CAIRO — In his purge of Egypt’s top generals, President Mohamed
Morsi leaned on the support of a junior officer corps that blamed the old guard
for a litany of problems within the military and for involving the armed forces
too deeply in the country’s politics after the uprising that ousted Mr. Morsi’s
predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.
In an interview, one ranking officer said the military had grown
increasingly demoralized because of meager salaries, cronyism, shoddy
equipment, a lack of promotion opportunities and growing confusion over the
role of its leaders.
Those complaints crystallized last week after gunmen killed 16
soldiers in the northern Sinai Peninsula, causing embarrassment throughout the
ranks. “The military didn’t change,” said the officer, a unit commander who was
not authorized to speak to reporters and requested anonymity. “Give me
equipment to work. You can’t give me ruined cars, a hundred soldiers and ask me
to secure 30 square kilometers in the desert.”
The changing of the guard left an uncertain landscape. The balance
of power has apparently shifted to Mr. Morsi, with the powerful Supreme Council
of the Armed Forces, which had been running the country since the revolution
last year, unsettled but still firmly in place. On Monday, a day after the
generals’ ouster, there were no signs that the military was mobilizing in
protest.
That led many analysts to suspect that the president had reached an
accommodation with a new generation of military leaders who were seeking to
restore the armed forces’ credibility, enhance their own positions, and
preserve the military’s privileged and protected place in society.
On Sunday, Mr. Morsi forcibly retired the country’s defense
minister, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, and the army chief of staff,
Sami Hafez Enan. The heads of the air force, navy and air defense were also
forced into retirement. Since the purge, Egyptians have desperately sought
clues about whether the shake-up would begin a new period of conflict between
the military and Mr. Morsi, a former leader in the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Changing
those leaders was smart for Morsi,” the officer said. “He waited for the right
timing, when the country had already taken steps along the right path.”
Whether or not Mr. Morsi struck a bargain with the younger officers,
he might have enhanced his credibility with political forces outside the
Brotherhood who had clamored for an end to military rule. At the same time, he
could gain a degree of loyalty from a cast of officers who owe their new prominence
to him.
Since the uprising, the military’s status has been the subject of a
tug of war between the Brotherhood, which is the country’s most powerful
political party, and the armed forces, represented by Field Marshal Tantawi and
the military council.
That struggle grew more confrontational as the Brotherhood and Mr.
Morsi closed in on the presidency before the elections this spring, devolving
into a fight over political authority that threatened to further polarize an
already divided nation.
Emad Shahin, a political science professor at the American
University of Cairo, said: “The negotiation process over the last year and a
half was not working. It’s not producing results.” He said the younger
generation of military leaders, recognizing that fact, might have welcomed the
change in leadership.
They included Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, whom Mr. Morsi named as
Field Marshal Tantawi’s replacement. “I see tons of reasons why Sisi should
cooperate,” Mr. Shahin said, including a need to rehabilitate the military’s
image. “If I were in Sisi’s shoes, I would say, ‘Maybe if we remove these
stubborn generals, something will happen.’ ”
The killings of the soldiers provided another reason for the young
officers to act. “This is definitely a failure of the military institution to
uphold its responsibility,” Mr. Shahin said.
The opaque nature of Egypt’s military made it hard to determine
precisely what sort of debates had taken place. Some said it was possible that
a faction within the supreme council, including General Sisi, was willing to
settle for far less than the broad powers that Field Marshal Tantawi and his
allies had sought for themselves.
“I think
there is a minimum for the military establishment,” said Omar Ashour, a
professor at England’s University of Exeter who is currently in Cairo. “They
want a veto in sensitive foreign policy issues, including on Israel and Iran —
any policy that can implicate the country in a foreign confrontation. They will
want to negotiate the independence of their economic empire.”
“Sisi was
inclined to accept minimum, as opposed to what Enan and the field marshal were
asking for, which was more or less the power of the Algerian military, combined
with the legitimacy of the Turkish military,” Mr. Ashour said, referring to the
broad political powers seized by Algeria’s generals in the 1990s and the
Turkish military’s interventions in domestic politics.
It remains to be seen whether a new formula will greatly alter the
dynamic between Egypt’s military and civilian authorities. “Is this going to be
another partition of the military and civilian spheres, with a new group in
charge of the military sphere?” asked Robert Springborg, a professor at the
Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and an expert on the Egyptian
military.
“Is the
Brotherhood taking control of the military? Or is it the beginning of
democratic control?” he said.
And while Mr. Springborg said it was still unclear whether the
initiative had come from Mr. Morsi or the young officers, there had been
longstanding calls for change within the military. “There was widespread
disaffection on professional grounds with Tantawi and company,” he said.
Performance was not rewarded, Mr. Springborg said, explaining that
officers would be sent for training, before being sidelined. “The assumption
was that the military was for show,” he said. “Soldiers would say: ‘They didn’t
want us to do our jobs. They didn’t let us fly the planes, or drive the tanks.’
”
The unit commander said soldiers were poorly compensated and saddled
with failing equipment. Dissatisfaction with the military’s leaders for staying
too long grew. “For the field marshal and Enan, it’s enough, really,” he said.
“We want development. We want fresh blood. We don’t want ministers to remain in
their positions for 30 or 40 years any more.”
Mr. Morsi was left no choice but to remove Field Marshal Tantawi,
according to the unit commander. “If you asked anybody who’s ruling the
country, the answer would have been the field marshal,” he said.
That does not mean the commander and his fellow officers are any
more comfortable with the new president.
“The truth
is,” he said, “we’re worried because he belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood.
We’re worried that this could be a step to win the loyalty of the new leaders,
in preparation for another step in the future.”
Still, the president picked wisely, he said, bringing in
“respectable people” who “understand the nature of our work.”
“People here
are over the moon,” he said.
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