Reflecting on Egypt’s Four Years of Emergency State

The political atmosphere in Egypt is getting more pleasant, as the state is becoming more open to discuss ways and reform its performance on human rights issues.

Foreign pressures by important allies, like the United States, could have a role to play in this arena. However, this does not rule out the political leadership’s sincere desire to improve political rights and civil freedoms for the future benefit of public citizens, under the new republic.

Since the beginning of September, the political leadership of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has been blowing a few warm breezes into the frozen body of civil freedoms.

It started, in mid-September, with announcing the National Strategy for Human Rights, which outlines the state’s overall vision towards improving human rights performance among state authorities, as well as enhancing civil freedoms and social development.

Then, in early October, the Parliament announced the formation of the new board of the National Council for Human Rights, a step that has been postponed for about five years under the exceptional Emergency Law.

Nonetheless, the biggest surprise was Sisi’s decision, last week on October 25th, to end the state of emergency, that was being applied and continuously renewed since 2017.

On Palm Sunday, April 9th, 2017, two Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists, simultaneously, bombed Mary Girgis Church in Tanta and Mary Morcos Chuch in Alexandria. The bombings claimed the lives of 45 citizens and injured 128 others, according to official statistics by the Egyptian Ministry of Health.

Sadly, the terrorist targeting of Coptic Christian citizens, who represent more than 15% of the Egyptian population, reached a peak point that year. Therefore, El Sisi convened a meeting with the National Defense Council (NDC) and then declared state of emergency nation-wide.

At that time, the announcement of the state of emergency aroused concerns among human rights groups, inside and outside Egypt. They were legitimately worried that re-declaring the state of emergency means starting a new dictatorial era, similar to Mubarak’s. They voiced concerns despite the fact that President El Sisi waived to the Prime Minister all the exceptional powers, granted to him under the law of emergency no.162/1958.

The ill reputation of the exceptional procedure goes back to three decades of abusing the emergency to crackdown on human rights and civil freedoms by the autocratic regime of Mubarak. One of the first demands on the protester’s list, in Egypt’s Arab Spring revolution in January 2011, which overthrew the Mubarak regime, was for the state of emergency to end.

In addition, the decision of ending the state of emergency promises that Egypt is finally crawling back to the track for liberal democratic reform, after almost a decade of prioritizing the fight against terrorism. That is a bigger challenge than the state and citizens are expecting.

However, while we are celebrating this significant moment, there are important lessons to drive from the past four years of emergency state in Egypt. The most important of which is about the feasibility of applying exceptional procedures to fight terrorism and how much this could benefit or harm democracy.

What makes this question more interesting is the fact that some democratically advanced countries (e.g.; France, Germany, and the United States) have been operating under the state of emergency for long years, which extends to decades in the American case. However, this had not significantly hurt the status of human rights and democracy.

The state of emergency is a procedure that does hinder liberal democratization in the short run. But, if properly applied it could enhance democratic progress in the long run. That is particularly true in the case of fighting against terrorist expansion, as was the case for Egypt.

The goal of terrorists is to destroy the nation-state system and structure and make it unable to function. As a result, political chaos and citizen anger dominate the scene, providing fertile soil for terrorist ideology to grow and attract supporters.

Sometimes, the state should jump the gun by wisely applying temporary exceptional procedures that blocks this terrorism permitting scenario. That is exactly what Egypt has successfully accomplished by utilizing the state of emergency in the past four years.