood nowadays functions as two phenomena: One is narrowly defined as a Egyptian political party. The other -- more relevant in the West in the 21st century -- is an ideological universe [that] could be defined even more broadly as including nearly identical movements around the world," including those in Pakistan and Turkey.

Johnson's conclusion: "Although the Brotherhood says it supports terrorism only in certain cases -- usually against Israel -- it does more than target Jews. It creates a mental preconditioning for terrorism. This mindset divides the world into two camps, those to be protected (a small number of "good Muslims") and the rest (including many other Muslims), who can be destroyed."

If Johnson is correct in his assessment, a theocracy led by the Muslim Brotherhood could be very problematic for Egyptians, and also, it would appear, raise broader problems beyond Egypt's borders.