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The ousting of President Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian army is a military coup d'état pure and simple. Morsi's ousting qualifies for a military putsch which is by definition the illegal removal of the head of the state by the army or a faction within it, or the security services, through the use of force or the threat to using it. Past experiences of military coup d'état such as the toppling of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953, Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, and the military putsch in Algeria in 1992 remind us that military coups are never a smart tool for conflict resolution. The military coup in Egypt is a regrettable testimony for the failure of all political actors and stakeholders to manage the transition period, as a result of acute polarization. Now that the constitution has been suspended and the army has taken over what are the challenges faced by Egypt today?

June 30, 2013 marks the last day of the first year of President Morsi's rule in Egypt. For his supporters, this is something to celebrate as Egypt completes a year of democracy under democratically elected President. For his opponents, this is his last day in power.

The language of certainty was much higher amongst the opponents maybe a month ago, when the mobilization of Rebel (Tamarrud) movement was high collecting signatures to sack the President (withdraw confidence as they called it). The support to the President at that time from his group (the Muslim Brotherhood) was rather doubtful; some people expected that the group that dominated the Egyptian politics over this year of Morsi's rule would sacrifice the President to keep the organization intact, or that the Brotherhood would make all the possible retreats and present all the possible concessions to save itself and maybe the President. The anticipation was that Morsi would accept a referendum on his rule if not an early Presidential elections.

To defuse this certainty, Impartiality (Tagarrud) movement was launched as an opponent to Tamarrud. It was exactly the same way the Conscience (Dameer) Front was established to defuse the Salvation (Inquaz) Front.

Yet, the difference was striking. Dameer Front was made of benign quasi-Islamist and partially-secular supporters of Morsi. It was answering the Salvation Front made of secular liberal and socialist opponents. The realm of ideology dichotomy was still apparent; and things were not sorted as Islam versus Secularism at that point. But the second wave of opposing Morsi was totally different; it was fully radical against the Brotherhood and their so called "Islamic Rule" as the tone became higher by Tamarrud and the call became pro having a full rebellion and establishing a whole new regime through the "popular revolutionary will" and by means of violence (if necessary). This was highly spear-headed this time by the Popular Current (Hamdeen sabbahi) whose ideology matches that of Tamarrud and where the key leaders of the rebel movement come from this Populist Nasserist Socialist current. The tone was totally high against the Brotherhood as an Islamist group rather than a political opponent represented through the Freedom and Justice Party. Describing the Brotherhood as Kherfan (cheep) was abundant to the point that the cause was portrayed as a battle between Islam versus Secularism. This ignited a fully Islamist support to Morsi in the form of Tagarrud movement spear-headed by the Jamaa Islameyya and its Construction and Development Party.

EXETER – Commenting on the recent Algerian hostage crisis on an international news channel, one terrorism "expert" made a remarkable claim: "Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was founded because of the so-called Arab Spring, after we abandoned our Libyan ally [Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi]." After enduring a few more inaccuracies, I felt compelled to put aside the students' papers that I was grading.

Let's start by stating the obvious: AQIM is not a product of the Arab Spring. AQIM exists because of the military coup that ended the "Algerian Spring" two decades ago. And it has not been strengthened by the Libyan revolution, but rather by the failure of state-building in North Mali, the absence of post-conflict reconciliation and reintegration in Algeria, and a lack of accountability for a shadowy Algerian security establishment whose brutal methods have proved woefully inadequate to the challenge.

AQIM's history can be traced directly to the coup staged by a handful of Algerian generals against President Chadli Bendjedid in January 1992. Bendjedid, whose memoirs were recently published (he died in October), gave Algeria its first relatively democratic constitution, lifting the ban on political parties and guaranteeing a minimum of basic rights, including freedom of speech, assembly, and conscience. He was the first Arab president to be criticized on state-owned TV (that is, without the critic disappearing afterwards). Algeria was the first Arab Spring country.

CAIRO – Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first-ever elected civilian president, recently granted himself sweeping temporary powers in order, he claims, to attain the objectives of the revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship. But the decrees incited strong opposition from many of the revolutionary forces that helped to overthrow Mubarak (as well as from forces loyal to him), with protests erupting anew in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Morsi has thus been put in the odd position of having to defend his decision against the protesters while simultaneously making common cause with them. "I share your dream of a constitution for all Egyptians and with three separate powers: executive, legislative, and judicial," he told his opponents. "Whoever wants Egyptians to lose this opportunity, I will stop him." So, was Morsi's "auto-coup" necessary to realize the revolution's avowedly democratic goals?

The new Constitutional Declaration, the Revolution Protection Law, and the new presidential decrees have several aims:

· To remove the public prosecutor, a Mubarak-era holdover who failed to convict dozens of that regime's officials who had been charged with corruption and/or abuse of power;

· To protect the remaining elected and indirectly elected institutions (all of which have an Islamist majority) from dissolution by Constitutional Court judges (mostly Mubarak-era holdovers);

· To bring about retrials of Mubarak's security generals;

· To compensate and provide pensions for the victims of repression during and after the revolution.

The last two weeks have seen the resurgence of Islamic-Western tensions around the seeming opposition between freedom of expression and respect for religious symbols. We hoped that the unfortunate episode of the cartoons "Muhammeds ansigt" (Face of Mohammed) published on 30 September 2005 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and the violent reaction in some cities of the Muslim world demonstrated to all parties how both provocation and the violent reaction to it can threaten world peace.

The quasi non-violent way was treated the case of the film "Fitna" (Discord) published on the Internet on 27 March 2008 by Dutch extreme right politician Geert Wilders comforted us in this hope.

DOHA – "They are armed, I am not going to fight a losing battle and kill my men over a demolished shrine," said Fawzi Abd al-'Aali, the former Libyan interior minister, before he "resigned" last August. He was referring to the armed Salafi groups that were accused of destroying Sufi shrines. One of the accused groups was the Ansar al-Shariah Brigade, which was quick to support the demolition, but denied any responsibility for it.

Ahmed Jibril, Libya's deputy ambassador to London, has now accused the Brigade, headed by Muhammed Ali Al-Zahawy, of perpetrating the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, which killed the American ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three other US personnel, as well as Libyan guards. Others have quickly embraced and promoted Jibril's allegation. But the picture is more complex.

The Brigade denied responsibility in a written statement, as well as in a brief interview with its spokesperson, who at the time was in charge of guarding Al Jala Hospital in Benghazi. Like its statement on the destruction of Sufi shrines, it denied involvement in the attack on the US Consulate, but stressed the gravity of the insult against the Prophet that putatively triggered it.

The Brigade attracted public attention last June as well, when around 300 armed members staged a rally in Benghazi, sparking outrage among Libyans. "We wanted to send a message to the General National Council members," according to Hashim Al-Nawa', one of the Brigade's commanders. "They should not come near the Shariah. It should be above the constitution, and not an article for referendum."