Egypt: Behind the headlines

Egypt coup reinstated the old system, which will explode again before year end

Pepe Escobar

RT

16 July, 2013

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Egypt needs to completely reorganize its political system, but the Egyptian ‘Google generation’ is not going to be part of solution, as the armed forces are back in power just like in post-Mubarak times, journalist Pepe Escobar told RT.

RT: Now we are having two rival camps riling across Egypt today. Where is this situation heading? Is it too early to talk about the dangerous prospects of the civil standoff?

Pepe Escobar: Its [Egypt’s] “ungovernability” is to the limit, in fact. The basic is that Egypt cannot feed itself. They have an annual deficit of over $20 billion. Before that we had the Emir of Qatar writing the checks, now we are going to have Saudi Arabia and the Emirates writing the checks. If they need money from the IMF it’s going to be another $2 to $3 billion max. We should have been negotiating for almost a year, it’s not enough. Everything is going to explode all over again in three, four, five, six months, before the end of the year, in fact.

What we are seeing now is nothing compared to what is going to happen in six months’ time. We still have the same problems. The Muslim Brotherhood was neo-liberal economically. This new government is going to be neo liberal as well. You have to completely reorganize the Egyptian system upside down. It’s impossible, because they cannot feed themselves, they cannot earn money from anything, they don’t produce anything that the rest of the world wants to buy, except of selling their tourist assets. There are no tourists going back to Egypt, especially now, after the coup, that is not a coup, according to the Obama administration. So it’s a dead end.

Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and deposed president Mohamed Morsi, sporting a cartoon mask of the toppled leader, flashes the sign of victory during a rally outside Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque on July 12, 2013, following Friday noon prayer (AFP Photo / Marwan Naamani)

 

RT: What should be done to avoid the worst case scenario?

PE: The worst case scenario was put in movement after this coup, which was not a coup. We can see the coup as a pre-emptive military coup. In fact, the Supreme Council of the armed forces is back in power just as it were in the immediate post-Mubarak time. So we have the old system again, these people who have been controlling Egypt for the past sixty years. They don’t have new ideas. The people who have new ideas would be the Egyptian “Google Generation”. Some of them are leftist, of course, but they aren’t going to be part of the solution, they are not going to be offering their solutions for the people who will be governing Egypt from now on, which is the same old gang.

RT: What's ahead for Morsi? We see allegations popping out that he has escaped from prison two years ago with the help of Hamas.

PE: Not only in Egypt but also in Syria the popularity of Hamas is not going very well. A lot of people say that Hamas betrayed Syria because of Qatar. Khaled Mashel, by the way who is in Doha, is very friendly with the Emir of Qatar. A lot of people in the Middle East are repulsed by that. As for the Muslim Brotherhood, they are trying to reorganize their forces. They see it as a setback, the set back is not only going to be in Egypt. It’s going to transfer to Syria, to the West, especially to the US. Also the Saudis they are thinking: “We don’t want a Muslim Brotherhood post Assad environment, if ever we get to that place.” So they are going to be marginalizing Syria as well.