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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