james gelfand is a scholar of middle eastern history he has been a faculty member in the department of history at the university of california los angeles since one thousand nine hundred five and has written extensively on the history of the modern middle east with particular emphasis on nationalism and the social and cultural history he is the author of five books on current middle eastern issues his most recent is the arab uprisings what everyone needs to know now a year after the egyptian revolution james calvin like many of his colleagues did not first see the overwhelming victory of the islamist parties in the elections there were three aspects of the elections that we didn't see that we got wrong but i don't think were really foreseeable first of all the very fact that there were going to be elections that the military is going to allow elections to take place anyway something that was very very iffy and then what sort of elections in the style of elections so we can't be totally faulted it's people such as myself are not seeing this stuff happening but the three aspects of the elections that came as a surprise was number one the size of the victory of the muslim brotherhood there was polling as late as june of last year in which the brotherhood was getting somewhere around fifteen percent of the and there was even kasian all brave soul out there that said forty percent forty percent but most of us didn't see forty percent most of us saw a lot less and we were pretty much disabused of that in the most recent elections the second thing that we didn't see was that it was a power of the sala fists the salafist a very very new on the egyptian political scene they've been around for a while but mainly they have scorned political involvement and they actually mocked the brotherhood for its attempts to enter into the political process their attitude was that there is a moral awakening that needs to take place before a society egyptian society is fit for and islam a government they came in very very late but they had achieved had acquired so much moral capital by the time that they came in through all whole variety of civil society programs that they ran through charitable works by conducting traffic in alexandria i mean these were things that they actually you know were able to build on so that they very very quickly were able to  create a strong political force and achieve approximately twenty percent of the vote and then the final thing that few of us actually saw was the way in which secular parties would fare as they have coming in a distant third this is not something that we had thought we had thought that they would be far more popular we thought that the brotherhood for example would be result of the muslim brotherhood getting forty percent less all of us can see how twenty percent and so on and so forth it's certainly more legitimate than the elections have were held previously in two thousand and ten for example the brotherhood got nothing in two thousand and five they got twenty percent of the vote but the question actually is made more complex in the sense that the process itself is extraordinarily complex i've read over the  for forming of the blocks in the forming of the parties and so on and so forth it's a very very difficult for me to figure this out so you can imagine how difficult it might have been for an egyptian of voter to figure out exactly what was going on exactly what was expected if there were proportional representation there were party blocs there was individuals who were run you had people fitting into the category of worker peasant or professional you had certain  seats set aside for specific groups so it was just very very difficult to comprehend what was going as far as we know it was mainly free and fair far as we know of the for example carter people were there and they would say for it on the other hand it was a slugfest and there was a lot of reports of tricks being used false information being passed people being herded to the polling stations and that starting from the layout from the one nine hundred eighty s all the way through now there's only one game in town that's neoliberal economics and so the there's not going to be the sort of you know  the difference between rich and poor for example the in the arab world which by the way america is still exceeds the arab world in the difference between the very rich and the very poor the gap that's  these things were things that sparked the uprisings all these things now are the things that these governments are faced with doing egypt is an economic backwater at this point and egypt is not going to be able to change its position at all in this time period the question is what the general aspirations of the gyptian people are if there is something that we can say as a general aspiration certainly when you have forty percent winning forty percent of the winners being the throughout the middle east there were chunks of time when islam is a man tended to follow similar strategies and similar tactics and then because of various outside forces had to shift for example the muslim brotherhood  seventy s and later on and you had a series of very very violent confrontations between defectors from the brotherhood and the egyptian government culminating in the massacre for example that took place in because for example they were able to force the brotherhood to as i said pledge allegiance to the system to participate in the political process be it as it may they couldn't operate as a free political party of course but they could back independent candidates for office and they want twenty percent of the vote in two thousand and five mubarak in two thousand and ten make sure that didn't happen again but in various other places as well the muslim brotherhoods have agreed to cooperate with various governments for example in libya they sat down in dialogue for a while with even in syria where it had been viciously repressed in one thousand nine hundred two the brotherhood then turned around and said well the government can't be that bad because it's good on the palestinian question and so we can't do anything to undercut the current government because of its you know progressive politics in terms of foreign policy so in that way the repression was very very effective but they said the repression also was counterproductive because this repressive apparatus that the governments had set up in egypt and tunisia and morocco and various other places tended to grow expand and over time it became the major so one of the major sources for the u down and very likely the army had had enough but immediately thereafter the army told people to get back to work and to stop the strike wave strike wave has in part continued but labor appears to be one of the big which is a very strange attempt to try to square the circle here you can't have it both and us in terms of economic policy the muslim brotherhood very likely is closer to the republican party than it is to the democratic party i was talking to students earlier today and if there is an equivalent in american politics it would be the muslim brotherhood is probably closer to newt gingrich the  santorum with the obsession over issues such as morality and ethics and that's a good thing young secular people were at the forefront of the revolutionary changed to the surprise of many experts the secular movement was buried in and islamised landslide well there's a couple of years number one that we had just totally underestimated the popularity the islamist parties but it's not just popularity it has to do with their organizational capability was far superior to that liberals for example the april sixth movement debated whether or not it would enter into the election as a party and they decided no they weren't going to do that because a lot of political knife on the part of the secular forces as to what the outcome was going to be the other thing of course is that maybe as westerners we saw what we wanted to see and terms of the revolution we tended to focus on the english speaking social networking in tahrir square labor for example was pretty much ignored in the american media and the muslim brotherhood as well the popularity very likely was just disruptive they want to get their lives back in order at the end of the day it's very likely that the elections will for example take place that there will be a political process that that they can participate in  population has won that it looks very likely that the army may go back to its barracks so long as its privileges are protected and so long as there is immunity for events that have recently transpired since particular since november of this year so that's something that's happened in terms of economic policy however the egyptian government starting with the so called cabinet the businessman that  accelerated it's the egyptian acceptance of neoliberal economics privatized patients cetera and it's very unlikely that that is going to be reversed when barak obama at the end of the street face the first street face of the egyptian revolution made his speech to about tunisia and egypt he said that the solution is for economic reform the solution is further neo liberal economic policies if barack obama wants to do something for the populations there's one thing he could could have done very very quickly which is to end subsidies for biofuels in the united states there has been a tacking up tremendously of the price of food in the middle east the middle east is the world's largest the arab world is the world's largest food importer of all the regions in the world egypt alone is the world's largest food importer of all the region regions in the world and the american subsidies for  biofuels has certainly done nothing but to make the price of grains particularly weak to go up as well so along those lines the you in the united states could have done something more effective but it wasn't politically to do the army is firmly in control now is one of the questions as to what was going to happen terminus of the reoccupation tahrir square whether or not the army would use that as an excuse to cancel the election and just try to impose top down control direct control itself as opposed to allowing the parliamentarians to to go through the motions of rewriting the constitution and then the other thing the military is  attempted to dictate the nature of the constitution they have attempted to stake out a position for themselves in the egyptian government that would allow them to retain their privileges allow them to retain a certain control over the political  has been the major bone of contention between people like i and others and the military the muslim brotherhood very interesting lee has walked a thin line on this one and walked a tight rope  the one they really want the military to go back to their barracks number two they also realize that they're going to have to give certain reassurances to the military in order to get them to go back to their barracks the military is very very very strong it's the largest military in the middle east sheer numbers and did plays a very very active role in a whole variety of all aspects of  certain demilitarization that was taking place in a distancing between from the presidency and the military but over time what the military was relegated into a very very important economic role this in part had to do labor they have privileged priority rights to have raw materials they can conduct those raw materials where they want the also military bases of course were on the borders frequently the places that were on the sea sides and so there was a great deal of possibility for exploitation for tourism as well so the military controlled everything from farms to dairy farms economy and it's been one of the things that people began to look at was that it's very possible that the military is very very quick round up of those people around the park and the fat cats  had to do with it's jealousy over there are privileged access number one and secondly different economic goals that they had they weren't as attached to international capital they weren't as attached to  liberal policies obviously they were part of the government and they do control manufacturing so it's a direct contradiction of what neo liberalism is all about so very likely what happened was that they use the immediate aftermath of the revolution to strike against their economic opponents in other places in the middle east you find somewhere things not the same about control but for example the syrian construction industry is controlled by the army pretty much there are other people the night you know as well associated with that but you know the army is a very very important player in the economy if there is a ray of hope it might be tunisia but even there tunisians got serious problems it's got serious regional differences in terms of the coastal regions for example actually have been able to take advantage of globalization terms of tourist industry and that sort of thing but certainly the inland areas which are more industrial textiles etc have not been able to take advantage of  e china for example it is only its only advantage comparative advantage is its proximity to europe so it's not going to get out of this hole that it's in very very easily its major export of course is oil it's a raw material it is not a manufacturing center so it's not an area of the world that's going to be hooked in very well to a globalized economy except in terms of the of exporting oil to the globalized economy in those terms the so called arab spring is a misnomer ok spring implies joy on the immediate horizon that any of that is going to take place and if you look at certain places like for example syria and perhaps libya yemen bahrain it has taken an extraordinarily ugly turn as well i think the relationship between egypt and israel the has been transformed in terms of the israel palestine conflict however several things have already taken place one of those is that the military regime has in egypt has signal way so he did the american and the israeli bidding of closing off gaza the current regime while it hasn't quite opened up the border with gaza has certainly made things a lot looser for and with the entire set of arab uprising this is a whole new model right there for a political opposition and hamas hears this sort of thing has looked around and said my god we we've got to do something here so you one fortunate side effect of the revolution has been an increase in violence directed against you gyptian christians or congress in terms of who is responsible for these actions we can say that it's very probable that it is people who are associated with the sellafield with the south afia tendency there were also some rumors that there were government agents who  doing it either the military or former member mubarak loyalists who were doing that certainly the discourse in some quarters of the egyptian population has been that this sort of thing did not happen under mubarak and would not happen under mubarak  legitimacy by blackmail in other words the legitimacy that the government sought was to say ok look i might be bad but i'm the only one who are for holding the forces of chaos and sectarianis