A birthday present for Mubarak

A birthday present for Mubarak

Egyptians began to politely talk about a post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt after their president suffered an assassination attempt in Ethiopia in 1995. This event, along with another attempt while on his way to Port Said in 1999, reminded Egyptians of the untimely death of Anwar Sadat in 1981.


More recently, he fainted while giving a speech in 2004. Mubarak turns 80 in May. People tend to sit back and reflect at 80 – thinking of what they did and what they didn”t during their lifetime. They often become obsessed with how history will label them. This might be especially true for someone who has been president of a country like Egypt for 26 years – who watched first-hand the assassination of his predecessor in 1981.


We don”t know if Mubarak had the chance to watch the television drama King Farouk in 2007. It spoke about the last king of Egypt, showing how gradually the street turned against him, for a variety of reasons (much of it economic) in July 1952. In disbelief, Farouk watches how ordinary Egyptians cuss him on the street and tear apart his portrait, chanting “Ya Farouk, ya Antiqa”. (O ancient one.) He is saddened by public anger and decides – at curtain fall – not to fight to stay in power, abdicating with relative ease in favor of his infant born son, Ahmad Fouad II. Farouk came to this realization – that he had been wrong – at the age of 32. Mubarak has not reached it yet at the age of 80.


Officially and in public, Mubarak boasts of certain facts that only depict one side of the Egyptian coin. The economy has been growing at a 7% rate and foreign investment stands at US$11 billion a year. These, along with the relative stability in Egypt, are feats for which the Egyptian leader must be remembered. Along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt remains an Arab heavyweight, 30 years after signing peace with Israel, and still walks the delicate tightrope of Arab nationalism while receiving military aid from the United States.


Trade with America is at $8 billion. If Mubarak steps out of his comfort zone and reads what the regional and international press are saying, however, he would realize how concerned the world is with Egypt. Over 53% of Egyptians are below the age of 24 and they are anything but pleased with the aged Egyptian leader. The president”s health, the boiling anger on the Egyptian street, and the latest municipality and village elections that took place on April 8 where the president”s supporters won with ease, gaining over 70% of the seats.


What makes these elections particularly important is that according to the new election law, 140 municipality heads will have a say in the upcoming presidential elections, scheduled for 2011. During the elections, riots broke out at a state-owned weaving factory in the industrial city of Mahallah al-Kobra, leading to the death of two workers, the wounding of 100 and the arrest of over 300.


Workers are enraged, afraid of inflation, the rising price and scarcity of bread, claiming that privatization (championed by the Egyptian government) will make them lose their jobs. Although the only recognized labor union is the state-run General Federation of Trade Unions, many workers are members of other smaller unions – which are powerful at a grassroots level in Egypt.
These organized labor unions are very influential – more so at times than the Muslim Brotherhood itself – and they are not pro-Mubarak, to say the least. Mubarak”s greatest worry – with due right – comes from what the Islamic street will do to Egypt once he is gone. As Arab and Egyptian nationalism both failed to provide salvation for ordinary Egyptians, political Islam – and religiousness – marched in over the past 20 years of Mubarak”s rule.


Previously, it was popular only with the urban poor. It has now infiltrated high society and is equally popular with the Egyptian rich. Although outlawed, the Muslim Brotherhood is well-grounded at a grassroot level and is manipulating the increase in the price of bread, which has captured nearly 30 million Egyptians by the throat. To avert a showdown and fearing the wrath both of the Brotherhood and labor unions, the government continues to subsidize food with $13.7 billion.


From Mubarak to Mubarak


Amid all these grievances stands the overriding worry that number one on the president”s agenda is not bread – nor the Brotherhood – but the succession of his son, Jamal, who is deputy secretary general and chairman of the political committee of the ruling National Party. He was also recently made a member of the party”s 50-man supreme council.


In 2000, when rumors started to surface that he was a president-in-waiting, Mubarak said, “Don”t believe the rumors, they are baseless.” For his part, Jamal gave an interview to the Financial Times, saying, “I am not fixated on this and I am not positioning myself.” A few weeks later, at a book fair in Cairo, he added, “Frankly speaking, my becoming president is not on the table, it never occurred to me, and is not an issue on my father”s mind.”


Most Egyptians, however, think otherwise. The new election law enables him to run for the 2011 elections where, after manipulation, the ruling National Party will disqualify all serious candidates, bringing about a “democratic succession”. Any party wanting to nominate candidates for the presidential elections of 2011 should have no less than a 5% representation (nearly 23 deputies) in parliament. That would be easy for the National Party, which has already started preparing for the elections, scheduled in less than five months.


The US and Mubarak


The United States is worried about a variety of issues in Egypt. Decision-makers in Washington are divided on how to deal with Egypt, a country that has been received billions in economic and military aid from the US since 1979. One argument says that Washington should cut back its financial aid to Mubarak to pressure him to democratize.


Recently, the US Congress has tried to regulate aid to Egypt, claiming that priority should be given to democratization and educational reform. The Egyptians curtly refused any dictation of spending, saying this can be jointly discussed by Washington and Cairo. Others argue that this would be like shooting the US in the foot.


Greater democracy after all would only empower the Islamists, as it did with Hamas (a branch of the Egyptian Brotherhood)in Palestine. They argue that the money going to Cairo is not spent on strangers, since most of it goes to buying arms and technology from the United States. Lawmakers in the US claim that an uncooperative Egypt could spell disaster for American interests in the Arab world.


They recognize how important Mubarak has been in acting as mediator, facilitator and negotiator of the Middle East peace process, between the Palestinians and Israel, and between the two Palestinian factions currently at dagger”s end, Hamas and Fatah. They understand that if Mubarak decides to be stubborn, he can hinder passage of US ships through the Suez Canal and halt all security collaboration on Islamic groups like al-Qaeda.


Mubarak realizes that these are his points of strength, and manipulates them brilliantly with the United States. He wants to keep the relationship with America, yet insists on minimal and very cosmetic political reforms. In as much as some people in America would like to punish Mubarak for his policies, they know very well that they need him to protect American interests in the region.


The Egyptian president is not pleased with the amount of pressure he has been getting from the US. In June 2006, for example, the government froze the activities of the International Republican Institute, a US group promoting democracy in Egypt, because one member gave an interview to a local newspaper saying that Egypt was not doing enough to bring about serious democratic change to Egyptians.


The US State Department”s Country Report on Human Rights (2006) said that Egypt”s human-rights record “remains poor, and serious abuses continued in many areas”. In 2007, the State Department”s International Religious Freedoms Report criticized the Egyptian government of bias against Egyptian Copts (Christians). There were only six Christians in a 454-seat parliament (five appointed, one elected) and only two in the 32-member Egyptian government.


They noted that Christians could not be found in senior jobs like mayor or police commissioner, and noted discrimination and persecution of the country”s 2,000 Bahais and 200 Jews. Under such pressure – and very unwillingly – the Egyptian government had decided to make the Coptic Christmas (January 6) a national holiday in December 2003. Reform in that regard, however, ended there.


The Americans have been critical of Mubarak for standing up for his African ally, President Ahmad al-Bashir of Sudan, claiming that no sanctions should be imposed on Khartoum because of the violence in Darfur. Although Egypt supports the United Nations-African Union Peacekeeping force in Darfur with troops, it refuses to condemn the Arab Janjaweed tribe (backed by the Sudanese government) and insists that the violence there cannot be described as “genocide”.


One particular source of tension is the case of Ayman Nour, a former member of parliament who ran against Mubarak in the 2005 presidential elections (coming in as second runner-up) who is currently serving time in jail for forgery.


Many Egyptians – and the US – claim he is being imprisoned for his political views. Last May, President George W Bush spoke at the Conference on Democracy and Security in Prague, hailing Nour by name and saying he is one of the many dissidents “who could not join us, because they are unjustly imprisoned”.


Insiders in Washington claim that although pleased with Mubarak”s efforts in Middle East peace, Bush is “greatly disappointed” by the lack of progress on Egypt”s human-rights record. Making his point clear, the US president supported giving Israel $30 billion in military aid from 2009 to 2018 (a 25% increase) while Egypt was given only $13 billion for the same 10-year period.


Mubarak complains that this aid is not benevolence on behalf of the Americans; it is living up to commitments made to his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, during the era of president Jimmy Carter. When Egypt signed the Camp David Peace Accords in 1978, it got expelled from the Arab League (which it had co-founded during World War II) and was completely isolated within the Arab world.


It then stuck out its neck for the Americans – again – during the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 and after the September 11, 2001, attacks when it shared intelligence on al-Qaeda, and suppressed Egyptian Islamists. And what do they get instead? Israeli espionage on Egyptian territory, where in 2007, a man was accused of stealing documents from the Egyptian Atomic Energy Agency and passing them on to Mossad, the Israeli intelligence.


The Americans turned a blind eye and have not – to date – done anything to get Israel to change course, regardless of the peace treaty that binds the two former enemies. That explains why state-run Egyptian media were not very enthusiastic about last year”s Annapolis peace Conference in the US, claiming that it would amount to failure because there was no serious intention in Washington to bring peace to the Arab world.


While Mubarak was working around the clock to broker a breakthrough in Palestinian-Israeli peace, he got notice in December 2007 (right after Annapolis) that Israel wanted to construct 300 new homes in east Jerusalem, near Bethlehem – sending shockwaves throughout the Palestinian street. They then criticized Egypt for not doing enough to prevent the smuggling that takes place on the Gaza/Sinai border, which is monitored by Egypt.


“What jails do they want us to improve?” asked one Egyptian official. “These were the same jails that held Omar Abdul Rahman [the blind cleric currently serving time in a US prison for the 1993 World Trade Center bombings] and Ayman Zawahiri [the right-hand-man to Osama Bin Laden]. Instead of complaining about democracy in Egypt, the Americans should be sending bigger and clearer thank-you notes to Cairo.”


Mubarak is hinting that if the Americans do not change course, he might turn to the European Union, whose trade with Egypt has risen by more than 5% in recent years, reaching 11.5 billion euros (US$18.2 billion).


He realizes the Americans would panic if he decided to obstruct the passage of navy ships through the canal, or if he stood back and watched the situation in Palestine without lifting a finger to help. “Big sister Egypt” as the Arabs call it, remains a credible broker in inter-Arab disputes. Mubarak has already snubbed the Bush administration by refusing to send troops to Afghanistan or Iraq, not before or after both invasions. He also might snuggle up to Iran. Only last week, he extended an invitation to to his Iranian counterpart, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, asking the latter to visit Egypt.


Perhaps the Egyptian president did indeed watch the King Farouk series, but missed the moral of the TV drama. The 1939 marriage of Princess Fawzia (King Farouk”s sister) into the royal house of Tehran – depicted majestically on screen – was not what should have inspired Mubarak. Rather, it would have been the last episode, with students and workers on the streets in 1952 – very similar to the ones he saw in Mahalla al-Kobra in 2008 – calling on the king to step down. Survival does not depend on the Americans. Nor does it depend on Iran or the EU. It depends on just how patient 76 million Egyptians can be.


Mubarak should revisit the series King Farouk, and learn from it. He should pay particular attention to the last episode, which shows why and how the last king of Egypt fell from grace in 1952 – despite the backing he had from both the United States and Great Britain. Someone should send him a DVD copy as a gift on his 80th birthday.


Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.