Egypt: Politics and reform in the Arab heartland

The US-Egyptian alliance survived five Presidential elections, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the assassination of Anwar Sadat, violent anti-US sentiment on Egyptian streets, and a fundamentalist revolt in the 1990s. President Hosni Mubarak, an Air Force general trained in USSR who succeeded Sadat in 1981 has been the epitome of ruthless pragmatism and the art of regime survival in Arab politics.

Mubarak’s Egypt, recipient of $50 billion in American aid largesse since Camp David, has been the pro-Western linchpin in Arab politics. Egypt contained both Colonel Gaddafi and the Generals who rule Sudan, did not break its ties with Israel despite Basin’s successive invasions of Lebanon, virtually exterminated the insurgent networks of Dr. Ayman Zawahiri and the Assiyut terrorists who massacred dozens of Swiss tourists at a Pharaonic temple in Luxor and, above all, lent combat troops under American command to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein after Desert Storm.

The dubious credentials of the US as the so-called honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would have fallen apart decades ago had not Egypt acted as both interlocutor, and often scapegoat, for Washington in the Arab world. As the most populous, pro-Western Arab state, Egypt has long been critical to the political stability of other moderate, US allied regimes such as the kingdoms of Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. This "domino effect" in the Arab world is a lot more real than it ever was in the politics of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

Of course, the events of 9/11 transformed the Egyptian-US relationship to its core, as it did every facet of American diplomacy in the Middle East. President Mubarak, like other regional strongmen from Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen to Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, enthusiastically joined the White House’s war against terror. Egypt had been a prime target of Al Qaeda ever since its militants tried to assassinate Mubarak in Addis and destroyed its embassy in Islamabad. However, the Bush doctrine of preemptive strike against both real and imagined threats to American security, created a diplomatic disaster for Egypt when Bush decided to invade Iraq.

Mubarak, who had played a critical role in both Washington’s pro-Saddam tilt in the 1980s and proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, faced a crisis of political legitimacy at home if he supported Operation Iraqi Freedom and the loss of American aid, the regime’s economic umbilical cord since Sadat expelled his Soviet advisers at Kissinger’s behest. Above all, the White House concluded that there was a link between Mubarak’s dictatorship and the fact that 9/11 was led by Mohammed Atta, a citizen of Egypt and that Al Qaeda’s top commanders all hailed from the ancient Arab nation on the Nile.

Yet the US cannot play dice with the political stability of Egypt. As long as the Star of David flies over the Israeli embassy in Cairo, another 1967 or 1973 style Arab-Israeli war is unthinkable. If the Arabs cannot make peace without the Palestinians, they cannot make war without the Egyptians. Israel’s friends on the Potomac have known this existential axiom of Arab politics all too well since the time of Dr. Kissinger.

Hence, the $50 billion aid windfall Egypt has enjoyed since Camp David to act as American gendarme, powerbroker and secular protégé in the Arab world in an age of Saddam, Khomeni and Al Qaeda.

Ironically, the last great democratic and constitutional experiment in Egypt took place in the 1920s, under de facto British colonial role. Copts served in Cabinets, secular nationalism was the ideology of the Wafd party, French and British culture dominated the Merchant/pasha elites of Cairo. Remember wartime Cairo in the movie The English Patient where Arabs in red fezzes waltzed to the music of Mozart while Field Marshal Rommel’s Afrika Korps circled the city?

This era has inspired the new reformist political party, the Hezb al-Ghad (tomorrow’s party). This moderate political party calls for elections and an end to the intelligence state, symbolised by General Dr. Omar Suleiman, the head of the Misri Mukhabarat and the most powerful man in Egypt after Mubarak and his son Jimmy. It seeks to end the regime’s draconian emergency laws and transform Egypt into a parliamentary republic.

The regime bases its legitimacy on its secular credentials and its liberal, pro-IMF, pro-Wall Street capitalist ethos and economic reforms. Thanks to Suez Canal tolls, high oil prices, tourism in the Red Sea Riviera, a stabilised currency, a booming stock market, huge Gulf remittances, massive US aid and soaring cotton prices, the economy of Egypt has surfed on a bullish wave.

However, Mubarak’s regime shows its political sclerosis and the 79-year old autocrat has no designated constitutional successor. In a land where Pharaohs sought to inspire awe in the afterlife with their necropolis and pyramids, it is about time the President abandoned the rigged referendums of the past and embraced true democratic change. After all, ruling parties introduced democracy in Mexico and South Korea. Why not in Mubarak’s Egypt?

Matein Khalid is a Dubai based investment banker