Reportedly, as many as 120 people may have been killed in clashes with security forces in Egypt, in another step backward for the region. On Saturday, "special" police task forces fired live rounds at protesters who had been camped in front of a Cairo mosque since June 3 in support of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and his Muslim Brotherhood. This came as Mr Morsi was formally charged with several offences, including murder. These will further enrage the Muslim Brotherhood, which won a mandate to govern in Egypt's first free elections last year before urban protests allowed the army to step in and eject Mr Morsi from office.
The Egyptian economy took a noticeable turn for the worse under Mr Morsi; religious minorities felt under threat; and Constitution-writing efforts were imperilled by the Brotherhood's attempts to stifle liberal impulses. But there is little doubt that this confrontation is not in Egypt's long-term interests. True, the Brotherhood, emboldened by its victory, sought to make its position secure by over-riding other elements of the state such as the judiciary, giving rise to fears that a single election would lead to the long-term Islamisation of Egypt's polity. Like democratically elected leaders in Pakistan before him, Mr Morsi also made the mistake of hand-picking and trusting a military leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi - on the assumption that he too was a pious Muslim - who then turned and bit the hand that fed him. However, Mr Morsi's supporters can legitimately claim that the arms of the government that were under the control of appointees of the old regime of Hosni Mubarak or of the military were deliberately obstructive, and made the economic situation, in particular, worse. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, fearful of the Brotherhood, suspended subsidies to Egypt. Reserves plummeted and inflation hit 10 per cent. By forcing governance to a halt, Egypt's "deep state" induced mammoth protests against Mr Morsi's administration - which then gave the army the excuse it needed to remove him from office. It has now compounded that error by failing to come to any accommodation with those justifiably angered by this slighting of the democratic verdict. By massacring what are believed at the moment to be largely peaceful protesters, anti-Brotherhood forces have gravely endangered any future accommodation with Egypt's largest party.
The implications for Egypt, and for West Asia and North Africa in general, are dire. It is not just that the informal Qatar-Turkey-Egypt axis, which was a possible evolution over the bipolar division of the region between the sphere of influence of Saudi Arabia and Iran, lies in tatters. It is also that both the Brotherhood and moderate Islamists across the region will draw dangerous lessons from this experience: that only a complete overhaul of civil society and the arms of governance, to Islamise them, will permit their access to power. The Turkey model has already been tarnished by mass protests; if in Egypt, too, moderate Islamists are not allowed their turn at power - however, constrained by various checks and balances - then the appeal of more radical forms of government, such as the Iranian pretence at democracy, will begin to grow for even previously moderate forces.
