When you look at the region today, how often do you see crimes against humanity? In Iraq and Syria, the answer is painful. The crimes are all too graphic and the inadequacy of international enforcement all too obvious. One would have thought that in this day and age, with the arsenal of international laws at our disposal, and with the International Criminal Court in place, things would have been different. Since the US invaded Iraq, up to one million Iraqis are believed to have lost their lives. The figure in Syria's civil war is 200,000. And in Gaza, more than 2,000 died in shelling that left many more lives irreparably damaged. There is no doubt in my mind that the Americans, when they dismantled the Iraqi state, committed a crime against humanity. Lives were lost because of the power vacuum that emerged in Iraq after the invasion and the actions that followed. Similar events in Syria and Libya must be seen in the same light. Allow me to compare this situation with what happened in Egypt one year ago. When Egyptian authorities intervened to disperse the Rabaa sit-in last summer, over 600 protesters died. Among the police forces, the casualties were also considerable, with 114 policemen killed. This goes to show that at least some of the protesters, who had been given 48 days to disperse, with warnings issued in advance, were armed and dangerous. Before the dispersals were ordered, the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters committed murder in various parts of Cairo, including Bein Al-Sarayat, Al-Manial, and the Giza Bridge. And yet a recent international report described Egypt's dispersal of the sit-ins as a crime against humanity. I beg to differ for I haven't forgotten what the Muslim Brotherhood did before and during the dispersal. When people refer to such terms as crimes against humanity, the images that come to my mind are those of genocide and lawlessness — scenes that keep recurring in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. And these are the exact scenes that Egypt narrowly escaped because it had the courage to stop the Muslim Brotherhood in its tracks. Egypt managed to avoid a collapse of law and order, one that could have developed into a civil war, because it acted firmly and decisively. Watching the tragedies of Iraq, with the attendant rise of the Islamic State, the ineptitude of central government and the rise of sectarian tensions, one realises how wise the Egyptians were when they overthrew the divisive and inept Muslim Brotherhood after one year in power. In Iraq, the dismantling of the state in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of 2003 led the country down the road to civil war, partition, and carnage. In Syria, the failure of the international community to act decisively against the regime led to a similar power vacuum and one of the worst civil wars ever seen in this region. In Libya, a NATO-assisted insurgency left the country in the hands of rival militant groups, with no viable central power to protect civilians from the destruction of their economy and lives. Yet Egypt was singled out for criticism, when the very act that it is blamed for is the one that saved it from a terrible fate. In Iraq, Syria and Libya there are groups that dream of carving off a chunk of land to call it an Islamic emirate or even caliphate. Some of these groups have regional and international allies who put their interests before the interests of the people of this region and humanity in general. The international coalition that led the charge against Gaddafi's army left Libya in the hands of Islamic militias that are supported by regional states. All that these militias now think about is how to divide Libya and establish their own separate emirates. Such events are taking place just across our borders, and that's why we have to remain particularly vigilant. Egypt has managed to survive the worst after the 25 January Revolution. We survived in the face of a grinding economic crisis and succeeded, not without difficulty, in ending the divisive rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood was about to turn Egypt into a launch pad for global jihadists. On 14 June 2013, weeks before his ouster, Mohamed Morsi made a public speech in which he urged jihad in Syria. If Egypt has stayed out of this trouble it is only because the Muslim Brotherhood wasn't allowed to stay longer in power. Many lives were saved because the government acted tough. The Rabaa confrontation didn't have to be that bloody, except that this is the way the Muslim Brotherhood wanted it to be. After the dispersal of the sit-ins, the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies sprang into action, burning churches and attacking police stations all over the country. The death toll from subsequent attacks exceeds even the needless loss of life on the day of the Rabaa confrontation. In one day, nearly 80 churches were burned down. Attackers who targeted police stations killed the officers inside in cold blood. Such threats to public life by a group claiming to be the country's best and most pious leaders are unprecedented. Another country might have fallen apart, but not Egypt. Now let's compare what the Egyptians did in their country with what the Americans and other major powers did in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. In Egypt, we stood up to a group that could have spread terror here and elsewhere. In Iraq, Syria, and Libya the voracious appetite for intervention by external powers disrupted the countries involved and led to unspeakable horrors. So allow me to ask this: Who in this region committed genocide, and who prevented it? Who committed crimes against humanity, and who fought to prevent them? What Egypt did in Rabaa, rather than being a crime, was a timely form of crime prevention. The writer is managing editor of the quarterly journal Al-Demoqrateya, published by Al-Ahram.
