News that Hosni Mubarak, overthrown as overlord of Egypt in 2011, has been released from prison only adds to the confusion in Cairo. Two years after the protests at Tahrir Square became an iconic symbol of the Arab Spring, is the hope of democracy in West Asia gone for good?

Was the Arab Spring always doomed to fail? If so, what does one make of the confident prediction of cynics that it would usher in an Islamist Winter? Is that really happening, given that the current turmoil in Egypt is the result of the Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood being taken on by the Army?
To be fair, nobody got it right: not the optimists and not the pessimists. While Mohamed Morsi did serve as Egypt’s first democratically elected President, his administration was disappointing in terms of economic performance and domestic priorities. Mr Morsi was occasionally impressive in international forums, but at home he became increasingly unpopular and was noted for rehabilitating members of the Brotherhood in different public institutions.
This does not necessarily mean Mr Morsi was taking Egypt down the path to a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. It is possible that the idea was to consolidate the Brotherhood, which had been on the margins for decades, and to that end the goal may have been as political as religious. It is equally possible that if Mr Morsi had been allowed to stay in power for say a year longer, the disgruntlement against him and the lack of urgency on economic concerns would have led to a popular as opposed to Army-led uprising.
Yet, all of that is now a theoretical debate. The fact is the Army realised Mr Morsi and his government were strengthening the Brotherhood, saw this as incompatible with the military’s sense that it would not brook a challenger to its role as political arbiter, and took advantage of the people’s anger that
Mr Morsi was betraying the urgings for democracy which had brought him to power in the first place. It acted when it thought the moment was ripe. Whether the moment would have been better or worse a year or two down the line is a pointless argument now.
The Egyptian Army’s moves against the Brotherhood have been brutal. Many senior ideologues of the Brotherhood had come out of hiding in the past few months, emboldened by the departure of a hostile dictatorship and the arrival of a friendly government. They had presumed the Morsi regime had time on its hands and had let down their guard. Analysts familiar with the region say this has left the Brotherhood vulnerable to the Army; in the past two years it had become much more visible and much less secretive. That is why top members of the Brotherhood, who would have been difficult to trace five years ago, have been found, trapped and killed.
While the Brotherhood has always been a problematic organisation, a coup is not easy to defend. Mr Morsi was democratically elected and in the early days of his removal there were enough people caught in a dilemma. The Brotherhood had been given the moral high ground, it was felt. It would mobilise its grassroots workers and insist it had been cheated of power. If so, this could have had the Brotherhood bouncing back in a few years. Mr Morsi would then have become a latter-day Mohammad Mossadegh, the popular and nationalist Iranian Prime Minister who was pushed out by an Anglo-American intelligence operation, supported by the military in Teheran, in 1953.
Mossadegh’s removal had the Shah of Iran regaining control and solidifying his position as a Western vassal. However, it sowed the seeds of discontent. When Mossadegh was avenged, in 1979, the Shah was dethroned not by a secular force but by a vicious form of political Islam represented by Ayatollah Khomeini.
The other possible route for Egypt would have been to recreate the Battle of Sabilla (1929), in which Ibn Saud, the first king of Saudi Arabia, decimated the Ikhwan (the word means “Brotherhood” in Arabic, as it happens). The Ikhwan was a zealot militia that was once an ally but later accused Ibn Saud of selling out to the West and to infidels.
A variation of this episode, and one that the generals in Egypt probably had in mind, was the decade-long civil war in Algeria. It began in the early 1990s, when the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was at the cusp of being elected to office. The Army vetoed this and cracked down on the FIS. The Islamists converted themselves into guerrilla groups and Algeria plunged into civil war. Eventually, the Army cut and shot its way to victory.
Given the industrial scale violence in Egypt, it would appear the Army is going for the Sabilla-Algeria option and does not want to leave scope for an Islamist comeback in the near future. It is seeking strategic advance and not just tactical success against the Brotherhood. Should the campaign be a long-drawn one, it is possible North Africa could become the leading theatre for international jihad — with the Egyptian Army as the principal enemy — after Western troops exit Afghanistan in 2014. If this occurs, it would take pressure away from West Asia and South Asia, and leave Israel and India relieved.
It is remarkable the Americans have more or less acceded to the Egyptian Army’s line. The idealism of democracy promotion has been tempered by the realism of containing Islamism. There is a delicious irony here. President George W. Bush had a reputation for being a fearsome right-winger and yet, it was he who advocated democracy at all costs in the Muslim world, even if it didn’t always yield results one wanted. On the other hand, President Barack Obama has a reputation for being a left-leaning liberal and it is he who appears to have come to live with the necessity of short-circuiting democracy.
This just goes to show that circumstances shape Presidents and Prime Ministers. Pre-office beliefs and preconceived notions mean relatively little.

The writer can be contacted at malikashok@gmail.com