Brothers under the hood

It was a fine morning way back in 1990 when one of the key members of the central leadership of Egyptian Brotherhood received a call from an American diplomat asking for an unofficial interaction. The Brotherhood staff was surprised, but complied. What transpired in the meeting, according to a well placed source, was little more than usual pleasantries and small, trifle talks. However, a channel was opened. But the channel soon dried up as both the parties lost the common ground to even break the ice. Uncle Sam remained an anathema for the Brotherhood while the former continued dismissing the later as a “fundamentalist fringe”.

Then something changed in September 2005. The Brotherhood captured one-fifth of the parliamentary seats up for grab and caught both Egyptian and American intelligence agencies napping. Frantic activities ensued in Cairo and Washington simultaneously and it was decided  that the movement needed to be crushed– ruthlessly! But as is the case with the American intelligence, a parallel channel was reactivated with the battered Brotherhood too. The Americans started the process to understand the Brotherhood in totality. The number of people in direct contact can be counted on fingertips. But these were influential voices.

And that explains the mixed nature of statements emanating from Washington vis-a-vis Muslim Brotherhood. As it braces for the probability of a changed regime in Cairo, Washington is speedily re-evaluating its tenuous contact with the Brotherhood. While the US is aware that although the Brotherhood has remained on the back seat in the current movement, the officials are now willing to come to terms with the reality that the organisation will definitely emerge as the biggest block in the parliament, if not majority, in case the elections are held in the near future.

Experts like Emile Nakhleh, an old CIA hand who assessed the role of political Islam during his tenure, maintains that the US, more than ever, needs to open dialogue with indigenous groups in the region including Islamic political parties. "You can not keep shying away from them. They might not win the majority on their own but they sure will emerge as a formidable political block as per my understanding of the region," said Nakhleh while talking to TSI.

However, it will be too early to say that the US has reconciled with the ground reality and is willing to play fair. People like Nakhleh are still in hopeless minority and soundbites coming out from both the sides of political spectrum in the US makes disappointing but funny read. The political right is burning tapes after tapes to equate Brotherhood with al-Qaeda with generous help from the articulate, but clueless, Fox TV anchors.

The new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, maintained that only pro-Israel parties can make for good democracy where as Representatives Shelley Berkley and Anthony Weiner, both Democrats, worried about "Arab democracies". Weiner observed that "Israel has been seared by the experience recently of seeing democracy elect their enemies", while Berkeley shockingly added "the reality is this: democracy as we think of it and democracy as it is often played out in the Middle East are two different things."

And mind you, these are the people who are instrumental in the formation of US's foreign policy. A crash course in public diplomacy appears to be the need of the hour.

However, surprisingly, scores of terrorism experts this scribe contacted in the US maintained that Qaeda, its tentacles as well as other militias almost regularly, and religiously, accuse Muslim Brotherhood figures of being apostates and sellouts, and hence fit to be killed.

“Our politicos might need to hear themselves talk, but they also need to understand that, as a matter of fact, till the time they have at least an elementary understanding of the Arab world and attempt to alter America policies, they will have very little or no formative part to play. They can happily threaten to keep back aid, but the smart thing to do would be to merely put forward US principles, take a modest back seat purpose,” quips James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute in Washington while talking to TSI.
And one can ignore the raised stakes of Brotherhood at its own peril given that it has now accomplished political legitimacy as well. Lost in political oblivion since Anvar Sadat's death, this officially illicit yet easily tolerated organisation was offered a seat at Vice-President Omar Suleiman’s talk-table by none other than the man himself who has been instrumental in ruthlessly crushing the organisation for decades.

One of the most informed voices on political Islam, Tariq Ramadan, who also happened to be the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, dismisses the current obsession with Brotherhood as fear-mongering. This Egyptian-Swiss philosopher at Oxford University called on politicians to stop demonising every political Islamic movement.
Also, treating Brotherhood as a monolith is the biggest mistake some of the analysts are making. There are visible, and vocal, segments among Brotherhood that have moderating effect on the organisation. The hardcore conservatives have their support base in rural Egypt and are presently the biggest group in the organisation. However, the pragmatic conservative faction that has influence among urban youth and the modernist faction which is small but growing, provide the organisation with a wide social spectrum. The present 'guide' of the organisation happens to be a shy professor of veterinary medicine for example. Last searched, there are no fanatic radicals at the central leadership of the Brotherhood. In fact, a quick run through the history will make it  clear that whenever an individual talks, even a tad too violently and with impatience, they are either reprimanded, asked to contain themselves, or are ceremoniously shown the proverbial door.

“Several of their plans are merely modular reform material – separation of the judiciary, stamping  corruption out, saving the environment et al. They have taken up the general reform language in the last decade. The difference is, unlike others, they act on it seriously. They also mean in all probability to draw more intemperately on the Islamic legal practice for Egypt's laws. They don't want to entirely alter Egypt into an orthodox Islamic legal system,” explains Nathan Brown, a political expert at George Washington University and director of its Institute for Middle East Studies, while talking to TSI from Cairo.

What is interesting to note here is that there has been no example in the recent US history where the perception of analysts and politicians have varied so diversely on a foreign policy initiative. It gives a signal. The meaning of course can be interpreted by different people in different ways.