Eric Trager was the Esther K. Wagner Fellow at The Washington Institute.
Articles & Testimony
A widening rift within the group can be traced to the misguided view that it could elude the government's repression.
On August 14, 2013, in what came to be known as the Rabaa massacre, Egyptian security forces stormed Muslim Brotherhood-led sit-ins at public squares in Cairo and Giza, killing hundreds of people protesting the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood's leader and Egypt's first elected president. The death toll, which Human Rights Watch later placed at over 800 civilians, shocked the international community, but the bloodshed didn't surprise the Brotherhood. Indeed, from the moment of Morsi's July 3 overthrow, the Brotherhood's leaders understood that they were in a kill-or-be-killed struggle with the new military-backed government...
