Egypt at the Cross-Roads with ‘No Positive Outcomes’
Army soldiers stand guard near the Republican Guard headquarters after clashes with supporters of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi, in Cairo, July 8, 2013. The death toll in violence on Monday at the Cairo headquarters of the Republican Guard rose to 42, Egyptian state television said, after the Muslim Brotherhood accused the security forces of attacking protesters there. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih (EGYPT – Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) – RTX11GIW
Egypt is entering a very dangerous phase in its history, according to Egyptian-born scholar, Omar Ashour.
Ashour is a lecturer in Middle East politics at the University of Exeter in Britain, and a fellow with the Brookings Institution.
"We saw this horror movie before, multiple times," Ashour says, "Every time an elected institution is removed by force by a group of generals, and that elected institution has support on the ground, which is exactly the case in Egypt, the country cannot descend except in one of four scenarios."
He lists these scenarios as an out-right military dictatorship, or military-dominated government with a civilian facade, or a full-scale civil war, or widespread civil unrest.
"There are no positive outcomes."
This will have repercussions for the rest of the world as well, says Ashour.
He says Egypt could see "the production of a new wave of angry teenagers and young men who were victims of repression who will have no belief whatsoever in constitutional procedures or in democracy or in (the) democratic process. And they will tell you, and we're hearing it already, 'we voted five times and this is what it got us'."