Into the Hands of the Soldiers

June 15, 2018
Former New York Times Cairo bureau chief Kirkpatrick delivers a sharply detailed firsthand look at Tahrir Square and its aftershocks.As an opening parable in this morally charged chronicle of practical politics and the consequences of unaccountable centralized power, the author offers the example of the great Aswan Dam, built in the 1950s by President Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt for electricity, with many millions of American dollars behind it. The dam displaced 120,000 people, killed fish, silted the Nile, and led to "an explosion in waterborne diseases." Yet Nasser's government and the Western powers alike declared the dam a victory. So it was in 2011, when Egypt shook off one near dictatorship and replaced it with another only to have a military coup replace that strongman and further crack down on dissent. Such victory as there is to declare is hard to discern. Egypt is poor, overpopulated, and riddled with a corrupt bureaucracy, but apart from that, Kirkpatrick writes, it defies the usual characterizations. Israel and Egypt have cooperated, against all expectation, in fighting the Islamic State group; Egyptian women are perhaps more politically engaged than American women; Islamists willing to commit terror are in it for more than the promise of a harem in the afterlife; and so on. Pushing away layers of myth, the author depicts a complex, straining-to-be-modern society that is hampered by autocracy and has long been so. It has also been betrayed and seduced by it, as when Mohamed Morsi talked a game good enough that, by defying the generals, for liberals and leftists, he briefly "appeared to be, as he had promised, their president, too." He was not, but it seems he was better than the military alternative--a lesson lost on the American government, Kirkpatrick writes, which pushed for democracy on one hand but for order on the other and in the end got neither.A valuable portrait of a society moving toward fulfilling "the promises of freedom and democracy" of the Arab Spring--but with a way to go still.

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July 2, 2018
When New York Times correspondent Kirkpatrick arrived in Egypt in late 2010, it seemed like an easy, almost idyllic assignment of studying Arabic and attending dinner parties; “the experts in Washington had all assured me that nothing else interesting would happen.” It was not to be, and the resulting story is as much about the cluelessness of those so-called experts as about the Egyptians whose improbable revolution was overtaken by violence, sectarianism, and venality. Kirkpatrick recounts how dueling power centers and ideologies in the American government produced a “schizophrenia... so open that Egyptian generals complained about it to their Pentagon contacts.” Although the Muslim Brotherhood had been Egypt’s primary opposition for decades and quickly eclipsed the liberals who led the revolution, the U.S. embassy refused to meet with their leaders even after the White House ordered it to, “too anxious about being seen with the Brothers, and too unsure of which ones to call.” In the end, Kirkpatrick musters little hope for Egypt, where the security services murder citizens indiscriminately and feel “they must put themselves above the law in order to save it.” Though Kirkpatrick lacks the insight into Egyptian political life that many local writers have brought to this subject, this dark chronicle adeptly weaves his personal experiences of the tumult with criticism of the flatfooted American response.

August 1, 2018

The conflicts and uprisings seen across the Arab region can be traced back to politicians seeking absolute power, and while strides have been made toward a more diplomatic direction, there is still much further to go. This is the conclusion laid out in this first book by New York Times international correspondent Kirkpatrick who conducted on-the-ground reporting while serving as Cairo bureau chief from 2011 to 2015; a time when the Arab world made headlines for revolting against long-standing suppressive governments. Kirkpatrick recaps former Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser's damming of the Nile in the 1950s, which serves as clear foreshadowing for the remainder of the book by showcasing the dangers of "centralized planning and unaccountable power." While the government celebrated this "accomplishment," it disrupted the predictability of the Nile communities relied on and in turn increased their likelihood for poor health and disease. Similar governments have persisted and Kirkpatrick was on the ground to witness the overthrow of the regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi and the subsequent aftermath. VERDICT Readers seeking firsthand commentary on Middle Eastern politics, the Arab Spring, and an examination of the Arab world will appreciate this accessible analysis.--David Miller, Farmville P.L., NC

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