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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