Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East

by David D. Kirkpatrick

  10: Thug Versus Thug

  The general in charge of legal affairs was Mamdouh Shahin. Youssef Sidhom was the editor of the Coptic newspaper Watani and an unofficial spokesman for the church. Outside relatively liberal areas, Aboul Fotouh performed well at the polls in only two districts: Mersa Matruh, where his old friend helped, and the North Sinai, where he told me he was the only candidate who visited. I doubt the Salafis brought him many votes.

  11: The Judges Club

  The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf by Nathan J. Brown (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997) is an excellent and sympathetic account of the Egyptian judiciary. This chapter has also benefited from “Independence Without Accountability: The Judicial Paradox of Egypt’s Failed Transition to Democracy” by Sahar F. Aziz, in the Penn State Law Review 101 (2016).

  The account of the American side of these events is based on interviews with more than a dozen officials involved, but most spoke on condition of anonymity.

  The paradigmatic example of the kind of hawkish Egyptian nationalist outraged by American democracy funding is Fayza Aboulnaga. She was the official driving the prosecution against the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute. When I called her office in early 2012, the military council had assigned a general to answer her phone. President Sisi named her as national security adviser and in 2017 she was still involved in the American aid.

  Steven Simon and Sergio Aguirre were the National Security Council staffers who tried unsuccessfully to work through Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton to shape a compromise with the generals about the American aid. The Foreign Ministry spokesman who complained to me that the United States had deducted the bail money from the aid payments was Ambassador Badr Abdelatty.

  I heard the same account of Shater’s message to the generals from several senior figures in the Morsi campaign, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The words I am quoting here are from Wael Haddara, a Morsi adviser.

  I encountered the term “judicial coup,” describing the dissolution of the Parliament, in an analysis by Nathan Brown in Foreign Policy magazine on June 14, 2012.

  12: The Night of Power

  Haddara’s first contact on the Morsi campaign was Khaled al-Qazzaz, a permanent resident of Canada who was married to a Canadian. His background is in education, but he worked on Morsi’s foreign policy team.

  The general who spoke about the military’s role as “trustworthy guardian” was Mahmoud Hegazy, who appeared with General Mohamed el-Assar.

  To clarify the chronology, Morsi’s inaugural rally in Tahrir Square was the night before his official inauguration. I described it last because it was the speech that was remembered.

  The assassination attempt on Abdel Nasser in 1954 was carried out by Mahmoud Abdel Latif, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood from Imbaba, in Cairo. Some believed (and some still suspect) that Abdel Nasser staged the episode as a pretext to crush the Muslim Brothers. The scene is described in many places, including Richard P. Mitchell’s The Society of the Muslim Brothers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) and The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).

  This account of Morsi’s meeting with Sisi in August 2012 is based on interviews with two people who worked in the palace at the time and on the account of a senior Muslim Brother with knowledge of the details.

  The Long Game by Derek Chollet (New York: Public Affairs, 2016) recounts the Obama administration’s worries that Sisi was “too close to Morsi.”

  13: A Day in Court

  Another Islamist who sued Tahani el-Gebali on the basis of our article was Essam Sultan, who had also helped start the post-Islamist Center Party and disrupted the first day of Parliament.

  14: President and Mrs. Morsi

  The Guardian obtained a part of the commission report that Morsi tried to suppress. “Egypt’s Army Took Part in Torture and Killings During Revolution, Report Shows” by Evan Hill and Muhammad Mansour, Guardian, April 10, 2013. Ahmed Samir was the columnist in El-Masry El-Youm.

  Morsi’s prime minister was Hesham Qandil. His female deputy was Pakinam el-Sharkawy, who was his chief policy adviser. His Christian deputy was Samir Morcos, who was also Morsi’s adviser on the democratic transition. I knew Sharkawy and she was influential. Morcos quit in December 2012. Morsi’s advisers told me that rival liberal or nationalist presidential candidates had rebuffed invitations to join the government. But many sincere liberals were disappointed that Morsi did not form something closer to a coalition government, and he never explained why he did not. Still, whoever the personnel, his government did not have a chance to do much.

  15: Under the Cloak

  The Syrian town I visited was Tilalyan.

  The fifty-five-year-old Libyan voter in Benghazi was Naema el-Gheryienne.

  The anti-Islamist was Mohamed Abu Hamed.

  The people who told me about Shater’s reaction to Morsi’s announcement included Gehad el-Haddad and Murad Ali.

  It is worth noting that Morsi’s team was right to fear that the court would dissolve the constitutional assembly. In a ruling on June 2, 2013, the court said that it would have done exactly that.

  “What Makes Mohamed Morsi Tick: Is It a Time Bomb?” by Patrick Graham was published in the Globe and Mail on May 4, 2013.

  The analyst who told protesters to “take to the streets and die” was Salah Eissa.

  The best analysis of the 2012 Egyptian constitution in context is in Nathan J. Brown’s book Arguing Islam After the Revival of Arab Politics. Egyptian politics produced many exaggerated claims about its merits and deficiencies, and the criticisms echoed widely in the West. But readers who want to understand that debate should read Brown’s chapter titled “Arab Constitutions, the Many Voices of the Public.” The comparison of constitutional plebiscites with mass loyalty oaths was Brown’s as well.

  The account here of the Sharia compromise around Article 219 is the product of my own reporting, including interviews with several liberal and Islamist members of the committee—among them Manar el-Shorbagy, a liberal political scientist at the American University in Cairo; Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister and presidential candidate who dropped out at the last minute to avoid signing the compromise; and Amr Darrag, of the Muslim Brotherhood. Amr Hamzawy, a liberal former parliamentarian and political scientist, also helped inform my understanding of the constitution and the compromise. Brown’s account arrives at similar conclusions from a scholarly methodology.

  The account of the Obama-Haddad meeting comes from aides on both sides, including Wael Haddara and Ben Rhodes.

  16: A Rumble at the Palace

  The protester whose death I asked about was Mohamed el-Gindy.

  The Brotherhood leader I quote urging supporters to defend the palace was Essam el-Erian. A report by Human Rights Watch documented some of those appeals. Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud raised alarms about fornication in the tents. “Their dead are in hell” was said by Sheikh Fawzi el-Saeed.

  Ola Shahba spoke in a television interview with the host Yosri Fouda.

  Some critics of the Muslim Brotherhood note that in December 2012, Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi offered to host a meeting for dialogue between Morsi’s administration and its political opponents. Morsi’s spokesmen insisted that it would be a purely social event, and Sisi ultimately scrapped it. Morsi thus effectively prevented Sisi from overseeing those talks, on the grounds that it would set a bad precedent for civilian democracy if the defense minister interceded in civilian politics or put himself above the president (like the chairman of the joint chiefs mediating a deal between Democracts and Republicans). Critics of the Brotherhood cite the aborted meeting as evidence that, on at least one occasion, Morsi was the one who walked away from an invitation to dialogue.

  17: Murder, Rape, Christians, and
Spies

  The Interior Ministry spokesman was General Osama Ismail. The paramedic trainer was Jon Porter.

  The attack on the Ikhwan Online office was January 25, 2013. The break-in at Brotherhood headquarters was on December 6, 2012.

  El Sayyid el-Badawi ran the Wafd party.

  The statistics on blasphemy cases against Christians come from the work of Ishak Ibrahim of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

  18: The View from the West

  General James Mattis spoke about Otaiba in a speech at the Center for American Progress in Washington, on January 23, 2015, and about Adel al-Jubeir at the Aspen Institute on July 20, 2013.

  Ambassador Patterson talked with Essam el-Haddad and Khaled al-Qazzaz in March about the UAE-led push for a coup. I was allowed to make an audio recording of the briefing quoted here.

  Hernando de Soto Polar was among those who told me about his work for the Brotherhood; he said he was impressed with Shater.

  Flynn describes his views of political Islam and his admiration for Sisi in The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, written with Michael Ledeen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016).

  The account of Ambassador James Watt’s role is based on interviews with Morsi advisers, British officials close to Watt, and members of the National Salvation Front.

  General Mohamed el-Assar, who began hinting around April at the possibility of a military intervention, was also the general who, on a visit to Washington in 2011, had praised the Muslim Brotherhood for its constructive role in the transition.

  European and American diplomats sometimes urged Morsi to make unilateral concessions to his opponents during this period. But his advisers say the diplomats never offered any indication that the opposition would consider any reciprocal concessions, such as recognizing Morsi’s legitimacy as president or discontinuing the calls to protest and demands for his ouster. Several diplomats involved later told me that in retrospect it was doubtful that proposed concessions from Morsi, like a change of ministers, would have made any difference.

  19: A New Front

  The two members of the military council who stayed in contact with the National Salvation Front were General el-Assar, who was also a liaison to the Pentagon, and General Hegazy, related to Sisi through a marriage of their children.

  After Sawiris boasted to me of his role promoting the music video about Tamarrod, his spokespeople asked for a correction, claiming that he had sold off his television network. But the supposed sale turned out to be a ruse. Sawiris had faked the sale for political reasons, and years later he sold the network again, for real.

  Hassan Shahin of Tamarrod was also, by coincidence, the protester who had been running near the Blue Bra Girl when she was stripped by the soldiers.

  In early 2014, Mohamed Heikal recounted to me his conversations with ElBaradei and showed me a picture of Sisi delivering a birthday cake. ElBaradei has declined to speak with me since he left Cairo.

  General Sisi’s office manager was General Abbas Kamel. The military’s chief of staff was General Sedki Sobhi.

  Some of the leaked audio recordings or private emails cited in this book might have been obtained by one of the Egyptian intelligence agencies or a foreign intelligence agency. I have confirmed or authenticated all of them, except those few that have been so extensively reported without credible contradiction that they have become a matter of public record in Egypt. American officials with access to intelligence reporting confirmed the accuracy of the leak indicating that the UAE sent money to the Egyptian military for Tamarrod.

  20: A Dutiful Son

  Wael Haddara was one of two sources from the Morsi administration who described the narcotics shipment at the airport and the secret meetings inside the palace.

  The quotes from Sisi at Dahshur come from “Military Messages” by Ahmed Eleiba in Al Ahram Weekly, the issue of May 16–22, 2013, and from the daily Al Ahram. Reuters reported the comments in English as well.

  The two generals who contacted the members of the National Salvation Front in May were again Assar and Hegazy.

  Badawi’s home was in the suburb known as October 6 City.

  Two others present for the State Department meeting each independently recounted the delivery of the memorandum and Thomas Melia’s response. I have the memorandum, in Arabic and English, as it was first written in Cairo and as it was translated for delivery in Washington. But Melia does not remember receiving the memorandum or making the statements that the two others attributed to him.

  21: June 30

  Kerry told me his side of the Addis Ababa meeting with Morsi. Multiple close aides to Morsi described his account to me.

  A few days after the Salafi-dominated Syria rally in Cairo, a mob in a village on the outskirts of the city lynched four Shiites. Rights groups argued that by attending the conference Morsi had legitimated the sectarianism rising around the region. But the connection to Morsi is indirect and remote. Shiite Muslims make up a tiny minority of Egyptians, and many Egyptian Sunnis disdain Shiites as non-Muslims. It is doubtful that outrage over the killings did much to trigger a backlash against Morsi, except perhaps in the small circle of human rights advocates.

  Amr Hamzawy worried that the National Salvation Front looked obstructionist because it constantly refused to accept any of Morsi’s invitations to dialogue or negotiations. So he broke with the group to attend the Ethiopian dam meeting, and it was a fiasco.

  In addition to the quoted sources, this account of the American response to the coup during its run-up is based on conversations with more than a dozen senior officials who were closely involved.

  Khaled Youssef described to me his role in filming June 30.

  The account of Morsi’s last days is based on extensive conversations with five people who were with him or in close contact during that period. The account of Morsi’s last conversation with Obama comes from a reliable record of the call made by people in the White House.

  The observation about which governors came under attack appears in Egypt in a Time of Revolution by Neil Ketchley (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Ketchley also made the most systematic assessment of the crowd numbers.

  The geriatric former premier Morsi proposed bringing back was Kamal Ganzouri.

  The office manager who interrupted Morsi’s meeting with Sisi was Ahmed Abdel Atty.

  22: Coup d’État

  This account of the July 4 meeting at the White House is based on interviews with more than a half dozen participants. All of the quotes were confirmed by their speaker or multiple others. The quotes and statements attributed to Obama were all recounted and confirmed by several others, but not Obama himself. The quotes from Kerry and Hagel come from their own accounts to me of their statements in the meeting (and the substance was also confirmed by others).

  Michael Morrell wrote in his memoir, The Great War of Our Time, that he had worried the Egyptian security services under Morsi were giving a free pass to anti-Western militants. “The military, intelligence and law enforcement communities in Egypt essentially stopped fighting Al Qaeda because they felt they had no political support,” he wrote. Al Qaeda “was establishing new footholds in the Sinai and other parts of Egypt.”

  Morrell told me in an email that the Al Qaeda “foothold” he meant was Ansar Beit al-Maqdis—the group that had attacked an Egyptian military checkpoint in July 2012, before Morsi held any real power. The group’s roots among the Bedouin of the North Sinai went back a decade.

  Might the Egyptian soldiers, spies, and police have stopped doing their jobs to spite Morsi? I asked.

  Morrell said he trusted Egypt’s spies. “I do not believe that the security guys with whom I worked would ever willingly allow terrorism to run rampant for political reasons,” Morrell replied by email. News reports and leaked emails later suggested that afte
r leaving the CIA, Morrell joined a firm, Beacon Global Strategies, which was paid by the UAE.

  Otaiba’s meeting at the Hamilton and his messages to Blinken and Sullivan were in some of the many emails stolen from his account and leaked to the public. I have confirmed the accuracy of the content of both emails with others.

  The Long Game by Derek Chollet also describes the opposition to Morsi from American allies in the region, including Israel and the Gulf monarchies. “Our other close regional partners—none of whom were sad to see Morsi go, thinking he was a stooge of Iran—were very supportive of al-Sisi,” he wrote. The idea that Morsi was a stooge of Iran was absurd, even before his stance toward Damascus. But that made his views abundantly clear. In an interview, Chollet said Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati leaders ignored evidence of the differences among Islamists—even Sunni and Shiite—because they were so committed to the idea that all were the same. “It was like cognitive dissonance,” he said.

  23: Killing Themselves

  The scholar who wrote about King Abdullah’s “victory lap in Cairo” is Bruce Riedel, a veteran observer of Saudi Arabia for the CIA and the White House, in his book Kings and Presidents (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2018).

  The Salafi I quote attacking Christians from the podium at Rabaa was Assem Abdel Maged.

  The name of the policeman whom Ebrahim el-Sheikh saw killed was Mohamed el-Mesairy.

  I know that Morsi was still held inside the guard complex on July 8 from interviews with people who were detained with him as well as from an interview with a member of his immediate family.

  The National Salvation Front’s spokesman on July 8 was Khalid Talima, and the television host quoted here is Youssef el-Husseini.

  Mohamad Elmasry is an Egyptian American scholar of communications who has written about the Egyptian media’s portrayal of Rabaa.

  24: A Lion