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 Now in his eighties, |
enters his twenty-eighth year in power, Egypt's future is more uncertain
than ever. Egyptian society is stagnant, and while Egyptians are proud of
a heritage that goes back millennia, they are pessimistic about the future
of their country,[1] unsure whether
Egypt can weather peacefully an economic downturn and a troubled
transition upon the incapacitation or death of its octogenarian leader.
Indeed, at a time when the Obama administration is once again basing U.S.
policy toward the Middle East on the assumption of the Egyptian
government's durability, many Egyptians—most prominently outspoken
Egyptian journalist Abdulhalim Qandil—argue that Mubarak's regime is on
the verge of collapse.[2]
The Economy
The Egyptian economy is in trouble. Egyptian
unemployment, according to international organizations, hovers above 20
percent, almost twice the official Egyptian government estimate;[3] underemployment is epidemic. According
to Transparency International, Egypt ranks in the bottom tier of Arab
states for high levels of perceived corruption.[4] The inflation rate continues to increase,[5] increasing pressure on the unemployed,
poor and elderly. Food riots erupted in April 2008 as the annual rise in
food prices topped 20 percent.[6] The
gap between rich and poor is also growing. Perhaps three million Egyptians
live in swank upper class villas in neighborhoods such as Ar-Rihab,
Ash-Shuruq, Sharm el-Sheikh, Marina, and Muqattam Heights while 44 percent
of the country subsists on less than $2 per day.[7] Less than 20 percent of Egyptians own nearly 80
percent of the country's wealth.[8]
Mubarak and his National Democratic Party
cannot shirk accountability as they have been in sole control of the
economy for more than a quarter century. When Mubarak took power, the
Egyptian economy was in a much better shape. Government public revenues
were 8.3 billion Egyptian pounds (E£) in 1981. From 1986 to 1987,
expenditures nearly doubled, from E£ 13.2 billion to E£ 22.2 billion.
Budget deficits increased from E£ 4.9 billion in 1985-86 to E£ 8.7 billion
in 1986-87. American economist Ibrahim M. Oweiss, an expert on the
Egyptian economy, concluded that since the mid-1980s "the Egyptian economy
has essentially stagnated."[9] The
growth rate of gross domestic product per capita has been approximately
zero.[10] Mubarak has been unable to
make the reforms necessary to address unemployment, inflation, housing,
food crises, and Egyptians' other urgent needs.
Over the past decade, the Egyptian pound has
lost almost half its value against the U.S. dollar. A recent report by
Goldman Sachs suggests a greater devaluation may be on the horizon.
"Without a further depreciation in the Egyptian pound, the Central Bank of
Egypt would risk further big losses in the foreign exchange reserves and
only delay the inevitable adjustment that is needed," the report found.[11] Should devaluation occur, the
cost-of-living would increase because of Egypt's dependence on imports for
many goods and services. This in turn would drive below the poverty line
the many million Egyptians struggling to keep their families afloat.
Cairo should also be concerned over its foreign
exchange reserve, which has fluctuated significantly. Between 1997 and
2001, it declined by half from US$30 billion to $15 billion before
recovering to $31 billion in 2008.[12] However, after the bread riots in April 2008,[13] the Egyptian government may not
have the political will power to devalue its currency and so risks
depleting its foreign exchange reserves, which, in turn, could constrain
its ability to stabilize its own currency.
There is very little indication that the
Egyptian government can turn the situation around. Annual growth is not
enough to absorb new entrants into the labor market.[14] According to former Egyptian trade minister Ahmad
Guwaili, the Egyptian education system does not prepare students
adequately for the needs of the labor market.[15] Those who do succeed often leave the country to
pursue more lucrative opportunities abroad. According to the U.N.
International Labor Organization, to halve the $1-a-day working poverty by
2015, gross domestic product (GDP) must grow at 4-5 percent a year, and to
halve the $2-a-day working poverty by 2015, GDP must grow by 8-10 percent
a year. Egypt's growth rate is closer to 3 percent for this year and will
contract to 2.4 percent in 2010.[16]
Nor has Egypt's productivity moved in tandem with GDP, an unusual pattern,
which the International Labor Organization attributes to increases in oil
revenues accompanied by "stagnant productivity."[17]
Egypt has an overwhelmingly young population:
37 percent of the population is below fifteen-years-old, and 58 percent is
younger than twenty-five,[18] and the
working-age population is increasing by 3 percent per year. A quarter of
young men and a whopping 59 percent of young women are unemployed.[19] The Mubarak regime has done little
to increase employment, especially among youth. Ninety percent of the
unemployed are between fifteen and twenty-four.[20] One writer in the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram
expressed his frustration with the current labor situation:
The drowning of 184 young Egyptian men off
Italian coasts didn't make waves in this country. It happened off Libya.
It happened off Greece. And it keeps happening. Over and over, our young
men brave death to get away ... there is a reason. There is a well of
poverty and despair so deep that impels them to act so insanely.[21]
The problem transcends the economic and can
have profound social ramifications since many Egyptian men can neither
afford to rent nor purchase an apartment, let alone marry,[22] a dangerous phenomenon in a country
that in the recent past, has had to battle an insurgency of young men
recruited by violent Islamist groups. Amidst this affordable housing
crisis, developers have constructed luxury complexes for the affluent, a
jarring irritant to the dispossessed. Even if the young and unemployed do
not turn to Islamism, either for lack of conviction or because of the
effectiveness of the state security apparatus, their despair and
frustration can manifest itself in a high rate of drug and alcohol use,
divorce, domestic violence, sex crimes, and prostitution, all of which
compound Egyptian social and economic problems.[23]
The Opposition?
Edward S. Walker, Jr., who was the U.S.
ambassador to Egypt from 1994 to 1997, and subsequently served as
assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, criticized
the duality of Egyptian policy, which can be
called having its cake and eating it, too. It [the regime] plays to its
domestic audience through the media, officially sponsored clerics, and
the educational system. The regime blames all its shortcomings on
imperialism, Zionism, the West, and the United States and uses that to
build domestic support.[24]
Although Egypt tolerates a number of opposition
parties—the Arab Socialist Party (Hizb Misr al-Arabi al-Ishtiraki), the
Liberal Party (Hizb al-Ahrar), the Progressive National Unionist Party
(Hizb at-Tajammu' al-Watani at-Taqadummi al-Wahdawi'), the New Wafd Party
(Hizb al-Wafd-al-Jadid), Tomorrow Party (Hizb al-Ghad), Kifaya, and the
Democratic Front Party (Hizb al-Jabha al-Democrati—Mubarak handpicks
high-level officials from within his National Democratic Party to serve in
all high level and most mid-level posts. After decades of democratic
drought, opposition parties are ineffective and have little organization
capacity. When they do organize, they face a lack of resources and
oppressive government tactics. Mubarak's government owns the media, and so
even the best organized opposition receives little public exposure.
When the ruling party does abuse its power or
flout the constitution, Egyptians have little recourse. According to the
U.S. State Department, the Egyptian executive branch interferes with the
judiciary. Senior officials can operate with impunity regardless of the
law. Nowhere is this more apparent than with regard to judicial oversight
of elections. By law, the judiciary in Egypt is required to supervise
elections, but many judges report government pressure to legitimize fraud.
Since the 2005 presidential elections, judges have led protests and
sit-ins protesting against the government's decision to prosecute two
senior colleagues: Hisham Bastawisi and Mahmud Mekki, members of the Court
of Cassation, Egypt's highest appellate court, who sought an inquiry into
fraud in the presidential elections and have asked for electoral and
political reform.[25]
Egyptian-American sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an increasingly strident
critic of the regime, suggested that the
battle with the judges may well prove to be
Mubarak's Achilles' heel. Justice is a central value for Egyptians, and
its absence is at the core of all protests. There could have been no
more compelling evidence of this than the unprecedented numbers of
people who rallied peacefully in solidarity with the judge.[26]
Ibrahim criticized Mubarak's use of the
Emergency Law, first imposed in 1981, which gave the security forces broad
powers to search without warrants and detain indefinitely without charge.
While Mubarak promised an end to the emergency regime, the National
Democratic Party-dominated parliament simply wrote its provisions into
"reformed" anti-terror legislation.[27]
As the Bush administration abandoned its
freedom agenda after the Hamas victory in Palestinian elections and with
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly acknowledging in the context of
China that the Obama administration would prioritize human rights concerns
even less, the Mubarak regime appears to feel itself having carte blanche
to curtail civil liberties. The State Department's 2008 human rights
report found that Cairo's respect for freedoms of press, association, and
religion all declined over the year. The Egyptian government continues to
restrict other civil liberties, particularly freedom of speech, access to
the Internet, and freedom of assembly, as well as to crackdown on the
activities of nongovernmental organizations,[28] such as Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldun Center for
Development Studies.
As a result, there is a dangerous political
void in Egypt. The average Egyptian citizen feels that his voice is not
heard.[29] While Egypt nominally
allows multiparty elections, polling brings no change. The International
Crisis Group called the 2005 elections "a false start for reform" and
noted "presidential elections are merely symbolic so long as the
opposition is too weak to produce plausible candidates."[30] U.S. abandonment of demands for reform and the
embrace of Mubarak and his son Gamal by both the Rice and Clinton state
departments have encouraged the Egyptian leadership to accelerate its
crackdown on dissent and raised the Egyptian public's cynicism toward the
United States.
Such cynicism was compounded by the
long-delayed 2008 municipal elections considered a sham by both Egyptian
and outside observers. Not only independent candidates close to the
outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, but also politicians from registered
opposition parties reported difficulties registering in an apparent
government campaign to prevent opposition candidates from participating in
the elections. More than 3,000 candidates, whose registration the
government prevented, sued the government. Although the courts ruled in
favor of the candidates in 2,664 cases, the government refused to
implement the rulings.
On March 30, Human Rights Watch issued a
statement questioning the legitimacy of the elections in which,
subsequently, National Democratic Party candidates won 92 percent of the
seats. There were only nine women in the People's Assembly (out of 454
total seats) and twenty-one in the upper-level Shura Council (out of 264).
Only three women received portfolios—for the ministries of International
Cooperation, Manpower and Immigration, and Families and Population—in the
thirty-two member cabinet. Christians are as underrepresented as women.
Copts may represent 8 to 12 percent of the population but received less
than 2 percent of the seats in the People's Assembly and Shura Council.[31] The Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace described the elections as "a step backwards for
Egyptian politics," and the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights did not
monitor the elections because of citizens' reluctance to participate and
the elections' lack of competitiveness.[32]
Challenge to Obama?
The danger for the West is that dissatisfaction
that already manifests itself in general anti-Western and very specific
anti-American sentiment could be the precursor to even more virulent
anti-Western Islamism. It is possible to find parallels in Egypt to
pre-revolutionary Iran. Years before the Islamic Revolution in Iran, young
Iranians were applauding Jalal al-e Ahmad's Westoxification, a
strident condemnation of Western influence on society.[33] As former French diplomat Eric Rouleau noted more
than a decade ago, the rise of political Islam in Egypt should not
surprise,
given the social ills engendered by extended
unemployment, especially among the qualified young; aggravated social
polarization in which ill gained wealth, insolently displayed, stood out
against the growing misery of the rural and urban population; and
generalized corruption spreading right up to the highest levels of
society and state.[34]
Unlike Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat,
Mubarak has never appointed a vice-president. Mubarak has been polishing
his son Gamal to be his successor, a mockery of Egyptian republicanism and
democracy.[35] Egyptians are enraged
that they appear ready to follow the path of Syria, in which a president,
who came to power in a military coup, installed his own son as successor.
If Gamal takes power, Egyptians fear he would continue his father's policy
of enriching the elite, suppressing the poor, all while ignoring effective
reform. Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an iron fist; he has turned Egypt
into a police state rivaling Syria's or Tunisia's with a security force
infrastructure that numbers nearly two million.[36] Indeed, many U.S. analysts acknowledge Egypt's
instability. "It will rock the world," wrote Michelle Dunne, a Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace scholar. "Octogenarian Mubarak, will
leave office, either by his own decision or that of providence, probably
within the next three years."[37]
Instability in Egypt after Mubarak's
incapacitation or death may become an international security concern.
There is no clear chain of command or civil society base to facilitate the
transfer of power to the next president. According to Thomas Barnett, a
national security analyst and former professor at the U.S. Naval War
College, the insecure succession could create a vacuum in which the Muslim
Brotherhood could rise:
By hardwiring themselves into the goodwill of
the masses through highly effective social-welfare nets, the Brotherhood
is retracing the electoral pathway to power blazed by Hamas in Palestine
and Hezbollah in Lebanon: hearts and minds first, blood and guts
later.[38]
Meanwhile, there are already signs of discord
between Washington and Cairo. Citing Mubarak's cold peace with Israel and
dealings with terrorist supporting states on its borders, Robert Satloff,
executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told
the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations,
"The foundation of the bilateral relationship has eroded. Divergences have
emerged over a wide range of Egyptian policies."[39] Equally alarming is the rise of anti-American and
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in Egypt's state media and society.
Obama will find himself facing a difficult
choice when instability strikes the largest Arab country. Every Egyptian
leader since Nasser has arisen from the military. Would an ambitious
general stage another coup? Perhaps under populist pressure, would a new
regime or junta scrap the Camp David accords as some judges demanded
during the July 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war?[40] Or is it possible that the Muslim Brotherhood may
gain strength, even paramount control? Populism—Islamist or
otherwise—should be a concern given a moribund economy and growing
disparity between classes and the amount of military equipment and even
nuclear technology that the U.S. government has provided Egypt. If the
Muslim Brotherhood were to achieve power in Egypt, the destruction of
Israel would again be the unifying principle for governments in the
region.
Aladdin Elaasar, a former professor of
Arabic language and area studies at the Defense Language Institute and
the Monterey Institute of International Studies, is author, most
recently, of The
Last Pharaoh: Mubarak and the Uncertain Future of Egypt in the Volatile
Mid East (Chicago: Beacon Press, 2009). The Egyptian government
has banned his books.
[1] John R.
Bradley, Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a
Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 209,
213-4.
[2] Abdulhalim Qandil,
Al-Ayyam al-Akhira (Cairo: Dar Ath-Thaqafa al-Jadida, 2008),
"Introduction."
[3] Daily
News Egypt (Giza), Feb. 15, 2009.
[4] "2008
Corruption Perceptions Index," Transparency International, Berlin,
accessed Apr. 22, 2009.
[5]
MarketWatch (Dow Jones & Company, Inc., New York), Apr.
11, 2008.
[6] International
Herald Tribune (Paris), Apr. 6, 2008.
[7] "Human and Income Poverty: Developing Countries,"
Human Development Report 2007/8. (New York: U.N. Development
Programme, 2007), p. 240.
[8] Khalil
al-Anani, "Union
of Dictatorships," Islamists Today, Aug.
20, 2008; Daily
News Egypt, Aug. 26, 2008.
[9] Ibrahim M. Oweiss, "Egypt's
Economy: The Pressing Issues," Georgetown University, accessed Mar.
13. 2009.
[10] Alan Richards,
"Economic Roots of Instability in the Middle East," Middle East
Policy, Sept. 1995, pp. 175-87.
[11] Bloomberg.com, Feb. 18, 2009.
[12] Asharq al-Awsat (London), Jan. 14, 2002.
[13] Associated Press, Apr. 10, 2008;
ABC News, Apr. 10, 2008.
[14] Al-Ahram (Cairo), Jan. 26, 2006;
Al-Hayat (London), Jan. 16, 2008.
[15] Nimrod Raphaeli, "Unemployment
in the Middle East: Causes and Consequences," Inquiry and Analysis,
no. 265, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Feb. 10,
2006.
[16] International Herald
Tribune, Feb. 24, 2009.
[17]
World Employment Report 2004-2005 (Geneva: U.N. International Labor
Organization, 2004), p. 30.
[18]
Michelle Dunne, "A
Post-Pharaonic Egypt?" The American Interest,
Sept./Oct. 2008.
[19] BBC
News, Feb. 16,
2005.
[20] "Egypt,"
U.N. International Labor Organization, May 22, 2006.
[21] Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo),
Nov. 8-14, 2007; Ash-Sharq (Doha), Nov. 9, 2007, in the MEMRI
Economic Blog, Nov. 9,
2007.
[22] Egyptian
Gazette (Cairo), Oct. 20,
2007.
[23] Agence
France-Presse, Oct.
3, 2007; Mohamed Talaat el-Harawi, "U.S.
State Department: Egypt Is a Transit Country for Human Trafficking,"
U.S. Copt Association, Jan 20, 2009; "Country
Narratives: Egypt," Trafficking in Persons, 2008 (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. State Department, 2008), pp. 111-2.
[24] "The
Future of Egypt," panel discussion with participants from U.S.
Department of State International Information Programs, Washington D.C.,
Public Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, and the Global
Research in International Affairs, Apr. 6, 2006.
[25] BBC News, Apr. 20,
2006.
[26] The Daily
Star (Beirut), June 16, 2005.
[27] The Daily Star, June 16, 2005; BBC
News, May
26, 2008.
[28] "2008 Human
Rights Report: Egypt," 2008 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices (Washington, D.C.: U.S. State
Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Feb. 25,
2009).
[29] Maye Kassem,
Egyptian Politics, the Dynamics of Authoritarian Rule (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), pp. 87, 90, 109.
[30] "Reforming Egypt:
In Search of a Strategy," International Crisis Group, Oct. 4,
2005.
[31] "2008 Human
Rights Report: Egypt."
[32]
Cited in "2008 Human
Rights Report: Egypt."
[33]
Jalal al-Ahmad, Gharbzadagi [Westoxification] (Tehran: 1962).
[34] Eric Rouleau, "Egypt's Islamists
caught in a bind," Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris), Jan. 1998.
[35] Daniel Sobelman, "Gamal
Mubarak, President of Egypt?" Middle East Quarterly, Spring
2001, pp. 31-40; Gamal
Mubarak, "We Need Audacious Leaders," interview, Middle East
Quarterly, Winter 2009, pp. 67-73.
[36] The Daily Star, June 16, 2005.
[37] Dunne, "A
Post-Pharaonic Egypt?"
[38] Thomas P. M. Barnett, "The Country to Watch: Egypt,"
Esquire, Oct. 2006.
[39]
Robert Satloff, "U.S. Policy towards Egypt," testimony to the U.S. House
Committee on International Relations, Apr. 10, 1997.
[40] YNetNews.com, Aug. 4,
2006.
Related
Topics: Egypt Summer 2009
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