CFr Daily News Brief 10/31

Top of the Agenda: Egypt Continues Brotherhood Crackdown

Police entered al-Azhar University, one of Islam's top religious institutions, to disperse students protesting in support of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi as the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and other opponents of Egypt's generals continues (BBC). Human Rights Watch said a draft law on protests would give the police the power to ban demonstrations, and would severely restrict the ability of political parties and nongovernmental organizations to assemble (DailyNews). Meanwhile, a fifty-member panel that's amending the constitution written by the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies will likely preserve Islamic law provisions and grant greater powers to the military, despite the dominance of secular and liberal politicians on the panel (AP).

Analysis

"Four months ago, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi carried out a coup in Egypt that overthrew President Mohamed Morsi and imprisoned the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hardly a day now passes without some indication of how the new Egyptian regime seeks to erect a military-police state, crushing those who dare oppose it," the Financial Times writes in an editorial.

"The White House under Obama worked for the coming to power of the Muslim Brothers in 2012 in the context of an understanding that the latter would protect American interests in the Middle East and across the Muslim world. The dilemma that will confront the White House in the near future will be the election of a new Egyptian president who would possibly be inspired by the ideals of the Nasser era. And maybe this is the reason why the Americans insist on an all-inclusive democratic process," Hussein Haridy writes in Ahram.

"By removing their patronage from the Brotherhood and throwing their full support behind the Egyptian military—and other regimes bent on crushing the Brotherhood—the Saudis may be pushing the movement to become both more extreme and more sharply anti-monarchical, threatening the Islamic legitimacy of all the Arab monarchies," Vali Nasr writes in the New York Times.

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PACIFIC RIM

Asian Anger Over U.S. Spy Reports

Chinese and Southeast Asian governments demanded an explanation from the United States and its allies over reports that American and Australian embassies in the region were being used for Washington's secret electronic surveillance program (AP).

This CFR Backgrounder explains the U.S. surveillance program.

JAPAN: The Bank of Japan will continue to expand the monetary base by as much as $711 billion, and predicted the country will hit its inflation target in 2015 (Bloomberg).

This CFR Backgrounder explains Abe's economic vision for Japan, dubbed Abenomics.