Headlines, Middle East & North Africa, North America

EGYPT: U.S. Mideast Policy Backfires Inside Ally – Report

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 2003 (IPS) - The U.S. occupation of Iraq and the administration’s backing of Israel have undercut Washington’s self-styled goal of promoting democracy in the Middle East, says a new study of Egypt, the Arab world’s largest country.

President George W. Bush has vowed that U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq would launch the forces of reform and create friendly pro-American populations in the region, also making it safer for U.S. citizens at home.

Neo-conservatives in the administration contend that Washington’s new push in the region is focused on "regime change" and will use U.S. military might, if necessary, to achieve it.

But the report, released late Tuesday, documents changes in Egypt – resulting from the war in Iraq and other U.S. policies in the region – that suggest that Washington might have caused more damage than good and created a far more disgruntled population than before the war in the nation of 72 million people.

”The U.S. administration should take seriously the evidence of political damage that American-Egyptian relations have sustained as a consequence of its regional policies, notably its perceived bias in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its decision to topple the regime in Iraq, and its heavy-handed admonitions to Egypt and other Arab countries to reform,” said the report.

Titled ‘The Challenge of Political Reform: Egypt After the Iraq War’, the report says that U.S. policies in the region have helped cement the belief that Arab regimes, especially the one in Egypt, are subservient to Washington.

Washington’s ”unpopular policies in Iraq and on the Israel-Palestinian front have embarrassed a friendly government in Egypt and undercut the U.S.’s ability to promote democratic reform in the region,” said the Brussels-based think tank the International Crisis Group (ICG).

There is now ”far greater anger” in Egypt directed at President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruthlessly ruled Egypt since the assassination of his predecessor Anwar Sadat in 1981, for supporting the United States than there is anger directed at the United States for supporting Mubarak, says the report.

For a growing section of the Egyptian intelligentsia and political class, the cause of domestic democratic reform is increasingly associated with opposition to, rather than support for, U.S. policies, it adds.

The 24-page study suggests that the failure of Egypt and other Arab regimes to prevent the invasion of Iraq, coupled with growing concern over economic issues – highlighted by the floating of the Egyptian pound in January 2003 – has prompted renewed challenge of the government’s policies and of the U.S. agenda in the Middle East.

The economic impact of the war on Egypt has prompted calls for the government to take a new course away from the ”dictates of Washington”.

The main economic loss was in exports to Iraq under the oil-for-food programme, which were worth 1.2-2.0 billion U.S. dollars in 2002, and provided gravely needed currency for the cash-strapped nation.

To offset that loss, the government announced that it was working to involve Egyptian construction companies in reconstruction projects in Iraq, despite local opposition from those who saw the move as approval of the U.S.-led occupation of a fellow Muslim and Arab country.

The U.S. Congress was also quick to approve 300 million dollars in direct economic aid to Egypt and two billion dollars in loan guarantees earlier this year.

The report says the war exposed a confidence gap between citizens and government that could widen as economic conditions worsen.

”I consider this government to be a danger to national security because of its purposeful neglect of people’s concerns and refusal to confront economic problems, which fills people with anger,” the report quotes Wahid Hamed, Egypt’s most popular screenwriter as saying.

”I challenge anyone of those who clap all day for the government to deny or refute the well known truth on the Egyptian street that people are like hot hay stalks, ready to go off in sparks,” Hamed added.

Opposition to the war also reportedly heralded a new player on the scene: ”young people unaffiliated to any organised political group but thirsting for an effective political voice”, says the report.

Braving police crackdowns, they took part in the spontaneous anti-war demonstrations in March 2003 and demanded more political and economic justice both in the region and at home.

Other experts agree with the report’s main thrust. Calls for change in Egypt are coming independent of U.S. plans to democratise the region, said Nathan Brown, professor of political science and international affairs at Georgetown University.

”In Egypt itself, calls for change don’t emanate from American pressure or from an American role,” Brown said. ”To a limited extent among some leaders in the country, they used the threatening regional environment in the region to call for a change.”

But Brown downplays the anger in Egypt, saying the country has traditionally had an impassioned political atmosphere.

In 1991, when Egypt was directly involved in the first Gulf War and millions of Egyptian expatriates lost their jobs in Iraq and returned home, the country still saw no huge political upheavals.

”Egypt has an inflamed political passions but it doesn’t have an immediate effect … now Egyptians have participated emotionally (in the Iraq war) but they are not deeply affected by it”.

The ICG report echoes that point. Despite the negative consequences of U.S. policies on its ally in Cairo, the Mubarak government ”has not been destabilized”.

The report says that if the United States wants to regain its credibility with the Egyptian and Arab publics as a promoter of democracy, it must correct its regional policies rather than embark on further direct actions to promote democracy.

”The U.S. would help the cause of reform best by more vigorously pursuing a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and de-Americanising the Iraqi occupation.”