Inside Egypt's Killer Coup: The Inconvenient Evidence

By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News

02 August 13

ithout specifically naming the Egyptian military, the Obama White House has condemned the crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood protestors in Cairo and Alexandria and has halted shipment to Egypt of four F-16 fighter jets. That is the good news. The bad news is that, for all the wide-eyed celebration of a pro-democratic popular uprising in Egypt, the military has charged the ousted president with espionage and sidelined "the democrats" to little more than cheerleaders for Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has put himself at the center of an extravagant cult of personality.

"In dark sunglasses and a uniform studded with medals, Egypt's top general is everywhere, looking down from posters and banners proclaiming him 'lion of the nation,'" wrote the Associated Press. "Adoring songs vow 'We are behind you.'"

Al-Sisi's bloody attacks against ousted president Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood have greatly embarrassed civilian supporters of the coup, like Nobel prize-winner Mohamed ElBaradei. Though nominally the new government's interim vice president for foreign affairs, he has condemned the "excessive use of force" and - without blaming the military - has called on all factions to denounce violence. Similar calls have come from leaders of Tamarod and the allied April 6th Youth Movement, the groups that led the protests against Morsi, the country's first elected president. Tamarod has also called for branding the Muslim Brotherhood as "a terrorist organization."

According to Human Rights Watch, the generally nonviolent pro-Morsi forces have taken huge casualties from the military and its supporters, who have been shooting their victims in the head and chest. But the Brotherhood and other Muslim allies remain in the streets demanding Morsi's reinstatement. True to their principles, they refuse to give in to direct threats from the military or impassioned entreaties to accept the coup from the European Union's Catherine Ashton.

"Regardless of what happens to the president, we will continue our protest. Our numbers are increasing every day. Citizens are recognizing the tyranny and the long-term danger of the military coup," said Brotherhood spokesman Gehad el-Haddad. "It may take weeks, months, more than a year - we will still hold our ground."

Even more embarrassing - for Obama as well as the Egyptian liberals - is a brief review of the historical evidence of how the coup came about. Please forgive the clutter of Internet links, but several readers have asked for more documentation.

Start with a prescient article in Foreign Policy magazine on April 6, 2012. It is called "Finish What You Start," and was written by Srdja Popovic, one of the leaders of Otpor, the Serbian student movement that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic, and Robert Helvey, a former top official in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and later president of the nonviolent Albert Einstein Institution. In March 2000, Col. Helvey taught Popovic and some 20 other Otpor militants how to create a nonviolent revolution against the Serbian strongman, with ample funding, supplies, and backup from Uncle Sam. Popovic went on to co-found the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS, which famously taught several young Egyptians how to bring down Hosni Mubarak.

"In Egypt, the success of 19 days of 'nonviolent blitzkrieg' that toppled Mubarak gave way to an interregnum dominated by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF)," wrote Popovic and Helvey by way of follow-up. "The moving forces behind Mubarak's downfall last winter - secular youth groups - have been relegated to the margins."

Popovic and Helvey's solution was to continue direct nonviolent action and keep the newly elected government "under public pressure and accountable from day one."

One year later, in April 2013, a group of young Egyptians organized themselves as Tamarod and began a classic CANVAS-style campaign to "foment rebellion" against Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood. As I documented in a previous column with WikiLeaked emails from the private intelligence group Stratfor, CANVAS is "still hooked into the U.S. funding and basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like)."

The Stratfor emails also showed Washington's ties to another famous group that trained Egyptians to overthrow Mubarak and then Morsi. This was Google and, in particular, the head of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, who helped train digital activists of the April 6th Youth Movement.

The emails made two points about Egypt's "facebook revolution" that Internet romanticists tend to overlook. The Egyptian military "got exactly what they wanted," wrote Stratfor's CEO, George Friedman. "They got rid of Mubarak and held on to power. The demonstrations were a tremendous help to them in achieving their goals." Another Stratfor exec - former State Department security official Fred Burton - stressed the importance of the White House hand in training Egypt's would-be revolutionaries. "Cohen's rabbi" was Google's billionaire boss and "Obama lackey" Eric Schmidt, wrote Burton, drawing on his Google sources. Google had "White House and State Department support and air cover. In reality, they are doing things the CIA cannot do."

Thanks to WikiLeaks, the Stratfor emails add to the picture of Obama's preference for covert action that David Sanger presents in "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power." As Sanger makes clear, neither Obama nor the CIA expected the training efforts to bring down Mubarak. But, with the movement against Morsi, Washington had a much clearer view. Accepting support from former Mubarak backers, the leaders of Tamarod openly called for the military to step in. Some, like ElBaradei, saw no alternative. Others, like Mahmoud Badr, one of the founders, went overboard in repeatedly praising the military and still does even after the violence. "We salute the Army! We salute them!" he proclaimed on TV right after Gen. al-Sisi gave Morsi 48 hours to calm the crisis that Tamarod had created. "They have shown that they are with the people."

"The military helped Tamarod from early on, communicating with it through third parties," reported the Associated Press. The Egyptian military also communicated regularly with Washington, expressing their unhappiness with Morsi in May and June of 2013. Obama made no public change in his policy of getting along with Morsi, but no later than Monday, July 1, he urged Morsi to give in to the demand from Tamarod and the military that he step down.

Between Washington's support for the training of Tamarod and the April 6th Youth Movement and Obama's direct participation in the final days, I think it fair to speak of Obama's coup, just as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger will forever own Gen. Pinochet's coup against Salvador Allende in Chile. But whether or not others agree with my characterization, the question now is whether Obama can step out of the shadows long enough to work with his Republican adversaries, European allies, and sensible Egyptians to limit the human disaster that is already under way.

A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How To Break Their Hold."

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