Three-strikes policy: Egypt military fires AGAIN on unarmed civilians and now reporters.

Very good article in the NY Post.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/this_blood_is_on_the_hands_of_muslim_olptNuF89CVqLiPBzOu6OL

This blood is on the hands of Muslim Brotherhood

What do we want the future Egypt to look like? A flawed, hybrid democracy, or a Sunni Muslim version of Iran? Based on his bluster yesterday about events on the Nile, Secretary of State John Kerry prefers the latter.

And Kerry’s remarks must have had White House approval.

In full outrage mode, America’s most famous windsurfer castigated the Egyptian authorities, insisting that the Muslim Brotherhood had a right to “peaceful protests.” Apparently, “peaceful” means armed with Kalashnikovs, killing policemen, kidnapping and torturing opponents, turning mosques into prisons, attacking Christians and burning Coptic churches.

The Brotherhood protesters rejected all offers of compromise and all demands to disperse. The interim government’s response was heavy-handed, but the Muslim Brothers chose violent resistance — using women and children as shields (a tactic typical of Islamist terrorists).

Do we really need to have sympathy for the devil?

With its blundering, fickle, late-in-the-day support for whoever appeared to be gaining the upper hand, the Obama administration has managed the remarkable feat of alienating every faction in Egypt. And it’s a sorry day when an American administration abets religious totalitarianism, as this White House did when the “democratically elected” Morsi regime tried to Islamize Egypt’s government and society for keeps.

There was, indeed, a coup. But not all coups involve tanks. The real coup came after Egypt’s premature, badly flawed election, when Morsi and the Brotherhood excluded all non-Brothers from the political process; curtailed media freedoms and jailed journalists; attacked Christians; and rushed toward an Islamist state that the majority of Egyptians did not want.

Tens of millions of Muslims took to the streets to protest the Brotherhood’s plunge toward tyranny. Only after attempts to persuade an unrepentant Morsi to compromise failed, did the military move against the regime. The people cheered.

Yet our breathtakingly inept ambassador backed the Morsi regime right to the end. That isn’t diplomacy. It’s idiocy.

But all you have to do to create witless panic in Washington is cry “Military coup!” Well, sometimes — regrettably — a military is all that stands between a population and deadly (and anti-American) fanaticism. Despite yesterday’s bloodshed, would we really prefer a return to Brotherhood rule? Stuff the political correctness and get real.

Is the Egyptian military an ideal ally? Nope. But it’s a far better bet than Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood turned out to be.

The danger now is that the administration and naïfs in Congress will cut aid to the Egyptian military and curl up into a snit. That would only make the Egyptians who want a reasonably free, generally tolerant and ultimately democratic Egypt even madder at us. And Egypt’s the most important Arab country.

Do we really need to make additional enemies in the region? Of moderates and secularists? In a quest to be “fair” to fanatics?

Official figures allow 275 dead in yesterday’s violence, while the Muslim Brotherhood claims more than 2,000. The latter number’s preposterous — you can’t hide that many corpses from prying journalists — but the reality is probably somewhere in between.

Regrettable? Yes. Inevitable? Also yes, thanks to the Brotherhood’s intolerance and intransigence.

It’s time to get over ourselves. Our narcissistic belief that we not only can, but must, decide the destinies of Middle Eastern populations is destructive. We can, at times, play constructively on the margins, but we’re not even good at that.

The Obama administration needs a new foreign-policy motto: “First, do no harm.”

And we need to base our policies on our long-term interests, not on here-and-gone headlines. The enemy of the Egyptian people and of the American people is the same: Islamist fanaticism. And defeating radical extremists isn’t a smiley-face business.

When someone insists that he knows what God demands everybody must do, you can either submit or resist. Egyptians chose to resist. And the Muslim Brotherhood, not the Egyptian military, chose blood.

 

There are reports that protestors kept children in those camps for 45 days straight. Human shields basically and they knew it would not end peacefully. Muslim extremist type tactics. Using children as ultra Martyrs for their benefit.

That's all the MB are doing right now. Using inflated death totals to push an agenda while ignore that they've also killed 60 police officers, attacked innocent people and destroyed tens of churches.

 

Obama cancels a joint military with Egypt over the latest events. This is pretty much a no win situation for the US but I think taking steps to distance the US from the Egyptian military is the right thing to do. Other than that the most the US can do is let things play out. It is clear Muslim Brotherhood rule is unacceptable to the US and to most Egyptians but the US taking an active hand in suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood will likely end up building popular support them.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...violence-cancels-joint-military-exercise?lite

Obama condemns Egypt over violence, cancels joint military exercise

CAIRO – President Barack Obama strongly condemned Egypt’s interim government Thursday, saying the United States was canceling a planned joint military operation in protest over violent clashes that left at least 525 dead.

He called on Egypt’s interim government, which took power after the July 3 military ouster of elected president Mohammed Morsi, to cancel a month-long state of emergency imposed after Wednesday's bloodshed.

"We deplore violence against civilians," he told reporters in Martha's Vineyard, where he is on a working vacation.

His plea did not immediately appear to be heeded in Cairo, where Egypt's interior ministry said it had authorized security forces to fire at any Morsi supporters who were involved in attacks on churches or government buildings.

Obama said Operation Bright Star – a joint biennial military exercise that had been due to take place in the Sinai region next month - would not now happen, and hinted further steps could be taken. It follows the decision last month to halt a planned delivery of F-16 fighter jets.

"While we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back," he said.

Egypt's security forces - backed by bulldozers - cleared two Cairo sit-in camps protesting the military's removal of the country's democratically elected leader.

In blow to Morsi supporters, Obama did not call for a change in leadership in Egypt, saying: "That's a task for the Egyptian people."

He characterized the July 3 power shift - regarded by many as a coup - as a "chance for reconciliation" that had been squandered by the interim government.

"We've seen a more dangerous path taken, through arbitrary arrests, a broad crackdown on Mr. Morsi's associations and supporters

The violent clearance of the camps triggered a backlash around Egypt, prompting the interim government to declare a month-long state of emergency and impose a night-time curfew.

It also sparked the resignation of Nobel Peace Prize winner and interim government minister Mohamed ElBaradei.

Egypt's health ministry announced Thursday that the death toll from subsequent clashes reached 525, with 3,572 others injured. Activists said the true death toll was much higher.

Hundreds of angry Morsi supporters attacked and set fire to the offices of the governor of Cairo's Giza district at about 2 p.m. local time (8 a.m. ET) Thursday. They threw Molotov cocktails and fired live ammunition into the building as government workers fled, according to security sources.
The Muslim Brotherhood also announced plans to hold a march in Cairo, and pledged to bring down the interim government.

“We will rise and rise again until we push the military back into the barracks and restore democracy,” Gehad El-Haddad, spokesman for the Islamist organization, said on his Twitter feed.

“We will not bow down, we will not cower,” said El-Haddad, adding that the security forces had shown “unbelievable brutality”.

In a troubling indication of the increasingly sectarian nature of Egypt's divisions, Reuters cited state media and security sources as saying that a number of churches had been attacked across Egypt.
Churches were attacked in the Nile Valley towns of Minya, Sohag and Assiut, where Christians escaped across the roof into a neighboring building after a mob surrounded and hurled bricks at their place of worship, state news agency MENA said.

Authorities referred 84 people from the city of Suez, including Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters, to military prosecutors on Thursday on charges of murder and burning churches, the state news agency reported.

As Egypt awoke to the first full day of its month-long state of emergency, Cairo appeared calm.

Traffic flowed through the former site of the Rabaa camp, and many Egyptians expressed support for the army in removing the protest camps. Passing drivers were beeping their horns, shouting “Long live Egypt” and slowing to shake hands with soldiers guarding the scorched area.

“I support the army,” said Mohamed, a student. “Now we are free, finally.”

A woman called Isra said: “What happened [on July 3] is not a coup, it is a people’s revolution. I support anyone who supported us to get rid of the terrorism we saw in the streets in the past year.”

But while the streets were quiet, activists rallied online – using social media to collate pictures and first-hand accounts of Wednesday’s violence at the Rabaa and Nahda camps.

Images of bodies piled high in mosques and other makeshift morgues were posted on Twitter, while on Facebook one activist set up a gruesome gallery showing victims of the violence.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry also posted pictures - of the 13 policemen killed by pro-Morsi protesters who fought back during the camp clearances.

El-Haddad said the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies had suffered a "very strong blow" in Wednesday's crackdown, and that the whereabouts of all its key leaders could not be ascertained.

Morsi himself has been held at an undisclosed location, and faces charges – brought by the security forces – that he colluded with Palestinian militants.

His detention was extended Thursday for another 30 days.

 

Coptic Christians praying in their burned down church.

 

Yeah, because your Islamist friends don't use their children.



"Peaceful" Islamists throwing a police car full of police men off a bridge.

 

"As a result". Yeah. Another attempt to paint Islamist violence as "just a reaction". Canadian Mathloon at work.

 

Where are the pictures of blacks killing cops, burning churches and such during MLK's civil rights sit ins?

 

We are used to it from you.

 

One thing that's under-reported was that after the coup, the MB was told by the acting president to prepare for new elections. The MB refuses to recognize any new elections and wants back into power. From the looks of things they have little chance of winning a hypothetical election any time soon.


from Reuters

Despite carnage, Muslim Brothers win little sympathy in Cairo

By Yasmine Saleh and Tom Finn

CAIRO (Reuters) - Normally crammed with cars and people, the chaotic streets of Cairo were strangely quiet on Thursday, with many shops still shuttered the day after security forces crushed supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

While distraught relatives waited to claim the hundreds of dead, there was little sympathy on show for the Brotherhood among Egyptians who said the Islamists had pushed too far.

The government has imposed a night-time curfew for at least a month and many people had clearly decided to stay home. Some of those who did venture out, pinned the blame on the Brothers.

"We didn't want this to happen, but at the end of the day they pushed us to do it," said Mahmoud Albaz, 33, an actor and real estate agent who lives near the Brotherhood protest camp at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, now blackened by fire and soot.

"More than 70 percent of Egyptians are against the Brotherhood," he said.

The Brotherhood won all five elections since the downfall of veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011, but Islamist President Mohamed Mursi faced accusations of incompetence during his year in office and was swept aside by the army after huge protests.

Some 68 percent of those who voted for Mursi in the 2012 presidential elections came from rural areas of Egypt, according to a report by the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute, while support in the big cities was always more muted.

"The government had to act and intervene. In the long run it will save the lives of Egyptians," said Faris Sabhy, 44, who runs an Internet cafe on the edge of Tahrir square, the focal point of rallies that led to Mubarak's removal.

"I watched it on television. I saw many guns on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood. I saw injured soldiers and thugs attacking the security forces," he said. "We are in a war."

PLAN TO BURN

While Western media denounced Wednesday's deadly assault by armed police on protesters, newspapers and state television were full of stories of Islamist skullduggery.

"The Brotherhood had a plan to burn Egypt," the state-run Al-Gomhuria newspaper said. The headline in private Al-Watan newspaper read: "The Brotherhood is burning Egypt".

The Brotherhood assertion that their supporters were peaceful and unarmed went largely unreported.

Mina Thabat, 24, an electrical engineer and the founding member of Christian Coptic rights group, the Masperso youth union, said the crackdown was unavoidable and accused the Brotherhood of attacking his community on Wednesday.

"We recorded around 74 attacks on churches and Christians. Several churches were burned to the ground," he said, adding that the government had failed to respond.

"I don't trust them or the Muslim Brotherhood. As Coptics, we pay the price of every conflict in Egypt."

Coptic Christians account for about a tenth of the 84 million people living in the Arab world's most populous state. They have suffered discrimination for decades, but communal tensions and attacks rose sharply under Mursi and have continued after his overthrow.

"Since June there's been a lot of sectarian violence ... I'm afraid because I don't know what will happen now," said Thabat.

The Brotherhood has called for new rallies against the army-backed government, and the interior ministry has warned that security forces will use live ammunition to counter any attacks against themselves or state infrastructure.

The ferocity of the crackdown on Brotherhood shocked some Egyptians. "I can't applaud the military for killing those who oppose them. They are dogs," said Rabah Zakaria, 31, a businessman in Egypt's second city of Alexandria.

With no end in sight to the turmoil, some spoke openly of their despair.

"Yesterday I cried. I think we're the furthest we've ever been from true reform or justice," said Sara, who declined to give her last name, describing herself as a secular activist.

"I don't believe that this is going to end in one month. I think is the beginning of another 30 years of military rule."

 

I think Canadian Mathloon aka Northside Storm should just try to grow a beard and finally join the Muslim Brotherhood, since he is so concerned about them.

 

If Pat Robertson was president and was kicked out of office for trying to elevate his brand of Christianity into civil law along with religious officials to enforce it, it might be a more appropriate comparison. The Brotherhood will always have the faithful, but three-quarters of the population at this point, hate them. Read below and understand how Morsi went from 80% to 30% popularity in a year. They brought it on themselves.

Egypt's media has never been remotely free and still continues to air things like this:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9CGdDharRXY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I've always taken Egyptian media with a grain of salt.

There were a LOT of good reasons. Morsi kept none of his campaign promises and kept the liberal and secularists that supported him out of power. I looked for a good chronology and found this:

How president Morsi ousted himself. A too short overview.

Confusion all around in Egypt today. Everywhere discussions rage on whether or not the military did a coup, if June 30 was a second revolution or a protraction of the 2011 revolution. What to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, let alone president Muhamed Morsi who is being kept hidden somewhere for over two weeks? My cab driver declared going to a pro-Morsi protest although he absolutely did not want the Muslim Brotherhood or Morsi to reassume power. Confusing.

However, the deep feelings of hatred that surface these days, are more cause for concern than the confusion. Many hate the Muslim Brotherhood and are willing to do anything to break the backbone of the organization. They’re convinced the MB are religious totalitarians. Others hate the military, the police and all things linked to the old regime as manifestation of all that went so very wrong in Egypt over the last decades. As for the MB, they hate everything that remotely smells like secularism. According to them, June 30 and all that preceded it, was one big conspiracy.

Actually, all are somewhat right in a certain way.

Who are the Muslim Brothers?

The MB was founded in 1928 by a young Egyptian teacher, Hassan Al Banna. It is no coincidence that Mustafa Kemal Attatürk had abolished the Caliphate just a few years earlier. Al Banna was convinced that Egyptians were westernizing too much and that they had to become real Muslims again. He wanted to achieve his goal by two means: resistance to the British occupation of Egypt, but above all through education of the Egyptians themselves. For all intents and purposes, Al Banna was a kind of a missionary. He travelled all over Egypt, persuading as many Egyptians a possible to join his underground resistance movement.

The MB combined religious education and social aid to the poorest. It made them immensely popular in no time. Egyptian and British authorities were less enthusiastic. They saw the MB as a subversive movement and quickly took action to suppress it. The Brothers were violent and murdered the Egyptian prime minister in the forties. A year later Hassan Al Banna himself was murdered.

The average Egyptian never really completely trusted the MB and this for three reasons. First, there is the ambiguity regarding their ultimate objective. Do they aim to restore the Caliphate? Do they aspire worldwide domination? Do they seek to transform Egypt into some sort of Saudi Arabia? The second reason is congruent with the first: it being a secret organization. As with free-masons, there’s no public list of members and nobody knows their exact numbers. And although they deny it, the MB is organized on an international level. The secrecy has a lot to do with persecution but also gives way to all kinds of conspiracy theories

The third reason for mistrust is the fact that the MB used a lot of violence. Their most infamous act was the assassination of president Anwar Sadat. Despite the fact they have since disavowed violence, many are convinced that the Brothers are behind terrorist organizations as Gamaa Al Islamiya or Al Qaida. Al Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden successor has a MB past. It is no coincidence that every Egyptian president was on a tense footing with the Brotherhood while simultaneously being forced to deal with them.

The 2011 revolution

When on January 25th the first mass protests filled Tahrir, MB executives declared that its members would not join. They choose evolution, not revolution. Nonetheless many young members joined the revolutionaries at Tahrir. On January 28th the MB realized that remaining on the side-lines was not an option and backed the revolution. That was important because if the organization is capable of one thing, it is raising huge crowds. That became apparent after Hosni Mubarak had fallen and the military leaders made some big errors. If Tahrir needed to be filled, the Brothers delivered. It have them an aura of good organizers that could speak for a large part of Egyptians.

After all, the MB had the aura of the revolution and of decades of resistance to the dictatorship. Muhamed Morsi was pretty used to be in jail and he and many other leader of the MB still were imprisoned on January 25. Besides, they enjoyed the image of being ‘good Muslims’ and therefore honest people, as opposed to the corrupt regime. A third advantage they held over other opposition forces: they had a plan, the so-called Ennahda.

The 2011 elections

Therefore, it was no surprise the MB won the November elections in a very convincing way, with nearly 50% of the votes. The other contenders were divided, badly organized and made quite some campaign mistakes. On the subway, someone explained very plainly why he voted MB. He said: “To marry I must buy an apartment. I can’t do that if I lose my job. The economy must reboot. The MB is our best guarantee for that.”

The enthusiasm in Egypt before, during and after the elections was enormous. People queued for hours to cast their true first vote. Politics and the meaning of the newly won liberty was discussed all over, the subway, the market, at the barber shop. After the elections huge numbers of Egyptians listened in on the sessions of parliament that were broadcasted live on radio. They did so in cabs, in the street, in tea houses. Every word was heard. That initiated the first downfall of the MB.

Every Egyptian heard how chaotic the parliamentary debates were. They heard elected MB and Salafis table the most insane propositions. There was the representative that proposed to make it legal to have sexual intercourse with a spouse up until six hours after she died. It infuriated the average Egyptian. They voted for the MB to improve the economy not to discuss Islam. Popular support for the MB sank rapidly.

The 2012 presidential elections

I was sitting down with a few young revolutionaries the day before the first round of presidential elections. One of them suddenly questioned: ‘What if the second round is between Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq?’ That off course would be every revolutionaries worst nightmare. But voting for Shafiq was out of the question. He was Mubarak’s last prime minister. If Shafiq were to become president, the revolution would have been in vain. To the astonishment of many Egyptians that nightmare choice became reality.

Although Morsi, and thus the MB, only got 25% in the first round, half the score of the parliamentary elections six months earlier, he got the most votes of any candidate. 75% didn’t vote MB, but that vote was divided. It was (and still is) the reality of the opposition: divided and lacking a common strategy. Yours truly suggested the revolutionary candidates endorsed Morsi in return for half the power and a veto right. It never came to an actual deal along those lines for lack of unity in the revolutionary camp.

Nonetheless Muhamed Morsi accepted the proposal, live in the most important TV show on air. He promised to be the guardian of the revolution, the president of all Egyptians and to share power with the liberal opposition. He further promised to appoint a Coptic vice-president and a woman. What were the options available for the revolutionary voter? Letting Shafiq win or reluctantly voting for Morsi, hoping the promises were not hollow words.

Morsi’s broken promises

I stood in the middle of Tahrir amidst a Muslim Brotherhood crowd when Muhamed Morsi was declared winner of the presidential elections and thus the first elected president in the history of Egypt. The relief among those present was indescribable. It felt as if 85 years of persecution fell of the Brothers shoulders. It was the week I published a piece stating Morsi had a choice between cooperating and disappearing. And that if MB failed to live up to their promises, Egyptians fear of them would quickly turn to hatred. That is exactly what happened the past year.

Still, Morsi was off to a good start. He deposed the hated military leader Tantawi and replaced him with the younger general Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi. Tantawi was the face of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) that held all power in the days between Mubarak and Morsi. It was the same SCAF that deprived the president of power during the presidential election weekend by virtue of a hastily drawn up constitutional declaration. Having taken back that power in August Morsi was cheered on by many Egyptians. He had an approval rating of 80%.

Other promises proved harder to realize. In his campaign Morsi had promised to solve Cairo’s traffic problems in a hundred days. And clean up the city. Off course, a hundred days having come and gone, there was not one traffic jam or pile of rubbish less in one of the world’s most chaotic cities. His promise of a woman and a Copt vice president weren’t fulfilled either. Instead he did appoint a widely appreciated judge.

The beginning of the end: the mini-coup

None of these shortcomings were the reason the atmosphere in Egypt shifted all of a sudden. To everyone’s surprise in November 2012, Morsi –by way of his spokesman- issued a new constitutional declaration stripping constitutional court judges of all power. He appointed a new general prosecutor. He further declared that the drafting of the constitutions was to be concluded within the week and to be followed by a referendum in two weeks on a text written almost exclusively by Islamists.

Revolutionary and liberal Egypt was infuriated. Instead of implicating them in the political process, they got pushed aside together with the entire judicial power. Again masses took to the street, protesting “the MB coup”. The MB resorted to armed mobs to disperse the protesters. Some people got dragged into the presidential palace where they were beaten and tortured. Revolutionaries of the first hour declared Morsi to be the new Mubarak. The vice president resigned in protest, as did all independent presidential advisors.

The day after the so-called mini-coup I asked someone close to Morsi what was going on. He told me a incredible story. Morsi and the MB leadership were convinced of a major conspiracy orchestrated by opposition figures as Mohamed El Baradei, the media, judges, businessmen and elements of the old regime. Morsi and his brothers got entrenched in a bunker mentality of ‘us against everyone else’ they haven’t managed to let go since. It induced Morsi to commit mistake upon mistake. Dialogue had become impossible.

The tyranny of the majority

There were several attempts to restore dialogue. The first one was made by the new army commander, general Sisi during the protests against the mini-coup. Morsi refused Sisi’s invitation. Instead he organized his own dialogue between his advisors, the resigning vice-president and the opposition. By that time, the opposition had lost all faith. And it has to be said, the opposition was also divided to the extent that any strategy beyond boycotting seemed impossible.

But despite the divisions the opposition organized itself in the National Salvation Front, headed by Baradei. Once the interlocutors had become clear, the European Union endeavored a kind of compromise in order to share power between the MB and the opposition. Morsi should replace his prime minister and allow the opposition access to five cabinet positions. The electoral law should be adapted according to the remarks made by the Supremer Constitutional Court. The hated general prosecutor should be replaced. European diplomacy chief, Catherine Ashton herself came to Cairo to give this proposal a final push. All seemed to agree. But Morsi did not respond. The political leadership of the MB was divided…

Instead of trying to close the gap, a campaign was launched against leading political and media figures. Journalists were detained. Liberal politicians were accused of spying, of heresy, of conspiring. Even the very popular satirist Bassem Youssef was prosecuted and questioned. Morsi’s approval ratings fell from 80 to 30 percent in less than seven months. More and more people saw him as the president of the Muslim Brothers rather than the president of all Egyptians. Those that had voted for him felt cheated. In the presidential elections they had overcome their deep doubts and anxieties in the name of the revolution. Now they felt betrayed by Morsi.

The youth rises against Morsi

Atop of all the political mistakes, Egypt was doing ever worse economically. There were daily power an water cuts? Petrol shortages became a general nightmare, causing enormous traffic jams at every filling station. Living got a lot more expensive as Egypt’s pound fell. If it hadn’t been for financial aid from Qatar and Libya, Egypt would probably have gone bankrupt in January.

In April some youth had the idea of starting a petition demanding precipitated presidential elections. A big demonstration was planned for June 30th, the first anniversary of Morsi’s oath of office. To their own surprise the response to the petition was overwhelming. Pretty soon they had gathered 2 million signatures. The military realized: June 30 was going to be huge and dangerous. The hatred ran deep. The Army decided on contacting the founders of the Rebel movement (Tamarod) and offered to provide security on the condition of a peaceful demonstration.

Meanwhile the petition amassed an increasing and spectacular number of signatures (it is said that by the end there were 22 million), making everyone realize this would end in an enormous clash between those that saw Morsi as a new dictator (betraying all ideals of the revolution) and the MB (that insisted on respect for election outcome). The days leading up to June 30th already saw some skirmishes and casualties.

The role of the Egyptian Army

The army is highly respected in Egypt. Particularly because as all other institutions seem to fail, the military often appeared the only one that could get things done. Even as it holds a large chunk of the country’s economy (figures vary from 20 to 40 percent), it is considered the only factor to put the country’s interests first. During the 2011 revolution the army chose not to intervene, which meant choosing the side of the protesters in Tahrir. In the end, it was the military that deposed Mubarak.

Of course Morsi too saw June 30 approaching. But instead of searching for a solution, he was looking for ways to divert the people’s attention and to try to gather them behind him. All of a sudden there was the problem of the Nile dam in Ethiopia and the threat of war. The sentencing of NGO employees drew anger in Europe and the US. And suddenly, in front of a packed soccer stadium Morsi changed his Syria strategy and called for a jihad against Assad. At the same time Morsi refused to take tough measures to tackle the anarchy and violence in Sinai where several soldier were kidnapped.

Thus, in June the army saw the convergence of two phenomena. On the one hand a big clash between Morsi opposers and supporters with the potential to grow into a kind of civil war. On the other hand the army saw a president willing to risk national security for political reasons. And this even leaves out the economic consequences of all of this for a country already on the brink. General Sisi made multiple attempts to persuade Morsi to engage in dialogue with the opposition. Morsi not only refused to listen to him, the political office of the MB decided secretly to replace Sisi and a number of other generals. A similar fate was bestowed upon a bunch of ‘conspiring’ judges and journalists.

The finale: June 30 until July 3

The tension on the eve of June 30 was enormous. Everybody believed a massive and violent clash would ensue. Friends told me they were even prepared to die – or at least they were convinced that in the end that would be their fate. But when I went from Tahrir tot the presidential palace and back on June 30, I realized it was al over for Morsi. Never before had so many people taken the streets. Numbers varied from 15 to 33 million Egyptians. Whatever the correct figure, it was clear to all that this was far bigger than the 2011 revolution itself. The protests were too big to fail.

The question then was: what will the military do? Will it wait to intervene until the situation escalates completely into violence or will it try act preventively? General Sisi chose the latter. He gave Egyptian politicians (read: Morsi) 48 hours to come to a solution. Morsi rejected the ultimatum and gave a speech repeating allegations of conspiracies and foreign interference. The only ‘concession’ he made was the promise to hold parliamentary elections within six months.

The army intervened, backed by the liberal opposition, de Coptic pope and the head of Al Azhar, the most renowned institute of Sunni Islam. They advanced a transition plan that was verbatim the one the Rebel-movement had proposed two weeks earlier. I was in Tahrir square when it was announced Morsi had been removed for office and replaced by the presiding judge of the constitutional court. The mood was ecstatic. Millions of Egyptians partied, danced and sang in the streets all night.

Revolution or military coup?

Apart from MB themselves, few Egyptians consider the removal of Morsi a real military coup. Rather it is regarded as a second revolution with the military siding with the people, as was the case in the first revolution. Contrary to what it did in the first revolution in 2011, the army did not assume political control of the transition, but immediately presented a civil president and cabinet. However it is clear that the army continues to play an important role in Egypt, politically and economically, as it has for the past sixty years. Particularly in foreign policy it is and remains the military that sets out the boundaries.

The massacre committed by the military among protesting Muslim Brothers raises serious questions of accountability though. Can anyone hold the military accountable? Or does the army remain an untouchable state within the state? As was the case in Malaysia or Turkey, it will probably take considerable time for the Egyptian army to be reined in to its appropriate role.

The most important question however remains what will happen to the MB? Up until today, they refuse to accept Morsi’s removal as a fact and refuse to talk unless he is restored in his office. We will undoubtedly see more clashes in the weeks and months to come. Still overtures for talks – whether or not under the auspices of the EU – remain possible. In any case, for Egypt to make progress, it is necessary to find some sort of democratic modus vivendi. For this to happen, hate and mistrust will have to make way for something we learned to live with a long time ago in all democratic countries: compromise.

The Egyptians seem prepared to see this revolution through at any cost. The MB failed the test of leading a democracy and are paying the price. Had the people (and army) not acted, they would have been worse off than they were with Mubarak.