The precipitating event of the last week was the release of an ISIS video detailing the beheading of 21 Egyptians, all from the poor province of Minya, and all belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church. From the moment the tape was released it was clear that both parties had grown insensitive to each other’s pains.
In Egypt, a popular, and inflammatory, news show host, Ahmed Moussa, declared that the US is in league with ISIS. This is a particularly cruel and heinous charge to make against a country that has welcomed both Muslims and Copts and suffered thousands of deaths by one of the most prominent of the Islamist terror groups. The trouble with that charge is that no one reprimanded him, and many may have believed him. It was a sad moment for Egypt. His charges come on top of the daily barrage of odd theories speculating on whether the White House has been captured by the partisans of the Muslim Brotherhood, or is in fact plotting the demise of Egypt.
On the US side the response to the video was bungled in many ways, and subsequent turns have not improved things. Almost all world leaders denounced the barbarity of ISIS and recognized the multiple identities of the victims, as Egyptians and Copts. The latter is important because in the video ISIS made no reference to policies, or grievances; it simply stated that the 21 men are killed on account of their faith, before threatening more mayhem toward Catholics in Rome. The statements of both the White House and the State Department were generic, almost perfunctory, and purposely ignored the religious confession of the victims. This may have been part of a standing policy not to aggravate sectarian tensions, or recognize religion instead of nationality. Both are laudable goals, but they hardly fit the occasion. The reaction from the nearly 1 Million Egyptian-American Copts was swift and exceptionally negative. In time, a day or two later, the White House spokesman did recognize the victims as Copts, and the President did so in an op-ed in the LA Times, but much of the damage had been done.
The next set of events in Egypt was remarkable, and the US should have recognized that and reacted accordingly. President Sisi made a televised address in which he reserved Egypt’s right to respond to the death of its citizens. A few hours later a number of Egyptian Air Force sorties hit ISIS sites outside Derna in Eastern Libya. There are two ways to tell this tale. The first is of an Egyptian leader who took offense at the killing of Egyptian citizens by foreign elements and sent the Egyptian Army in pursuit, wisely or impulsively. The second, and this was a favorite among some Islamists, was that a Muslim leader sent a Muslim Army to kill Muslims on behalf of Christians. One commentator on a Muslim Brotherhood Channel even indicated that the killing was an appropriate retaliation for the Copts’ participation in politics through their Church. If one favors a future Middle East where the nation-state holds sway and sectarian and religious divisions are dampened down by the forces of national unity, then it is clear which narrative is favored. The US indicated disapproval of the strikes, on account of the danger they posed to the moribund political process in Libya. Perhaps the real reason is that the US does not wish to see Egypt bogged in Libya, which is a sensible concern. But love and concern expressed clumsily and inarticulately can seem like cruelty.
Memorial services for the 21 men were being organized around the US as President Obama spoke at the conference on “Countering Violent Extremism.” As usual, the President was cool, rational and analytical. But his remarks about the need to counter ISIS by promoting political inclusiveness and jobs were too cool by two degrees. The slain men were from Minya, one of the poorest provinces in Egypt. Poverty and unemployment pushed them to risk their lives in Libya, not as terrorists but as construction workers who remitted their wages to buy textbooks for their children. The men were also no strangers to political marginalization. Supporters of President Morsi burned more Christian property in Minya in 2013 than mobs had done in Egypt for the last few centuries. In 2012, as President Morsi exhorted his followers to approve the Islamist Constitution he staked his rule on, flyers circulated in Minya threatening Copts not to Vote. There is no doubt that the American President would laud these men, but the timing and wording of his remarks generated endless jokes about “Jobs for Jihadis”. As in an Albee play, words which are fine in isolation can hurt deeply in the confines of close relation.
Two countries which need each other, and where bonds of affection have existed in both strong and frayed forms, are now at an unhappy impasse in their relationship. Egypt is, or more accurately the Egyptians are, behaving oddly, seeming to regard the US as an enemy rather than understand its concerns as a great power, and seeing in its liberal polity both a hopeful example and a potential hedge against the chaos in the region. The US seems to believe the fiction that Egypt is no longer important, and perhaps deals with it through the prism of the difficult relationship with Islamist terrorism, rather than uniquely in its own right. The quicker the US recognizes that Egypt is not a regional issue, but that the region is a replay of many Egyptian ills, the more likely it is to salvage something from this fraught relationship.
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Dr. Maged Atiya is a physicist. http://salamamoussa.com/2015/02/20/america-and-egypt-by-edward-albee/