Balagan

"Balagan" is one of the first words newcomers to Israel learn. A useful addition to a new immigrant’s limited vocabulary, it can mean anything from "a mess" to "utter chaos."

No grammarian will challenge any extended usage of the word, because it simply isn’t Hebrew. I’m hard put to explain where it came from and when it was first used in this country. Our forefathers managed well enough without it and even today when it has found a niche in colloquial Hebrew and its popularity is undeniable, I prefer not to use it.

It seems Yiddish speakers brought it with them generations ago. It was probably borrowed from Russian/ Ukrainian. Its migration can be traced through Persian and at least two Turkic languages. In all these tongues the word has different and additional nuances.

Some people dispense with complex, difficult to understand situations by using the concise and descriptive phrase "What a balagan!", often condensed to "Balagan!"

Viewing the scenes in Tahrir Square this week and reading the opinions of our modern Egyptologists. The temptation to dismiss it all using the one-size-fits-all word - "balagan," was almost too great to resist.

However, we can't afford to write it off that easily. We are concerned neighbours, too concerned to ignore the volatile situation in Egypt.

Journalists quick to coin catch phrases changed the seasons this week. Now they are calling the once hopeful “Arab Spring" a gloomy "Arab Winter."

John Bradley reporting for the Daily Mail said, "As protests grip Cairo and Islamic fundamentalists gain in confidence there and elsewhere across the region, the hopes of Western leaders for a new era of democracy across the Middle East have been exposed as hopelessly naïve. The uprisings have led only to more intolerance, authoritarianism and division.”

The Daily Telegraph's David Blair summed up the latest flare-up in the following words, “These are dangerous times. In Egypt the central paradox remains, that everything has changed except the country’s rulers. The dictator has gone, but the system that he built and the political allies whose careers he nurtured are still in place.”
Eighty six year old Moshe Arens is a busy senior citizen. An active Chairman of the International Board of Governors of the Ariel University Centre of Samaria and an op-ed columnist for Haaretz . Formerly, he was professor of aeronautics at the Haifa Technion, ambassador to the United States, twice Minister of Defence and once Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Drawing on his close acquaintance with Arab leaders and considerable knowledge of events occurring in this region, he wrote in Haaretz. “The Islamists are going to inherit the mantle of the dictators. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya were corrupt dictators, but they suppressed the Islamic movements in their respective countries and were all thus on the side of the seculars in their own perverse way. The same holds true for Syria's Bashar Assad. The toppling of these Arab dictators was inevitable. Unfortunately what will follow is just as inevitable. It looks like it is going to be long Arab Winter.”

Ben Macintyre writing for The Times disagrees, "There was nothing inevitable about the Arab Spring .These tumultuous events tend to be seen as the ineluctable flood of history flowing in one direction. But in reality, all mass movements are made up of countless individuals making private decisions based on morality, ideology, courage, as well as fear and self-interest.

Millions of people across the Arab world were inspired, not by Islamic fervour or charismatic leaders, but by one another. Nothing is inevitable about this process, let alone its success. "·

In an article published in the Washington Institute's PolicyWatch Robert Satloff also wonders if developments in Egypt were really unavoidable.

"It is important to recall that the current situation was not inevitable. For example, it remains a mystery as to why a risk-averse Egyptian military would insist that risky legislative elections precede a less-risky presidential election. More fundamentally, even accounting for the serial bungling of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), there were many points during the past eight months at which the military could have achieved its prime objective -- defining a protected space for itself in a new, democratic Egypt -- without triggering an all-out backlash. "

Speculating a little, Satloff says, "Yet the most likely outcome of holding legislative elections in the current environment is to increase the plurality that Islamist factions -- the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the even more extreme Salafist parties -- are expected to receive. Some in Washington may view this outcome as appropriate (i.e., representing the 'authentic' voice of the Egyptian people) and even advantageous to U.S. interests (i.e., the Islamists in question offer an alternative to the bin Ladenist violent model), but they are wrong. Egypt's Islamists may be taking an evolutionary approach to political change, but it is the product of a pragmatic assessment of what circumstances permit, not some ideological opposition to a radical Islamization of politics, culture, society, or foreign policy"

Zvi Bar'el Middle East affairs analyst related to this pragmatism in an article published in Haaretz

"Even if all of Egypt's Islamist factions were to join forces, the Muslim Brotherhood will need to find coalition partners, and compromise on Islamist ideology for the sake of political strength." Bar'el assumes that the combined Islamic parties will win between 30 to 40 percent of the vote.

When it is finally formed the coalition government will have to face a formidable task, "With the Egyptian treasury set to empty, inflation already at 8 percent, millions of unemployed Egyptians threatening to go out into the streets after the elections, and foreign direct investment at almost non-existent levels, their organisational ability, and their talent for amassing international funds will face a decisive test." Says Bar'el

Reviewing "Egypt’s turmoil" The Economist concluded "The generals must go. Egypt, above all, must not fail. It is the biggest Arab prize by virtue of history, geography and population, now more than 85 million strong. It is the seat of the rejuvenated 22-country Arab League. It should be the Arabs’ breadbasket and economic motor. It was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel and has been America’s most stalwart Arab ally. If Egypt’s surge of people power is reversed, the whole of the Arab world might sink back into authoritarianism. If it is sustained, the desire for change might prove irresistible elsewhere."

In a blistering critique the paper goes on to list the failings of Egypt's interim military government. It claims the generals have made a hash of just about everything. They have stymied every effort towards economic reform, deterred investors and let the country slide more deeply into penury and debt. "They have entirely failed to reflect the spirit of democratic change," says The Economist. "The interim government has been overhasty and undemocratic in amending the constitution and has tried to slip additional pre-emptive clauses into the constitution that would give the armed forces an entirely unwarranted position of political power, protecting their economic privileges and keeping the defence budget secret. It was this last mistake that prompted Egypt’s democrats in the past week to take again to the streets across the country."

The concluding remarks of the Economist's lead article leave room for a little cautious optimism. "The choice is not between soldiers and mullahs. Egyptians need not be caught in a vice between bloody-minded anti-democratic generals on the one hand and bogus-democratic Israel-hating Islamists on the other. There is a good chance that, as in Tunisia, Islamists will play by democratic rules, and influence but not dominate the polity. Anyway, even if the revolution could be suppressed, the lesson from the stultifying rule of Mr Mubarak and his fellow autocrats is that blocking the Brothers is a surer recipe for trouble than letting them into government.

Democracy was never going to arrive swiftly, and perfectly formed, in the Arab world. Pursuing it is a risk; but it is one that Egypt, and its neighbours, must take."

In an era when almost everything is tagged and bar-coded a lot of people have been cost-labelling and making damage assessments.

Associated Press’ correspondent viewed Tahrir Square and counted the cost. "Political differences aside, what has become clear is that the latest clamour against Egypt’s military rulers is pummelling the country’s already flailing economy at a crucial time when many hoped winter tourism would pick up. A financial crisis is looming, say analysts."

“We’re not far off,” said Neil Shearing, chief emerging markets economist with Capital Economics. “There’s enough money left in the coffers to get through the year, but not much beyond that. Crunch time is two to three months away.

It took 30 years to engineer the revolution that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak in February. But it only took months to push the 7 percent annual growth rate of recent years to an anaemic forecast of only about 1 percent this year." Says Shearing and concludes, "As of October, the country’s net foreign reserves had fallen to $22 billion from $36 billion at the end of 2010. At least part of that money has gone to supporting the Egyptian pound, which economists worry could face severe depreciation if officials don’t shore up the country’s finances."

Already nearly half the population lives near or below the poverty line set by the World Bank of $2 a day.

The economy depends heavily on agriculture, tourism and cash remittances from Egyptians working abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries.

However, rapid population growth and the limited amount of arable land is straining the country's resources and economy. Egypt's main exports are petroleum, petroleum products and cotton. The World Bank report for 2009 listed Egypt's gross national income per capita as US $2,070 .

By comparison the same World Bank report listed Israel’s GNI per capita as US $25,740.

It's no secret that both Israel and the US were better positioned in the days before the Arab Spring. However, now we have to adjust to the new emerging reality of regime change and the uncertainty of the outcome of that change.

The need to adjust was mentioned in an editorial in Haaretz this week.

“It would be deceptive to say the Muslim Brotherhood or Islam in general were responsible for the change in attitude toward Israel. Israel must recognise that the region's political and social reality is changing. It would do well to consider how to adjust its policy to the change instead of lamenting the change itself.”

In the article he wrote for PolicyWatch Robert Satloff traces changes in relations between Washington and Cairo. He wrote, "Egypt's parliamentary elections, which begin today, may yet produce an outcome that advances U.S. interests, but it would only be due to a stroke of good fortune."

Satloff claims the Obama administration's once-powerful message to Egypt about strategic direction, democratic institutions, and economic growth has lost its voice. Nevertheless, he believes it's possible to salvage something. Writing as the polls opened in Egypt he said , "It’s still not too late to engage Egyptians on the consequences of their vote."

However, Eric Trager, another Washington Institute fellow reporting from Cairo for The New Republic described how the Moslem Brotherhood’s well organised Freedom and Justice Party will probably win more seats than any other party.

Trager visited a few polling stations on Election Day and in many places he witnessed scenes of typical Levantine chaos.
"Ballots arrived late at approximately 900 polling stations and, in a few cases, angry voters held judicial monitors hostage after their ballots failed to arrive. Meanwhile, candidates nationwide scrambled to correct their campaign literature when they found that their numerical ballot placements did not match the numberings that had been announced prior to the election. In many places, lines were incredibly long -- including a seven-hour wait for women voters in the relatively wealthy, northern Cairo neighbourhood of Heliopolis.

But despite the day's various frustrations and confusions, one thing seemed quite clear at every polling place that I visited: The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party is poised for victory."

Trager spoke to Brotherhood activists who acknowledged that Salafist parties could cut into their Islamist vote-share. "People fear that those with Islamic ideology are competing with one another," they said.

Noting how visible the thousands of Brotherhood volunteers were at every polling station he visited, Tager remarked, "What makes the Brotherhood's showing so remarkable is how consistent it is: they are, simply put, everywhere. And given that they are pushing an Islamist message that holds visceral appeal for the religious Muslim public of Egypt, they may have devised a formula for victory."

Both the voters and the parties contesting the parliamentary elections face a daunting challenge, namely Egypt's absurdly confusing balloting system. Voters cast one ballot for their preferred party, which elects a slate of party-affiliated candidates that will comprise two-thirds of the next parliament; and another ballot on which they choose two individual candidates -- one professional and one worker -- who will comprise one-third of the parliament. To complicate matters further, there might be as many as fifty parties on a given party-list ballot, and dozens of names on the individual-candidacy ballot. For the quarter of Egyptians who are illiterate, there is yet another complication: each candidate and party is assigned a unique symbol, though some are easy to confuse. Tager explains how the Brotherhood managed to overcome some of these obstacles. "They set up kiosks, adjacent to the polling stations where their volunteers advised confused voters where to go to, how to vote and who to vote for."

The results of the first round of voting in the elections indicate that the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party has managed to win more seats than the observers predicted but not enough to govern on its own. It remains to be seen what kind of coalition government it will form.

Have a good weekend

Beni 1st of December, 2011.