Track all of the global protest activity taking place on International Workers’ Day (or May Day or Labor Day depending on your location) including plans to reignite the “Occupy” movement.
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This piece is the second in a three-part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), which uses Recorded Future to examine the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s political future. We’ll be hosting a webcast discussing this research next Thursday, April 12.
Introduction
As covered in the last post, the actors that comprise leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood has and does change over time. In the months following the January 25th uprising, the Muslim Brotherhood stepped into the vacuum left by Mubarak. More specifically, the younger members of the Muslim Brotherhood challenged the party’s older leadership, in some cases, deciding to desert or defect.
Using time windows to evaluate changes over time is a powerful analytical methodology. In unique cases, such as that of a revolution, the political development under study shifts the paradigm. How to understand the indicators of an event which is not foreseen? With Recorded Future’s temporal analysis, we can look at a set period of time as it was forecast, actually happened, and covered afterward.
Figuring out the FJP and Detecting Defections
Post-January 25th, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leader, Mohammed Badie, feared that he would lose the support of the youth. Subsequently, he issued an edict forbidding any defections or creation of new parties. Shortly thereafter, the Muslim Brotherhood formed its own political party, the Freedom and Justice Party, with Mohammed Saad al-Katani as the head. As demonstrated previously, it is a quick process to visualize the key players and their relationships, which we can use for future searches.
In response, the younger elements of the Muslim Brotherhood gathered to discuss a new agenda for the party — one that focused on greater transparency in government, better relations with the West, and equality for minority Coptics and women. In the subsequent months, some Muslim Brotherhood youth formed a new party, Al-Tiyyar Al-Masri, or “Egyptian Current Party” (ECP), which was part of the Revolution Continues Bloc.
As coalitions evolve and dissolve, it is complicated to follow each of the statements and responses by the various elements within a coalition. To track this element, I created a watchlists — of ECP members, other parties in the coalition, and members of the Islamist alliance. Typically to visualize shifting alliances, one would need the assistance of this guide from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace combined with this map from The Arabist blog. Below is a dynamic and time-shiftable network visualization of the players and parties in the Islamist alliance:
Network Map of Islamist Alliance
From this expanded network map, we may notice a few more players who hadn’t previously been on our radar, so we can create a watchlist from all these entities. Just as easily, it is possible to visualize the Revolution Continues Bloc and do the same. Now we have a more robust way to search, monitor, and visualize the evolving relationships.
Prognosticating Presidential Elections
How do we figure out what we are missing? Recorded Future’s toolset empowers an analyst to accelerate the process of hypothesis testing, by quickly identifying topical and temporal blindspots, in this case around key dates leading up to the presidential election.
More than bureaucratic planning, these date of Egypt’s presidential election underpinned two important political dynamics. First, the Muslim Brotherhood explicitly vowed not to enter a candidate into the presidential race and expelled one of its own leaders, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, when he declared his intent to run. Following this moving window is critical to watching the Brotherhood’s calculation of if and when it would nominate a formal candidate.
In late-February, before the date was known, here is a picture of the forecasted dates for the election and preceding candidate registration period:
Key Egyptian Presidential Election Dates
There was a peak in mid-April, as the closing date for candidate registration, and anticipating the elections in late June. Once the elections were announced as late May, we see a different picture of events, though with some additional texture.
Egypt Announced Election Date Timeline
When the elections were finally announced on February 29th, as slated for May 23, we can see how the forecasts adjust (by setting the publishing date after March 1st). Of course, we find a peak on the candidate closure date (April 8th) and the election dates, May 23rd and May 24th, but we also discover that June 21st is the date set for announcing the final voting results. Not only does this timeline give us a clear picture of dates and how they relate, but also we better understand the previous forecasts, specifically the follow-on announcement of voting results approximately one month after the election date.
In addition to Aboul Fotouh, several others had declared their candidacy (e.g. Amr Moussa) while rumors abounded about whom else might enter the race. To track these developments, I built a watchlist of the announced candidates, and another of the rumored and potential candidates. For the announced candidates, one can quickly develop a sense of varied sentiment for each of the candidates, as well as how each of them did or did not respond to one another (e.g. El Baradei’s formal withdrawal from the race).
A second dynamic was the revision of the constitution in light of presidential elections: the ascendent Muslim Brotherhood pushed for revision of the constitution after the presidential elections, whereas the ruling military, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), wanted to draft the constitution before the elections to ensure their contribution.
Tracking these shifting developments would typically require constant scanning of press, statement, and policy papers. With Recorded Future’s custom alerts, however, I receive email alerts based on my custom queries, for example, anytime a member of the SCAF talks about election dates or a Brotherhood official mentions the constitution.
Before, During, and After the Parliamentary Polls
In the months after its formation and up to the election bid, the FJP took time to organize; observers wondered how independent the leadership and platform of the FJP would be from the decision-making, influence, and structure of the Muslim Brotherhood. We will address the FJP-MB relationship in the next post — in this one, we will focus on the internal dynamics of the FJP.
First, let’s examine the timeline of events leading up to the November 28, 2011 polls. To narrow the scope of the analysis, it is possible to limit the publication time to not extend beyond November 28 — thus eliminating the benefit of hindsight. Also, we get a more textured narrative if we look at both the timeline of the party and then of just the leadership (from the watchlist created above) from the beginning of July.
Freedom & Justice Party Leadership Timeline up to November Polls
With lots of volatility in the months following its formation, the FJP had to decide where and how to spend their political capital — from members of the Muslim Brotherhood youth defecting to issues of transitional justice to consolidation of a platform. In the weeks preceding the parliamentary elections, it became clear that the FJP was setting up for a larger win than initially imagined. Now, to contrast with the same picture of the FJP’s leadership with the same time period (the gray dots are incidents and reports):
Freedom & Justice Party Leadership Timeline up to November Polls
The clearest differences is that the volatility of momentum was much less during July and August and non-existent in September, but what does that mean? Once we investigate the reason for the peaks, different conclusions can be drawn about the FJP’s challenges during this time. Some of the attention around the FJP’s leadership, naturally, was surrounding announcements of political appointments and meeting outcomes. More specifically, we see two issues emerge: the drafting of the constitution and a platform issue about tourists visiting beaches dressing inappropriately according to the Muslim Brotherhood’s perspective. Later, the leadership highlights the military’s entrenchment, foreshadowing a mounting struggle.
A more complex view is the combined picture of the both the leadership and the party. The ability to disaggregate leadership statements and perspectives from the party overall adds a previously energy-intensive layer of analysis. For contrasting the visualization during and after the opening of the polls, we will just focus on the FJP party, and again Again, the publication time is set for after November 28, so we’re not including coverage form before the polls.
FJP & MB After Elections
There are two very sharp peaks — one in mid-December which reflects Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s assurance that sharia law should be applied gradually, likely to assure the West, observers, and Egyptian minorities that the Muslim Brotherhood was not “taking over” the country. The subsequent peaks are around the various rounds, followed by the second sharp peak, when results are announced.
With a sweeping victory, the FJP surprised several analysts who did not expect such a strong performance. In the weeks after the announcement of results, the Muslim Brotherhood, through the FJP, assures that it will not “Islamicize” Egypt. Importantly, Aboul Fotouh garners attention for calling for the Muslim Brotherhood to refrain from “partisan activity.” The last peak in late February is Secretary of State Clinton clarifying that the Brotherhood, now in power, will not renege on the long-standing peace treaty with Israel — an indication that the US wants to keep channels open to the ascendant FJP.
Lastly, let’s briefly look at what the FJP’s formation may have meant for its election bid. By comparing network maps before (left) and after (right) the elections, it is clear that the nodes organize into a more cohesive network. While this conclusion may appear obvious, it does not take much effort or time to confirm the hypothesis.
FJP Players Before Formation
FJP Players After Formation
Similarly, if we wanted to assess if this crystallization continued, we could do the same search for the past month. One of the key drivers of change is the stability and rigidity of an organization’s structure. By contrasting these views over time — and continuing to monitor the shifts — emerging players and patterns of increasing organization (or lack thereof) present themselves.
Conclusion — Comparing Political Presents
As political circumstances change, an expert can separate the signals from the noise. With the ability to constantly scan the horizon, Recorded Future’s custom alerts help track emerging signals, for example, shifting political alliances or the relationship between a recently empowered Muslim Brotherhood and entrenched ruling military. Additionally, we can place political developments in rapid-changing context by comparing relationships among the data before and after key moments. Lastly, Recorded Future shortens the cycle required to become familiar with the sources, stories, and subjects; data visualization provides a topographical map to navigate the terrain of a new topic.
Combining the levels of analysis described above, we now have a set of drivers to track developments in Egypt’s political landscape: FJP’s negotiations with other elements of the Islamist alliance, dates on drafting of the constitution, defections and desertions of the Muslim Brotherhood youth, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s increasing or decreasing coordination with the FJP.
In this post, we investigated the run up to Egyptian parliamentary polls, creation of a new political party, and subsequent results, focusing on answering three questions for the analyst:
For the last post, we will use Recorded Future to evaluate the background, impact, and anticipation of Khairat al-Shater’s presidential candidacy, the nature of relationship between the FJP and the Muslim Brotherhood, and potential tension points between the SCAF and FJP, focusing on answering three questions for the analyst:
This piece is the first in a three-part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), which uses Recorded Future to examine the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s political future. We’ll be hosting a webcast discussing this research next Thursday, April 12.
In early 2011, the world watched Egypt revolt, catalyzing a cascade of uprisings across the Middle East. Since then, Egypt has weathered protests, parliamentary polls, and power plays — soon there will be presidential elections.
After a revolution, one may wonder: what is next for Egypt — who is in charge? In the wake of the uprising of January 25, 2011, an opposition force has been building momentum: the Muslim Brotherhood. Beyond the political maneuvering and Islamist ideology, the Muslim Brotherhood’s sweep of recent parliamentary elections and presidential aspiration are best understood by examining its historical, rhetorical, leadership, and structural changes over time.
This post provides context and an overview for deeper analysis using Recorded Future’s various analytical and temporal tools. Despite the complex, ever-changing, and polarizing nature of Egyptian politics, Recorded Future allows a non-expert to confidently achieve depth and breadth on this critical political moment.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood did not play an active role in the #Jan25 movement, the ousting of Mubarak and shift change in power provided a long-awaited opportunity for this opposition group to consolidate and legitimize its power. At least, that’s what the data shows.
Below is a snapshot of the timeline for a five year period (January 1 2006 to January 25 2011) for the Muslim Brotherhood. There are a few noticeable peaks through 2009, mostly due to the frequent arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members.
Recorded Future Timeline of the Muslim Brotherhood
After years as marginalized opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood has adapted to survive in harsh political conditions. As became clear much later, the organization would flourish when the spring finally did arrive by trying to establish legitimacy and seeking to consolidate their power.
Hindsight is always perfect and, often, useless. Instead of looking back at the past (from the present), what if we could look at past versions of the future? More concretely, were there any indications before January 2011 that a major moment was just over the horizon? With Recorded Future, we can time shift our frame of reference to only analyze information reported prior to January 1, 2011 — situating our reference point in the past, but looking forward — analytical time travel, if you will.
Examining queries not just around the Muslim Brotherhood, but also around Egypt, the initial drivers of change present themselves:
Now that we know that events in 2010 built momentum to the scheduled elections, we can create “time windows” through which to examine the late-January revolution and Mubarak’s descent. First, let’s zoom in on the 60 days prior to January 25, 2011. In fact, we can investigate the sentiment of coverage, our metric for the tone of the reporting.
Again, with reporting before January 25, 2011, we see a graph of positive sentiment around the idea of the Muslim Brotherhood as an opposition force to Mubarak’s National Democratic Party establishment. However, there is a follow-on peak of negative sentiment around the Muslim Brotherhood’s antagonism towards Israel.
While these observations are not surprising per sé, the absence of certain dynamics is also telling; there is little, if any, discussion of the Muslim Brotherhood as a source of mobilization or cohesive political opposition. One observer categorizes the MB’s decision to withdraw from the second round of voting as having minimal effect on the legitimacy of parliament.
With the second time window of the 30 days following January 25th, events on the ground moved quickly, but — as we know now — rippled far forward for Egypt. The picture below not only tells the story of those tumultuous weeks, but also foreshadows the conflicted attitudes towards the Muslim Brotherhood.
Muslim Brotherhood Discussed in Wake of January 25, 2011
Some voices back the Brotherhood’s crystallization as a political force (El Baradei), while others set an alarmist tone if the Brotherhood were to govern (Mubarak, McCain). Indeed, in the previous several years, Mubarak would warn Western officials about the Muslim Brotherhood’s intent to establish a theocracy similar to that in Iran. Additionally, we have a few different assessments, that either the MB is not as radical as portrayed (Clapper) or that the MB does not play a central role in post-revolution politics (al-Sayyed). Without making a huge leap, we can intuit that the Muslim Brotherhood is aware of this mixed perception and did not want to appear to lead the charge of revolution, instead working through and behind a consolidated opposition front.
With this context in mind, let’s next answer the question “Exactly who is the Muslim Brotherhood?”
Even experienced observers professed confusion when trying to understand the inner workings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Recorded Future can produce a network map from the large amounts of unstructured data in text, yielding a visualization of the relationships between players.
Muslim Brotherhood Network - 2009--2011
In maneuvering and analyzing this network map, a few actors emerge because of their proximity to the center: Mohammed Badie and Yusuf al Qaradawi. Badie is a current leader (“Supreme Guide”) of the Brotherhood and Qaradawi is a Qatar-based influential theologian closely associated with the Brotherhood. By hovering over the “Egypt” entity, the other co-occuring actors also highlight.
Focus Network on MB in Egypt
A few more names pop up — notably Mohammed El Baradei and Hosni Mubarak. Additionally, there’s Mohammed Mahdi Akef, a former Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood model comes into focus: the organization, while centralized, is only somewhat dense around its leadership and has bridges to other international communities. Another search focused on these individuals allows us to assess how other actors orbit around the hubs:
Muslim Brotherhood Leadership Network 2002-2012
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Muslim Brotherhood Connections Revolving around Individuals
This investigation reveals that Rashad al Bayoumi is an interesting nexus between Badie and Qaradawi and further inquiry shows that he is a deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood and influential in his own right, though not central. What if we could evaluate how the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership views itself? Below, we’re looking at the same network map, this time drawing only from the Muslim Brotherhood’s own website, Ikwan Online.
Muslim Brotherhood Self-Representation on Ikwan
Among some familiar names (Badie, Akef, etc.), Mohammed Mursy gravitates towards the center. In addition, a list of players to examine (al-Katatni, Ghozlan, al-Shater, Fotouh, el-Erian, Howeidi, and Sawiris) becomes clear. Building a watchlist of these individuals bundles them into one search term of key MB actors.
So, what happened to/with this group after January 25th? Who emerged from the shadows and edges? How does this organization change adapt to changing political circumstances? The forthcoming post will better explore the answer to the last two questions, but here is a quick preview.
Without overstating this map’s sophistication, one can start to discern actors responsible for decisions, respect, experience, communications and rhetoric, authority, and mobilization. Besides a list of people directly involved with the Brotherhood, the map also yields a list of secondary actors — activists, reporters, scholars, and government officials focused on the Muslim Brotherhood. Although it may not always reveal hidden actors, sthe network map visually characterizes the nature and degree of key actors’ ties with one another. In short order, one can develop a picture of the organization’s leadership, influencers, and followers.
Analysts often inquire about the methodology and quality of the data collection. To address this challenge, Recorded Future maps the sources of data according to country, topic, or type (mainstream, blog, niche, primary source, etc.), which allows analysts to quickly determine who is credible, correct, and worth following.
Web Sources Reporting on Muslim Brotherhood Leadership
In addition to dividing sources, this view ranks them according to how many events each source reported, first broke, or predicted. Ordering sources by reliability of prediction, an analyst can start to assess the credibility of each: what is the publisher’s agenda, association, and historical accuracy?
The goal is to determine which sources are reporting what type of events, when. Some of the blogs may not break stories but instead just re-publish predictions, whereas wire stories may offer frequent reporting and only occasional forward-looking insight. Taken together, a survey of the sources reporting on the fast-evolving moments following January 25th, and particularly in regards to making predictions, comes into focus.
Below, we find that a relatively unknown blog republishes many wire and news stories, hence, its high ranking. Below that, however, we find BBC News and Iranian-backed Iran Daily, as well as a major Pakistani outlet (Dawn) and Al Jazeera Arabic.
The ability to move back and forth through time makes the process of backtesting forecasts quite straightforward and efficient.
Top Sources MB Leadership
With Recorded Future, an analyst can move mountains of data with the levers of time, momentum, sentiment, and visualizations. After making conclusions based on manipulation of this data, one can rank and evaluate the credibility of various sources, particularly for future predictions. For example, the process of mapping recognized leadership, influential advisers, and outspoken members of any party takes a significant amount of energy. For a non-expert, however, Recorded Future significantly cuts down the time to become familiar with the key players and their relationships with one another.
But why not just head to Wikipedia and scan the article on Muslim Brotherhood? Or, better, Google it and read a few recent articles and policy papers? The news provides updates, Wikipedia crowdsources background, and policy papers proffer analysis — Recorded Future offers insight about where and when to zoom in on the data.
For the second post, we’ll used Recorded Future to examine the run up to Egyptian parliamentary polls, creation of a new political party, and subsequent results, focusing on answering three questions for the analyst:
Several weeks ago, we shared a view of travel events planned by world leaders to visit Europe during the first half of 2012. There were many interesting meetings and interactions to be examined, but one pair of events that stood out was the close proximity of visits to Cyprus by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s during mid-February and Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz at the end of February.
Territorial claims over Cyprus continue to be a contentious foreign policy item for Turkey, and are particularly divisive in its relations with Greece and the European Union. However, the confirmation of huge natural gas deposits in the neighboring Mediterranean waters claimed by Israel and Cyprus (dubbed the Leviathan gasfield) adds a new, potentially volatile element to Turkish relations in the area. Sending Yildiz to visit northern Cyprus shows its attempt to balance out the increasingly tight knit partnership between EU-friendly Israel and Cyprus related to natural gas fields in the region.
The timeline below shows how significantly the relations between Israel and Cyprus grew during the last two years with the callouts highlighting notable moments related to natural gas development:
The recent visit to Cyprus by Netanyahu comes several months after Turkey imposed further economic sanctions and severed military ties with Israel. The quote sitting at the bottom of the timeline is from Dr. Greg Reichberg, Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Cyprus Centre, that suggests energy trade could impact Cyprus in two ways: act as a catalyst that helps resolve the territorial dispute, or potentially incite further conflict over valuable, non-renewable energy sources.
The next step for analyzing this situation at a high level is to evaluate major diplomatic efforts between both Israel and Turkey. The network below shoes diplomatic relation events for Israel and Turkey as reported during the last twelve months with the nodes connecting both countries showing separate interactions. While there are states such as Iran and Greece shown that are one-sided in these relations, others are connective states (France, Germany, the United States) that have much to lose should they be forced to take sides due to heightened discord between Turkey and Israel.
Click image to view network of Turkey and Israel relations
We’ve seen recent challenges over offshore drilling territory come and go (see the dispute over oil deposits in the South China Sea), but this will certainly be an issue to watch as the Israel’s relations with Arab countries remain as stormy as ever. Additionally, we’re provided the opportunity to watch how this develops as projections show Israel’s Mari-B gas field is expected to depleted by 2013 and drilling in the Leviathan field could begin as early as 2016.
Visit Recorded Future and get registered for a trial account to try out the timeline and network tools shown above and run your own analysis on these and other geopolitical issues.
One task that we’ve heard to be challenging for analysts (business and intelligence alike) is capturing a snapshot of how the world appeared at a past time. This could be the PR from a company leading up to a past earnings announcement or the local news that precluded a major protest event. In this case, we’ll compare the diplomatic relations for China in months leading up to their leadership visiting the United States.
Here’s how to turn back the clock by setting limits on publication time in Recorded Future to evaluate a historical period:
The timeline below shows that diplomatic activity was relatively subdued leading up to Hu’s visit with the exception of meetings with the United States and Germany.
Diplomatic Activity for China in Lead Up to Hu's US Visit
The activity in the timeline can filtered down by the countries and officials with relationships to China, and we can actually gather up the most frequently co-occurring countries mentioned in these diplomatic relation events with China. Remember that these events occurred during the three months before Hu’s visit to the United States, and we find that after the US and Japan, the list is as follows:
Once we have an overview, we can compare that list to the network shown below of China’s relations for just the month prior to Hu’s trip. Interestingly, you’ll find that the most controversial relations from the US geopolitical perspective are absent. To view this yourself, click the network image and then use the time slider underneath to shift the frame in focus.
Diplomatic Relations Close to Hu Jintao's US Trip
All of this initial research builds into an opportunity to identify recurring themes or divergence from past behavior with respect to a current event. We can now contrast the above results with China’s diplomatic relations leading up to Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US this past week.
Recent Xi Jinping US Visit Timeline - Click to View
The first thing that stands out looking at the timeline is the significant difference in China’s diplomatic activity leading up to Xi’s travel as well as the negative sentiment surrounding recent events. This stands in contrast to the generally positive sentiment in the month prior to Hu’s visit.
You can also take a step further and see that several of those controversial countries absent ahead of Hu’s 2011 visit are now very much in the picture (Syria, Iran, Sudan) leading up to the recent China-US meeting.
Network of Month Leading Up to Xi's Visit - Click to View
What’s to be learned? On the first take, we can pick up on the negative sentiment found in media surrounding China’s diplomatic relations during the recent months leading up to Xi Jinping’s visit to the US and the presence or mention of China’s relations with country’s at odds with the larger international community.
What’s still to be examined:
The stage is set for answering those types of questions now that we’ve gone about segmenting media coverage based on both event time (when something happened) and publication time (when those events were reported). If this type of analysis would be valuable to your organization, go ahead and try Recorded Future or contact us for more information.
