More violence likely in Egypt as political deadlock remains unsolved

After Sunday's 6 October celebrations leave 57 dead, many fear that confrontation between Morsi supporters and the interim authorities will only escalate

After weeks of relative calm, Egypt plunged into violence once again on 6 October as the country celebrated its national holiday marking the 1973 war with Israel, igniting fears over further bloodshed in the turmoil-stricken country.
Fifty-seven people died and 393 were injured that day, according to the health ministry, as supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi clashed with pro-military civilians and security forces.
The very next day, several attacks targeting security forces and state installations made clear that Egypt was still far from reaching stability, causing many to fear further escalation between the Muslim Brotherhood and the current authorities.
In a context of deep political polarisation, very few have sympathised with the Muslim Brotherhood.
"On 6 October, I saw two corpses on the street, and people were happy and gloating about it because they were Brotherhood supporters," Revolutionary Socialists member Tarek Shalaby said.
"We have a state fighting against the country's biggest organisation, which has diverging interests," Shalaby added. "The state is using all means; violence and repression against this group, but also propaganda to gain popular support and prevent anyone from objecting."
Many today believe that the Muslim Brotherhood is the main instigator of Egypt's instability, responsible for the ongoing state of violence the country has witnessed since the popularly-backed military ouster of Morsi in July.
"They insist on pushing their supporters toward confrontations that they know will lead to human loss," Ahmed Atef, spokesman for the Nasserite Popular Current political group, told Ahram Online.
"Morsi supporters should have selected another day to protest, instead of a sacred national occasion for all Egyptians," April 6 co-founder Ahmed Maher said in a statement, referring to the 6 October protests.
Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, a political science professor from the American University in Cairo, accused the Muslim Brotherhood of resorting to violence to achieve political gains. "They keep pressure on the government so they can drive it to negotiate with them and accept their conditions."
According to Soltan, the latest push of violence reflects the group's desire to paralyse the country just as it seems to be stabalising. "They got the feeling that we were returning to stability, and that the world was starting to recognise the current power's legitimacy, and they wanted to stop that," he said.
Sense of normalcy
Egypt has indeed been longing for a sense of normalcy in the past few weeks. A nightly curfew has been shortened. Several walls built long ago in Cairo's downtown to prevent clashes between protesters and security forces were brought down. Authorities undertook the renovation of Cairo's emblematic Tahrir square. And, most importantly, weekly Friday protests organised by Morsi supporters were no longer followed by deadly clashes, prompting several European countries – including Holland, Belgium, and France, among others – to lift an earlier travel ban on Egypt.
In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on 24 September, US president Barack Obama roundly admitted for the first time since Morsi's ouster that the "interim government that replaced him responded to the desires of millions of Egyptians who believed the revolution had taken a wrong turn." Obama also said that the US would continue to "maintain a constructive relationship" with the interim government.
Apart from street clashes, the Muslim Brotherhood has also been held responsible for a series of spectacular attacks targeting security forces, state installations and liberal figures. This has led many to fear a coming escalation and a return to the nineties decade of Islamist-led violence.
"Various groups following different methods and different strategies are responsible for the attacks…working on account of the Muslim Brotherhood," Atef said.
On 4 September, spokesman for the liberal Al-Dustour party Khaled Dawoud was pulled out of his car and stabbed by alleged Morsi supporters while driving by a Muslim Brotherhood march in downtown Cairo. Two days later, political activist Bothaina Kamel said she was violently beaten by Muslim Brotherhood supporters.
Since Morsi's ouster, militants have stepped-up their attacks against security forces, especially in the Northern Sinai Peninsula
."We don't control what is happening on the ground, but what is going on in Sinai in reaction to the military coup will stop the second [army chief] Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi says he retreats," leading Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed El-Beltagy warned two days after Morsi's ouster.
In an unprecedented attack on Monday, assailants fired rocket-propelled grenades at a satellite communication dish in Cairo's upscale district of Maadi, which had been previously spared from violence. A jihadi group called the Furqan Brigades later claimed responsibility for the attack, describing it as part of an ongoing war between "Sunni Muslims and infidels who intend to uproot Islam from the land of Egypt."
"Terror attacks are expanding from Sinai to the rest of the republic," Atef says, adding that the Maadi attack represented "a qualitative change for the Islamic groups, at the heart of whom the Muslim Brotherhood lays."
The Muslim Brotherhood, however, has repeatedly denied resorting to violence. "Are there any alternative to peaceful protests?" asked Tarek El-Morsi, spokesman for the group's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party. "We won't resort to violence."
Instead, the group has denounced the violent state crackdown against them which has left hundreds dead. "When a soldier or a policeman uses ammunition against a specific social group, you can't simply call that 'violence'," Tarek El-Morsi said."This is deliberate murder."
Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members have been arrested, including several leading figures such as Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and his deputy, businessman Khairat El-Shater.
One alternative would be for the Muslim Brotherhood to join the country's current political transition, a move the group has so far refused to make. "Is there really a political transition? There is a group that arrived to power riding on tanks and is imposing its will on the people," Tarek El-Morsi said, vowing to continue the protests for now. "When the power is legitimate, we will join a political transition."
The Muslim Brotherhood-led National Coalition to Support Legitimacy has called for new protests on Friday 11 October, marking 100 days since Morsi's ouster.
"We are in a strong position, I am very optimistic," said 23-year-old Mahmoud Ziad, member of the 'youth against the coup' coalition. To Ziad, the 6 October protests revealed that "despite all the arrests and all the killing, people will keep taking to the streets."
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