Mass protests, clashes continue as Egyptian army fails to name
governmentBy Alex Lantier
8 July 2013

Mass protests continue across Egypt in the wake of Wednesday’s US-backed
military coup against Islamist President Mohamed Mursi. While it persists
in the crackdown on Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the military junta has
failed to assemble a civilian puppet government amid conflicts over posts
with those Islamist parties that back the coup.

Weekend protests followed on from the violent clashes that took place
throughout Egypt on Friday, in which at least 36 people were killed and
over 1,400 wounded. On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of anti-Mursi
protesters poured into downtown Cairo’s Tahrir Square, while several
thousand MB supporters blocked the Salah Salem Road in Heliopolis, a Cairo
suburb, to protest the coup.

Protests and clashes also continued in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest
city. A widely circulated YouTube
video<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmjFNvb3sQU>posted on Saturday
showed what were believed to be Islamist supporters
throwing two young men off a building in Alexandria. Clashes also occurred
in Mansoura and Tanta, Egypt’s eighth and tenth largest cities, between
pro-and anti-Mursi protesters.

There were mounting signs of armed resistance to the coup by Islamist
forces, threatening to tip Egypt into civil war. Gama’a Islamiyah, a
far-right Islamist party that has carried out terrorist attacks inside
Egypt, yesterday called for the removal of newly-installed President Adly
Mansour.

Egyptian Islamists are reportedly founding a domestic branch of Ansar
al-Sharia, a militia in neighboring Libya, to organize armed resistance to
the Egyptian junta. Ansar al-Sharia fought against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi
in the 2011 NATO-led war in Libya; it subsequently was suspected of
organizing the September 2012 attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi.

Fighting also continued in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, a center of Islamist
support. Four army checkpoints were attacked and a pipeline carrying gas to
Jordan was bombed on Saturday, and fears of sectarian bloodshed intensified
after Coptic Christian priest Mina Aboud Sharween was shot dead.

Yesterday the Sinai-based Salafi Jihadi group issued a statement saying
that the Sinai was affected by “current events ravaging the country.” It
threatened attacks on “repressive practices” by Egyptian army and police
forces.

The ongoing protests and the toppling of Mursi are the outcome in large
measure of a powerful wave of working class struggles that has grown and
shaken Egypt over the last year, reprising the powerful strike wave that
led to the ouster of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

Last year saw 3,817 labor strikes and protests over economic demands, the
vast majority (71 percent) of which occurred after Mursi’s election at the
end of June 2012, according to recent studies by Egypt’s International
Development Center.

The trend accelerated this year: in the first five months of 2013 alone
Egypt experienced 5,544 strikes and related demonstrations. While some were
briefly noted in major Western media—like the February Sokhna port workers’
strike for permanent jobs, or the April railway strike—the vast majority of
these struggles go completely unreported.

As opposition to Mursi built up in the working class, powerful sections of
the US foreign policy establishment and the Egyptian ruling class concluded
that the Islamist president had to go. The Egyptian army—working in close
coordination with the Pentagon, which funds the country’s military to the
tune of $1.3 billion per year—ousted Mursi, placing him under house arrest
and issuing arrest warrants for hundreds of MB leaders.

While the ouster of Mursi was broadly popular in Egypt, the junta that has
taken its place is an army-run regime aligned with US foreign policy and
the interest of the banks. While the coup organizers’ initial target is the
MB, their aim is to end the ferment in the working class, slash state
subsidies that keep fuel and grain prices affordable for Egypt’s
impoverished population, and crush popular opposition to Washington’s
Middle East wars.

The goals that drove the population into struggle against Mursi cannot be
achieved by supporting this regime, but only by unifying workers in
struggle against US imperialism and its capitalist allies in the Middle
East.

The clearest sign of the reactionary character of the army coup is that it
has Washington’s support. The Obama administration has refrained from
labeling it a coup, which might trigger a cut-off in US financial aid to
the Egyptian military. On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke
to Egyptian Defense Minister General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the leader of
the junta, calling for al-Sisi to arrange a peaceful political “transition”
in Egypt.

This appeal was echoed by Sen. Robert Menendez, Democrat from New Jersey
and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who called for
the junta to organize elections: “We have to make sure the military gets a
very clear message that we want to see a transition to civilian government
as quickly as possible. I think we have to get a process in which we urge
all the parties to participate together, that we come to an election as
soon as possible.”

After repeated announcements that the army would name National Salvation
Front (NSF) leader Mohamed ElBaradei prime minister, Egypt’s state-run
daily *Al Ahram* reported that there had been no successful conclusion to
talks on forming a government. Instead, General Authority for Investment
official Ziad Bahaa El Din had been offered the position. ElBaradei is now
being considered for the vice presidency instead.

El Din, a founding member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, said the
decision was “neither final nor official.”

ElBaradei’s decision to seek a position with the junta itself has exposed
the cynicism of his political maneuvers. During last year’s Egyptian
presidential election, ElBaradei declared he would not run after seeing his
poor projected poll results and criticized the army for not carrying out
the election under better conditions: “My conscience does not permit me to
run for the presidency or any other official position unless it is within a
democratic framework.”

Now, ElBaradei’s “conscience” is encouraging him to seek various positions
in a government assembled on the basis of a naked military coup. His role
would be to draw on his experience as a former UN official to secure
recognition for the army regime and loans from the International Monetary
Fund, which would be used to boost investment in Egypt in exchange for deep
cuts to social spending to balance that nation’s budget.

Israeli daily *Ha’aretz* noted that “his [ElBaradei’s] high international
profile and diplomatic experience will be very helpful to the new regime in
its attempts to convince the world that deposing President Mohamed Mursi
and the Muslim Brotherhood was a popular revolution and not a coup. This
recognition is crucial if Egypt wants to maintain American military
assistance and re-apply for loans from the International Monetary Fund.”

Resistance to ElBaradei’s nomination came primarily from the Salafist Nour
Party, which the army has sought to maintain as part of its coalition in
order to prevent Salafist groups from moving into armed struggle against
the junta. The party’s presence in the army coalition is further evidence
of the reactionary character of the coup.

Nour Party vice-chairman Bassem El Zaraka announced his party’s opposition
to ElBaradei on Al-Hayat TV: “ElBaradei has a vision of a secular state
that does not go along with the Nour Party.”



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more articles » <http://www.wsws.org/en/>


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