Riding a hungry tiger
Less than one year after the Egyptian army which refrained from fighting for deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak, indirectly supported the Tahrir revolution, and later directly supported the demonstrators finds itself killing these very protesters. Beating, shooting and abusing them as though they've entirely forgotten the initial cry of the Facebook revolution: "The army is us."
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The killing perpetrated by the Egyptian army comes nowhere near that of the Syrian army, currently massacring the Syrian people, but it is nonetheless surprising considering the background of the Egyptian revolution. The killing is an expression of mutual disappointment. The further the election process advances, and the more traction the religious Muslim parties gain, the more the army understands that the clash is inevitable. It erupts almost spontaneously, without either side instigating it and this clash is certainly not what head of the military council Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi had in mind. It stands to reason that U.S. President Barack Obama now realizes his support of Mubarak's ouster was misguided, and the same realization is now dawning on the Egyptian army.
But who are the Egyptian protesters who have returned with a vengeance to the square? They are the disillusioned, not necessarily members of the Muslim Brotherhood (though that group is certainly represented among them). The Islamists among them wish to restore order so that no one especially the generals will have an excuse not to implement the results of the parliamentary elections. Their bloc be it radicals or independents has gained some 70 percent of the votes so far, and they do not want to jeopardize this majority.
To some extent, the army and the Muslim Brotherhood share one goal: to restore order. There is some degree of cooperation between them, even though the generals will soon find that they are riding a tiger, and the tiger is getting hungry. A confrontation is inevitable. On one side is the army, which seeks to preserve Egypt's relationship with the West and its accompanying lifeline of aid, and on the other side are the Islamists, who wish to impose, with some degree of coercion, a strict regime of Shariah law on the country, which will isolate Egypt and thrust it into a financial crisis. Faced with economic distress, the Muslim Brotherhood will offer solutions not based on economic progress or social reform but rather a welfare system integrated with their mosques.
Eventually, either one side will overpower the other or some compromise will be reached in terms of the scope of the future president's authority and the military's future role in ruling the country. Either way, the army will not regain the power it acquired in the 1952 Egyptian Revolution. Egypt's current state is so desperate that it appears neither side can save it.
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