As the Obama administration opens a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, conservative voices in the US have been warning of the dangers of such moves, writes Ezzat Ibrahim from Washington Among an array of issues in Egyptian- American relations following the 25 January Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood is the most murky. The US kept its relationship with the Brotherhood at bay for almost six decades, but now American foreign policy is encountering one of its greatest challenges in a decade: engaging the most powerful Islamist group in Egypt and the Muslim world in a constructive dialogue that should avoid any unnecessary surprises on the path to a democratic Egypt. At the same time, the US administration has been playing the wild card with both the Israel lobby and the conservative right, which are still categorising the Islamist group as a sponsor of extremism across the Middle East and beyond. Yet, for more than four decades, the Brotherhood has renounced terrorism as a means of bringing about political change, and it is not on the US State Department's list of terrorist groups. But the group is still seen with great suspicion by both Israel and its supporters in the United States, including some members of Congress. "The Muslim Brotherhood is committed to violence and extremism," representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said following the recognition of the Brotherhood's political party last month. "Neither freedom nor justice will be advanced by any political party established by the Muslim Brotherhood," she added. Nevertheless, the US rapprochement with the group is being seen as a sign of a pragmatic policy to achieve vital American interests and to avoid a backlash in US-Egyptian relations in case the Muslim Brotherhood wins a majority (or becomes part of a national coalition) in the next parliament. The Republicans should ease their opposition once it becomes obvious that the Brotherhood will be a key player in Egypt's future. On a larger scale, American strategists may find it is time to go in a new direction by working with popular Islamist groups that denounce violence and extremism. The Arab Spring is reshaping the local scene in Egypt and other nations, and therefore US foreign policy will try to adapt. One important element in the new approach is to woo this Islamist movement, which has deep roots in most societies in the Middle East. The complicated US relationship with the Islamic world has added further burdens to the new approach, since US troops are still fighting (or sending up drones) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. The US is fighting Al-Qaeda and its offshoots in different places, but public opinion in most Arab countries considers resisting American power to be legitimate and not the opposite. The ascendancy of the Islamists in the new Arab politics will encourage such groups to benefit from spreading anti-American propaganda, and it is seen as a wise step to attempt to sway such positions. The US has lost crucial allies, and possible substitutes have not yet emerged. At the same time, the US has not developed a new comprehensive strategy regarding the new reality. "Given the changing political landscape in Egypt, it is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful, and committed to nonviolence, that intend to compete for the parliament and the presidency," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Budapest last week. "The administration is continuing the approach of limited contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood that have existed on and off for about five or six years," she added. "This is not a new policy; it is one that we are re-engaging in because of upcoming elections. But there will be certain expectations set and certain messages delivered, and we hope that the move toward democracy that is happening in Egypt will actually result in an inclusive, participatory political system." Following the speech, Tamara Cofman Wittes, deputy assistant secretary of state for near east affairs told Al-Ahram Weekly that "contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood have continued on and off for years since the 1990s. The announcement of Secretary Clinton is nothing new." She insisted on the American version of the story, saying that "the United States has held talks with the Muslim Brotherhood deputies. And all I can say is that in the past three to five years, the United States has held a dialogue with Egyptian parliamentarians, including MPs from the Brotherhood, and we are on the same approach today." Dialogue advocates in the state department consider the Brotherhood to be part of the political scene in Egypt, which has become more dynamic than ever before. "Washington wants to enter into a new dialogue since the group announced its commitment to democracy and therefore will deal with it like any other political force in the country," Wittes said. The new contacts would not differentiate between the Brotherhood and the Freedom and Justice Party. "The ongoing contacts include all political parties, political activists, and youth movements," she added. Although Egypt and Western capitals have greeted such announcements as a significant move, state department officials are playing down the importance of the new approach. "Contacting the Muslim Brotherhood and its party will be held under the normal activities of American diplomacy. The US embassy in Cairo will host these meetings, and there will be no special setting of any kind for the dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood," Wittes said. "The situation in Egypt today is more open to all parties. In such a new climate, all political forces are facing questions from Egyptian public opinion, which will judge their credibility and the degree of commitment to the multi-party system and democratic principles, human rights, women's rights, and minorities' rights. Accordingly, the Freedom and Justice Party will face the same public opinion's queries as any other party." According to US officials, contacts between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood go back to the 1990s, including meetings in the US embassy and the Brotherhood's offices in the Manial district of Cairo, and some of them took place in 1994 and 1995. The sources said that some of the meetings had not been at a high level, but had taken place in an atmosphere such that the American representatives could become familiar with the group's ideas. The representation of the Brotherhood in Egypt's parliament gave US diplomacy a chance to learn more about the Brotherhood's vision in recent years. US sources confirmed reports that the US had reached out to the group beyond official policy circles on requests from State Department liberals, US intelligence and influential writers. Meanwhile, critics on the right, including right-wing conservatives, have assumed that such contacts will strengthen and promote the group's causes. In a recent argument, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute wrote that "rather than embrace the Brotherhood, the Obama administration should be seeking to ensure that the group cannot dominate Egypt. Most analysts agree that the Muslim Brotherhood is by far the best-organised group in Egypt, but that it only enjoys perhaps 25 or 30 per cent support. The secular opposition remains weak and fractured. If the Obama administration wishes to remain engaged in Egypt's future and shape the best possible outcome for both US national security and the Egyptian people, it should be pushing for electoral reform to change Egypt's dysfunctional system to a proportional representation model in which the secular majority can form a coalition to check a Muslim Brotherhood minority for which true democracy is anathema." At the heart of the right-wing argument it is widely believed that the Brotherhood's rhetoric is devoted to the Islamisation of society and the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate, which would eventually seek the destruction of Israel. Bruce Riedel, a fellow of the US Brookings Institution and a former adviser to the White House, emphasises the necessity of engagement: "for a long time, the United States talked to former president Hosni Mubarak and former head of General Intelligence Omar Suleiman and lost connection with the majority of Egyptians, including the part that is represented by the Muslim Brotherhood." "There is no need to keep the Muslim Brotherhood as the bogeyman of the Middle East since the group has committed not to resort to violence." But Riedel predicted that the real tension between the US and the Muslim Brotherhood would come from the group's support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and consequently the relaunching of the peace process could be a reasonable choice for Israel and the United States in the future. Still, pro-Israel experts are casting doubts on the recent developments. "US officials have engaged with Muslim Brotherhood members in the past, when the group's representatives served in parliament. The convenience of that political umbrella for contact with the Muslim Brotherhood disappeared last November, when the Mubarak regime's ham-fisted fixing of parliamentary elections resulted in no opposition candidates winning seats. Yet, soon after Mubarak's fall, senior US officials privately confirmed that policy had been changed to permit direct engagement with Muslim Brotherhood officials, though they were not advertising the shift," Robert Satloff of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote recently. "What is more striking about Clinton's pronouncement is that it comes in the absence of a clear strategy to advance the prospect for a successful outcome to Egypt's tumultuous changes," he added. Another analyst, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, went a further step in lamenting the recent announcement by warning of an inevitable US indulgence of the Muslim Brotherhood that could give a push for Islamist groups in America itself. "As Team Obama legitimates Muslim Brotherhood organisations and groups overseas, it will feel ever less constrained about further empowering their counterparts in the United States. If so, the Muslim Brotherhood will come to exercise even greater influence over what our government does and does not do about the threat posed by Sharia, both abroad and here," Gaffney wrote.
