The storm before the storm

THE Egyptian army’s action on August 14th was not unexpected. Nor was it unlooked for by those who bore its brunt, the supporters of ousted President Muhammad Morsi. But it was surprisingly savage.

At the time of the July 3rd coup against Mr Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, his supporters set up two camps in Cairo, one a set of tents near the university in the west, the other, larger one in the middle-class district of Nasr City in the east, centred on the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. There the furious refuseniks—most, though not all, aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organisation of which Mr Morsi is a leader—remained throughout the holy month of Ramadan, which ended on August 7th. The camps were noisy, somewhat disruptive to the city’s traffic and increasingly vexatious to the army-led regime that had come to power in the coup.