Things have gone from bad to worse for Egyptian civil society since I last blogged about the bleak short term outlook for the sector back in October. This week, the government shut down the Cairo offices of seventeen international human rights and pro-democracy NGOs, which the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has accused of fomenting the country’s recent unrest. According to the official MENA news agency, “The public prosecutor has searched 17 civil society organisations, local and foreign, as part of the foreign funding case. The search is based on evidence showing violation of Egyptian laws, including not having permits.” As was the case under Mubarak, government regulations concerning NGOs are vague and convoluted enough that it is always easy to find a pretext for the prosecution of any organization.
International condemnation has been swift and emphatic. After the Konrad Adenauer Foundation was shut down, Germany summoned the Egyptian ambassador in protest, while UN high commissioner for human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani described the shutdown as “unnecessarily heavy-handed”, and “clearly designed to intimidate human rights defenders who have long been critical of human rights violations in Egypt, including under the previous regime.” U.S. officials have publicly and privately voiced similar complaints. “Suffice it to say we don’t think that this action is justified,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. “We want to see the harassment end,” she added, calling the raids “inconsistent with the bilateral cooperation we’ve had over many years.” Another senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that in private channels, the United States had sent an even stronger message: “This crosses a line.”
The SCAF has accused foreign NGOs of attempting to provoke a “conflict between the military and the Egyptian people”, but the Egyptian military is clearly less worried about outside interference when it accepts $1.3 billion in annual military aid from the United States. In reality, the SCAF sees the emergence of a strong civil society as the greatest threat to its control over Egypt, and the foreign interference argument is merely a convenient pretext for shutting down a number of “pesky” organizations.
It is still unclear whether or not the strong internal and external condemnation — particularly from the U.S. — will influence Egyptian policy, but the revolutionary slogan, “the people and the army are one hand” has been shattered for even the most optimistic veterans of Tahrir Square. Any illusions that the SCAF would impartially usher in a new, free, and democratic Egypt have been thoroughly dispelled. Inclusion is not part of the SCAF’s modus operandi, perhaps most evidently demonstrated by its repeated attempts to marginalize women in the Egyptian political scene — including through the use of vile tactics of intimidation and humiliation like the so-called “virginity tests”.
In the US and throughout the West, the pressing question about Egypt has long been, “what will the ascent of the Muslim Brotherhood and other more extreme Salafi groups mean for the future of Egyptian politics?” But perhaps the better question is, “will the military actually cede power and allow a democratically elected civilian government to rule in any meaningful sense, regardless of its composition?”
