In conjunction with my recent post on the rise of secular nationalist Khalifa Haftar in Libya in the face of the Second Libyan Civil War, I would like to turn to another similar situation to Libya’s east – that of Egypt. In 2011, the same year Muammar Gaddafi was killed in his hometown of Sirte, Hosni Mubarak, long the President of Egypt, was overthrown by the manifestation of the Arab Spring in Egypt.
Egypt’s transition to democracy saw Muhammad Morsi, backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, become President. This was intolerable to Egypt’s secular military establishment, and he was in turn overthrown in 2013 by Egyptian general Abdel El-Sisi.
Sisi’s years in office have been marked by the military’s consolidation of governing power and the end of any real elections, and his mandate is quite similar to that of Vladimir Putin – he wins elections but he does so because any legitimate opposition has been jailed or removed from the ballot.
Middle Eastern politics since the end of the Ottoman Empire has been a back and forth of secular Arab nationalism and Islamic nationalism. This dichotomy is at the heart of a number of conflicts right now – Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Even outside of the Arab world, Turkey has had a long running conflict between those who seek an Islamic government, now championed by Erdogan and the AKP and those who want a secular, nationalist republic, the CHP, who look back to the days of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
While those who back state Islamism lack state sponsors, save for perhaps Turkey, a recent development adding a confounding factor is the emergence of Iran as a sponsor of state Shi’ism, and in this capacity they have brought Lebanon partly into that camp and are in the process of doing the same with Iraq. Going forward, the United States must accept the realities of these factions of Middle Eastern politics if we wish to engage productively in the region and in our pursuit of continued democratization.