The first step has been a long time coming. In the recent history of Egypt this was in the form of the birth of the MB in 1928. In the last eight decades an extremely well organized, richly funded MB grew despite major repression by successive authorities before the fateful, 1952 so-called free- officers’ revolution and subsequently under Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak. The second darkest spot in Egypt’s history, the January 25, 2011 uprising, replaced an autocrat by the makings of a stifling Islamic theocracy. The modus operandi of the MB, political and sectarian was quite obvious to those in the know, both from within and from outside Egypt. The disgraceful role the US played starting by dubbing the cataclysmic changes in the Arab countries as an ‘Arab Spring’ headed towards democracy, is directly related to the status quo of utter chaos in Egypt and the region as a whole.
The ongoing State-sponsored atrocities perpetrated against the Coptic Christians in Egypt are well documented but totally ignored by foreign powers who would sacrifice anything in exchange for their seeming interests in the region. Recently, even President Obama stated that the tide in Egypt does not show a progress towards democracy in the exclusion of opposition parties/groups from the political process. He also extended caution against dealing with the repressive Syrian regime of Al-Assad before sorting out the so-called freedom fighters into Muslim extremists and true democracy seekers, discouraging the former and supporting the latter. Words are well and good but unless these are followed by meaningful actions they are as useful as the teats on a bull.
How much Christian blood-to-be-shed is enough before the rest of the world, particularly the West, would act? Withdrawing economic and military support to this notorious regime is a sure way of slapping it into humane behavior towards minorities, whose land Egypt originally belongs. Unattended to immediately risks a dramatic change in the geopolitics of the region from a Western leaning democracy to an Islamic Iran-style theocracy. I seriously doubt that it is in the interest of Israel to be surrounded by an Islamist hegemony bent on its destruction. The quid pro quo the US is relying on of a continued peace treaty between Egypt and Israel through maintaining an Islamist MB controlled regime, is tenuous at best, more realistically it is of an ephemeral nature bound to be abrogated when the MB are on firmer ground in Egypt and elsewhere. This is another one of my wakeup calls for action from the West. Ignore it at your own risk.
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Saba E. Demian, M.D. is retired professor of pathology, USC, LSU Medical Schools