Can the Egyptian military deliver democracy?

"The army and the people are one hand."

Thus was the revived slogan from Tahrir Square on 30th June, first chanted by Egyptian protesters in 2011 to remove dictator Hosni Mubarak, now deployed with spectacular effect to remove Egypt’s first democratically elected President.

Since the military seized power, notionally on behalf of the Egyptian people, there has been endless debate as to whether this was a coup or a revolution. Semantics aside, there is little doubt that the Egyptian military has reaped the rewards of an uncertain transitional phase. The military has made a remarkable comeback as it rides a wave of popular support, particularly given the manner of its retreat into the shadows following the ascendancy of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood just over one year ago.

Popularity aside, the military’s move to overthrow an elected president “in defence of the people” begs the question of whether the military can ever be relied upon to be the midwife of democracy, be it in Egypt or anywhere else.

In the Egyptian context, the military has left nothing to chance in order to craft itself an image of legitimacy. Mindful of maintaining the visage that it only intervened at the invitation of the Egyptian people, the military’s media machine went into overdrive in the days after Morsi’s overthrow, with carefully pitched messages in defence of the Egyptian state and its people and carefully calibrated statements honouring the revolution of 2011.

It has struggled to sugar coat activities that traditionally take place after military coups: the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood leaders (at the time of writing, Mohammed Morsi still remains in detention); the closing down of pro-Brotherhood and other Islamist TV stations and the killing of some 60 Brotherhood supporters on 8th July.

These were hardly the actions of an institution seeking to find accommodation with the Brotherhood, which remains one of the most divisive but also dominant forces in Egyptian politics. This was not a surprising response from the military given that it was only last year that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) handed over power to Morsi amidst widespread protests. Their past tenure as interim governors of the Egyptian people included forcible virginity tests for women protesters, civilian deaths at the hands of the army, and the same levels of religious strife that it now claims forced its hand in deposing Morsi.

By far the single biggest reason for Egypt’s generals to return the country to its democratic footing will be its own overriding ambition to maintain its economic and business privileges.There is also the small matter of US$1.3 billion of annual US military aid which is dependent on a democratic transition, but those qualms have already been fudged by a US administration reluctant to call a coup a coup for fear of upsetting the military’s transition plans.

Egypt’s generals may also be motivated to return Egypt to its short-lived democratic status because of the military’s overriding ambition to maintain its privileges in Egypt’s society, economy, and state. Under Morsi, the military successfully campaigned for and won constitutional approval for absolute independence from judicial and executive oversight. Given the deteriorating state of Egypt’s economy under Morsi, military intervention was perhaps inevitable also to safeguard the extensive domestic commercial interests which were suffering under his economic mismanagement.

Of course, those interests can easily be upheld in a Mubarak-style dictatorship. But after the popular current of the Arab Spring, such a dictatorship can only be sustained through popular assent, or at least an appearance of democratic legitimacy.

So the Egyptian military’s interests will necessitate a return to democracy. But it will be a sham democracy if it manages to maintain its privileged status and its license to intervene. The activists of Tamarod (Rebellion) who unleashed the anti-Morsi protests are wise to this problem, but have not yet provided a convincing road map to a sustainable democracy.

The path back to democracy is not guaranteed under military rule as examples across the Middle East and the Muslim world have attested throughout recent history. Pakistan’s military has a similarly overbearing role in that country’s institutions and economy. When General Pervez Musharraf deposed then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999, he was originally hailed, particularly amongst Pakistan’s middle classes, as a secular saviour for the country’s economy and democracy, much as Egypt’s generals are today. After a 10-year dictatorship, Musharraf left the country more polarised, violent and on the brink of implosion than when he found it in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, many post-colonial Muslim states are yet to enact far-reaching reforms that would place militaries firmly under democratic civilian control and scrutiny. Civilian leadership continues to play a secondary role to the might of the armed forces, whose acceptance of civilian sovereignty remains anything but given.

Without such reform, the military will forever consider itself the guardian and arbiter of state sanctity. In its current guise, the military is a competing actor with other political movements, not solely a protector of a state’s borders from external threats. Military leaders in Pakistan and Sudan, for example, have used the power of political Islam for their own ends–only for the ideology to then morph into a force of its own to the detriment of the state itself.The Egyptian military, much like the Algerian and Turkish armed forces before it, is now presenting itself as the defender of secularism in the face of Islamist challenges.

There is no doubt that President Morsi made serious mistakes during the Brotherhood’s first opportunity to prove itself. But the Brotherhood will not be able to acknowledge its own shortcomings while it has the justifiable grievance that power was snatched from them. It will see the military’s hand in thwarting Morsi’s abortive government at every turn and orchestrating the popular unrest.

Despite attempts to make a deal with the military, it is now inconceivable to imagine how the Muslim Brotherhood will enter into an agreement with a military which, in its eyes, has resorted to type in seeking the movement’s destruction once more. From its very inception, the Brotherhood has survived and faced down repeated military challenges. Now, the Brotherhood’s sole aim will be to consolidate its base in the face of a military onslaught against its leadership and support base. In the absence of a reversal of the military regime, therefore, there is little prospect of the democratic process succeeding without the Muslim Brotherhood having a voice in its development.

Egypt is now at a precarious juncture with the military and the Brotherhood at polar opposite ends. Both have authoritarian impulses but both recognise the need to return to democracy, at least in their own image. If the Egyptian military is to be the midwife of Egyptian democracy, then it must start by shedding its political ambitions permanently.