UAE and the Plan to Counter Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
On March 1st, 2015, David Kilpatrick of the New York Times reported on some secret recordings of Egyptian military leaders that have recently been released. According to the recordings (which Kilpatrick points out that they are yet to be verified), they “appear to indicate that both the Egyptian military and its backers in the Emirates played a much more active role in fomenting the protests against Mr. Morsi in June 2013 than either party has acknowledged.” This is important since “President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was then the defense minister, said when he led the ouster of Mr. Morsi that he was acting in response to the protests” (Kilkpatrick, 2015).
Also in the recordings (as written in Kilpatrick’s piece (2015)),
“They appear to record Gen. Abbas Kamel, Mr. Sisi’s office manager and top aide, speaking by telephone with Gen. Sedky Sobhy, who was then the military chief of staff and is now defense minister.
They appear to be discussing a bank account controlled by senior defense officials that had been used by Tamarod, a movement that called for protests on June 30, 2013, to demand an early end to Mr. Morsi’s presidency.
“Sir, we will need 200 tomorrow from Tamarod’s account — you know, the part from the U.A.E., which they transferred,” General Kamel appears to tell General Sobhy in the recording.
General Sobhy’s side of the conversation is not heard. But he apparently brought up the Egyptian intelligence services, or mukhabarat.
“What do you mean by mukhabarat, sir? The mukhabarat guys?” General Kamel appears to say. “Do you remember the account that came for Tamarod?”
He then apparently says to General Sobhy, “We will need only 200 from it — yes, 200,000.” If that sum was in Egyptian pounds, it would have been equivalent to about $30,000 at the time.”
And while the el-Sisi government is calling the recordings fake, many others in Egypt believe that they are real. Of course it will be critical for these recordings to be verified.
If these recordings are true, they further confirm the belief that many had that el-Sisi was looking to get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Egypt. But the recordings seem to also show the actions of some actors from the UAE, who may have had an in interest in the affairs of Egypt. It will be interesting to see whether those in the UAE are tied to the state regime, as they, along with Saudi Arabia, have been critical of Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Again, if true, this is just another confirmation that el-Sisi was not looking to work through legitimate elections to obtain power in Egypt, but rather, was willing to use non-electoral means for his power. Again, this is not to say that Mursi was acting as a liberal democratic (in the sense of liberal and illiberal democracy), but there is belief that if open and transparent elections were held, and Mursi (and others could have run), that he and the Muslim Brotherhood would have faced serious challenge. Egyptians were upset with the lack of progress of the government in post-revolutionary Egypt. But, with el-Sisi’s actions, and following actions against the Muslim Brotherhood (and other challengers of the regime), the hope for a democratic Egypt anytime in the near future seems slim.
