By Erin Cunngingham, GlobalPost
Editor’s note: The following text is from Global Post, which provides views — important, moving or just odd — from around the world. The views expressed are solely those of the author.
Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s new president, appears to be taking a page from Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s old strongman. A court remanded the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper Thursday on charges of “insulting the president” in a move Egyptian journalists say is pitting Morsi’s government against Egypt’s free press in a way that is reminiscent of the authoritarian regime protesters ousted last year.
Late Thursday, Morsi issued a law that protects journalists from temporary detention while they await trial. But the charges still stand.
By Steven Cook, CFR
Editor’s note: Steven A. Cook is the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This entry of From the Potomac to the Euphrates originally appeared here. The views expressed are those of the author.
It’s fair to say that Egypt continues to be interesting. Yesterday, President Mohamed Morsi announced the retirements of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and Lieutenant General Sami Anan, which comes just a few days after he sacked Egypt’s intelligence chief, the governor of North Sinai, and the head of the Military Police. What’s happening here? Speculation is rampant. Was Morsi’s shake-up the result of plotting within the military’s own ranks, revealing a much-rumored split within the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces? Does kicking Tantawi and Anan upstairs – they will both serve as advisors to the president – constitute a Muslim Brotherhood coup? Both scenarios are possible, but it’s more likely that Morsi is doing precisely what he seems to be doing: consolidating his power.
By Isobel Coleman, CFR
Isobel Coleman is a senior fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy and director of the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. This entry of Democracy in Development originally appeared here. The views expressed are her own.
Global food prices are spiking upwards because of widespread drought in the U.S., the breadbasket of the world. Nearly 80 percent of the country’s corn crops and over 11 percent of its soybean crops – which are major exports for the U.S. and an important source of animal feed – have been affected. Last month, soybean and corn prices were at record-breaking highs. Poor weather conditions in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine are also inflating global wheat prices; these countries typically produce around one-quarter of the world’s wheat exports. The U.S. itself exports more wheat, corn, and soybeans than any other country.
By Steven Cook, CFR
Editor’s note: Steven A. Cook is the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This entry of From the Potomac to the Euphrates originally appeared here. The views expressed are those of the author.
Longtime observers of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – both friendly and unfriendly – will attest to her intelligence, sense of humor, and unfailing grace. So it was a few weeks ago upon her arrival in Israel that she said she wasn’t offended by the way she was received during her visit to Egypt on July 14 and 15, saying that she only regretted “the wasted tomatoes.” The secretary of state was, of course, referring to the tomatoes that some Egyptians used to rain down on her motorcade when she arrived in Alexandria to open the new consulate in Egypt’s second city. Clinton’s quip deflected what was decidedly not an exemplar of Egyptians’ famous hospitality and downplayed the secretary’s curious visit to Egypt.
Arriving in Egypt during Clinton’s visit was like being transported into an alternate universe where reason and logic were either suspended or turned on their head. Everywhere I went, everyone with whom I spoke – with some notable exceptions – wanted to know why the United States, and specifically the secretary of state, supported the Muslim Brotherhood.
By Elliott Abrams, CFR
Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. The views expressed are solely those of the author. This entry of Pressure Points originally appeared here.
From the moment when Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 while the West Bank remained under the control of the Fatah Party and the Palestinian Authority, the question of Gaza’s relationship to Egypt has been open.
Gaza was under Egyptian control from 1948 to 1967, under Israeli control from 1967 to 2005, and under Palestinian Authority control from 2005 to 2007. After the Hamas coup in June 2007, Egypt under Mubarak largely retained the border controls that Israel had put in place. Mubarak viewed Hamas with suspicion, as a radical group that was part of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Perhaps more surprisingly, Egypt’s new government, itself dominated by the MB, has continued those controls.
Editor's note: Ofer Zalzberg is a Jerusalem-based senior analyst for Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group. The views expressed are solely those of the writer.
By Ofer Zalzberg, Special to CNN
Newly elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy’s call to “update” the Israel-Egypt peace agreement has stirred apprehension in Jerusalem. True, Morsy and other Brotherhood leaders have declared repeatedly that they will respect past agreements and that their focus is the treaty’s military annex. It’s also true that this position was embraced by nearly all other presidential candidates; with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict such a visceral issue, the treaty isn’t likely to disappear from public debate. But long standing Israeli fears about the Brotherhood and its fraternal relationship with Hamas have provoked skepticism among Israelis about Morsy’s intentions in general and altering the annex in particular.
The 1979 treaty imposed limitations on the Egyptian military presence in the Sinai Peninsula in order to restore Egyptian sovereignty without sacrificing Israel’s strategic depth. Today, Cairo argues that formula has turned what was intended to be a buffer zone into a region of lawless mayhem; only the permanent stationing of additional Egyptian military forces, Egypt claims to Israeli interlocutors, will reverse the trend.
Watch "Fareed Zakaria GPS" Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET.
On "Fareed Zakaria GPS" this week: How to shift Moscow from being part of the problem to part of the solution in Syria; a smart discussion on Obamacare and the economy, with Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jeff Sachs and more; and India's huge project to fingerprint 1.2 billion people.
Also: What's next in Egypt? Tarek Masoud, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Steven Cook, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, weigh in on how Egypt's president-elect Mohamed Morsi will jostle for power with the military.
Watch more in the video above and from this excerpt from the show: FULL POST
Editor’s note: Khairi Abaza is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and he is also a former senior official in Egypt’s secular liberal Wafd party. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Khairi Abaza.
By Khairi Abaza, Special to CNN
Egypt’s historic presidential election will not settle the future of the country in one fell swoop, but it traces the contours of a new regime in which the key political actors may ultimately be forced to compromise with one another.
Though Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi was named president-elect Sunday, in a sense it doesn't matter whether he won or lost the runoff to Ahmed Shafiq, who served as prime minister in former dictator Hosni Mubarak’s final hours. After 15 months, neither the military nor the Muslim Brotherhood has the wherewithal to grind the other out of existence.
Editor's note: Nader Hashemi is director of the Center for Middle East Studies and an assistant professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is the author of "Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies." The views expressed in this article are solely those of Nader Hashemi.
By Nader Hashemi, Special to CNN
Egypt suffered a political earthquake Thursday when the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court effectively dissolved the democratically elected parliament and ruled that Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister can remain a presidential candidate.
These events have been widely interpreted as a “judicial coup,” the start of a “counter-revolution” and “the end of Egypt’s Arab Spring.”
While the situation is still in flux and the future is unknown, there is one claim can be made with certainty: this is a naked power grab by the country’s ruling military.
Editor's note: Egypt's highest court on Thursday declared the parliament invalid, and the country's interim military rulers declared full legislative authority, triggering a new level of chaos and confusion in the country's leadership. Here's a post from last month, where Fareed Zakaria examines the problem of Egypt's military dictatorship.
By Fareed Zakaria
If you look at Egypt moving forward, there's a great deal of emphasis placed on the various political parties and what they may stand for and what they're going to do. But we have to remember: The real obstacle to democracy in Egypt continues to be the people who run Egypt — a military dictatorship. FULL POST
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Egyptian protesters have been venting their anger in Tahrir Square since former president Hosni Mubarak and former interior minister Habib El Adly were sentenced to life in prison Saturday.
Many Egyptians think Mubarak should have received the death penalty for his role in the deaths of demonstrators last year. They are also upset that six of his former aides were acquitted.
Samer Shehata, a professor of Egyptian and Arab politics at Georgetown University, talked to CNN about the reaction and what the verdicts might mean for the upcoming presidential runoff.
By Kyle Almond, CNN
Egypt’s presidential race is headed for a runoff, but the two remaining candidates present voters with a serious dilemma, according to some analysts.
Sonya Farid, writing for Al Arabiya, said the two candidates who reached the runoff — Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafik — are the most non-revolutionary of all the candidates and represent “two typically tyrannical institutions: the first (Morsi) being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the second (Shafik) a senior official of the former regime.”
Shafik was the last prime minister of former President Hosni Mubarak, who was forced out by protests in February 2011. Shafik received 5.5 million of the country’s 23 million votes, about 200,000 votes behind first-place finisher Morsi, who leads the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Voters must now choose between “a return to the old corrupt tyrannical regime or a complete transformation into a seemingly unfavorable scenario that would give the (Muslim) Brotherhood a trifecta of both parliamentary houses and the presidency,” wrote Adel Iskandar, a columnist for the Egypt Independent.
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