Egyptian politics

By Nir Boms and Benjamin Balint
The Washington Times
March 2, 2007

CAIRO. -- Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt's leading democracy activist, hangs two photographs in his modest office at the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies in Cairo. One shows him with Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House; the other is a portrait of Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. This juxtaposition tellingly captures some the current state of mind of Egypt's pro-democracy opposition: insecure and not certain where to turn to.
Three forces shape the public life of this country of over 70 million: the ruling National Democratic Party, led by Hosni Mubarak; Islamists, who have increased their share of parliamentary seats from 2 percent in 1984 to roughly 20 percent today; and the democrats, outgunned by both the autocrats and theocrats.
The first of these forces is both the most powerful and the most unwavering. In his address last November to the opening of Egypt's parliamentary session, Mr. Mubarak, who has been president since 1981, vowed to remain president as long as his heart continues to beat. He has also taken steps to secure the succession of his son, Jamal, a move that will likely be introduced as a measure intended to secure Egypt's "stability." Mr. Mubarak routinely imprisons challengers, men like Ayman Nour, runner-up in the 2005 presidential election (with 7 percent of the vote), Talaat el-Sadat, a member of parliament and nephew of Anwar Sadat who had criticized the Egyptian military, and Mr. Ibrahim, jailed in 2000 with members of his staff and acquitted three years later.
The Islamist's program, like Mr. Mubarak's, is similarly intelligible. The Muslim Brotherhood, which continues to gather strength under the slogan "Islam is the solution," is considered by some the real beneficiary of the "democracy revolution." But its electoral achievement also has something to do with the reported 500 million Egyptian pounds it spent distributing blankets and buying votes during the last election. With only 23 percent of registered voters showing up to the polls, such tactics yield disproportionate influence.
The pro-democracy opposition, however, is altogether more difficult to understand. Although there are 23 opposition parties on paper, in reality only three are of any consequence: the liberal Wafd Party (banned from 1952 to 1978), the Arab Nationalist Nasserite Party and the leftist Tagammua Party.
Each in its own fashion advocates steps toward genuine democracy and an independent judiciary, free establishment of political parties, privatization and the abolition of Egypt's state of emergency. Reformers also seek to amend Article 77 of the constitution in order to impose a two-term limit on the president.
They also tend to share a lament for the cultural and economic decay in a country that used to act as a symbol of Arab pride. They point not only to Egypt's glaring poverty, but to its loss of cosmopolitanism, its crumbling bridges to the West and the abysmal state of its schools. The National Council of Education recently reported that Egypt spends $743 a year on each university student, roughly a tenth of education expenditures in developing countries, and one-fiftieth of what developed countries spend.
On one point, however, Egyptian reformers, autocrats and theocrats appear to agree. They share a critical attitude toward American democratization efforts in the Middle East. They consider American optimistic announcements of an "Arab spring" in 2005 -- triggered by Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution," unprecedented elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, and Egypt's first multicandidate presidential election in 50 years -- wishfully premature. The autocrats and the theocrats point to a different sort of American imperialism. The democrats point to a United States that reneged on its commitment for democracy and, following its failure in Iraq, reverted to the old "stability" approach that erased all that was achieved since the issue of democracy was actually put on the table. Reformers took special note when during her visit to Egypt in mid-January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conspicuously avoided the democratization rhetoric she had deployed during her last trip in 2005.
Refaat El-Saeed, a member Egypt's upper house of parliament and the head of the Tagammua Party, puts this rather simply. Egyptians, he said the other day, "cannot imagine that the same people who abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, run the Guantanamo detention camp, and endlessly forgive Israeli aggression are also genuine democratizes."
Even apart from these sins, Mr. El-Saeed thinks the American democracy initiative fundamentally misguided: "Democracy is an internal affair; you cannot export it by the ton." Other democracy activists agree. The American democracy initiative in the Middle East, they told us, has proved hesitant and inconsistent -- if not outright contradictory. Talking the talk and walking the walk are two different things -- especially here. Democracy is not an "instant" project that is created by a show of elections that can easily be bought. Democracy takes time -- but America appeared to have lost its patience.
Rather than abandoning its efforts to foster democracy in the region, the United States should listen to those who share its objectives in the region and stand by their side as they try to return the "spring of freedom" to its tracks.

Benjamin Balint is a writer based at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. Nir Boms is vice president of the Center for Freedom in the Middle East.

In Arab Hub, the Poor Are Left to Their Fate

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
The New York Times
March 1, 2007

CAIRO, Feb. 23 — Ali Mezar has spent his life fishing a narrow, muddy patch of the Nile in this, one of the most crowded cities in the world. But Mr. Mezar has little contact with urban civilization. He sleeps in his boat, makes tea from the dirty Nile water and on good days earns a few dollars.

Not far away, on the shoulder of a busy avenue, Karim Sayed, 21, herds sheep and goats matted with urban filth. He spends his days staring into oncoming traffic, hoping to make a sale before the police move him or confiscate a sheep.

At the city’s edge, in a packed neighborhood built entirely by its residents, Mina Fathy and his neighbors fix sewerage, water and electricity problems on their own because they say the government offers them virtually no service in such functions.

Cairo is home to 15 million and often described as the center of the Arab world, an incubator of culture and ideas. But it is also a collection of villages, a ruralized metropolis where people live by their wits and devices, cut off from the authorities, the law and often each other.

That social reality does not just speak to the quality and style of life for millions of Egyptians. It also plays a role in the nation’s style of governance.

The fisherman on the Nile, the shepherd in the road and residents of so-called informal communities say their experiences navigating city life have taught them the same lessons: the government is not there to better their lives; advancement is based on connections and bribes; the central authority is at best a benign force to be avoided.

“Everything is from God,” said Mr. Mezar, the fisherman, who was speaking practically, not theologically. “There is no such thing as government. The government is one thing, and we are something else. What am I going to get from the government?”

Cairo has been the capital of Egypt for more than 1,000 years, and sits where the dry sands of the desert lead to the fertile Nile Delta. Egyptian officials like to say that this is where modern bureaucracy was invented, where the mechanics of governance first took shape.

While the Egyptian government is the country’s largest employer, it is by all accounts an utterly unreliable source of help for the average citizen. That combination, social scientists say, helps create a system that has stifled political opposition and allowed a small group to remain in power for decades.

One brick in the foundation of single-party rule has been public resignation. There is no widespread expectation that the authorities will give the common man a voice, and so there is rarely any outrage when they do not. The fisherman, the shepherd and Mr. Fathy all said that the most they could hope for from the government was that it stay out of their lives.

“We hope God keeps the municipality away from us,” Mr. Sayed said as he sat in a wooden chair, surveying his fetid flock of goats and sheep with headlights streaming by.

Such a feeling of separation is one reason that the leadership has been able to clamp down on opposition political activities without incurring widespread public wrath, political analysts say.

“People see the government as something quite foreign or removed from their lives,” said Diane Singerman, a professor in government at American University in Washington who has written extensively about Cairo. “Commuters to the city, or poor peddlers and working people, do not see the government as particularly interested in their lives, and they also see politics as quite elite and risky and something to stay away from.”

Officials say part of the disillusionment comes from unrealistic expectations, a holdover from the heady days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s leader from 1954 to 1970, when government jobs were deemed a right and cradle-to-grave care a promise.

Mr. Mezar and his cousin Muhammad Hassan fish the Nile just as their parents and their grandparents did, living in the bottom of their small wooden boats. Dark from the sun, hands callused from their oars, they are the image of Egypt, and they often smile and wave dutifully as tour boats motor up the river, with tourists snapping their pictures.

They dock their boats beneath a busy overpass, waking each morning at 6, filling their glasses with tea made from water scooped directly from the Nile. They worry that despite their fishing licenses, the police will demand their fish or write a ticket for some invented infraction.

“There is only despair,” Mr. Hassan said as he slowly rowed while his son, Rageb, 22, stood barefoot on the front of the boat putting out the net. “It is all about connections. If you know someone, you get 20 jobs. If not, you get nothing.”

He said they knew about bilharzia, the life-threatening parasite in the slow-moving waters on the edge of the Nile, but their priority is catching fish.

“We get checked for bilharzia,” he said.

“Really?” he was asked.

“No, never,” he replied, shaking his head.

There were four boats working the river one morning, including Mr. Hassan’s. The crews were all relatives of his. No one expressed anger — or depression. Only resignation.

“I am sick of Egypt,” Mr. Mezar said. “I like fishing, but you see, are there any fish? I would give all of this if the government gave me a job.”

Cairo has grown like a living organism, swallowing up agricultural lands and villages as its population has ballooned. Nearly three-quarters of the population live like Mr. Fathy, in informal communities.

Mr. Fathy comes from Manshiet Nasser, a sprawling labyrinth of brick apartment buildings along trash-strewn dirt roads that is home to hundreds of thousands of people. Informal communities are not shantytowns, but neighborhoods that grew organically, without any urban planning. People simply built homes, some buying agricultural land, some squatting on desert land.

The nature of these communities has bred a sense of distance and alienation from the government, experts in Cairo’s life say. The government only provided services when the neighborhoods reached a critical mass, when the numbers of people could no longer be ignored. Few have schools. Roads are so narrow that police trucks cannot enter. Electricity is pirated. Order is established by the community, independent from the authorities.

“My impression is that they think they are something different from the rest of the city,” said Abdel Halim Ibrahim Abdel Halim, an urban planner and architect. “They feel like they provided housing for themselves, they control that housing.”

Residents of Manshiet Nasser, which is on a plateau, often refer to those in the formal center of the city as “people who come from under,” as Salah Ibrahim, 40, meant when he said, “People who come from under never listen to us.” He said a road in front of his house had been flooded with sewage for days until, finally, the neighbors all donated money to have it repaired.

“Every house is on its own,” said Mr. Fathy, who said he had paid a bribe of 2,000 pounds, about $350, when inspectors insisted that he tear down the third-floor apartment he was building on top of his parents’ building. “Every house has to solve its own problems.”

Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting.

Bush holds first meeting with terror war consulting group

(White House-AP) March 1, 2007 - President Bush has held his first meeting with a group designed to bring his administration and lawmakers closer together on the war on terror.

The opening subject: the battle against a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

Vice President Cheney, who's just back from Afghanistan, took part in the session - as did congressional leaders of both parties.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it a "good start". And Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said the tone was "upbeat" and "amicable."

Pelosi says the meeting represented the kind of consultation that's been sorely lacking on Iraq.

Bush announced his acceptance of the idea for these sessions as he unveiled his Iraq troop buildup plan last month.

No word when the panel will meet again - and or when it will take up Iraq.

President Convenes Bipartisan Terror Panel

By Associated Press
Washington Post
March 1, 2007

Despite initial wariness from Democrats, President Bush finally convened a bipartisan working group to advise him on terrorism, sitting down at the White House yesterday to discuss the deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan with senior lawmakers from both parties.

When he unveiled his new Iraq policy in January, Bush mentioned his interest in forming such a group as a way of improving relations with Congress. Democrats initially balked out of concern that Bush would be dictating the subject and the people present, congressional aides said.

What now appears to have emerged is a plan to have regular meetings to discuss key national security issues with an evolving cast of participants from Capitol Hill, according to congressional and White House aides. The first subject to be taken up was Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban movement is posing a strong challenge to the government led by Hamid Karzai and the American and European forces trying to help it stabilize the country.

As described by people present yesterday, the initial meeting lasted more than an hour and included presentations from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, who briefed lawmakers on his just-completed trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Blogger on Ice

Once again Egypt's Hosni Mubarak shows zero tolerance for a secular democratic dissenter.
The Washington Post
Wednesday, February 28, 2007; A18

THE BUSH administration has tolerated Egypt's brutal crackdown on domestic dissent and the broader reversal of its democratic spring of 2005 in part because President Hosni Mubarak argues that his adversaries are dangerous Islamic extremists. It's true that the largest opposition movement in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood; how dangerous it is can be debated. But what is overlooked is that Mr. Mubarak reserves his most relentless repression not for the Islamists -- who hold a fifth of the seats in parliament -- but for the secular democrats who fight for free elections, a free press, rights for women and religious tolerance.

The latest case in point is a blogger named Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman, who was sentenced to four years in prison last week on charges of religious incitement, disrupting public order and "insulting the president." A brave and provocative 22-year-old student, Mr. Soliman first achieved notice with postings that denounced riots in Alexandria directed at Egypt's Christian Copt minority. He said the brutality he witnessed was the result of extremist Islamic teachings, in part by his own university, Al-Azhar, which he called "the other face of al-Qaeda." He compared the prophet Muhammad to Israel's Ariel Sharon. And he said Mr. Mubarak was a "symbol of tyranny."

Setting aside the hyperbole, there was considerable truth in many of the blogger's charges. Right or wrong, he certainly would seem to deserve the same freedom of speech as Egypt's government-owned newspapers, which regularly publish vile anti-Semitic screeds. But Mr. Soliman was one of several Egyptian bloggers arrested last year. While others were released after being beaten -- and in one case, raped -- by police, Mr. Soliman was brought to trial by Mr. Mubarak's prosecutors in what seemed a clear attempt to freeze what had been a growing space for free expression.

"This verdict sets a legal precedent for prosecuting someone for what they write on the Internet, on charges that are not easily defined or defended against," wrote another Egyptian blogger known as Sandmonkey. "This could be used to prosecute any blogger the government feels like punishing and serves as a huge blow to freedom of speech in Egypt."

As a political prisoner, Mr. Soliman will join Ayman Nour, who was sentenced a year ago on fabricated charges after he ran for president against Mr. Mubarak on a liberal democratic platform. As many as 800 members of the Muslim Brotherhood have also been jailed in the past year. This by a government that continues to be one of the largest recipients in the world of U.S. aid, collecting more than $2 billion a year. What do American subsidies support? Not least, the elimination of what would otherwise be the strongest secular democratic movement in the Arab Middle East.