MOSCOW, August 21 (Itar-Tass) - The situation in Egypt tends to aggravate; the country is on the brink of a civil war, and the events may turn to the Syrian scenario, Lieutenant-General Leonid Reshetnikov, director of Russia’s Institute for Strategic Studies, told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
“There may be a lull for a day, for two days, for a week and even a month, and then there will be outbreaks, clashes. This threat is real,” the expert said.
He said the army‘s attempts to establish order, to stabilize the situation were positive, on the one hand. “Nobody wants a huge country in a destabilized state of a civil war - neither Russia, nor the US, nor European countries, much less neighbour countries,” Reshetnikov said. “And then the army itself upset the balance when it started to interfere in political events even before arresting president Mursi. The army arrested the democratically-elected president, and a considerable part of the population was angered at that,” the expert noted.
The Muslim Brothers will continue their anti-army activities and will start the anti-government activities, the expert believes, and they will be joined by other sections of the Egyptian people who used to regard democracy as the supreme value and believed that dictatorship Mubarak had chosen in the past should end for good.
It was apparent that a strong, influential organization like the Muslim Brothers would not surrender arms. “The world now has an eyesore, a huge country, its population largely consisting of young people inclined to radical, extremist and even terrorist actions,” the expert said.
He believes the United States, in connection with the Egyptian events, landed in a stalemate, “being unable to decide what it should do next. To support only the military is dangerous now, as the military may not be able to hold the power for long. To support the military will mean a final breakup with the Islamic world.” The Islamists, the expert said, “will never forgive the United States, which at first supported them and Mursi, and then betrayed them and sided with the military,” Reshetnikov said.