I understood the power of what was unfolding in Tahrir Square, and the injustices and indignities that so energized the protestors. It was clear to me that Mubarak had to go; the question was how to get him to move before events overtook whatever agency he still had left. I was skeptical of the “right side of history” argument, simply because in my own experience in the Middle East, history rarely moved in a straight line. Revolutions were complicated, and most often ended messily, with the best-organized rather than the best-intentioned reaping the immediate gains.
Riding back with Clinton from yet another White House meeting that week, I suggested sending a private envoy to see Mubarak and deliver a firm message from the president. It would be a last effort to persuade him to agree to step down before we would have to call for his departure explicitly and publicly. The emissary needed to be someone Mubarak knew and trusted. I mentioned Frank Wisner, a retired diplomat who had grown close to Mubarak as ambassador in Cairo in the late 1980s. Clinton liked the concept, and recommended it to the president, who agreed. Wisner met with Mubarak in Cairo on Monday, January 31, and conveyed a set of points that mirrored what the president had conveyed in earlier calls. A savvy and vastly experienced diplomat, Wisner found the points prepared by the NSC staff to be painfully precise—like the helpful prompt to “pause for reaction” after the initial passage—but delivered the message faithfully and effectively. He reported that he thought Mubarak would be responsive.
He was not. Mubarak continued to offer too little too late, to take steps that even a week earlier might have had some chance of producing a dignified departure for him, and the more orderly transition for Egypt that we sought. The situation worsened on February 2, when thugs supporting Mubarak rode camels and horses into Tahrir Square, clubbing and beating demonstrators. Appalled, the White House stepped up its rhetoric, pressing the case for Mubarak to begin the transition “now,” but stopped just short of calling for his immediate exit.
Wisner inadvertently complicated matters further when he said publicly in a video appearance at the Munich Security Conference on February 5 that he believed it was “critical” that Mubarak stay in office until the fall elections to steer the transition. He was speaking as a private citizen, but by this point his trip to Cairo had become public and it was easy for people to confuse his views with those of the administration. For exactly that reason, we had urged him not to do the Munich appearance, but evidently not strongly enough. The president and Donilon were furious, and Jake Sullivan and I tried to outdo one another’s contrition in the immediate aftermath. I wrote to Jake that evening that he should shoot me if I ever suggested another emissary.
The Egyptian president gave another televised speech on February 10, a meandering and embarrassing performance that did nothing to ease the intensifying anger of the protestors. The armed forces, under Defense Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, finally made clear to Mubarak that they would no longer defend him, and that it was time to step down. He resigned on February 11, handed power over to the military, and flew off to his residence in the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. The Mubarak era was over. The scenes of jubilation in Tahrir Square were as remarkable as they were heartening. It was hard not to feel hopeful, and the president had steered U.S. interests through extremely complicated terrain as skillfully as anyone could have. In many respects, however, the challenge for American policy was just beginning.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), led by Tantawi, became the interim arbiter of governance, and pledged early elections for a new civilian government. Inevitably, there was a certain amount of well-intentioned flailing around in Washington as we sought to stay in touch with Egyptian officers and officials. At one particularly prolonged Deputies Committee meeting, we set off on a wild exercise in Rolodex diplomacy, with agencies tasked with compiling lists of virtually every Egyptian who had ever been to a U.S. military staff college or on an exchange program. I pointed out that that was what we had an embassy for, but in the characteristically American rush to “do something,” a pile of spreadsheets with phone numbers was dutifully compiled and then largely neglected. It was an early indication of the White House’s understandable but ultimately self-injurious instinct to micromanage from Washington and underutilize its embassies abroad.
In addition to the challenges of Egypt’s transition, we faced an extremely nervous group of regional leaders. Mubarak’s overthrow was stunning for them, and many would remain bitter for years about perceived American disloyalty. In a long conversation with me a few months later, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was blunt: “You abandoned your best friend. If you had stood firmly with Mubarak right at the beginning, he would still be with us.”
My arguments made little difference to Saudi leaders who saw the fires of the Arab Spring burning all around them, with unrest already breaking out in Bahrain and Yemen. The truth was that it was beyond America’s power to throw Mubarak under the bus; powered by decades of repression and corruption, the bus was already rolling over him by the time Obama called for transition. I flew quietly to Amman on February 12, the day after Mubarak’s resignation, to encourage King Abdullah to stay ahead of the wave of change. It was our most direct conversation in nearly two decades, and he said he was already thinking about steps that he might take to open up Jordan’s political and economic systems.
I visited Cairo on February 21–22, the first senior American official to arrive since the revolution. The mood in Tahrir Square was exuberant, with thousands of people still camped out, reveling in a national pride that many had never felt before. Walking along the Nile corniche to the Foreign Ministry, we passed piles of barbed wire and dozens of armored vehicles in front of the partially burned-out state television building. Banks had reopened without a disastrous run on the Egyptian pound, and the economy was sputtering back to life. “The political class,” I wrote to Clinton, “is filled with genuine enthusiasts for change, as well as ex post facto revolutionaries, eager to declare their heretofore well-concealed antipathy for the Mubarak regime and claim that they were really with the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square all along.”4
I cautioned, however, that “expectations are unrealistically high.” The military leadership was struggling with transparency, a concept that didn’t come naturally. A number of political leaders were worried by the military’s rush to hand off to civilian rule. Cramming constitutional revisions and parliamentary and presidential elections into the next year, I predicted, would “benefit only the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of the NDP [the old official party]—the only organized parties on the playing field for early Parliamentary elections.”5
The youth leaders I met, many of whom had orchestrated the sweeping Tahrir Square movement, were equally skeptical of the SCAF and the United States. Their energy and commitment were apparent and admirable, but they were already struggling to translate their success on the street into results at the ballot box. Organizing effective political parties was proving much harder than mobilizing crowds at Tahrir. They were determined to break down the web of privilege and protection that the elite had long enjoyed under Mubarak, but unsure how to get started. Still a little surprised at how quickly their movement had toppled a president, they were—like most revolutionaries in the first flush of victory—starting to squabble among themselves.
Secretary Clinton traveled to Egypt in March, and I returned in June and then again in January 2012. Several other senior American officials came through as well, doing our best to amplify the hard work of an embassy constrained by security conditions, reduced staffing levels, and the ordered departure of family members. We tried to help bolster economic confidence, but offered more free advice than tangible assistance—limited partly by the reluctance of the SCAF to risk necessary reforms, and partly by budgetary stringency and partisan paralysis in a Washington still working its way out of the 2008 recession. Our message on the political side was also a bit conflicted. On the one hand, we emp
hasized to the SCAF the dangers of moving to elections too quickly, before giving a chance for new political parties to organize. On the other hand, we worried about the perpetuation of military rule, especially as intermittent violence continued, with the U.S.-supplied Egyptian security forces at center stage. A rapid move to civilian rule seemed attractive from that point of view. In the end, it probably didn’t make much difference what we thought, since the SCAF was anxious to make a handoff and get out of the unaccustomed political limelight, and the Egyptian public even more sensitive than before the revolution about foreign encroachment.
President Obama made a speech at the State Department in May 2011, highlighting our support for post-revolutionary transitions in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as outlining longer-term strategy for the region and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The tone of his remarks was pitch perfect, making clear our intention to support forces for reform. There was little to offer, however, beyond words. The speech reflected Obama’s fidelity to his long-game strategy and the priorities that underpinned it; his sober sense about the generational nature of the unfolding challenge and steep near-term odds facing voices of openness and pluralism; the risk of making the Arab Spring about us, as opposed to about the people in the region; and the harsh reality that the political and fiscal climates at home would in any case prevent the administration from providing anything close to the kind of support transitional regimes needed over the long term.
After my June 2011 trip, I told Clinton and the White House what they already suspected: Further progress toward a successful democratic transition was “certainly not a sure thing now.”6 When I came back to Cairo in early 2012, parliamentary elections had produced a strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which had won nearly half of the seats in the lower house. Combined with another quarter of the seats won by Salafists, the result was a dramatic victory for Islamist parties. The United States had largely avoided interaction with the Brotherhood up to this point, both because of their anti-American ideology and in deference to Mubarak. The Brotherhood reciprocated our reluctance and suspicion, but they had clearly emerged as a political force in Egypt, and I was authorized along with our new ambassador in Cairo, Anne Patterson, to meet with senior MB representatives and test the waters.
Our first encounter was in a nondescript office at the headquarters of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, in downtown Cairo. Our host was Mohamed Morsi, the party’s secretary-general and nominal head. Short and stocky, with a trim black beard, Morsi was circumspect, as unsure of how to approach a meeting with Americans as we were with him. While he had studied at the University of Southern California decades before, Morsi’s English was halting, and he stuck to Arabic in our conversation. I stressed that the United States had no business backing particular parties in Egypt; what we supported was a broader evolution toward democratic institutions, shaped by Egyptians themselves. I emphasized that we hoped to sustain partnership with Egypt, in our mutual self-interest, built around economic progress for Egyptians, regional security, and continued adherence to existing agreements, especially the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Morsi said that was all consistent with the Brotherhood’s outlook, but I left our meeting not entirely convinced. It was a bit surreal sitting with Morsi and two of his colleagues, who had probably done a total among them of forty or fifty years in Mubarak-era jails. They had been on their best behavior, but it was hard to tell whether to take self-avowed moderation at face value, or whether it cloaked a more complicated agenda. They were a movement used to life in the shadows, distrustful of outsiders, and not inclined to share power once they obtained it.
My overall impression of Egypt a year after the revolution was decidedly mixed. It was, I told Clinton, “a pretty confused place.”7 The economy was sliding, with the SCAF tarnished and uncertain and the revolutionary youth who dominated Tahrir Square a frustrated and politically disconnected bunch. Meanwhile, some senior civilians in the interim government overseen by the SCAF had decided to burnish their own revolutionary and popular anti-American credentials instead of moving swiftly on reform. Chief among them was Minister of International Development Fayza Abul Naga, a longtime Mubarak supporter who had, I suspected, quickly turned his photo face first against her office wall when he was deposed. She instigated trumped-up cases against a number of American NGOs, eventually resulting in the arrests and detentions of several U.S. citizens, which we labored for months to undo.
Contrary to initial MB promises that they wouldn’t run a candidate in the June 2012 presidential elections, the Freedom and Justice Party put forward Morsi as its nominee. Supported in no small part by Qatar, and to a lesser degree Turkey, he won by a narrow margin, revealing a deeply polarized electorate. I visited in early July, soon after his inauguration, and Clinton returned later that month. We urged him to govern inclusively, focus on the economy, and stick to the treaty with Israel. He was careful about the last point, not interfering with the operational channels that the Egyptian military and intelligence services maintained with the Israelis, and working constructively with Clinton to avert a major Israeli clash with Hamas in Gaza in November. Morsi, however, got nowhere on the economy, and was a disaster at inclusive governance. He and the MB had no experience running public-sector institutions, and little interest in sharing the burden with other politicians or technocrats. Late in the fall, he began an effort to further revise the constitution to entrench presidential prerogatives, and in turn the Brotherhood’s centrality in Egyptian politics.
By the spring of 2013, tensions were rising rapidly. Street demonstrations intensified, drawing together a flammable mix of disgruntled revolutionary youth and Cairenes frustrated by economic decline and two years of uncertainty. The armed forces, now led by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, hung back at first, always anxious to protect their reputation. After massive street protests in late June, however, Sisi decided to act. Morsi was arrested on July 3, and the military again took power. Most of the Egyptian public seemed relieved, eager for order and predictability, the luster of their revolution long worn away.
Sisi moved quickly to crush the Brotherhood, encouraged by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, both of whom poured billions of dollars into stabilizing the Egyptian economy. The military’s actions clearly fit the classic definition of a coup, notwithstanding the considerable popular support for Sisi’s decision. Under U.S. law, formally designating Sisi’s intervention as a coup would have required an automatic cutoff of U.S. security and economic assistance. The president was unhappy with the military’s move, which set a complicated precedent in a region still in the throes of revolts of various stripes and guaranteed even greater polarization in Egyptian society and ever greater civilian strife. He was also mindful, however, of the mood of the Egyptian public, our continuing reliance on security partnership with Egypt, and the value of retaining some leverage over Sisi and a post-revolutionary transition that seemed unending.
We spent long hours in the Situation Room trying to thread the needle and avoid cessation of assistance. Lawyers and those of us pretending to be lawyers edited and reedited formulas we thought could finesse the problem. Finally, we split the difference. The White House asserted that no judgment on whether this was a coup or not was required by law, and therefore it was choosing not to choose. Looking back, we should have simply given a straight answer, called the coup a coup, and then worked with Congress to avoid the blunt tool of complete aid suspension. Instead, to make clear his displeasure with the coup that wasn’t a coup, and the subsequent steps Sisi took against the Muslim Brotherhood, the president suspended shipment of certain weapons systems, including F-16s and M1A1 tanks, which were never essential to Egypt’s main security priority—fighting a growing Islamist insurgency in the Sinai. In the end, we won favor with no one and managed to antagonize just about everyone—besieged Islamists, repressed revolutionaries, our regional friends and partners, and of course the Egyptian military and Congress.
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SECRETARY KERRY ASKED me to return to Egypt and assess the situation, which I did in mid-July, ten days or so after Sisi overthrew Morsi. I found Sisi in a not-so-conciliatory mood. Some in his new interim government, like Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, the former IAEA head, advocated a focus on economic recovery, renewing the political transition, and leaving the door open to the Brotherhood to reenter politics in the future. In our conversation, Sisi was unmoved by that view, and dismissive of differences within the Brotherhood over how to approach its predicament and whether to try to sustain itself as a political party. He was already enamored of his popular standing and taken by his image as the man on the white horse. Seemingly overnight, his photos appeared on walls all over Cairo. Dressed in uniform, his eyes hidden behind 1970s-era Arab strongman sunglasses, he exuded an air of mystery and command. More trouble was already brewing, with thousands of Brotherhood members and their families camped out at Raba’a Square in central Cairo, demanding Morsi’s release and reinstatement. I told Kerry that this was not going to end well.
The secretary sent me back to Cairo again in August to try to dampen tensions. I spent the next eight days working with a European Union counterpart, Bernardino Leon, whose optimism and persistence in trying to find ways to deescalate had an infectious effect on me—but not on Sisi or the Brotherhood leadership. We shuttled back and forth between Sisi and two former MB government ministers who had not yet been arrested and were still in touch with their underground leaders, including the aging MB Supreme Guide. They were, however, unable to talk to either Morsi, who had been moved to a prison in Alexandria, or Khairat el-Shater, the Deputy Supreme Guide and number two in the organization, now in Cairo’s notorious Tora Prison. The two former ministers agreed to consider an initial series of confidence-building measures at Raba’a—moving people out of the square, in return for a thinning out of security forces in the area and the opening of a dialogue with the new government. They also sought the release of a senior MB official at Tora, Saad al-Katatni, as a gesture of goodwill, and to create a more authoritative channel for further discussions with Sisi and his subordinates. Sisi was reluctant to agree to any of this, distrustful of the MB and inclined to press his advantage. He seemed slightly more open at the outset on the issue of Katatni, but within a few days had lost interest in that too.
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