Egypt’s Military Removes Morsi, Syria Uses Chemical Weapons in Ghouta, Al-Shabaab Attacks Nairobi’s Westgate Mall and Washington Shuts Down

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 October 2013 | Reporting Period: 3 July – 2 October 2013

Quarterly Briefing

• Egypt’s military removes President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood on July 3, suspending the constitution and appointing an interim government; security forces subsequently clear pro-Morsi protest camps in Rabaa Square on August 14, killing at least 638 people.
• A chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus on August 21 kills hundreds of civilians — the UN confirms the use of sarin nerve agent; President Obama moves toward airstrikes before accepting a Russian-brokered deal to remove Syria’s chemical arsenal.
• Al-Shabaab gunmen attack the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi on September 21, killing 67 people in a four-day siege; the attack is the deadliest terrorist strike in Kenya since the 1998 US Embassy bombing.
• Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who disclosed mass surveillance programmes beginning in June, is granted temporary asylum by Russia on August 1 after spending weeks in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.
• The United States government begins a partial shutdown on October 1 after the Republican-controlled House refuses to pass a spending bill; the shutdown enters its third day as this edition publishes.
• Syria’s civil war continues to generate the world’s largest refugee crisis; the UNHCR reports that more than two million Syrians have now fled the country, with Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq hosting the vast majority.

Prologue: A Summer of Red Lines and Military Coups

The third quarter of 2013 opened with a military coup in the Arab world’s most populous country and closed with the US government’s own institutional machinery grinding to a halt. Between those two bookmarks lay a chemical weapons attack that nearly triggered the first American military strike on an Arab government since Libya in 2011, a massacre in one of Africa’s busiest shopping malls, and the spectacle of a former American intelligence contractor negotiating asylum with the Kremlin. For Jamaica and the Caribbean, none of these events was geographically proximate, but their aggregate effect was to sustain the sense of a world in which the post-Cold War order’s institutions — democratic elections, international chemical weapons norms, global surveillance governance, functioning Western democracies — were all under simultaneous pressure.

Egypt: The Coup and the Massacre

Egypt’s military removed the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, on 3 July — exactly one year after his inauguration — following massive street protests organised in part by a movement called Tamarod (‘Rebel’). General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the army chief, appeared on national television to announce the suspension of the constitution and the appointment of the chief justice as interim president. Western governments, caught between their formal commitment to democratic processes and their discomfort with a Brotherhood-led Egypt, offered carefully worded statements declining to use the word “coup.”

Pro-Morsi demonstrators established protest camps in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square and al-Nahda Square in Cairo. On 14 August, Egyptian security forces cleared both camps; Human Rights Watch subsequently documented the killing of at least 638 people and described it as one of the largest mass killings of demonstrators in recent history. The crackdown drew international condemnation but no concrete international response. The Brotherhood was designated a terrorist organisation by the interim government in December. Egypt’s trajectory — from Mubarak autocracy to Brotherhood democracy to military-backed interim rule — illustrated the complexity of the transitions set in motion by the Arab Spring.

Syria’s Chemical Weapons and the Near-Miss

The chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta agricultural belt east of Damascus on 21 August killed hundreds of civilians; US intelligence assessments put the figure at over 1,400, while other estimates are lower. The UN investigation confirmed the use of sarin nerve agent delivered by surface-to-surface rockets. The attack crossed the “red line” that President Obama had defined in August 2012, and the administration began preparing for military strikes. Secretary of State Kerry gave a speech strongly implying that strikes were imminent. Then, on 9 September, Kerry made an apparently offhand remark that Syria could avoid strikes by giving up its chemical weapons. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov seized on the comment; within days a framework had been agreed under which Syria would declare and eventually surrender its chemical arsenal to the OPCW. The strikes did not happen.

The episode had direct implications for the Caribbean’s calculation of American credibility and resolve. Obama’s reversal was widely characterised as a retreat from a stated red line, and while that characterisation was disputed, the perception that American military threats had become less reliable had consequences for the deterrence calculus across multiple theatres. Oil markets, which had spiked briefly on the prospect of wider regional conflict, eased as the Russian deal took shape.

Westgate, Snowden and Washington’s Shutdown

The Al-Shabaab attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi on 21 September was a deliberate strike at a symbol of Kenya’s modern cosmopolitan economy — an upscale mall popular with expatriates and the Kenyan middle class. The four-day siege killed 67 people from multiple nationalities. Al-Shabaab stated the attack was retaliation for Kenyan military operations in Somalia. The attack reinforced warnings about Al-Shabaab’s intent and capability to strike beyond Somalia’s borders, and reminded Caribbean tourism operators that terrorist attacks in African destination cities affect broader global travel patterns.

Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia, granted on 1 August, transformed what had begun as a surveillance scandal into a geopolitical incident. Moscow’s decision to shelter an American intelligence leaker prompted Obama to cancel a planned bilateral summit with Putin. The Snowden files, which continued to be published through the quarter, revealed the scope of NSA collection activities including the monitoring of allied leaders’ communications. The US government shutdown that began on 1 October and continues as this edition publishes was caused by Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act; its market effect has been modest so far, but default risk from the approaching debt ceiling is the more serious concern.

Looking Ahead

The US shutdown is in its third day; the debt ceiling deadline falls in mid-October and a deal is not yet visible. Syria’s chemical weapons removal is just beginning; the broader civil war is completely unresolved. Egypt is under military-backed rule with no clear democratic roadmap. The UNHCR’s count of two million Syrian refugees will grow; the political consequences for Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey of absorbing displaced populations are already visible. Venezuela’s economy, which underpins PETROCARIBE, is being managed with increasing difficulty by the Maduro government. The Caribbean’s interest in global stability is rarely more obviously at stake than in quarters like this one.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review is published quarterly, examining how wars, geopolitical tensions and major international crises have shaped Jamaica, the Caribbean and their economies.

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