I was talking about a purge not a reform. They could have tried to get rid of the old lot of intelligence officers and special war office operatives, kept the roles but filled them with independent or Brotherhood allied ones, but they didn't.
Generally you can only fill military roles with people from a military background for a number of reasons. There are indications that they thought they had put enough people in place, or at least the best they could manage, but they were wrong (see the post the other day about how al-Sisi formed a relationship with Morsi the sucker).
We've had enough experience of Islamism in power : in Sudan, in Swat, in Turkey, in Gaza, in Tunisia to see that (apart from a normal competition between wings of capital which the energy sector in Egypt is - fewer but more powerful non-Islamists versus more numerous but weaker Islamists) there is no overall, automatic deep state plot against Islamists, there's an attempt to adapt its rougher edges to continue the goodies, a few marginal plotters maybe but no overall dynamic.
Generalisations and what happened in countries like Turkey in terms of diminishing the power of the military cannot be automatically applied to Egypt. There were clearly all manner of interests in Egypt that decided the MB in power was an outcome they couldn't live with.
The idea of a deep state thrust against the Brotherhood and no one else from day one June 2012 doesn't accord with reality. The Brotherhood were given their chance, fuel problems only started to take hold in 2013 in part as a result of people stocking up before the price increases, they weren't there in anything like the same degree in 2012.
Some may have been prepared to genuinely give them a chance for a while. Others were likely biding their time, giving the MB only enough rope to hang themselves.
This from the Brotherhood doesn't make sense as an explanation: "Different circles in the state, from the storage facilities to the cars that transport petrol products to the gas stations, all participated in creating the crisis."
Why didn't the Brotherhood do something about these types rather than go after the NGO workers and those who wanted new trade unions?
Because NGO workers and independent trade unionists were much easier targets who they also had obvious reasons to go after. Not so easy to purge the state apparatus when there are so many levels at which it can mess with you, especially if you are relying on the military to keep up their end of the bargain but they betray you. Imagine coming to power in the UK and then finding yourself repeatedly thwarted by civil servants, not exactly an unheard of concept and Egypt clearly had its own version of this with much energy, high stakes and greater polarisation.
Do not forget that the MB went after the judiciary and came a cropper as a result. Altogether too crude an approach, and one that hollowed out their claims to legitimacy in a manner that has now been successfully used against them.
The MB's attempts were entirely inadequate, but they certainly tried. They did not have enough support within important segments of society to purge effectively in a short space of time, and they played their hand badly. And they could not rely on popular support not just because of those conspiring against them, but because their own agenda hardly inspired. They made the wrong alliances (that probably seemed right at the time) and gave those who could perhaps have helped them no reason to do so.
As for non-functioning police, there were probably some non-cooperative chiefs from the outset. But the disloyalty - as much as it was - became more apparent as the months wore on and the police began to be viewed as an extension of the governing party, many simply didn't want to serve as a governing party extension.
Given the role of the police under Mubarak, how hated they were and how their reputation was immensely tarnished that's one of the most stupid things you've said.
I expect the reason the army is taking on a "security" role right now, is because it cannot wholly rely on the police either. The killing of the protestors outside the Republican Club was something crazy opening fire without trying to use the standard police tools of water cannons and tear gas. Soldiers are definitely assuming the mantle more than police.
Water cannons and tear gas lost their effectiveness very early on in the uprising against Mubarak. They still achieved some results, but not enough. Things quickly moved on to live-fire of various varieties. And its absurd to even speak of standard police tools in Egypt given that back in 2011 we quickly saw many 'non-standard' scenes such as police throwing rocks, running people over in their vehicles. Let alone the next attempts to replace fear of the police with fear of non-uniformed thugs, the battle of the camels, and then finally the army.
If we were making any assumptions based on 'standards' we might have assumed that the first thing any side that won power and had some control over the state would have tried to do after that mess would be to, at the very least, attempt to restore the image of the police to at least a certain extent. Even if it involved fairly empty gestures like renaming them, giving them a new uniform, paying lipserive to new 'police ethics' and training, command structures etc. But at no point was any serious attempt to do this made, not during 'interim periods' when the military had overt political power nor once the MB got in.
So the army has been taking a security role for a very long time. And as we saw when Tahrir was cleared that time and protesters were beaten, stomped on and dragged into piles like garbage, the military thought it better to do that than to protect its own image. So its really not surprising that they shot a load of MB protesters the other day, especially as it happened near a military installation. Plus its quite likely that they wanted to let everyone how how deadly they could be, either to attempt to restore the key state weapon of fear, or otherwise influence the direction the MB go in post-coup.
The police have not been entirely non-existent since the MB got in, I expect its been a mixed picture that has also varied by region. And there are several reasons other than deliberately doing nothing as part of a plot against the MB for them failing to deal with situations. Most obviously, the same inability to deal with angry protests or violence as they had in 2011, outnumbered and on the back foot, with a lack of motivation thrown in for good measure.
Also, elbows, who put up that contradictory slogan about not secular not religious?
Someone that understood that at the time it was important to have unity among disparate groups, with a message did not turn off people whose support was important, or play into the hands of the regime. The message does not have to make perfect sense, it can have inherent contradictions. Indeed thats the point - to paper over those contradictions at that important moment even though the contradiction will be exposed in the end.
