Matthias Rathmer - Seeds of Wrath

Tourists of the world, unite! Come on over and visit! Come and form your own impression! It’ll be quite different from the one created by the frenzied, irresponsible headlines spewed out everywhere by the west’s gawping tabloids. Provided you don’t come here wanting to ask, live and in real time, one of the so-called Islamic State nutcases how his Mum is; and you don’t want to go on a desert run with arms smugglers and terrorists from Libya; and you don’t try to explain the Muslim Brotherhood that paradise doesn’t exist; provided you conduct yourself as you would expect an Egyptian to if he steps into your world and your local pub, then you’ll be as safe as you can ever be anywhere in this mad world.

Any foreigner living here as a guest wonders sooner or later who, and with what kind of lifestyle, actually manages to find any enrichment. When different cultures in private life nudge up against the boundaries of tolerance, then conflicts both big and small are only too likely to result. They are often argued out quite openly and honestly even if there is no solution. Some sort of way of living together is arrived at and shapes the everyday. Egyptians are masters at this.

Anyone who knows how to get round the shortcomings, anyone perceived to bring benefits for others, will inevitably come to the fore in dealing with foreigners, given a marked aptitude for insight and a herculean ability to compromise. In shocking contrast to the practical intelligence brought by the individual, there is indecision, yes, dishonesty, on the political stage. Diplomats and politicians on both sides are mutating into hypocrites.

Since the revolt, it has been said, and still is, that the west has to make a decision once and for all. In between two poles, there’s a real dog’s breakfast. At the one extreme, a suitable realpolitik with the Egyptian government. At the other, an implementation of the constantly propagated values of a basic democracy based on freedom. This is exactly what happened when President Sisi visited Germany in June 2015. While he was welcomed by Chancellor Merkel with military honours, the President of the Bundestag and second in the state at the time, Norbert Lammert, representative of a highly regulated, democratically elected parliament, had distanced himself from Sisi well in advance.

It was just to the taste of the Egyptian leader, himself a former General, to march in to brisk military music performed by people in the smartest of military uniforms. He always liked this kind of show. The fact that behind this polite posing he had been attacked for his harassment of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the opposition, and had been asked to think just a little, from time to time, about human rights, was met with his familiar broad smile. He knew. He was needed. Egypt is needed. After all, that was what the visit was all about. Because between east and west the land of the Nile is the last, reasonably stable Islamic country in a religion which is constantly characterised by the merciless terrorism of extremist lunatics and other radical Muslims of the trouble spots of Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

In reality the visit was no more than a bit of political theatre, embarrassing at times, performed for the public by Merkel and Sisi. It was a production of meaningless babble with which one of them faced the other for the first time and which the other had to endure. In all conflicts one stays engaged as a way of sending out a sign to those watching. Of course. It is already important enough to have general agreement on defence and on fighting local and national threats but beyond that Egypt is of little significance to Germany, neither economically nor politically. But.

The actual influence of the Germans on the Egyptians was, in the past, almost always hugely overestimated. In the tradition of all Egyptian Presidents, the glowing militarist, Sisi, does not allow himself to be drawn into talking about his appearance as an insurgent in the turmoil of the troubles, and absolutely not as an Islamic male who would tolerate neither the sexual orientation of the former Foreign Secretary nor the weaponry of such a commanding woman.

Anyone who has followed Sisi’s rise will know how much the soldier in him dominates his manner. Anyone who watches Sisi knows how sharp and strategic he can be. And anyone who knows him will realise how much of an influence Islam is. All these characteristics make it very obvious how little of a democrat he is. And anyone who has had to get to know the country and the people will also know that it really does rather lack anything that could make for a free, democratically organised country, most especially mature, educated citizens. Democracy will be developed and established only in protracted and complex stages. Simply to try and import it, all wrapped up by the west, made in the image of the west, will be doomed to failure for that very reason, quit apart from another basic issue about how democratic Islamic countries can actually, fundamentally, be.

If the west, including the United States, continues to claim to have political relevance and influence in Egypt, then that really is a consciously dishonest act, a fudging of reality which it will take a lot of persistence to persuade others to believe. Sisi just accepts money. That’s all he does. Subsidies from selected areas for the Egyptian army had definitely been stopped in 2013. But millions of US dollars started to flow out of Washington again, in the age-old tradition, as did the millions of euro from Berlin for science and for schools, and all quite independently of political developments in Egypt.

So, as still seen and reported, these subsidies do not mean that Sisi has made concessions on policy or human rights. In the diplomatic tit for tat, there is simply nobody there who comes across as intelligible and who, more than anything, wants things to happen. Nobody is resolute about axing the annual bank transfers of dollars and euros if Sisi continues to refuse a dialogue about freedom and basic rights with his ideological opponents. In the long battle against Islamic militants in an unstable region, Egypt is quite simply needed too much. That alone is enough to give up on human rights and a reconciliation with Egyptian society.

Sisi is shrewd. He has given back to the Egyptians something which keeps a large part of society calm. And still does. Egyptians can be proud of their country again, maybe because the new Suez Canal was completed in record time. That certainly gives energy and importance, particularly for the dissatisfied and the protesters. Meantime the President is, above all, a man of the army. And the Egyptian army owns almost half the economic power in the land. Without the military, nothing happens. Nothing. It’s been like that for decades. Ever since the appearance of a certain General Nasser in the nineteen fifties. It would be laughable to believe that any of these gents, the Generals, would let their business dealings and influential activities be interfered with by any remotely democratic social grouping. So long as these soldiers wield such enormous power, so long as all those who can remember – whether loudly or timidly – the value system of the west, will do very well not to lose hope. This will be in itself both burden and task for the future. For decades to come, Egypt will definitely not be a democratic state.

Sisi has long since hooked himself and the country up in quite a different way. Sisi really likes entering into pacts with Russia and China because they’re good for business, all the more so with the financial world and shared values of influential Arab states. This clique of leading Gulf States, more than anything Saudi Arabia, favour an Islam they can control, moderate, direct. Together, they march in step against that form of Islamisation they can very much do without. For the same reasons given by Sisi for his constant, unbending battle against the Muslim Brotherhood, the sheikdoms are fearful that the conservative and more fundamental interpretations of the Koran recently becoming apparent will cause the future loss of reforms. Moderate Islam assures the status quo. It keeps the faithful in a state of mental immaturity.