Where
are the sands shifting
to in Egypt?
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
July 5, 2006
LONDON - Nearly everyone here who
keeps themselves informed agrees that the sands are
shifting in Egypt. The unanswered question is where
to?
For decades foreign correspondents
have reported that economically Egypt is in a terrible
mess and is much too vulnerable politically to survive as
it is much longer. But it does survive and under Hosni
Mubarak who took over 25 years ago when President Anwar
Sadat was assassinated by an Islamic militant it has, in
its own idiosyncratic way, gradually stabilised. But
progressed? It seems not much.
Mubarak inherited a political and
economic system fashioned in two contradictory ways by
his predecessors, Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser
nationalised half the economy. The very poo r were given
a safety net and an imaginative land reform was enacted.
Before long, although the liberated peasants began to
thrive, the urban economy became encrusted and
barnacled.
Sadat turned the ship in the other
direction. The reorientation of Egypt's political
bearings away from Moscow and toward Washington and the
decision to make peace with Israel brought a vast
infusion of American aid. But the attempt to liberalize
the economy was so abrupt that, rather than revitalizing
it, the effort merely spawned a new breed of
entrepreneurs and speculators who both milked it and
failed to impress Western businessmen that Egypt was a
suitable milieu for long-term investment.
Mubarak inherited the worst of both
worlds. A more decisive man might have pushed on with
Sadat's economic reforms, but Mubarak felt boxed in by
the leftward-leaning Nasserite old guard that even today
wields influence. Only in the last few years has
privatisation of a moribund economy gathere d speed.
Deregulation- which means abolishing the hundreds of
layers of officialdom that have impeded both the creation
of new businesses and trade- is now moving so fast that
the World Bank has singled Egypt out as the number one
developing country in this regard.
Tourism is growing at a headlong
rate. Gas exports are booming and the economy is now
expected to grow at 6%. But to get to this stage has
taken Mubarak over 20 of his 25 years. And he is still
not within sight of cracking Egypt's horrendous
unemployment problem. The privatised companies have
little money to spend on employing more people. Surplus
cash simply goes to paying off years of bad debts.
Moreover, in one of the most perverse of decisions, the
successful Nasserite land reform program is being rolled
back. Landlords are being re-empowered and rural
inequality and destitution is again on the
rise.
But the wasted years of economic
policy are nothing compared with the wasted years of poli
tical development. Mubarak has long acted as if he feels
checkmated by Islamic fundamentalism. It is the force of
the fundamentalists that has made him fear to this day an
open and free electoral contest. Last November's highly
controlled presidential and parliamentary elections were
no different from past ones except in one important
regard- the Muslim Brotherhood, the umbrella grouping for
moderate to radical Islamists (now adhering to
non-violence), was allowed to contest a limited number of
seats and now have a serious presence in
parliament.
The violent wing of the Islamists
always gave Mubarak the rational to keep democracy at
bay. Indeed the atrocities of the Gama'a and Jihad, the
last being the murder of over 50 tourists visiting the
tombs at Luxor in 1997, were a mortal threat at the time.
But their leaders renounced violence in 1999. (The
bombing of tourist resorts in the Sinai a year and half
ago was the work of a marginal fringe group.)
But what Mubarak always and still
ignores is that fundamentalist strength, both violent and
non-violent, waxed because he closed off all political
avenues of dissent. Only very recently is the press being
given some room for manoeuvre. Torture and police
beatings are a common form of response to those who
demonstrate or protest. Added to that is the growing
hardship of the poor.
If Mubarak had been a wiser leader
he would long ago have seized the opportunities offered
by democracy. He probably would have had nothing to fear
if he had done this 20 years ago. The Islamic Brotherhood
is an urban phenomenon, and almost half Egypt's voters
are in the villages, were they have long combined
uncomplicated peasant religiosity with a wholesome
support for Mubarak.
But now with the unravelling of the
land reform he is losing this support in the countryside
at a time when the Brotherhood have a new confidence in
their step.
This is why nobody seems to know
quite where the country is going. Egypt is not likely to
go up in smoke, which some people thought a few years
back. But neither is the most important country in the
Middle East dramatically going forward. But being stuck
in the sand when the sands are shifting is a policy to
nowhere.
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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