Egypt Tries to Reassert Itself

The Egyptian government is seeking to create the impression of both indispensability and flexibility as it fosters a bilateral rapprochement with the new US administration and moves to rehabilitate its regional standing.  

Meanwhile, the shock waves of the Gaza conflict continue to reverberate. Israel's operation was conducted without any apparent concern for its impact on regional interlocutors, with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a primary victim.

Mubarak was presented by regional opponents as in on the Israeli decision to attack Hamas through his meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni shortly before the Israeli attack; an image he was unable to shake despite repeated denunciations of the Israeli operation.

Egypt received another slap from Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert this week through his decision to fire defense ministry official Amos Gilad as Israel's chief negotiator to Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo. Gilad was subsequently reinstated after apologizing for publicly criticizing Olmert's efforts to insert talks on a prisoner release into ceasefire negotiations - a move opposed by Hamas and Egypt.

Olmert's concurrent decision to send Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin to participate in the Cairo ceasefire talks perhaps speaks to Israeli efforts to tighten ties with Egypt's General Intelligence Services head Omar Suleiman who has led ongoing Egyptian mediation efforts.

The experienced Suleiman is increasingly being seen as a potential candidate for the presidency. There are as yet no indications that he would want the job and with the president's son and expected successor Gamal Mubarak categorically denying leadership pretensions, the prolongation of the elder Mubarak's stint in power beyond the scheduled 2011 presidential election cannot be ruled out.

Strife over Strip continues

As the impact of Gaza on Egypt's regional standing wanes, the US has understood the message from Cairo that its support is required and is dispatching Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Sharm El Sheikh for a major Gaza reconstruction conference on 2 March.

Given Hamas' complete control of the Strip, efforts to promote Fatah involvement in the Gaza reconstruction effort look certain to founder despite the Ramallah government's plans for direct payments to affected householders. This is understood by Egypt and the US, with the latter pledging $US900 million to support the Gaza operations of established international organizations - which has no impact on Hamas control of the territory.

With the incoming Binyamin Netanyahu government unlikely to support a future extension of any ceasefire agreement undertaken by the Olmert government in coming weeks, Egypt has taken the hint, and is again turning its attention to promoting a Hamas-Fatah dialogue, with a full meeting of Palestinian factional delegations scheduled for 27 February.

The Mubarak government understands that a unity deal, while certain to be little more than symbolic in the short term, is crucial to slowing momentum toward a full and final separation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. If a final rupture occurs, Egypt will be forced to find an uncomfortable modus vivendi with Hamas, with all this implies for the stability of the northern Sinai and the bolstering of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. 

Under pressure to end the Israeli/Egyptian siege of the Strip, Hamas may well acquiesce to the return of Fatah-controlled PA security forces to the Rafah Crossing between Hamas and Israel. This would provide Egypt with the ladder it needs to climb down from its domestically unpopular position accepting the moribund US-brokered deal that has forced the ongoing closure of the Rafah Crossing.

Importantly, the key issue that ostensibly led Hamas' to pull out of last autumn's Egyptian-mediated Palestinian unity dialogue, the ongoing detention of Hamas members by Fatah, appears to have been surmounted with a pre-talks agreement on a factional prisoner exchange.

The Mubarak government is itself seeking to draw a line under its troubled relationship with Hamas, promoting a new policy of "openness" while agreeing to the sidelining of controversial Fatah figures; moves that could go a long way to easing concerns within the Islamic movement concerning Egypt's pro-Fatah leanings.

Judiciary, Brotherhood still targeted

In a bid to foster Qatari support for any Palestinian factional rapprochement and/or a Gaza truce, Cairo may also look to send a high level representation to the upcoming Arab League summit in Doha. This, in an effort to bury the hatchet following rising bilateral tensions over Qatar's hosting of the Iranian and Syrian presidents and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal at the height of the Gaza crisis.

As Egypt struggles to reassert itself on the regional stage, a clampdown on internal dissent continues. 

Recent months have seen the jailing of bloggers, attempts to curb the independent media and to rein in reformist elements of the judiciary and an ongoing crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Secular political opposition to National Democratic Party rule has largely been quelled since the 2005 presidential and People's Assembly elections. Party schisms have been fostered (fomented in some cases by the government) within secular opposition parties such as Ayman Nour's Al-Ghad and the veteran Al-Wafd party while new movements such as the Democratic Front have struggled to gain significant support.

The rise and fall of Al-Ghad mirrored the waxing and waning of the George W. Bush administration's so-called "freedom agenda," the most important regional test of which occurred in Egypt, through the country's first contested presidential election in 2005.

Nour received 7.3 percent of the popular vote in direct competition with Mubarak (88 percent), but his candidacy was already blighted at that point by official allegations of irregularities in collecting signatures for the registration of the party. Incarcerated for a second time over these charges,

Nour was released from jail last week, but his chances of reemerging as a rallying figure appear slim even if a presidential pardon that would allow him to stand for office again is forthcoming.

The emancipation of Nour and recent reversal of prison sentences handed down to four independent newspapers editors are indications that the government feels it has the situation under control and is looking to turn over a new page with the US following increasing tensions in the latter years of the George W. Bush administration.

This, as it continues to prosecute efforts to damage the financial base and support structure of its primary adversary the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood's strong showing in the 2005 parliamentary poll, in which party candidates running as "independents" snared 88 seats despite significant voting irregularities, appeared to mark the effective high-water mark of the Egyptian democratic reform process.

Subsequent years have seen an ongoing series of arrest raids and trials of Brotherhood members. Elections for the upper house of parliament, the Shura Council, in 2007, were an important indication that the new policy of allowing the Brotherhood to bolster its sphere of control (which extends into the professional associations) through political representation was at an end.

There is a clear danger here that the reversal of Brotherhood political gains could again promote a radicalization of fringe elements of the movement. This could act to promote an extant regional trend towards Salafi fundamentalism and increase the prospects for a long-term reemergence of insurgent violence. 

Here, last week's Khan al-Khalili bombing - while fitting into a pattern of sporadic attacks on tourists since the height of the insurgency in the mid-1990s - serves as a warning.

As it seeks to respond to myriad socio-economic challenges, Egypt can ill-afford the costs of an autocratic retroversion.