Supporters of Egyptian coup may think twice in the future.
Egypt’s latest military coup brings back eerie memories of the one Argentina suffered in 1976. At the time, much of the citizenry welcomed the return to power of the men in uniform. That was understandable: the economy was in free fall, terrorists of one kind or another were running amok and there seemed little the government of Juan Domingo Perón’s widow, Isabelita, could do to stop the rot. Unlike the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Egyptians who celebrated the coup by dancing in the street, setting off fireworks and telling curious Westerners that, thanks to the Army, they have got their “revolution” back, Argentines took things calmly, but several years would go by before a significant number started having second thoughts. Human rights? They only came into fashion after the military disgraced themselves by losing a war.
In the mid-seventies, Argentina was deeply troubled, but the problems it faced were minor in comparison with those currently confronting Egypt. Annoying as many Peronists no doubt were, they were nothing like the Muslem Brothers or their even more extreme Salafist allies, puritans who want everyone to submit to their rigorous variant of Islam and were, and presumably still are, furious with the deposed president Mohammed Morsi because he failed to embark on a holy war against Israel.
Egypt is also plunging into an economic crisis that will make anything Argentina has experienced look like a barely perceptible blip. It is fast running out of the money it needs to feed an already hungry population. Will the US, the European Union, the IMF or some charitable Muslem sheikhdom give it some in exchange for a promise to restore “democracy” double quick? Even if they do, they would find it hard to come up with enough and, in any event, after a few months of military rule the huge numbers of pious and illiterate peasants who make up the majority would vote once again for the Islamists.
For decades, Argentina had to deal with the unfortunate fact that most people favoured a movement that was not really that democratic. Luckily for everyone, Peronism evolved; by Middle Eastern standards, Cristina is a fervent believer in the rule of law who respects her critics’ views and would never dream of doing anything untoward. The same cannot be said of many popular politicians in Muslem countries, where genuine democrats tend to belong to a small Westernized elite. When the “Arab spring” got under way, it was widely hoped that at long last Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and the rest would follow the route taken a generation before by the many Latin American countries that threw off military rule to become passably democratic, but though elections were held, most of the winners turned out to be every bit as authoritarian as their predecessors.
Optimists take heart from the rapid transformation into democracies of Spain, Portugal and Greece, a process that was made easier by dangling in front of them the prospect of joining the European Economic Community, as the European Union was then known. Some think Turkey should be offered the same chance but, though British politicians say they think that would be a splendid idea, few others would be prepared to let a country that, as is frequently pointed out, is just too big, too poor and too Muslem, be a member of their club.
Well-wishers often attribute the resurgence of Islamic fanaticism to poverty and inequality aggravated by the sins of European and, more recently, North American imperialists, plus the existence of a startlingly successful and militarily powerful Jewish State. That is true enough; awareness that all Muslem countries, unless they have plenty of oil or are blessed with a large Chinese minority, have fallen far behind the rest of the world has certainly led many to cling, as Barack Obama once said of embittered rednecks in the US, “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them”.
But while in developed countries such disgruntled individuals may express their sentiments by voting for candidates they assume share their feelings without expecting them to do anything much, in others they turn to the local equivalent of the Fascist movements that all but destroyed Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. That was why the Moslem Brothers and the Salafists did so well in Egypt’s elections barely a year ago and why, in other parts of the region, people with similar views easily shouldered aside the savvy youngsters whose protests helped bring down one non-elected dictator after another.
Turkey has enjoyed a long economic boom, but that has not been enough to reconcile the free spirits who have been staging demos in many cities with the government’s heavy-handed Islamist agenda. In Arab countries, among them Egypt, the economy is most unlikely to help whoever is in power. For the pious who insist that a bigger dose of religion is the only answer to their many woes, that may be good news. For the people who have been whooping it up in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and especially for the Coptic Christians who have good reason to fear the holy warriors’ wrath, it is anything but. Like Argentina’s military chiefs in 1976, Egypt’s would have been well advised to let the elected government stay in power so there would be no doubt as to who bears the responsibility for the disaster that is looming. Instead, for plausible reasons, they decided to move in, thereby making Egypt’s unfolding tragedy their very own.