Egipte, la temptació algeriana

Michael Rubin:

Islamist clerics have already made clear they would take to the streets to fight any election which did not go their way. It has been more than two decades since the Algerian government, stunned by an Islamist victory in their 1991 elections and the victors’ promise to revise the constitution, decided to cancel the elections, unleashing a brutal civil war that killed perhaps 200,000. The major reason why Algerians did not get caught up in the Arab Spring protests was that the scars of violence during the 1990s remain too fresh. That an Arab socialist rather than an Islamist regime now holds sway may convince the Egyptian military that the risks and costs were worth it.

In Algeria, however, the population is largely spread along its 600-mile coastline. In Egypt, most of the 80 million are crammed into the narrow Nile River Valley. Egypt’s court and its generals are taking a large risk, indeed. If history repeats, the cost could be much higher.