People in Egypt woke up on Friday to find petrol prices had increased that morning. The move had not come as a surprise, as they had been expecting it throughout June and knew it was going to happen as the 2019-2020 budget went into effect. Fuel-price increases range from 17 per cent on the highest-grade unleaded gasoline 95 fuel used by high-performance and luxury cars to 30 per cent on the liquid gas canisters used by households in cooking. Both diesel, the fuel widely used by trucks and buses, and gasoline 80, used in heavy transport vehicles and agricultural tractors, increased by 22.7 per cent. This is the fifth increase in fuel products since 2014 and the fourth since November 2016 when Egypt signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that aimed at cutting the budget deficit through slashing energy subsidies, introducing a new value-added tax (VAT), and rationalising government administrative expenditures. The energy subsidies had burdened public finances for years, representing more than 20 per cent of overall expenditures. Economists have long argued that money that went into fuel subsidies was not targeting those that really needed it, with a World Bank study showing that the highest income quintile receive around 60 per cent of all energy subsidies. Moreover, the energy subsidies promoted capital-intensive rather than labour-intensive industries. Economists have long argued that subsidy money is better spent on improving education, health and the social safety network. Previous governments were reluctant to reform the subsidy system for fear of stirring up social unrest. However, Egypt in its agreement with the IMF committed itself to lifting the subsidies gradually so that fuel is now to be sold to customers at its cost price at the beginning of the current fiscal year that began on 1 July. Moreover, electricity subsidies were cut by 15 per cent starting in July. According to a statement by the Ministry of Petroleum, this price brings the cost coverage ratio to 100 per cent within the fuel segment. Diesel and liquid gas canisters are still 40 per cent subsidised, according to estimates by investment bank Beltone Financial Holding. The savings from the hike are estimated at LE37 billion, which puts the oil subsidies for the current fiscal year at LE53 billion based on the assumption that oil prices will be at $68 per barrel. Government estimates suggest that every $1 increase in oil prices above this level could add LE4-6 billion to its expenditure bill. The next step is to adopt a price-indexation mechanism on fuel, which is an automatic pricing mechanism whereby prices will be set based on a calculation that takes into account international oil prices and the exchange rate. The system is already in the works for the higher end Octane 95 fuel and allows for price fluctuations of up to 10 per cent to be decided by a committee of officials from the finance and petroleum ministries every three months. This does not mean that fuel might see another increase soon, however. “We do not expect movements in prices upon the indexation implementation given the current low petroleum prices trending below $70 per barrel and supported by a stronger pound,” Beltone said. Besides car owners, users of public transportation were the ones to immediately feel the effects of the price hikes. Commuters were not happy to hear drivers breaking the news of yet another increase in the cost of each ride. While transportation was directly affected by the price hikes, cutting subsidies will also indirectly affect inflation upwards. Investment banks expect the resulting increase in the inflation rate to be mild and much less than the hikes caused by previous increases in fuel prices, however. “We expect a softer hike in commodities prices than that experienced in the two previous energy price increases, as it was partially priced in since the kick-off of the IMF-backed reform programme in November 2016 and given the weak purchasing power recovery,” Beltone noted, putting the increase at between seven to 10 per cent at most. This, according to Beltone, would translate into 2.6 per cent on average in monthly inflation during the third quarter of 2019. “Annual inflation is expected to average 13.3 per cent in the third quarter, almost flat from 13 per cent in the previous quarter,” it added. According to the government, the money saved by both the fuel and electricity subsidies lift will be channelled into spending on social measures. Beltone estimated these savings at LE43 billion and noted that petroleum bill savings alone would fund 45 per cent of the wage compensations package revealed by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi recently, at an overall cost of LE60 billion and aimed at easing inflationary pressures resulting from fuel liberalisation. The package includes raising the minimum wage to LE2,000 per month, increasing pensions for public employees to LE900 per month, and providing state employees with a LE150 one-off increase. It will also see the inclusion of 100,000 families in the conditional cash-transfer programmes Takaful and Karama (Solidarity and Dignity). The first supports households with children, while the second targets the elderly and persons with disabilities who are unable to work. Moreover, dozens of traders and producers are participating in the government-sponsored Kolena Wahed (We are All One) initiative, whereby discounted commodities are sold in fairs and mobile outlets provided by the government. Egypt’s perseverance with the fiscal reforms has so far paid off in terms of macroeconomic stabilisation. Preliminary financial indices for the 2018-19 budget have shown that GDP growth reached 5.6 per cent, Presidency Spokesman Bassam Radi announced in a statement earlier this month. GDP growth ranged at around two per cent in 2016. The budget deficit is expected to drop to a targeted 8.4 per cent of GDP, he said. Meanwhile, gross general government debt is expected to decline to about 85 per cent of GDP in 2018-19 from 103 per cent in 2016-17, according to the IMF. While macroeconomic stabilisation is a short-term priority to restore confidence, enhance competitiveness, and ensure the sustainability of public finances, the efforts should be combined with a longer-term perspective on structural reforms, said the “Egypt’s Stocktaking” report prepared by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “The success in structural reforms, in particular aimed at boosting job creation, will determine whether Egypt goes beyond macroeconomic stabilisation to create sustainable growth, which is essential in the long run for social and economic stability,” the report said. Nicolas Pinaud, head of the Sherpa Office and Global Governance Unit at the OECD, told Al-Ahram Weekly that it was important for Egypt to work on the quality of growth and how it trickles down to the population and not just the pace. “There is a need to look at generating opportunities for the entire population, including the most vulnerable segments through, for example, education and training,” he said during an event organised last week by the Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies (ECES), a think tank. When looking at Egypt’s peers in the region such as Morocco and Tunisia or to OECD middle-income countries like Mexico, Turkey and Greece, “Egypt is not doing well enough compared to those countries when it comes to inclusive growth,” Pinaud said. He noted that despite existing social spending, poverty rates remained high, which meant they may need to be better targeted. As the report showed, “despite significant efforts to roll out Takaful and Karama, these programmes still need to be substantially scaled up to create an effective safety net covering Egypt’s vulnerable population, in particular given the impact of the ongoing adjustment on the poor,” he said. *A version of this article appears in print in the 11 July, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Economic reform on track

One month ago, no one could have predicted, let alone imagined, that a sitting American president would venture into North Korean territory via the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) in the absence of peace on the Korean Peninsula. The unthinkable happened on Sunday, 30 June, when President Donald Trump stepped into North Korea for a few seconds, accompanied by Chairman Kim Jong-Un.

Egypt is “very clear” about its opposition to the pursuit of military action against Iran, an Egyptian source said earlier this week as political tensions between the US and Iran were escalating. The source, who has been closely following the Iran issue in Cairo, spoke as Iran was announcing its plan to violate the uranium enrichment level it had committed itself to in the 2015 nuclear deal it reached with the US and five leading European countries. The escalation between the US and Iran started in May last year, when US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw from the deal concluded by his predecessor Barack Obama. During the past 13 months, the source said, regional countries, essentially Israel and Saudi Arabia, each of which has its own reasons for pressure to be exercised on Tehran, had driven the pressure for escalation against the country. Over the past year, the source said, Egypt had been trying to argue the case for political dialogue. Egypt has no direct influence on the issue, but it had expressed its apprehensions about any possible military attack against Iranian targets in the region to regional and international countries who shared its apprehensions about picking a military confrontation with Iran, he said. This was especially the case since no careful assessment had been done on possible repercussions in the region, which was already in turmoil. “We are carefully following French attempts to introduce de-escalation, and we are hoping they will work,” said another Egyptian official later in the week when France announced plans to send an envoy to Tehran to try to reduce the tensions. One reason Egypt is particularly apprehensive about any escalation against Iran is its assessment that if attacked directly or indirectly Iran would use all the cards at its disposal in the region, including Gaza. A scenario that Egypt particularly fears is that Iran could lean on its allies in Gaza to carry out proxy retaliations that could aim at Israeli targets. “It is already a very fragile and week-by-week truce that we are working with all the parties to keep between Gaza and Israel,” the official commented. Over the past few months, Egypt has been “very clear” in telling the Islamist group Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2006, to act firmly against any attempts at “provocation” that could be used by Israel to start an assault on Gaza. It is five years since Israel’s last war on the impoverished and largely isolated Gaza Strip. In July 2014, Israel’s war on Gaza, labelled Operation Protective Edge, cost the lives of over 2,000 Palestinians and led to further deterioration in already poor living conditions for the over one million people living there. “Every day is a clear reminder that we are living in a part of the world that has been totally forgotten by the rest of humanity. We are living amid piles of trash, with poor sewage, poor health services, poor electricity services, and poor everything, and on top of it all we are not even getting our salaries paid fully on time,” said Nizar, a Palestinian civil servant who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly by telephone from Gaza. Nizar’s family had been suffering “enormously”, he said. “Everything is just so difficult: to get food for the children is difficult; to get medicine for any of them when they fall ill is very difficult; and we have no exit to hope for,” he lamented. Nizar blamed the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for “forcing so much hardship on the people” while trying to settle political scores with the Hamas leaders in Gaza by declining to pay civil servants their dues. This had compounded the “tormented suffering” of the Palestinians in Gaza who were already living under a harsh Israeli blockade, he said. This week, Israel allowed fuel into Gaza in a sign of its willingness to keep up with a truce that had been sponsored by Egypt. Israel is also negotiating with Qatar on its intention to build an industrial city in Gaza that would provide thousands of jobs for the largely unemployed population. “We hear so many things about plans to improve our living conditions, but what we actually see is very little, if anything at all,” Nizar said. The last thing that Nizar would wish to see is for Iran to come under attack and to call on its allies in Gaza, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to act in retaliation by targeting nearby Israeli villages. Israel is already building a 65km and six-metre high fence around Gaza and has been destroying any tunnels between Gaza and neighbouring areas to seal off the Strip. According to the Egyptian official, there is no telling what could happen if “things got out of hand in the current confrontation between the US and Iran and took a bad turn that included Gaza.” Egypt, the official said, knows very well that there are “cells here and there” that do not follow the orders of the Hamas leaders in Gaza or the leaders of Islamic Jihad. “This is why we have to worry; if Gaza is implicated, we absolutely have to worry. The Strip is on our direct border, and the last thing we want is a confrontation with huge humanitarian costs,” he said. Ahmed Youssef, a Hamas leader in Gaza, is convinced that “Gaza is too small and too dilapidated to be of any real significance in the Iran issue,” however. “We are just withering away here,” he said, lamenting the failure of the international community and the Arab world to help Gaza overcome the “horrific outcome of Israel’s last war on Gaza”. “The world is not going to reach out to Gaza now. The world is too busy discussing the ‘Deal of the Century’ [on Palestine] and is forgetting about the people of Gaza who are suffering on a daily basis,” Youssef said. A Washington-based diplomatic source said that all the plans relating to Trump’s vision for a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians that involved an economic package to improve the living conditions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank had been shelved. This was due to the failure of “even the most enthusiastic Arab capitals” to give the deal a push, as had been demonstrated in a meeting hosted by Bahrain last month, the continued ambiguity about the fate of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who is going through another round of elections while still facing legal charges over corruption, and the firm refusal of Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza to talk about a deal that offers the Palestinians no statehood and no repatriation of refugees. The most that Gaza could hope for now, Youssef said, was for Egypt to re-launch its reconciliation proposals between Hamas and the PA, “which will not be easy, as each side had points on which it would brook no compromise.” “There might be a resumption of the talks, and we may see an Egyptian delegation coming to Gaza and going to Israel later this month, but things are still being discussed,” he said. The other thing that Hamas might wish for, he added, was for Iran to escape from any military confrontation with the US because “clearly Iran has been able to arrange some political support for the Palestinians in Gaza, and a weaker Iran would not be in our interest.” A Cairo-based European diplomat argued that Hamas was not in a position to lose the support, “financial and not only political”, of Iran, even if the financial support “has been dwindling considerably over the past months”. According to the diplomat, Hamas is being denied other financial resources with the policy of Egypt to destroy all the tunnels with the Strip, the blockade that Israel is imposing on it, and the policies that the Arab Gulf countries have been taking against its citizens, including those of Palestinian origins, who had been finding ways of sending funds to Gaza. He added that the Hamas leaders were already losing their popularity in Gaza and the last thing they would wish for was for “an even more complicated situation.” Nobody wanted a crisis in Gaza with large humanitarian consequences. A de-escalation in the tension between the US and Iran might not be to the liking of some in the region, but it would spare the world, and certainly Egypt, from the consequences of an even more complicated situation in Gaza, he said. *A version of this article appears in print in the 11 July, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: All eyes on Gaza

Raising a single child is a challenge and a responsibility, so how much more so is educating and raising generations of young people? Egypt s young people are often energised enough to rock the world, but they can also be confronted by a reality that diverts them from realising their dreams, encouraging them to engage in social-media activities that can give them only false happiness. Engaging our young people in more constructive tasks is something that needs to be addressed differently.

Plastic is an alarming man-made catastrophe, and its abundant presence not only destroys the earth s environment and oceans but is also detrimental to humans. Halfway between Hawaii and California lies a mammoth garbage patch in which seven million tons of plastic waste have accumulated and spread.

The Conversation – There s no shortage of dire warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence these days. Modern prophets, such as physicist Stephen Hawking and investor Elon Musk, foretell the imminent decline of humanity. With the advent of artificial general intelligence and self-designed intelligent programs, new and more intelligent AI will appear, rapidly creating ever smarter machines that will, eventually, surpass us.

Of all the fake and even comical titles that the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group has used for itself, the designation of ousted president Mohamed Morsi as a “prophet” who was “assassinated” must be the most absurd. This designation was given by many Muslim Brotherhood activists, including the Yemeni Nobel Laureate Tawakol Kerman, who went so far as to use this designation to describe Morsi.

Around the world, hate is on the march. A menacing wave of intolerance and hate-based violence is targeting worshippers of many faiths across the globe. Sadly – and disturbingly – such vicious incidents are becoming all too familiar. In recent months, we have seen Jews murdered in synagogues, their gravestones defaced with swastikas; Muslims gunned down in mosques, their religious sites vandalized; Christians killed at prayer, their churches torched.

The Africa Cup of Nations kicked off in Egypt earlier this week. The circumstances under which the championship is being held are quite unusual, since it was originally destined for Cameroon. However, the latter country could not make the necessary preparations, which meant that the Confederation of African Football (CAF) asked for new bids to host the tournament, with Egypt and South Africa applying.

The death of ousted president Mohamed Morsi on 17 June from a heart attack during his on-going trial for espionage was met with a collective shrug in Egypt. Morsi died in the same month he and the Muslim Brotherhood faced mass protests that led to his removal from office. In June, six years ago, most of Egypt’s opposition figures — including former chief of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei — came out against Morsi. In an interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm in mid-June 2013, ElBaradei pleaded with Morsi to leave office peacefully. “Morsi lost the confidence of most Egyptians, and I urge him to do like Hosni Mubarak and leave office peacefully,” said ElBaradei. “If Morsi refuses to leave, I hope the army will intervene to support the will of the people and force him from power. It is the duty of the army to support the people’s aspirations.” Responding to the calls of opposition figures, and of the Tamarod campaign which collected 30 million signatures in favour of ousting Morsi, millions took to the streets on 30 June 2013 — the sixth anniversary of which will be marked on Sunday — demanding Egypt be rid not just of Morsi but the Muslim Brotherhood. Anti-Brotherhood protests continued for four days, with demonstrators threatening to storm the presidential palace and evict Morsi by force. On 3 July 2013, representatives from opposition forces, including ElBaradei, delegates from religious institutions, the Salafist Nour Party, civil society organisations, and army’s then chief, minister of defence Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, met to announce the removal of Morsi and the appointment of head of the Supreme Constitutional Court Adli Mansour as interim president. Morsi, like Mubarak in 2011, was placed under house arrest. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, forever obstinate and stubborn, refused to abandon power peacefully. They organised armed sit-ins in major squares in Cairo and Giza and threatened to use the terrorist Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis group in Sinai to spread violence across Egypt. Morsi was born in Al-Idwah, a village in the Nile delta government of Al-Sharqiya, on 20 August 1951. He graduated from Cairo University’s Faculty of Engineering (Department of Metallurgy) in 1975, after which he left for the United States to study material science at the University of Southern California. There is no reliable data on when he joined the Muslim Brotherhood. Tharwat Al-Kherbawi, a lawyer and historian who split from the Brotherhood over its dictatorial agenda, claimed in his book The Secret of the Temple, that Morsi joined the group while a student at Cairo University in the early 1970s. “At that time, late president Anwar Al-Sadat decided to release most of the Brotherhood’s officials and activists detained under president Gamal Abdel-Nasser since 1965. They moved quickly to spread in universities and mosques and recruit students,” wrote Al-Kherbawi. “Morsi was a voracious reader of Sayed Qotb, the leading Brotherhood ideologue who resurrected the ideology of Takfir and Hakimiya. The fact that Morsi was a hard-line Qotbist helped him rise quickly in the group, especially after the Qotbist wing took control of the Brotherhood in rigged internal elections in 2009.” In 1979 the 28-year-old Mohamed Morsi married Naglaa Mahmoud, a 17-year-old student. According to the Brotherhood-affiliated website Sebq, Mahmoud was a relative of Morsi. In an interview with Turkey’s Anatolia Agency in August 2014, Mahmoud said she met Hillary Clinton while she was living in the US with her husband. “We have a long friendship and it increased when my husband became the legitimate president of the country,” said Mahmoud. “The Muslim Sisterhood, the female off-shoot of the Brotherhood, had routine business dealings with the Clintons who always asked us for help on Middle East issues.” According to the World Bulletin, Morsi’s wife is also a friend with Saleha Abedin, the mother of Huma Abedin, a Muslim Students’ Association board member at George Washington University who started working for Hillary Clinton as an advisor in 1996. Until 2000, however, Morsi was little known. When parliamentary elections were held that year he was among 88 Muslim Brotherhood members who won seats. Subsequently the Brotherhood chose him as their parliamentary spokesman. “Morsi was a polite parliamentarian and at the time appeared to represent the voice of reason among the group’s MPs,” said Al-Kherbawi. “Yet his speeches and statements, on close examination, reveal him as a committed Qotbist.” Morsi lost his seat in 2005 when only 17 Brotherhood candidates were successful. The Brotherhood appointed him chief of its political bureau. When the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guidance Office elections were held in December and hardliners won against the reformist camp led by then deputy guide Mohamed Habib, he rose to greater prominence within the group. When protests erupted against Hosni Mubarak on 25 January 2011 Morsi was critical of the demonstrators. Abdel-Gelil Al-Sharnoubi, a journalist who was in charge of the Brotherhood’s official website, reported Morsi saying “the group can never join these boys who have decided to gather in Tahrir Square”. Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders were arrested on 28 January 2011, after security forces received intelligence that members of the group had met in Turkey with foreign agents, mainly from the CIA, where they were instructed to take part in what came to be known as “the Friday of Fury” on 29 January. According to later court hearings, extremists from Hamas in Gaza and Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis in Sinai used the chaos of 29 January to infiltrate Egypt’s borders and release Muslim Brotherhood prisoners. Morsi, in an interview with the Qatari Al-Jazeera TV channel aired on the evening of 29 January, claimed that citizens living near the Wadi Al-Natroun prison — on Cairo Alexandria desert road —demolished the prison buildings and set Brotherhood figures free. When Mubarak was ousted from office the Muslim Brotherhood became a major political force and Morsi its main negotiator. When the Freedom and Justice (FJ) party — the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood — was founded in June 2011, Morsi was named as its deputy head. Morsi said at the time that the party would not field candidates in every constituency “because the Brotherhood believes in political diversity”. Morsi, together with the Brotherhood’s supreme guide Mohamed Badie, also stressed that “the group does not intend to field a candidate in any presidential elections”. Despite the early reassurances, the FJ contested every seat, and ended with getting 235 seats. The party’s Islamist allies won 25 per cent of the remaining seats in the People’s Assembly. In the Shura Council elections, the FJ won 103 seats — 57.2 per cent of the total. Morsi did not stand in 2011’s parliamentary or Shura elections and after Mohamed Saad Al-Katatni was made speaker of parliament in January 2012, Morsi was appointed head of the FJ. But there were no plans for Morsi to stand as a presidential candidate. “Everything changed when John Kerry, the high-profile US senator who was at that time working as special representative for US president Barack Obama, visited Cairo in early December 2011,” says Al-Kherbawi. Kerry was the first among US congressmen who urged Mubarak to resign. In an article in The New York Times of 31 January, 2011 — six days after the uprising erupted, Kerry asked Mubarak to resign. “Kerry at that time — during the Obama and George W. Bush presidency, was one of several American officials arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood was a moderate group which America should support to achieve democracy and stability in the Middle East,” says Al-Kherbawi. In Morsi and the Seat Abdel-Moez Ibrahim, a member of the judiciary supervising the 2012 elections, wrote that “Kerry visited Cairo in December 2011 as an Obama envoy and held a closed-door meeting with leading Brotherhood officials at the group’s headquarters in Cairo’s Moqattam district.” “Kerry urged the Brotherhood to contest the presidential elections and promised the Obama administration would support them. Kerry’s only condition was that if the Brotherhood won the presidency it must respect Egypt’s foreign agreements, particularly the peace treaty with Israel,” Ibrahim wrote. In March 2012 the Brotherhood announced that it would field a presidential candidate. Its first choice was Khairat Al-Shater, the Brotherhood’s bank-roller. “Al-Shater was disqualified from running on a legal technicality. The group, now overwhelmed by ambition for power, decided to push Morsi as Al-Shater’s “spare tyre”, the Brotherhood’s accidental candidate. In the second round, in May 2012, Morsi was able to defeat former army general and prime minister Ahmed Shafik, winning 13.2 million votes to Shafik’s 12.3 million. Some sources said the Brotherhood spent as much as LE600 million to help Morsi succeed. Former US president Barack Obama was the first foreign leader to congratulate Morsi,” Ibrahim said. During his one-year rule Morsi moved quickly to implement the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda. “Although he promised to be a president for all Egyptians, his promises proved false,” said Ibrahim. Between July and November 2012 he issued a series of constitutional declarations that allowed him to legislate by decree without any judicial oversight or review. At the same time, a constituent assembly dominated by the Brotherhood and Islamist forces drafted what came to be known as the Kandahar constitution which placed Egypt on the road to becoming a theocratic, jihadist state. Having alienated judges, the intelligentsia, secular political forces and Copts, Morsi clashed with the army. In August 2012 he dismissed defence minister Hussein Tantawi and chief of staff Sami Anan. He also refused to attend the funeral of 16 soldiers killed by Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. The confrontation between the Muslim Brotherhood and civilian forces escalated. In December 2012 Brotherhood militias moved to disperse protesters who had gathered before Al-Ittihadiya palace, killing three. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal warned in a TV interview at the time that Egypt was moving towards a civil war. The Tamarod group was formed to gather signatures for a petition demanding Morsi’s removal. Political forces demanded Morsi dismiss prime minister Hisham Qandil and prosecutor-general Talaat Ibrahim and form a new constituent assembly to write a new constitution. At that time, minister of defence Al-Sisi called for a national dialogue. But Morsi, under orders from the Muslim Brotherhood leaders who were now Egypt’s de-facto rulers, refused. Al-Ahram political analyst Hassan Abu Taleb believes that in the 12 months in which Morsi was in power “people saw what Muslim Brotherhood rule and a theocratic state look like”. “Political Islam — as shown by the Morsi experience — was incompetent, polarising and stubborn. Morsi managed to alienate almost every sector of society outside the Brotherhood,” Abu Taleb said. *A version of this article appears in print in the 27 June, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: The road to 30 June

We killed you, the last of the prophets…” With these words, activist and Nobel Laureate Tawakkol Karman lamented the death of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. She may have not realised that this poem was written by poet Nizar Qabbani to lament former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who was known as one of the worst enemies of the Muslim Brotherhood. A moment of raw emotion is one of many positions which deserve a closer look, to understand the full impact of the death of Morsi. Various responses have surfaced in the wake of his death last week during a court session, responses which were influenced by the political position of each individual.

This café was legendary in every sense of the word. Perhaps it was the most famous café in history. In 1913 – just one year before World War I – Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler were sitting in this café in Vienna. In Café Central – according to the BBC – a number of twentieth-century makers were sitting sipping coffee. At the same time, Sigmund Freud and Leon Trotsky as well as Josef Tito were also sitting in the aforementioned café. Freud, at the time, was a famous psychoanalyst, Tito was a car engineer trying to make his way in life, while Hitler was a young man who was 24, living in students hostels and looking for work.

On 13 June, two tankers sailing through the Gulf of Oman came under attack, similar to a previous attack on four tankers in the same area a couple of weeks ago. The first attack was ascribed by senior US officials to Iran without conclusive evidence to this effect save that the attack must have been carried out by “a state actor”. As far as the two attacks of last Thursday are concerned, US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left no doubt that Iran was the state actor responsible for carrying out the two.

Attacks against Norwegian and Japanese oil tankers in the Gulf last week may mark a new chapter in the regional and international crisis that began with Washington s unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran and the re-imposition of its boycott and economic sanctions against Tehran. Judging by Iranian reactions to the new reality, we could summarise its strategy as follows. Firstly, if the confrontation between Iran and the United States forces a halt to Iranian oil exports then Iran will make sure that other parties cannot export their oil either.

As soon as news broke of the sudden death of ousted president Mohamed Morsi during a court hearing on 17 June, Brotherhood officials and activists in Europe, Turkey and some Gulf countries, as well as human rights organisations opposed to the Egyptian government, lashed out at Cairo for causing his death. The statements were many and diverse, but the common thread was that Morsi died as a result of the Egyptian authorities’ neglect of his medical condition during his years in jail. Some even demanded an international investigation into the causes of his death. Morsi had already been found guilty in two of the cases against him and sentenced to life. The Brotherhood and its supporters now want to capitalise on the opportunity to internationalise the cause of his death. Experts agree that the group’s latest actions conform to its long-standing habit of “manufacturing victimhood”. It is a habit that began following the assassination of the group’s founder Hassan Al-Banna in circumstances that still remain a mystery. According to one narrative, the Brotherhood’s “Special Apparatus”, as its paramilitary wing was called, was involved in the assassination following a quarrel between Al-Banna and Abdel-Rahman Al-Sanadi, commander of the paramilitary wing, over the latter’s role in the assassination of judge Ahmed Al-Khazindar. Mokhtar Nouh, a lawyer and former Muslim Brotherhood member, points out that there was nothing suspicious about Morsi’s death. He collapsed in full view of the courtroom after he had been on his feet addressing the court as a co-defendant in the case pertaining to espionage charges involving the Palestinian Hamas organisation. The prosecutor-general’s office immediately took all the measures necessary to put paid to any doubts and issued a detailed report. A member of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), speaking on condition of anonymity, said that, contrary to rumours put about by the Brotherhood, Morsi had no problem accessing medical treatment and was in fact given special attention. The EOHR member added that it was in no one’s interest to neglect Morsi’s health. Nouh stresses the Brotherhood had consistently refused to appeal to the government or to President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi for an amnesty on grounds of ill health because the organisation refuses to recognise the post-30 June 2013 political order. Lawyer Amr Abdel-Salam offered testimony to the medical attention accorded to Morsi. Citing General Ihab Abul-Kheir, the former assistant to the interior minister who oversaw Morsi’s medical treatment, Abdel-Salam said, “Morsi received comprehensive health and medical care during his detention at the hands of leading practitioners in all medical disciplines. Contrary to rumours, he was never deprived of medication. In fact, two officers were assigned to oversee his medical needs in order to preserve his health.” The Brotherhood’s victimhood discourse builds on four components. One is the politicised statements of condolences by foreign officials, especially the heads-of-state of countries hostile to Egypt such as Qatar and Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quick to charge his rhetoric with terms as the “martyr Morsi” and the “martyred president”. The second involves commentaries by human rights organisations, most echoing the Brotherhood’s narrative that Morsi died as a result of medical neglect for which the Egyptian government is responsible. One of the organisations involved is the Committee for Justice, a Geneva-based operation run by the Muslim Brotherhood. Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) tow the same line and have echoed calls for an international investigation into the causes of Morsi’s death and the conditions prevalent in Egyptian prisons. Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) responded to tweets by Sarah Whitson, executive director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division, by saying her feeble claims confirm HRW’s intent to continue to circulate falsehoods. “It is amazing that Whitson posted her first tweet less than half an hour after the announcement of Morsi’s death. In that tweet she concluded that he had died as a result of medical negligence without offering a shred of evidence to back her claim,” said SIS. It added that the only authoritative information was to be found in the report released by the Egyptian prosecutor-general’s office which contained initial findings into the cause of death and added that it would supply further details after an autopsy had been conducted. The report, which refuted Whitson’s claims, confirms “that her conclusions are nothing less than a tendentious attempt to precede events for political motives and that HRW has stooped to yet another level of baseness by exploiting the death of an Egyptian citizen to espouse political positions and criminal allegations without proof. Such behaviour has nothing to do with rights advocacy,” insisted SIS. The third component of the victimhood discourse is the propaganda campaign launched through social media platforms using hashtags such as “martyred president”. The fourth is mobilisation through funeral rites. Funerals have long served as chapter headings in the Brotherhood’s narrative of victimhood. In this case, the group sees funeral and commemorative activities for Morsi as a means to re-establish its presence in the street and demonstrate that the organisation is still alive in Egypt. Some analysts predict that the “Special Apparatus”, currently headed by Mahmoud Ezzat, will plot to avenge Morsi. They say such a scenario is consistent with Ezzat’s ideas expressed, for example, in his first communiqué to followers as acting supreme guide and in his book The Jurisprudence of Popular Resistance to the Coup. The book, circulated among the group’s rank and file, condemns the Egyptian government, its security establishment and, indeed, Egyptian society, as heretic, and calls for armed resistance. It has served as the group’s ideological rationale for acts such as the assassination attempt against the Egyptian prosecutor-general Hisham Barakat and the murder of police and army officers. Ezzat’s book, which he signed using the moniker Papa Mahmoud, has become an ideological frame of reference for Brotherhood militant activity today, much as works by Sayed Qotb, such as Signposts on the Road, set the compass for Islamist violence in the 1960s. Investigations have also revealed that the Brotherhood has circulated among its members in prison documents that furnish a theological rationale for condemning the Egyptian government as heretic. One of these is a study by Abdel-Rahman Al-Barr, known as the Brotherhood mufti, which cites Sheikh Mohamed Al-Ghazali’s commentary on the assassination of the Egyptian intellectual Farag Foda by Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya. In Al-Ghazali’s opinion it was not Foda’s execution that was wrong but the fact that it was carried out by an agency other than the ruler (ie, the government). Al-Barr argued that since the ruler was unlawful and would not issue a judgement against himself, it was legitimate to fight him. Maher Farghali, a specialist in Islamist groups, argues that Morsi’s death serves the interests of the hardliners in the group who will try to use it to promote antagonism towards the Egyptian government and as a means to mend rifts in the organisation in favour of the hardliners and their appeal for vengeance. Farghali adds that the Brotherhood, when acting out its victimhood discourse, generally turns to violence rather than taking a step back for introspection. *A version of this article appears in print in the 20 June, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Playing victim

North Africa has been an arena for rivalry between the Islamic State group (IS) and its affiliates and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its affiliates for many years. In the period prior to its military defeats in Syria and Iraq, IS influence in North Africa increased considerably and many factions of Al-Qaeda affiliated groups in North Africa shifted their allegiances to it.

It has become apparent that the United States will fight the rise of China over the next decade using economic warfare and sanctions, and as a result the resourceful Chinese have been taking steps to fight back in this war by allying themselves with US rival Russia. The latest visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Russia in May and his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin represents a major step forward in the two countries relations.

Recent attacks on shipping, including oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, and missile attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels directed at targets inside Saudi Arabia are ratcheting up tensions in the Middle East. At the same time, Iran is promising to restart elements of its nuclear program. Add to this the deployment last month of a significant US military force to the region to counter Iran and you get a combustible mix that could be the spark for a wider regional war arising out of the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia -- unless steps are taken to lower the tension.

Elections make for strange bedfellows in Iraq s self-ruled Kurdish region, and when they are over power struggles among the victors begin. This has been the case since the breakaway northern Iraqi enclave held its first ballot in 1994. On 10 June, Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), was sworn in as the region s newly elected president, succeeding his uncle Masoud Barzani who quit after the failure of an independence referendum in 2017.