The Nation Newspaper

Tag: anarchy

  • Saving Egypt from anarchy

    Saving Egypt from anarchy

    THE MASS DEMONSTRATIONS and violence in Egypt during the past week may look a little like the revolution that erupted two years ago — but they are utterly different. The principal protagonists in the streets are mostly not common citizens seeking an end to dictatorship but gangs of hooligans, angry and restless youth, remnants of the former regime’s security forces and a brutal and corrupt police force that answers to no authority other than itself. As Egypt’s defense minister correctly put it Tuesday, at stake is not the overthrow of a regime but the collapse of the state into anarchy.

    Egypt’s Islamist government and its secular opposition, though polarized into warring camps in recent months, have a common interest in putting an end to the chaos before it consumes the country. The question is whether leaders on both sides can set aside the overreaching agendas and uncompromising tactics that have brought them to this emergency.

    President Mohamed Morsi, who won a two-round democratic election last year, has considerably more legitimacy and popular support than did former ruler Hosni Mubarak. But he and his Freedom and Justice Party, backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, have helped create the crisis by adopting some of the former regime’s tactics. Mr. Morsi has smeared reasonable opponents as criminals, tried to intimidate the press and used autocratic methods to force through his agenda. The swelling unrest last month has its roots in the mass protests Mr. Morsi provoked last year by suspending the judiciary in order to complete a new constitution.

    Opposition leaders, who range from former followers of Mr. Mubarak or his nationalist predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to liberal democrats and Christians, also have much to answer for. Having lost two elections and a referendum to Islamic forces in the past year, many appear reluctant to play by democratic rules. Some have demanded political capitulation by Mr. Morsi as the price of accepting the government’s offer of dialogue; others openly seek the overthrow of the new regime.

    The weakness and intransigence of both sides have empowered anarchic forces such as the police, unreformed since the fall of the Mubarak regime, hooligans and unemployed young men, who in the past week have battled one another in Cairo and cities along the Suez Canal, killing scores. Meanwhile, the army, also outside the regime’s control, deliberates over whether to restore order, seize power for itself or remain on the sidelines.

    Fortunately, there were signs this week that the politicians were beginning to see the imperative of coming together. Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei reversed his rejection of negotiations and called for a dialogue among his secular National Salvation Front, the Morsi government, Islamist parties outside the government and the military. On Thursday the front met with the Muslim Brotherhood and agreed to oppose violence. There is much more to discuss, including possible changes to the constitution and a law governing upcoming parliamentary elections. A new, national unity government is a worthy, if long-shot, goal. But above all, Egypt’s leaders must agree on restoring order.

    – Washington Post

  • Reign of anarchy

    Reign of anarchy

    •Auchi robberies show police still have a long way to catch up with bandits

    For three hours that seemed interminable, residents of Auchi in Edo State last week had a taste of hell as an army of robbers terrorised the town in a shocking operation carried out with bullets, dynamites and bombs. Reports said the bandits incredibly numbered over 100 and rode on motorcycles and buses, leaving a trail of death and destruction. In the reign of anarchy, 15 people were killed, four banks robbed, and a police station vandalised. The quarters of soldiers attached to the state’s security outfit, Operation Thunderstorm, also came under attack. The scale of the violence prompted Mr Rasaq Momoh, the lawmaker representing Etsako West II in the state House of Assembly, to describe the incident as a “terrorist attack.”

    An unsettling aspect of the Auchi raid is the reported size of the group of bandits involved, which should draw attention to the state of the nation, with high unemployment figures and widespread poverty constituting a huge threat to social security. We recall that a similar crime happened in Lagos recently when a gang of violent robbers seized the streets of the city for several hours in what was tagged “Bloody Sunday.”

    From the evidence, despite the use of terror tactics, the Auchi incident was actually an attack by the robbers on some banks, GTB, Access Bank, First Bank and Ecobank, where they left in their wake shattered windows and doors, smashed ATM machines and broken walls, and got away with money. Their greed was evident in an opportunistic move, as they even stole from a female road-side trader, Iyabo Omon, who said, “They took the chickens and other items I displayed for sale.”

    Clearly, the police were caught napping when the bandits struck, which is both unbelievable and inexplicable. It was a massive minus that the robbery attack took the police by surprise, showing that they were ill-prepared for such a raid. How can the police force explain that within the period the siege lasted, paralysing the entire town, its men failed to come up with any resistance? If anything, the daring bombing of the Auchi Police Station by the brigands showed a helpless force, as reports said many of the policemen fled in the face of superior firepower.

    If the police appeared unpardonably weak in the circumstances, the inaction of the state’s special security unit was no less intolerable. It was to be expected that where the police were vulnerable and handicapped, the men of Operation Thunderstorm would be equal to the challenge. Of what function then is this security outfit, if it could not confront the daredevils in what was, to all intents and purposes, an emergency? The fact that the robbers were audacious enough to take their attack to the outfit’s command quarters without serious reprisals defeated its security essence.

    One curious but incontestable reality discernible from the security challenge is that criminals are in possession of very sophisticated modern weapons; they, therefore, tend to have an advantage over the police in a shoot-out. It is baffling that the government has allowed criminals to outclass the law enforcement agency in this crucial area, with the ridiculous result that policemen have been known to take to their heels in encounters with robbers, as was the case in Auchi. It deserves to be noted that the Edo State Deputy Governor, Pius Odubu, highlighted this disturbing deficiency on the part of the police when he visited the scenes of the crime and urged the police to upgrade the quality of their arms.

    No doubt, the government is expected to pay more than lip service to this requirement and equip the police with effective weapons to maintain law and order in the society. The police should be given all it takes to combat crime in this day and age.