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Egypt's Revolution Stalls in Divide-and-Conquer Politics
(Wall Street Journal)- Charles Levinson and Matt Bradley- Egypt's Arab Spring revolution, which toppled Mr. Mubarak in 18 days, has stalled in a quagmire of divide-and-conquer politics, leaving the country's revolutionaries splintered and disillusioned. The unity between Egypt's secular and Islamist forces drove the uprising. But growing rifts between the conservative, religious Brotherhood and the largely liberal, secular revolutionaries now appears one of the most damaging cracks in Egypt's revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood had long preferred backroom deals with the regime over street protests. Egypt's secular opposition, meanwhile, grew suspicious of the Brotherhood's political ambitions and Islamist agenda. "Everyone thought the military were idiots. They weren't," said Josh Stacher, a professor at Kent State University who spent 15 years in Egypt studying the Mubarak regime's ruling tactics. "The revolutionaries didn't understand how the system works and they miscalculated again and again."