Yesterday’s very large Tamarrod protests against the Muslim Brotherhood and president Morsi in Egypt were mostly peaceful. But following those protests an attack on the Muslim Brotherhood’s party building led to casualties on both sides:
Members of the group inside the headquarters started firing live ammunition, according to Mada Masr’s reporter, who also noticed a variety of arms held by protesters including guns. All lights were shut off in the surrounding streets.
The building was stormed, looted and burned just like the building of former president Mubarak’s NDP party had been destroyed in the 2011 revolution. Six or eight people were killed. A reporter said of the looting: “I thought they would carry away everything but the kitchen sink. Then I saw one carrying a kitchen sink.” A video from inside of the building confims that.
The loot included this seemingly genuine list of large bribes paid by the government of Qatar to the leading heads of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The police was not seen while the building was attack but came back to “guard” it after the looting was finished. The Muslim Brotherhood is now considering to create “self defense units”, something that other say it already has build up, though secretly so far.
The big clash that was expected yesterday did not happen. The numbers of anti-Morsi demonstrators were too large for the other side to attack. But as smaller protests and the demand for Morsi to stand down will continue further strife seems inevitable. Issandr El Amrani looks at the possible alternative outcomes:
- The army will wait it out to the last minute (possibly
disastrously so as early intervention might be better in cases of
large-scale violence) and may be internally divided about how to proceed
(hence the hesitation).- Should Morsi be toppled, it will create
an enormous problem with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists for
years to come. They will feel cheated of legitimately gained power and
Egyptian politics will only grow more divisive and violent.- Whatever
alliance came together behind the Tamarrod protests will fall apart the
day after its successful, because its components are as incompatible as
the alliance that toppled Hosni Mubarak.- The leadership around
the NSF (ElBaradei, Moussa, Sabahi etc.) has followed rather than led
Tamarrod and will not be able to provide effective leadership in the
coming days. Only the army can.- If Morsi remains and the
protests are repressed or simply die out, the country will nonetheless
remain as difficult to govern considering Morsi’s lack of engagement
with the opposition.
The United States and its elephant-in-a-china-shop ambassador Anne Patterson have so far be standing behind Morsi. Anti-Americanism was therefore a large theme in yesterday’s protests. One wonders how that is compatible with the protesters calls for the U.S. backed army to take over.
That is indeed what I now find likely to happen. Rumors say that the army has already informed the U.S. that Morsi will be gone by the end of the week. Then a new cycle of writing a constitution and elections will begin. This time in an even more loaded atmosphere and under worse economic conditions.