POLITICS-EGYPT: U.S. Fails to Win Support over Iraq

By Cam McGrath Reprint | | Print |

Cam McGrath

CAIRO, Oct 11 2002 (IPS) - U.S. attempts to rally Arab support for military intervention in Iraq have fallen on deaf ears in Egypt.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher has accused U.S. President George Bush of attempting to "rewrite the rules in the middle of the game" – referring to his move to obtain a new United Nations resolution on Iraq. Maher emphasised that Egypt is firmly against any military action, and said Iraq should be dealt with according to existing UN resolutions.

"I do not think there is a necessity to change the rules…what is important is to have the inspectors back in Iraq as soon as possible," he says. "I believe we should work on the assumption that the Iraqi government is willing and will continue to be willing to accept the return of the inspectors without conditions."

The position taken by Egypt is critical. When the U.S. needed Arab support for its 1991 military campaign against Iraq it turned first to Egypt. This time round, however, Egypt is refusing to be any part of it.

"Egypt has affirmed from the start that no country has the right to intervene to overthrow the government in a sovereign country," the state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) quoted President Hosni Mubarak as saying.

Arab regimes are concerned that the U.S. wants to redraw the political map of the Middle East. They fear that after Saddam is toppled their regimes may be next.

But it is not the U.S. that these regimes fear most. Frustration over two years of the Palestinian Intifada and U.S. meddling in Middle East has brought temperatures on Arab streets to a boiling point.

"The true danger to the region arises from the likely response of the people to any military strike on Iraq…and no one can control or ignore this matter," Mubarak said.

Strategic analyst Hassan Abu Taleb says he is particularly worried about public reaction to reports that Israel will participate in a military operation. "Considering the collapse of peace efforts and Israel’s mounting repression of the Palestinians, the spectacle of an Israeli-aided offensive against an Arab nation can only generate incalculable anger in Arab capitals," he said in a recent editorial comment.

On the economic front, there seems little incentive to jeopardise the status quo. Egypt is a major trading partner of Iraq under the United Nations oil-for-food deal which allows Baghdad to sell oil to buy food, medicine and humanitarian items for a people suffering under more than a decade of UN sanctions.

Egyptian non-oil exports to Iraq reached 1.7 billion dollars last year, compared to just 158.9 million dollars in exports to the U.S., according to official figures. But many more dollars come from the U.S.

The figures on Iraqi trade with Iraq are somewhat misleading, says economist Magdy Sobhy, explaining that Egypt is primarily a conduit for goods from other countries. "Most of these exports are not Egyptian goods, so you have very low added value to the economy," he told IPS.

The U.S. gives Egypt military and economic aid worth about two billion dollars a year as a part of the 1978 Camp David Accord. The U.S. cannot stop this assistance, but it can slow down disbursement and cut down any additional aid or trading privileges. If push comes to shove, says Sobhy, Egypt would be better off with Washington.

The uncertainty over war is deepening Egypt’s economic recession by keeping away tourists and foreign investment, Sobhy says. There is little appetite for a war even though some Egyptians point to the benefits of a short war for Egypt. A short war followed by a new stable government and the lifting of sanctions would bring swift recovery and new opportunities would open up.

In 1990 some two billion Egyptians were working in Iraq, filling positions vacated by Iraqis sent to the front lines in the war against Iran. These workers could once again find jobs in Iraq a decade after their expulsion on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War. Additional labour would be required to repair the country’s damaged infrastructure, and bilateral trade would flourish under a free trade pact with Egypt, in place since 2001.

A short war may offer positive scenarios, but a long conflict or one that fragments Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni and Shia states would increase regional instability, analysts say. One analyst warns that if Saddam Hussein launches Scud missiles into Israel and provokes a retaliatory strike, it would "open the Gates of Hell."

Islamic leaders condemn Bush’s threat of war on Iraq. Sheikh Mohammed Sayed el-Tantawi, head of Egypt’s most prestigious Islamic institution, the Al-Azhar mosque, has warned Muslim countries against allowing the U.S. to use their land or other facilities for a strike on Iraq.

"We are with the Iraqi people and against any aggression on them," he said. "We will not accept any oppression of any Muslim or Arab country," the Grand Sheikh said in a recent statement published by a Kuwaiti newspaper.

Weekly sermons at thousands of mosques across Egypt warn of an insidious pattern to American foreign policy. The military campaigns against Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, indifference to Palestinian people suffering under Israeli occupation, and the latest threat of war against Iraq have led sheikhs to declare that the U.S. is hostile to Islam. The presence of government agents in the congregations deter them from saying so outright, but the message is clear from their selection of Koranic verses and proverbs.

Almost all Egyptians that IPS spoke to say they would never approve a U.S. attack on a Muslim Arab country to depose its leadership. "I hate Saddam Hussein, we all do," says Khaled Moustafa, a civil servant. "But we do not accept American interference in our affairs."

Many Egyptians ask why the U.S. does not address the real menace to peace in the region. "Washington regards Iraq as an unparalleled peril, but this opinion is not necessarily shared in the Arab world or by other international powers," Ibrahim Nafie, editor-in-chief of the semi-official Al-Ahram newspaper wrote in an editorial. "There is in the Middle East a threat to international peace and security many times more grave than that posed by Iraq: the Israeli occupation of Arab territory and the murder and destruction wrought by the occupation forces against the Palestinian people."

POLITICS-EGYPT: U.S. Fails to Win Support over Iraq

By Cam McGrath Reprint | | Print |

Cam McGrath

CAIRO, Oct 11 2002 (IPS) - U.S. attempts to rally Arab support for military intervention in Iraq have fallen on deaf ears in Egypt.
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