by John McCain
The opposition leaders were a mixed bag of older, longtime Mubarak critics who had been marginalized over the years, a few retired diplomats who hoped to be summoned back into service in the country’s hour of need, and then these young people with their colloquial English and high-tech sophistication. At one point, a former Egyptian ambassador, elegantly dressed in pinstripes, was belaboring the fact that the U.S. had been Mubarak’s ally. While he appreciated our interest in their movement, he continued, honesty required him to point out that there couldn’t be any rapprochement between the Egyptian people and the U.S. government until we dealt with the plight of the Palestinians. That is a complaint any American official traveling in the Middle East will hear repeated constantly. I sank back in the chair I was sitting in, a little bored, I suppose, and subconsciously disappointed that in this moment of promise, this little glimmer of hope that the maladies of the Middle East, most of which had little if anything to do with the plight of the Palestinians, might be improved by the political transformation of afflicted societies, we were going to get wrapped around the axle by another anti-Zionist rant from another Arab statesman. Then, to my relief and intrigue, one of the young men present interrupted the well-dressed bore. “Ambassador, with respect,” he began. “We’re not here to discuss the Palestinians. We’re here to talk about the Egyptian people. We want to focus these senators on our needs in this next period of our history.”
Alas, that period of Egyptian history will be a chronicle of disappointments, an uprising against authoritarianism and injustice that opened a path to power for an Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood, which wouldn’t manage the transition to secular politics and brought disorder, intolerance, and another upheaval, which ended with a popularly supported military coup and a return of authoritarianism. But for a moment, in that abrupt dismissal by the young of the failed conventions of the old, we could glimpse what could have been, what should have been, and what I believe one day will be. We left for home encouraged by a genuine sense of promise, and eager to go back.
We hadn’t met with any Muslim Brotherhood representatives on that first post-Mubarak visit, though I would in subsequent trips to Egypt, six more in total over the next two years. At the time, I was skeptical the Muslim Brotherhood could be trusted to adhere to democratic norms no matter what promises they made. I raised those doubts in interviews, observing that revolutions can go bad, and often do. I would eventually come to the view that the Muslim Brotherhood should be allowed to run in the election. They had renounced violence, and pledged to play by the rules. I was still skeptical, and didn’t like the views they espoused, but I was open to the idea that this might be a phase democratizing Arab societies had to go through before embracing a more secular politics.
I went back to Egypt twice over the next four months, the first trip on my own and the second with John Kerry, who chaired the Foreign Relations Committee. Although the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was regarded by many, if not most, Egyptians as a legitimate temporary governing authority, public protests demanding an end to military rule continued until elections for a new parliament were held at the end of the year, and a presidential election was held in June 2012. I met again with my old acquaintance Field Marshal Tantawi, who stressed the military’s firm intention to turn the country over to civilian rule at the earliest practicable opportunity. I met with scores of Egyptians engaged in building the institutions of civil society, at leadership positions and at the nuts-and-bolts level, and with business community leaders to get an appreciation for their progress. I solicited their views on whether they trusted the military to keep its commitment, and which politicians and political parties were in the best position to form a civilian government. Most expected the armed forces to follow through on the commitment, and more than one of my exchanges included the observation that the Muslim Brotherhood would do well in any fair election.
And they did. They won a plurality of the seats in parliamentary elections held at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, and in coalition with another Islamist party controlled almost 70 percent of the parliament. It seemed likely that the Brotherhood would win the presidential election, too, if they chose to run a candidate, which they had announced they would not do. I assume their initial position was taken out of fear that the military would reconsider its acquiescence to a civilian government. I brought another Senate delegation to Egypt in February 2012 just as the last of the parliamentary runoff elections were concluding. I hoped to use the trip to begin establishing a dialogue between members of Congress and leaders of the ascendant power in Egypt.
But I had another, more immediate responsibility to take up with my friend Field Marshal Tantawi. In December, just before the start of the elections, Egyptian security services had launched an armed raid on the offices of seventeen human rights and pro-democracy NGOs, including three American organizations, Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the International Republican Institute (IRI), whose board of directors I chair, confiscating records, computers, and cash, none of which were ever recovered. NDI and IRI staff were prohibited from leaving Egypt, including IRI’s Egypt director, who was the son of an old friend, former Illinois congressman Ray LaHood, who at the time was President Obama’s transportation secretary. The Americans had to seek sanctuary in the U.S. embassy, where they had been living ever since, while our very dedicated ambassador, Anne Patterson, worked to get the travel ban lifted. I had already released a statement blasting the unexpected assault on American humanitarians, warning that it “could set back the long-standing partnership between the United States and Egypt.” A week before we arrived, the Egyptians had escalated the crisis and filed criminal charges against forty-three of the aid workers, nineteen of them Americans, including Sam LaHood.
A Mubarak crony and minister for foreign aid organizations under Tantawi (and currently national security advisor to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi), Faiza Abou el-Naga, had instigated the raids and prosecution. She’s a longtime antagonist of democratic internationalists involved in party training, election monitoring, and other civil society efforts in Egypt. Most observers assumed she would lose power with Mubarak’s departure, but she actually became more influential with the military. She blamed the NGOs for Mubarak’s downfall, which is ridiculous, but she is unpersuadable on the subject.
My first task was to help Anne get the Americans out of Egypt before Abou el-Naga did something even more stupid. To do that, I had to suppress my natural outrage over the mistreatment of Americans, who had done nothing more nefarious than work to help Egyptians decide for themselves who would govern them. I had to adopt a tone and approach that could defend the work of the NGOs without jeopardizing efforts to get the victims safely out of the country. Joint Chiefs chairman General Martin Dempsey had appealed directly to Tantawi the week before to no apparent avail, as had Central Command CinC General Jim Mattis. A delegation of generals from Egypt visiting Washington had been ordered to return to Cairo before they could be harangued about the aid workers by members of Congress. I had stated in advance of the trip that it wasn’t my intention to negotiate their release, but only to underscore to Egyptian authorities how seriously the U.S. Congress was taking the matter. As a rule, Egyptian generals, as political as any political party in Egypt, don’t like to be perceived as making concessions to Americans immediately after they’ve been asked to make them. Standing up to the Americans was good politics in that fraught moment of Egyptian history. There was much lingering resentment, not just in Abou el-Naga’s aggrieved attitude, but among the generals, too, over the U.S. government’s lack of support in the crisis for Mubarak considering Mubarak had often been accused of being Washington’s lackey. I had to be diplomatic. But I would struggle to keep my anger in check when my appeals were met invariably with references to laws that hadn’t been broken and a judicial process that was clearly prejudicial.
I made the case I could—that U.S. and Egyptian relations were too important to be und
one by a misunderstanding—to everyone we met with on that trip, starting with Tantawi, who was inscrutable in response. We met with parliament representatives, including the speaker, who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s party. I didn’t make overt demands, just pleaded with each host to help defuse a crisis that was in neither country’s interests. To Tantawi, I allowed that the Americans in jeopardy were “my people,” as IRI chairman, and I had a personal interest in getting them home. They were mostly young and idealistic and there to do good. They shouldn’t be treated as criminals. We need to resolve this, I said, and until we do our relationship isn’t going to return to normal.
Our first meeting with a Muslim Brotherhood official was at the Brotherhood’s headquarters with the deputy leader of the organization, Khairat el-Shater, a tall, imposing man but with a relaxed and open manner that put the delegation at ease. He had an interesting conversation with Jeff Sessions about the religious character of the Brotherhood’s positions, in which he suggested there wasn’t as much difference between their views and the way Americans viewed the role of religion in a democracy. Americans, he observed, are free to invoke their religious beliefs in official settings. Benedictions are given at your official ceremonies. God is referred to on your currency, and in your Pledge of Allegiance. There is a role for religion in public life in Egypt just like there is in America. Jeff couldn’t have agreed more. The connection between a Muslim Brotherhood leader and one of the most conservative members of the U.S. Congress was an unexpected, to say the least, cultural appropriation.
Curiously, it was the Brotherhood representatives we met with who indicated the most willingness to be helpful. They made no promises, but emphasized they had played no role in the decision to initiate the prosecution, and agreed it would be a mistake to let it cause a serious breach in relations. Obviously, they had self-interested motives in appearing to Americans as less instinctively anti-U.S. than we had good reason to believe they were. But that didn’t matter to me if it resulted in their assistance in getting our people safely out of Egypt.
That happened a couple weeks after we left Egypt just after the Americans’ case had gone to trial. Some of the judges presiding over the trial had resigned. A few days later the Americans were on a chartered plane out of the country, except for one individual on the NDI team, who insisted on remaining in Egypt as an act of solidarity with his Egyptian colleagues. The popular reaction in Egypt was quite negative and contradictory. Angry protesters accused the government of inventing a case against the Americans only to cave to American pressure and injure the nation’s pride. The Muslim Brotherhood released a statement insisting they had played no role in their release. The defendants were subsequently tried in absentia that summer, and convicted. That angered me, and the fact that our people were safely home meant that in future meetings with Egyptian officials I could allow myself to be more demonstrative in my protests over the injustice. A few weeks after their wrongful conviction, Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood’s candidate selected after Khairat el-Shater had been disqualified, won Egypt’s presidential election. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces acquiesced to his inauguration but demanded the dissolution of parliament and reserved certain political powers for itself.
Morsi would govern for a year before protesters were back in the streets in full force, demanding his removal from office. He would be deposed in a military coup the next month. In the fall of 2012, he had given himself powers to legislate in the absence of parliament without judicial review, and to control, also without judicial review, the writing of a new constitution for Egypt. Protests erupted immediately as secularist politicians accused Morsi of “presidential tyranny.” The new constitution ratified by a Brotherhood-controlled constitutional assembly confirmed their fears. Morsi had refused to make concessions to secularists, liberals, moderates, or the courts. The constitution gave greater powers to the president at the expense of the judiciary, and extended them to areas that had been the purview of the military. It declared sharia law as the basis for all laws and gave the government responsibility to “ensure public morality.” More protests ensued.
The situation was rapidly deteriorating when I went back to Egypt with a large delegation concerned about the recent turn of events for the primary purpose of meeting with Morsi to state our concerns. In addition to his aggregation of powers and the decidedly Islamist constitution he had secured, attacks on Egypt’s Coptic Christian community by Islamist extremists were multiplying, and would escalate the following year. Compounding the problem was the recent disclosure of anti-Semitic remarks Morsi had made a couple years earlier. He had called Israelis “bloodsuckers” and the “descendants of apes and pigs.” Morsi claimed he had been quoted out of context. It was hard to imagine what an appropriate context might have been. The meeting was long and did not prove particularly productive. We had to explain to him why Americans were upset over his anti-Semitic statements, and that provoked an extended monologue about the Muslim Brotherhood view of Israel. Morsi had pledged as a candidate that he would keep the peace with Israel and honor Egypt’s Camp David commitments, but it was clear he was more accustomed to the Brotherhood’s militant view of Israel. We emphasized, too, the necessity of compromise and concession to successful governance. But I left the meeting with a strong feeling that the Brotherhood’s hold on power was going to be very brief. Before we left Egypt, we met with the new defense minister who had replaced General Tantawi. I didn’t know Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as well as I had known Tantawi. I’m certain we had met once or twice on my many trips to Egypt, but I couldn’t recall any exchanges of interest we might have had.
I would see Sisi again in August a month after public protests had exploded, millions of demonstrators in Cairo had demanded Morsi’s ouster, many of them surrounding the presidential palace, and the military had stepped in to enforce the people’s will. Pro-Morsi demonstrators took to the streets to demand his restoration and clashed with anti-Morsi crowds. The violence that ensued looked like it might plunge the country into a very dark time. Lindsey and I flew there to appeal to both sides to step back from the brink. The army had already jailed Morsi and many other senior Brotherhood figures. Protests were still raging for and against Morsi.
Our message to the Muslim Brotherhood was, You were forced out by widespread popular demand that gave the military the opening because you dug in your heels and wouldn’t make concessions. Don’t compound the mistake by turning to violence. Let the Egyptian people see you call for reconciliation and cooperation. You can’t win an armed confrontation. Our message to Sisi was, Be magnanimous in victory, the country can’t continue in this direction, it will become ungovernable. You’ve got the upper hand, reach out and try to separate the Islamists you can work with from the intractable extremists. We asked his permission to meet with Morsi. He didn’t say no explicitly, but he made it clear he wasn’t going to allow it. He gave the impression of being a pretty cold-blooded individual, and there was a lot of ego inside the uniform he was wearing. In his view, the country was going off the rails and he had stepped in, heroically, to rescue it. He was the nation’s savior, and now he was going to do what was necessary to end the chaos and insecurity. He didn’t say, I’m going to arrest every Muslim Brotherhood member I can get my hands on, and kill a lot of people in the process. But he communicated clearly to us that the country needed order, and he was going to accomplish that, and he didn’t really care who he had to destroy to do it or what we thought about it. It was an ominous exchange and it was clear in which direction things were heading. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, one of the most capable members of the Obama foreign policy team, was in Egypt at the same time, and agreed with our assessment.
We discussed with our ambassador, Anne Patterson, how we should answer the inevitable question we were going to get at a press availability we had scheduled: “Do we consider the military’s intervention a coup?” We both thought, as undiplomatic as that would sound to the generals, there really wasn
’t anything else we could call it. Anne worried that no one would hear any other part of our message, including our calls for dialogue and national reconciliation. They would just hear the word “coup.” One side would be offended and the other incited. There was truth in her concern. But there really wasn’t anything else we could call it. The Egyptian armed forces had removed an elected president from office, arrested him and his associates, and assumed governing authority. That’s a textbook definition of a military coup, and calling it a banana would only sacrifice our credibility. So we called it a coup, and as predicted our comment blew up in the Egyptian and international media. There were no more meetings with officials in the new regime. We managed to meet with a couple Muslim Brotherhood representatives who weren’t in jail yet, and then we left the country.
I haven’t been back since. Sisi did ask to see Lindsey and me when he was in Washington last year to meet with President Trump. We went to his suite at the Four Seasons. Before the meeting, a Sisi aide had communicated that the President did not wish to discuss the continuing liability of the NDI and IRI staffers. Their convictions had never been overturned, and I regularly remonstrated with Egyptian officials, including Sisi, over that injustice. As long as their convictions stood, any one of them could be subject to an Interpol arrest warrant. It is a damn disgrace, and not the act of an ally. But the purpose of Sisi’s trip was to reestablish his legitimacy in the eyes of official Washington. Trump had obliged him. Now he expected Lindsey and me to do the same. To that end, he was pleased to discuss other subjects of mutual interest, but not a matter that would cause him political discomfort for no appreciable gain. As soon as we were ushered into his suite and exchanged greetings, I began to lobby him on the forbidden subject as did Lindsey. He listened for a while, one of his aides tried to change subjects unsuccessfully, and then Sisi brought the encounter to an abrupt halt with something that sounded vaguely like a threat. “Don’t damage this relationship, Senators. If you do this it will be on you. I am a stubborn and hard fighter.” Needless to say, we left the Four Seasons with little expectation either of us would be going back to Egypt for a while.