Center for a New American Security

If you've been following my Twitter feed, you'll know I arrived in Cairo a few days ago and will be here for another few days doing some research. I tacked this short visit onto a trip to Europe to help train a unit preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, and I must say it's good to be back in the Arabic-speaking world during what continues to be an exciting time in the region.

This is my first trip back to Egypt since living here for seven months in 2006, and since I am no one's idea of an expert on Egypt and Egyptian politics, I am grateful to my friends here in Cairo for hosting me and providing me with plenty of people to meet with.

The research questions I'll be trying to answer here concern the position in which the Egyptian Army and other security forces now find themselves. I have two broad concerns: one is political, and one is tactical/doctrinal.

Politically, it is correct to note that the Egyptian military has more or less been one with the regime since the 1950s when the Free Officers Revolt replaced the monarchy here. But the military is at the same time in a position it has not been in for 40 years, directly involved with the day-to-day politics and decision-making in Egyptian life. Yezid Sayigh concisely and cogently explained the interests of the Egyptian Army after Mubarak in an op-ed that ran in Financial Times a week before Hosni Mubarak stood down as president. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that Yezid is my advisor at King's College, where he is doggedly pushing the submitted thesis of his most wayward student through the arcane bureaucracy of the University of London at the moment -- thanks, Yezid! -- but he is also one of the world's foremost experts on soldier-state relations in the Arabic-speaking world.) I agree with his analysis of the Egyptian military and have further concerns about the seemingly inevitable clash between its interests and the interests of the young revolutionaries on the streets as well as those of everyday Egyptians who have wildly inflated expectations about life after Mubarak.

First, there is a sense you get that many Egyptians honestly feel the only thing standing in between the Egyptian nation and greatness was the sclerotic Mubarak regime. Now that Muabark is gone, the military -- and whatever government that follows -- will naturally struggle to meet those expectations.

Second, the Egyptian people have now witnessed a dramatic display of people power: mass demonstrations effectively removed from power a man who seemed immovably secure in his post just one month ago. The incentives are there for every group of people in Egypt with a grievance (which is to say everyone) to now strike or demonstrate to see, in effect, what they can get. The military is growing increasingly frustrated with these demonstrations and has ordered them to cease. But the incentive structure is all wrong: even if you don't think you'll get anything, why would you not demonstrate right now? The worst case scenario is, you get nothing. But heck, you might get something!

One of the sources of the military's frustration leads to my third concern, which is the fact that even if the people have a valid grievance, there is no real authority to negotiate with at the moment. Egypt needs a transitional government of some sort, but right now, you've got people agitating for higher wages, back pay, and more reforms on the one hand, and a military on the other hand that is not prepared in the least to hear these concerns and act on them.

That all leads to my second broad concern, which is, as I said, more tactical or even doctrinal. The Egyptian military, like most militaries, is configured for major combat operations against the armies of other states -- not for what are, in some ways, stabilization operations on the streets of Egypt itself. And as an American who fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan after the conclusion of "major combat operations," it's possible to feel for the Egyptian Army at the moment.

First, the Egyptian Army is not prepared for and has no doctrine to support stabilization operations. The M1 Abrams tanks you see in downtown Cairo are as useless as the M1 Abrams tanks we had on street corners in Baghdad after the invasion. As we saw during the violence which preceded the fall of Mubarak, they're not exactly the best weapons for crowd control! (We Americans, of course, eventually made good use of those tanks in Iraq, but let's hope and pray things don't get that bad in Egypt.)

Second, we Americans paid -- and are paying -- a heavy price in Iraq and Afghanistan for the way in which the development of competent local police lags behind the development of the Army in both countries. In Cairo, at least, the police are rarely seen these days. The police officers you do see, usually directing traffic, never much respected anyway, have lost their ability to intimidate the people, who now periodically hurl abuse at them and who see themselves as having "defeated" the police during the demonstrations -- and not just in Tahrir Square but all over the countryside, where police stations burned from Upper Egypt to the Delta. But the Army trying to serve the functions of the police in preserving law and order is as awkward here as it is anywhere else. You need local police to preserve order, and though things in Cairo at the moment reflect a kind of good-natured anarchy, things might not stay that way if demonstrations continue and expectations remain unmet. (That having been said, Cairo has always been a city of neighborhoods, and locals in these neighborhoods usually do a damn fine job of preserving order on their own, thank you very much.)

Many analysts have, correctly, focused on the importance of the Army going forward. But the reconstitution and development of the police, in my mind, is probably even more important for Egypt's internal security.

So that's the kind of stuff I'm thinking about as I wander around pestering old friends and observing post-Mubarak Egypt. As anyone who follows this blog knows, I'm always more interested in what happens after a conflict or change in regime than in the conflict or regime change itself. Unfortunately for Egypt, I see more -- not less -- internal conflict and instability on the horizon. Let's all hope my initial analysis proves incorrect.

I was in Beirut when Rafik Hariri was assassinated and lived in Lebanon for the next 12 months as well. The March 8th and 14th demonstrations, and the popular movement that led to the end of the Syrian military occupation of Lebanon, were all very exciting to live through and witness -- especially as a young guy, fresh out of the Army and studying the politics of the Middle East. (I learned more on the streets than I did in the library that year!) But in so, so many ways, the six months that followed the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon were more interesting than the frantic weeks that led up to the withdrawal itself. In those six months, we saw what had really changed in Lebanon, and the answer was not much at all. If the rumors are true, and if Hosni Mubarak steps down today, the most interesting "Friedman Unit" will be the six months starting now. We will see what kind of order replaces -- or doesn't replace -- the current regime, and we will see how the disorganized opposition groups fracture and fight among themselves about the way forward. The true meaning of this uprising will be found not in what happens today or what has taken place in Tahrir Square over the past three weeks but in the weeks and months ahead.

Issandr doesn't pull his punches:

Andrew Exum touches on an academic issue here worth mentioning: that the events in Egypt have been poorly predicted by North American academia, perhaps because political science departments largely focus on quantitative analysis. Andrew, as ever (and I blame living in Washington as well as his southern roots for this), is very polite about not bashing the "quants", as he calls them.

 

Personally, I would be more blunt. Quantitative analysis and the behaviouralist approach of most American PoliSci academics is a big steaming turd of horseshit when applied in the Middle East. Statistics are useful, yes, when you are in a country that has relevant statistics or where polling is allowed. But things like electoral statistics tell you very little about the political reality of dictatorships, because the data sets are inherently flawed, since they're either unavailable, fraudulent, or irrelevant.

This is not a new problem, right? Garbage in equals garbage out. If the data you are plugging into your analysis is unreliable, your conclusions are not going to pass muster -- not with the political scientists using "soak and poke" methods or, for that matter, any dude you happen to pass on the street. A buddy of mine commented this is less about the divide between quantitative methods and qualitative methods as it is an epistemogical debate. But any debate over methods is ultimately a debate over epistemology: how does the researcher "know" what he or she knows? If he or she is relying on laughably poor data harvested from a semi-closed police state, Issandr points out, he or she can't claim to know much at all. All of this has direct relevance to the study of conflict, of course. Conflict zones are really difficult places to gather reliable data. On the one hand, the U.S. military harvests all kinds of data from its wars. But on the other hand, studying the war in Afghanistan, I have come to trust the data less and less over time and the more I have asked questions about how the data was collected. The numbers look neat on a PowerPoint slide, sure, but when you start asking hard questions, they are less impressive.

(This all reminds me of that quote/warning about how all government statistics are ultimately generated by a civil servant somewhere writing down whatever the hell he pleases on a sheet of paper. Help me out with the exact quote, readers.)

I have been greatly entertained by the debate between Daniel Drezner and Arpoova Shah over the question of whether the situation in Egypt says anything about the strength of political science in the United States. I encourage you all to read what the two of them have written, but there is something going on here that neither Drezner nor Shah deal with. I was standing in line a few hours ago, waiting on a sandwich at Potbelly's, when I read this, from Greg Gause, in a volume of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies last year:

Over the past five years, from volume 37, number 1 (February 2005) to volume 41, number 3 (August 2009), IJMES published thirty-seven articles that deal with politics in the contemporary Middle East, broadly understood. This is my count, of course, and others might add or drop some articles. I define contemporary as post World War II and have a relatively expansive definition of politics. My count does not include short features, only full articles.

 

Eighteen of the authors of these articles are identified as having academic appointments in political science departments, fewer than 50 percent of the total (some of the articles are co-authored, so there are more than thirty-seven authors involved). The other authors are concentrated in the discipline of anthropology (with one sociologist and one historian) or have appointments in religious studies or Middle East studies departments. Of the eighteen political scientists who have published in IJMES during this period, only eight were employed in North American universities. The majority of the political scientists appearing in IJMES during this period have appointments in European or Israeli universities; one political scientist working at an Arab university appeared in the pages.

 

Although those North American political scientists who did publish in IJMES during this period did some very good work, and it was my pleasure to review many of their articles, these numbers lead me to the troubling conclusion that there is a growing gap between the professional requirements for disciplinary success in political science in North America and the standards and forms expected of the best Middle East studies work. Increasingly, particularly at the best research universities, advancement in political science requires work concentrated in formal and statistical methods. There are, of course, exceptions. Some political scientists working on the Middle East who use postpositivist methods have secured leading jobs at top research universities. There is a refreshing recent trend toward encouraging mixed-methods research in dissertations, with large-n statistical and/or rational-choice formal mathematical components supplemented by case studies based on field work and more classic discursive and qualitative approaches. However, professional advancement in the field is driven by publication in journals that are heavily weighted toward quantitative and formal methods. In the subfield of comparative politics, where most Middle East work is done in the discipline, there are also strong currents arguing that cross-regional work, not intense concentration on a single region, is preferred. In promotion and tenure decisions, publication in regional-studies journals, although not actively discouraged, is not credited as highly as publication in disciplinary journals. The sad fact is that, for ambitious political scientists looking to get the best North American jobs, publication in IJMES is not a great career move. ...

 

The professional situation of political scientists outside of North America is not as constrained. Good area-studies work that is informed by the epistemology of social science but relies on “old-fashioned” area-studies methods of qualitative analysis and considerable field work is more highly respected in the discipline in Europe and elsewhere. One can advance professionally at the best universities in Europe and the Middle East doing such work. Because of these different incentives, and different financial-support systems, graduate students at European universities who are interested in the Middle East tend to spend more time in the field and produce work that is more accessible to cross-disciplinary Middle East studies audiences. The significant representation of European-trained political scientists in the pages of IJMES over the last five years is testament to this different set of career structures and incentives.

I am not trying to demonize quantitative methods here. Although I tease "Quants" because I myself am an area studies geek, let's be honest: the more "tools" you can bring to bear on a question, the better. And I am not trying to say -- and neither is Gause -- that one cannot publish smart scholarly work on the Arabic-speaking world outside of IJMES (which is the flagship journal of Middle Eastern Studies). But I am trying to say that American political scientists are, by and large, rewarded for doing work that does not immediately lend itself to relevance in situations such as the one in which we currently find ourselves.

There are some excellent American political scientists working on the Arabic-speaking world. Greg Gause is one of them. So is Marc Lynch, whose writing during this most recent crisis has been excellent and necessary. So too is Josh Stacher, who published a great essay in Foreign Affairs over the weekend. So it is unfair, Drezner is correct to point out, to start bashing political science. I actually think American political scientists -- from Samer Shehata to Nathan Brown -- have been quite prominent in offering informed commentary during this crisis. But that's not a reason not to fret that political scientists trained in America might not be doing the kind of field work necessary for both top-flight area studies as well as providing policy-relevant insights onto events on the ground when crises arise. I spoke at THE Ohio State University last week, and one of the professors there similarly worried to me that students trained in the American academy would not be able to "keep up" with their European peers on regional expertise. That, to me, might be worth American political scientists thinking about. 

Work cited (emphasis mine):

Well, this is depressing, but I guess it was inevitable that in Washington, people would start asking "Who Lost Egypt?" before it was even clear what, exactly, is happening there.*

As I have tried to make clear, I am not an expert on Egypt. (Though not having expertise has hardly kept anyone from going on television and radio to talk about Egypt this week!) I served, though, on the Levant and Egypt team during the 2008-2009 CENTCOM Assessment Team. And looking back on that experience today, one of the things that has struck me is how long ago the U.S. government had identified the fall or death of Hosni Mubarak as a likely contingency to plan toward. Everyone knew this was going to happen eventually. So I think the blame being heaped on the intelligence community here is a little silly. Intelligence cannot predict the future, though it can assist policy-makers in gaming out possible contingencies, and I think our intelligence services did that here. It's hardly the fault of our nation's intelligence agencies that successive U.S. administrations from both parties decided it made more sense to continue backing a strongman than to prod Egypt's ruling party toward real and accountable democratic processes -- even though we all knew Mubarak would not be around forever. Even when administrations have decided to pressure Mubarak, by the way, they have found that the ~$1.5b we give Egypt annually has been a largely ineffective source of leverage. (Though it has, I would argue, helped foster now-invaluable connections with Egypt's military. Those last two sentences should serve as a warning for any legislators out there threatening to cut our aid.)

*If you are one of those people who think debates in Washington are a bit silly and are instead curious about what is actually taking place in Egypt, you could do worse than to follow the reporting of Charles Levinson of the Wall Street Journal, who in my mind has been the outstanding print reporter of these events. (And there have been many, many candidates for that title, from Graeme Wood of the Atlantic to Anthony Shadid of the New York Times.) Charles and I met in Cairo in 2005 and have been friends since, so I am a little biased toward the guy, but ask any journalist on the ground in Cairo which westerner speaks the best Arabic (Egyptian Arabic, no less) and knows Cairo the best, and they'll give you the name of Charles Levinson. Read this report from Tahrir Square that ran in today's Journal and tell me it's not absolutely first-rate journalism, taking you inside the anti-government protesters in a way I have not seen elsewhere. In related news, I passed by the office television a few hours back. The anchors at CNN were chuckling about a turkey attacking a mail truck. And you wonder why Americans are so poorly informed about the world?

One of the things that has come up in several conversations today has been the professionalism of the Egyptian military. It is worth noting, too, that even though the United States is getting a lot of blame from protesters on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria for our support for the Mubarak Regime through the years, the United States will likely be able to retain a great deal of influence in Egypt even in a post-Mubarak political landscape because of the way in which the U.S. military has kept up such close relations with its Egyptian counterparts. Egyptian officers have been coming to the United States for training for three decades now, so most high-ranking Egyptian officers have close friends in the U.S. military with whom they went to the War College or CGSC. (We Americans would also like to think we have played a role in the professionalization of the Egyptian officer corps, but that may be giving us too much credit.)

What a different situation we have in Pakistan, where an entire generation of the Pakistani officer corps was "lost" to the U.S. military because of the Pressler Ammendment and the way in which it halted cooperation and exchanges between our two militaries. In that way, one thing Egypt and Pakistan have in common is the way in which each, in different ways, highlight the very real benefits of mil-mil cooperation, officer exchanges, and security force assistance.

UPDATE: President Obama just spoke on Egypt. His first words were words of praise for the Egyptian Army. That is no accident.

I know you are all focused on Egypt at the moment, and for good reason, but I asked Dana Stuster, another intern here at CNAS with some experience in the Middle East, to write something for the blog on alternatives to Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen. Just trying to get ahead of the curve. Take it away, Dana:

On January 24, President Salih addressed the Yemeni people and offered the compulsively quotable wisdom that Yemen is not Tunisia (for the reasons why, see Brian O’Neill’s work over at “Always Judged Guilty,” among others). But if Yemen is not Tunisia, or Egypt for that matter, then what is it?

 

To begin with, Yemen is not on the cusp of a revolution. It’s easy to get caught up in the heady events in Tunisia and Egypt, but Yemen just does not have the socio-economic preconditions for the types of revolts seen in the past two weeks. Even if something were to take hold, the opposition movement in Yemen is incredibly fragmented. It’s unclear just what the mix of ideologies has been in the protests in Yemen these last few weeks, but even if the movement could depose Salih, there’s no clear outcome. If anything follows, it will begin with a motley assortment of groups jockeying for influence – a volatile cocktail of religious and political factions. In all likelihood, though, they won’t get that far.

 

Salih will stay in office, at least in the near term. The pressing issue in Yemeni politics remains, as it was before the constitutional amendment was proposed, who will be president after his term ends in 2013. Will Salih run in 2013, despite issuing a statement that he won’t? It wouldn’t be the first time Salih announced he would withdraw from the presidency only to run come election season. He may even try to consolidate his power and stay in office by force. In response to the protests, he has raised monthly salaries for Yemen Armed Forces soldiers, a hedge against disloyalty and an investment in the future stability of his regime.

 

Or maybe this time he’ll step down and allow a new president. Even if he doesn’t, Salih is now 78-years-old; it’s past time to start thinking about the looming succession crisis in Yemen. In his address on Monday, Salih called rumors that he would name his son Ahmed his successor, “rude.” The statement does not mean that Ahmed, who is commander of the Republican Guard and the subject of speculation that he is being groomed for the executive office, won’t choose to run on his own. The second most powerful man in the country and leading commander of the Yemen Armed Forces, Brigadier General Ali Mohsen al Ahmar, has hinted that he won’t tolerate Ahmed becoming president. Al Ahmar has waited in the wings for all of Salih’s now-32-year term. He may run, or he might just cross the Rubicon and take the government. A third possibility would be a candidate from the Islah Party, perhaps Hamid al Ahmar. Power would remain concentrated in the same cabal of northern tribesmen – al Ahmar is the leader of the Hashid Tribal Federation, to which Salih and B Gen al Ahmar also belong – but with a different slant. While Salih has been fairly secular (by the standards or Middle Eastern governments) and intent on walking a balance beam between northern and southern, Shi’a and Sunni, and various tribal divides, Islah is composed primarily of conservative converts to Wahabbi Salafism. One of the patriarchs of the party is Sheikh Abdul Majid al Zindani, a peculiarly Yemeni institution in and of himself (aside from his hennaed beard, he is known for being a financier of al Qaeda and is accused of having a hand in the attack on the USS Cole). B Gen al Ahmar financed jihadis as well, arranging the travel for Yemenis to go to Afghanistan (first to fight the Soviets, then the Americans) and Iraq.

 

There are no good options in Yemen. As long as Salih retains his tenuous hold on power, the United States will be forced to deal with an autocrat, but then again, he always has been. Yemenis call their brand of politics “decorative democracy,” a façade which was only instated in an effort by Salih to regain American aid. Now, though, Yemen is an integral part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts and cannot be neglected as it has been in the past. Salih knows that his place is assured – it’s the confidence that allowed him to propose the abolition of term limits in the first place. The State Department will have another couple years of the same fair-weather ally they’ve come to know, but it will only postpone an inevitable transition. None of the candidates to succeed Salih seem conciliatory to U.S. interests, and it will not be enough to hope that Yemen’s coming resource crisis will force the prospective Islah Party government or al Ahmar military regime into a dialogue. The United States needs to start making friends now, especially outside of Sanaa, with local and tribal leaders. The tribes are a constant in Yemen; the government, after a 30-some year hiatus, is about to be a lot less so.

Hey, I'm not trying to get all Edward Said on the readership here, but I do have one small request: can we all agree to stop using European historical analogies to describe what is taking place in Egypt? It's not Europe in 1848 or Eastern Europe in 1989 or France in 1789: it's Egypt in 2011.

What is taking place in Egypt today is the result of sui generis social, political, cultural and even geographic phenomena. When we use "western" frames of reference to make sense of what is taking place, by contrast, we a) sound really freaking narcissistic and b) fail to take those local phenomena seriously and thus miss a lot of what is going on.

Egypt has been doing this civilization thing, it occurs to me, for quite some time. Maybe even longer than Western Europe (by, oh, a few thousand years or so). So let's take Egypt and the Egyptians seriously -- on their own terms.

I was home in Tennessee for a brief 24 hours and woke up yesterday morning to MSNBC's "Morning Joe," which Mama Muqawama likes to watch before work. Nothing against the people on that particular show, because it's probably just representative of U.S. cable news in general*, but I was absolutely stunned by the willingness of the show's guests to opine about Egypt without having any actual experience in or expertise on Egypt or the broader Middle East. Is it really that tough to say, "Hey, that's a great question, Joe, but I am not really the best guy to give the viewers at home a good answer?"

Instead, guest after guest -- most of whom are specialists in or pundits on U.S. domestic politics -- made these broad, ridiculously sweeping statements about the meaning and direction of the protests.

I traveled to Egypt twice in 2005 and lived there between January and August of 2006 while studying Arabic after having completed my master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut. I am by no means an expert on Egypt. But I like to think I know the people who are, so as a service to the readers, I am providing you all a list of no-%$#@ experts on Egypt. This list is, happily, by no means exhaustive: unlike the lack of informed commentary on Afghanistan, the United States has thousands of people who have lived and studied in Egypt as civilian researchers and students and can thus provide some reasonably informed commentary on events there. The following list is filled with some people whose opinions matter and whose analysis might actually be informed by study and experience. This list is in no particular order except for the first two people on the list, who are both good friends as well as two of the world's best experts on Egyptian politics.

Issandr el-Amrani, Arabist.net, @arabist

Elijah Zarwan, Crisis Group

Michael Wahid Hanna, The Century Foundation, @mwhanna1

Marc Lynch, GWU/CNAS/FP.com, @abuaardvark

Steven Cook, CFR, @stevenacook

Samir Shehata, Georgetown University

Josh Stacher, Kent State University, @jstacher

Amil Khan, Abu Muqawama, @Londonstani

Max Rodenbeck, The Economist

If you can, follow the live feed on al-Jazeera Arabic, which has made for the most exciting television I have watched since the Red Sox came back from three games down in the 2004 ALCS. (These events are arguably more geostrategically significant.) If you can't follow that feed, try al-Jazeera English or follow the updates on Robert Mackey's most excellent New York Times blog The Lede.

*An exception to the rule: Ben Wedeman at CNN.

Update: Someone in the comments suggested Shadi Hamid (@shadihamid), and I second that. Again, my list was happily not exhaustive. There are a lot of very smart analysts out there who can thoughtfully opine on Egypt -- in large part thanks to the legions of Arabic-language students who pass through Cairo at some point in their training.