Bloodshed in Egypt saps support for military-led transition
Hopes for the creation of an inclusive interim government in
Egypt took a sharp blow this morning, when at least 40 people were killed and hundreds wounded at a
Muslim Brotherhood protest outside the
Cairo headquarters of the army's Republican Guard.
Reuters
reports that the Brotherhood said its members, who had been peacefully
protesting outside the barracks where they believe ousted
President Mohamed Morsi is being held,
came under fire during morning prayers.
Abdelaziz
Abdelshakua, from Sharqia Province northeast of Cairo, was wounded in
his right leg with what he says was a live round.
"We were praying
the dawn prayer and we heard there was shooting," he said. He said an
army officer assured them no one was shooting, then suddenly they were
under fire from the direction of the Republican Guard.
"They shot us with teargas, birdshot, rubber bullets – everything. Then they used live bullets."
Al
Jazeera's Egypt news channel broadcast footage of what appeared to be
five men killed in the violence, and medics trying to revive a man at a
makeshift clinic at a nearby pro-Mursi sit-in.
But another
protester told Agence France-Presse that while the military used tear
gas and warning shots to disperse the crowd, the initial gunfire came
from
a group of men in civilian clothing, who attacked the protesters directly.
"The Republican Guard fired tear gas but the thugs came from the side. We were the target," protester Mahmud al-Shilli told AFP.
A
military source described the attack as launched by "armed terrorists"
who attempted to storm the barracks, killing one officer and injuring 40
more. The source said that the army opened fire only after coming under
attack.
Regardless
of who initiated the violence, the attack has threatened the army's
efforts to establish an interim government with support of various
anti-Morsi parties. Al Nour, a Salafist party that was the only Islamist
group to support Mr. Morsi's ouster, said
it was withdrawing from talks in response to the bloodshed, reports The Washington Post.
Nour
“decided to withdraw immediately from all tracks of negotiations as a
first reaction to the Republican Guard massacre,” Nadr Bakr, a
spokesman, said on Twitter.
The Post notes that the group's
departure "was a significant blow to an already fragile political
process, whose organizers had sought not to exclude Islamists
altogether."
The alienation of Egypt's Islamists and the Muslim
Brotherhood, the country's largest and most firmly established political
organization, poses a serious challenge to the country's future.
Nathan Brown,
a professor of political science and international affairs at George
Washington University, told The Christian Science Monitor last week that
the Brotherhood
needs to be included in the transition, which must be deliberate and inclusive.
“Any
process has to be inclusive and protracted and public,” he says, adding
that so far, the signs for the new process are not positive. “The first
signals are that you're going to have this committee appointed by the
military, for constitutional amendments, in a hurry and rushed through.
To me that's like saying the last map we used led us to drive off a
cliff, so now that we've got a second chance let's go drive off the same
cliff.”
The
military, he says, should indicate to the Brotherhood that they are
welcome to participate fully in the process. And the committee that
writes the constitution should be “broad-based” and “take their time to
make sure this is a consensual process.”
Yet that's likely to be
thorny, as each of the parties who got at least some of what they wanted
out of the 2012 constitution are unlikely to want to hand back their
gains, including the military and salafis. Non-Islamist parties are
acutely aware of this, and are attempting to maintain good relations
with salafis until the constitution is agreed upon. It is unclear if the
Brotherhood will participate in the process.
