Democracy in Egypt

Martin Henry, Gleaner Writer

Hosni Mubarak has finally capitulated under massive and intense people protest and has left the Egyptian government in the hands of the armed forces. The protesters wanted democracy in place of autocratic rule. Are they about to get it?

Mubarak was the third military ruler of Egypt since the Free Officers, a group of disaffected army officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, overthrew the constitutional monarchy in a bloodless coup. Nasser had been among the group of Egyptian soldiers surrounded, entrapped and captured by Israeli forces in the 'Faluja pocket' in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war which a coalition of Arab forces had launched to wipe out the newly established state of Israel but were decisively defeated. Nasser was exchanged as a prisoner of war.

He and other officers attributed the humiliating Egyptian/Arab defeat to the corrupt and weak regime of the fat and womanising King Farouk, and they secretly formed the Free Officers Movement to overthrow the government, which they did.

Egypt had only reluctantly joined with the Arab League in going to war against Israel, Prime Minister Nokrashy Pasha even predicting defeat. But the Government was pushed by overwhelming pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel public sentiments, sentiments which are probably no less strong today.

A short experiment with civilian rule followed the Free Officers' coup with Mohamad Naguib appointed president. The 1923 monarchical constitution, which had been created when Britain unilaterally granted Egypt independence from its 'protection' in 1922, was abrogated and the country declared a republic on June 19, 1953. One of the first moves of the current military government has been to abrogate the constitution, which protesters had demanded, citing it as being supportive of autocratic, one-party rule. But this has left Egypt in a legal and constitutional grey zone. A bad constitution may be better than none.

Nasser arrested Mohamad Naguib in 1954 and declared himself president, setting up a one-party socialist government dedicated to pan-Arabism and anti-Zionism.

Rebuffed by the pro-Israeli capitalist West, Nasser turned to the Soviet bloc for aid on big projects like the Aswan Dam and militarisation. When Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, which had been built by Britain and France in 1869, and denied Israeli shipping access, the previously owning countries backed Israel in the 1956 war to capture the Sinai peninsula and the Suez Canal, a strategic objective which was accomplished in under 100 hours.

Agreement

United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 997, supported by the United States, led to almost immediate withdrawal by the French and English. But Israeli troops remained in the Sinai into 1957, only leaving under intense American pressure and an agreement of right of passage through the Suez Canal.

Nasser and Egypt managed to extract a diplomatic and moral victory from a humiliating military defeat. Nasser became immensely popular throughout the Arab world as a hero who could stand up to the Western imperialists and the Zionists and as the leading advocate of pan-Arabism.

In May 1967, Nasser again closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and dismissed the UN peacekeeping force which had been stationed on the Sinai Peninsula. The United States failed to live up to its guarantees of freedom of the waterways to Israel, which had been given in return for Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula in 1956.

Nasser declared on May 27, 1967, "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight." He added, the following day: "We will not accept any ... coexistence with Israel ... . Today, the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel ... . The war with Israel is in effect since 1948."

Israel attacked first on June 5, 1967, inflicting humiliating defeats on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the Six Day War. Egypt lost all of the Sinai.

The defeat was so humiliating that the war is often disregarded entirely in Egyptian histories. Nasser offered to resign, but was acclaimed for the presidency by enthusiastic crowds. There was substantial popular support for Mubarak. We are not even sure if it was not majority support. But the foreign media were firmly on the side of the anti-Mubarak 'democracy' protesters who had gained first and strategic advantage by seizing and occupying Tahrir Square in their new media campaign.

Nasser died of a heart attack on September 29, 1970 and was succeeded by Vice-President Mohammad Anwar el-Sadat, who was a member of the Free Officers Movement in the military which had overthrown the monarchy in 1952.

Sadat reversed many of the elements of Nasserism, seeking to create a more open and less repressive society, and veering away from socialism. He offered peace with Israel in exchange for the return of Sinai territory which Israel had captured in the Six Day War of 1967 and still held. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir refused to negotiate despite the advice of war hero, General Moshe Dayan, and others, because she believed that Sadat's offer was insincere.

Sadat was determined to regain the Sinai, by war if not by peace treaty. On October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish religious calendar, the Egyptian army, backed by Soviet weaponry, swept across the Suez Canal, penetrating deep into the Sinai and completely surprising the Israelis. The Cold War was the defining feature of geopolitics and the United States (US) hastily airlifted military aid to Israel which had been previously withheld, doing so, it has been said, after Israel threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in the conflict. Israel counterattacked across the Suez and completely surrounded the Egyptian Third Army before a ceasefire.

Deals

In return for aid, the US, with the wily Henry Kissinger as secretary of state, engineered Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai. And just as importantly, on the other side, struck deals with Egypt to replace the USSR as chief patron and ally.

In a speech to his Parliament on November 9, 1977, Sadat declared that he was prepared to go anywhere, including to the Knesset, to negotiate peace with Israel. Israel, led by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, responded with an invitation to Sadat to address the Israeli Parliament. The Egyptian president spoke his desire for peace in the Knesset on November 20, 1977.

The Camp David meetings followed, mediated by President Jimmy Carter. And a formal peace treaty was signed on March 26, 1979. Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize for1978.

Peace cost Sadat his life. I remember, with acute clarity, exactly where I was when I first heard news of his assassination on RJR's six o'clock evening news on October 6, 1981. Disaffected elements of his own army on parade to commemorate the Suez crossing to attack Israel on that date in 1973 had turned their weapons on him.

Vice-President Hosni Mubarak was wounded in the attack. He had been the commanding general of the Egyptian air force in the war of 1973 and vice-president since 1975. Mubarak succeeded Sadat in the presidency.

Mubarak has presided over a repressive regime. But Egypt has been governed under the 1958 Emergency Law since 1967, except for an 18-month period which ended when Sadat was assassinated.

Mubarak has been forced out of office and there is wide expectation that democracy is about to break out. But there are other possibilities and the risks are great. Egypt, like much of the Middle East, has rather poor soil for democracy. Various repressive regimes have held sway during this Age of Democracy. Religious, and in some places, ethnic fanaticism is strong. The expressed fear that a movement like the Muslim Brotherhood, which dates back to 1928, could come to power in Egypt - and even legitimately by the ballot - is not without substance. We have seen the enigma in other places of anti-democratic governments coming to power by 'democratic' means.

Egypt has entered a period of great uncertainty and, quite possibly, instability. Power has been left in the hands of the military, continuing a long tradition of the military dominating government. Nowhere is the military particularly fond of handing over power to civilians.

Acceptable terms

Hindsight wisdom would suggest that it might have been better to wait for the September elections to be conducted under negotiated acceptable terms and conditions and with international observers present. But even if those elections are 'free and fair', indeed because they are, they may deliver an anti-democratic regime which will go into its own round of repression of opposition.

Many have been quick, without any depth of historical analysis or understanding of the exigencies of foreign policy, to criticise and to condemn the American working relationship with the autocratic and repressive Mubarak regime. But that working relationship has provided a pragmatic solution to one of the most intractable and dangerous problems in the Middle East: Arab-Israeli war, always with the ominous potential of sucking in the rest of the world.

The peaceful people-power revolution which removed the autocrat Mubarak from the presidency caught the benefactor superpower US flat-footed, like everyone else, and has created a huge dilemma. Continued aid could end up supporting military dominance of the government, more repression, and even the rise of anti-American and anti-Jewish forces. But withholding aid could have precisely the same effect. The resurgence of Egyptian anti-Zionism, from a suppressed but ever-present cultural stance to public policy, could happen pretty easily.

Democracy viewed narrowly as free and fair elections, and widely assumed to be an unmitigated good, could prove to be a disaster for Egypt in the historical and cultural context of that country which has never known a day of genuine democracy in 5,000 years of 'civilisation'.

The Middle East, with Egypt and Palestine occupying pivotal positions, has played critical roles in geopolitics for 4,000 years and is not about to cease doing so any time soon. Not only has the area been important to great powers but it is the cradle of the world's three great and contending monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Christian escathology has assigned a special role to the Middle East, and the place name Armageddon, a symbol of final conflagration, has become part of the lingua franca of the world.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.