- Egypt’s revolution has shown clear fault lines in society, says H.A. Hellyer
- Muslim Brotherhood gained impressive support, and squandered it almost as quickly
- Hellyer: Military remains popular, despite civil rights violations in Egypt’s “War on Terror”
- Pro-revolution activists and rights campaigners on the margins, three years on
Editor’s note: H.A. Hellyer is a non resident fellow in Foreign Policy at the DC-based think tank Brookings Institution and the Royal United Services Institution in London. An ISPU Fellow, you can follow him on Twitter: @hahellyer
(CNN) — I was in Cairo three years ago when the revolution began. I had not thought the January 25th protests would lead to very much. But they did.
Three years later, Egypt greets the dawn of the anniversary with bombs, police violence, and nihilism.
The revolution has become a struggle in a way no one dreamed at the time. It seems to be almost a revolutionary act to simply reject despair. In this despondent phase of the Egyptian tale, there are very few good guys, far too many bad guys, and a plethora of ugly guys.
On the 25th of January three years ago, the divisions in the population were more or less clear. The ‘bad guy’ was the regime of Hosni Mubarak, with all that implied. The corruption, police brutality, and overall degradation of human dignity in Egyptian society were clearly associated with his office.
Certainly, there were sections of the population that supported him — in the aftermath of the uprising, 79% of Egyptians said they supported the protests that led to Mubarak’s departure. That left a sizeable minority which was uncertain of or opposed the protests.
At the outset of the uprising, most Egyptians were unwilling to throw their weight behind the protests — but they did not support Mubarak. They just did not see much of an alternative.
Today, the divisions are far more complicated. That 79% has become fragmented in ways that few predicted.
Those that backed the Islamist forces of the Muslim Brotherhood would feel great pride as confidence in its political party went from 15% in the aftermath of the uprising, to a high of 67% a year later. But they would also feel great disappointment: just prior to the June 30th ouster of Mohamed Morsy, Gallup polls and others showed the political force of the Muslim Brotherhood had lost most of its post-uprising popular support over its year in power.
They are now designated as a terrorist organisation by the military backed interim government, albeit without conclusive public proof linking the group to terrorist attacks (a separate terrorist movement, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, has claimed responsibility).
The Brotherhood’s political strategy has gone from trying to enforce authority over the state from within, to engaging in continuous protests against it from without.
Since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the military establishment has been the single most popular institution in the country. Popular conscription means that members of most Egyptian families have served in it; the educational system glorifies it, and most media in the country over the past three years has been at best lukewarm in its criticism of it.
At its height over the past three years before Morsy’s ouster, public confidence in the military was anything
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