Many pharmacies and herbalists in Egypt prescribe their own 'wasfa' (secret drug or herbal elixir). Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Aug 10 2014 (IPS)

Magda Ibrahim first learnt that she had endometrial cancer when she went to a clinic to diagnose recurring bladder pain and an abnormal menstrual discharge. Unable to afford the recommended hospital treatment, the uninsured 53-year-old widow turned to what she hoped would be a quicker and cheaper therapy.

A local Muslim sheikh claimed religious incantations, and a suitable donation to his pocket, could cure the cancer. But when her symptoms persisted, Ibrahim consulted a popular herbalist, whose wasfa (secret drug or herbal elixir) was reputed to shrink tumours.

“I felt much better for a few months and thought the tumour was shrinking,” she says. “But then I got much worse.”

When she returned to hospital the following year, tests revealed that the tumour was still there, and the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. Moreover, the herbal mixture she was taking had caused her kidneys to fail.“Successive [Egyptian] governments have done a poor job at both regulating the medical sector and educating the public on health issues, leaving Egyptians unable to afford their country’s two-tiered health care system vulnerable to ill-qualified physicians, spurious health claims and quackery” – Dr Ahmad Bakr, Egyptian health care reform lobbyist

Egypt is a “minefield” of bad medicine, says paediatrician Dr Ahmad Bakr, a health care reform lobbyist. He says successive governments have done a poor job at both regulating the medical sector and educating the public on health issues, leaving Egyptians unable to afford their country’s two-tiered health care system vulnerable to ill-qualified physicians, spurious health claims and quackery.

“Our health care system is deeply deformed,” Bakr told IPS. “It’s not just a matter of low funding and corruption, ignorance (pervades every tier of) the health system, from government and doctors to the patients themselves.”

He says Egypt’s lax regulation and poor enforcement has created room for unqualified doctors to perform plastic surgery out of mobile clinics, peddle snake tonic on satellite television, and dabble dangerously in reproductive health.

It is estimated that one in every five private medical clinics in Egypt is unlicensed, and thousands of medical practitioners are suspected of using false credentials or having no formal training.

“There are a lot of so-called doctors who practise medicine in Egypt,” says Bakr. “They mostly work out of small clinics, but you’ll even find them in the most prestigious hospitals.”

The incompetency goes all the way to the top.

In February, Egypt’s military announced it had invented a device to remotely detect hepatitis C – along with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), swine flu and a host of other diseases. The device, which is said to work by detecting electromagnetic waves emitted by infected liver cells, is based on a fake bomb detector marketed by a British con artist.

The military also claimed that it had invented a revolutionary blood dialysis machine that can cure hepatitis C, AIDS and even cancer in a single treatment.

“I was shocked when I saw these incredible claims were being made with barely any clinical evidence,” says Dr Mohamed Abdel Hamid, director of the government-run Viral Hepatitis Research Lab (VHRL). “With any new medical treatment you should perform peer-reviewed, double-blind clinical trials before announcing it.”

Critics say Egypt’s government contributes to a climate of medical irresponsibility. State media routinely exaggerates health threats and feeds public hysteria, while the knee-jerk reactions of government authorities – including high-ranking health officials – are coloured by popular sentiment and political motives.

Reacting to the global swine flu pandemic in 2009, overzealous parliamentarians passed a motion to slaughter all of Egypt’s 300,000 pigs.

There was no evidence that pigs transmitted swine flu to humans, nor had the virus been detected in Egypt. But officials, swayed by the Islamic prohibition on eating pork, appeared to seize the opportunity of a like-named virus to rid the Muslim-majority nation of its swine.

“The pigs were kept almost exclusively by poor Christian zebaleen (rubbish collectors), who used them to digest the organic waste,” says Milad Shoukri, a zebaleen community leader. “Thousands of families lost their livelihoods to this absurd decree, which had no scientific basis.”

Global pandemics such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), avian flu and the latest contagion, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), have presented golden opportunities for Egypt’s myriad quacks and swindlers to fleece the uninformed masses.

“With each health scare we see the same patterns,” says Cairo pharmacist Amgad Sherif. “People panic and throw science out the window. The low level of education and high illiteracy among Egyptians makes them susceptible to believe even the most ridiculous medical claims.”

When a swarm of desert locusts descended on Cairo, enterprising charlatans took out ad space in local newspapers offering a “locust vaccine” to anxious citizens.

Not surprisingly, the injected serum, which turned out to be tap water dyed with orange food colouring, offered no protection against “locust venom”. But it did leave duped households poorer, and at risk of blood contamination or hepatitis C infection from jabs with unsterilised needles.

“The people doing this only care about getting money from people who don’t know any better,” says Sherif. “They know nothing about medicine and do not follow even the most basic hygiene practices.”

In one popular scam, people claiming to be state health officials troll low- and middle-income neighbourhoods offering costly “preventative medicine” for infectious diseases. The fake medical personnel, dressed in lab coats and wearing official-looking badges, administer bogus vaccinations to unsuspecting families.

“Sometimes they give people injections – who knows what’s in them,” says Sherif.

Health officials say the sham physicians create confusion that affects legitimate health campaigns, such as Egypt’s national door-to-door polio eradication campaign.

Egyptian authorities have also found themselves in a cat-and-mouse game with thousands of “sorcerers”, whose superstition-based folk medicine draws desperate working-class patients suffering physical and psychological ailments. The self-proclaimed doctors and faith healers are particularly difficult to catch, say prosecutors, because they tend to work out of rented apartments and advertise mostly by word of mouth.

An Egyptian judicial official told pan-Arab newspaper Al Arabiya that despite attempts to prosecute sorcerers for swindling and fraud, most cases are dropped when the sorcerers reach a settlement with their victims. “There is almost one sorcerer for every citizen,” he concluded.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Fish cages on the Nile River. Experts are calling for a more holistic approach to aquaculture. Credit: Cam Mcgrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jul 26 2014 (IPS)

Less than four percent of Egypt’s land mass is suitable for agriculture, and most of it confined to the densely populated Nile River Valley and Delta. With the nation’s population of 85 million expected to double by 2050, government officials are grappling with ways of ensuring food security and raising nutritional standards.

“With the drive toward increasing food production and efficiency, Egypt is going to have to become smarter in how it uses water and land for food production,” says aquaculture expert Malcolm Beveridge. “It would make sense to bring aquaculture together with agriculture in order to increase food production per unit of land and water.”“Why are we using water first for agriculture then taking the drainage for aquaculture? Surely it should be the opposite – use water first for aquaculture and after that to irrigate fields” – Sherif Sadek, general manager of the Cairo-based Aquaculture Consultant Office

One possibility under study is to adopt integrated aquaculture, a holistic approach to food production in which the wastes of one commercially cultured species are recycled as food or fertiliser for another. Projects typically co-culture several aquatic species, but the synergistic approach also encourages the broader integration of fish production, livestock rearing and agriculture.

“An integrated approach would seem the logical next step for Egypt’s aquaculture industry in that it can significantly reduce water requirements while increasing fish farmers’ revenues,” Beveridge told IPS.

Egypt’s aquaculture sector has witnessed explosive growth in recent decades. Annual production of farmed fish climbed from 50,000 tonnes in the late 1990s to over one million tonnes last year – exceeding the combined output of all other Middle East and African nations.

But fish farming as it is predominantly practised in Egypt – by simply digging a pit and filling it with water and fish – has a major drawback. A decades-old government decree requires that drinking water and crop irrigation be given first call on Nile water, leaving aquaculture projects to operate in downstream filth, contaminating fish and limiting productivity.

“Over 90 percent of the aquaculture in Egypt is based on agricultural drainage water, with plenty of pesticides, sewage and industrial effluents,” says Sherif Sadek, general manager of the Cairo-based Aquaculture Consultant Office.

“Why are we using water first for agriculture then taking the drainage for aquaculture? Surely it should be the opposite – use water first for aquaculture and after that to irrigate fields.”

Integrated aquaculture reverses the water-use paradigm, with tangible benefits to both fish farms and farmers’ crops. While the practice is still in its infancy in Egypt, several projects have demonstrated its commercial viability.

At the El Keram farm in the desert northwest of Cairo, farmers use pumped water for tilapia culture, recycling the water into ponds where catfish are raised. The drainage from the catfish ponds, rich in organic nutrients, is then used to irrigate and fertilise clover fields. Sheep and goats that graze on these fields generate manure that is used to produce biogas to heat the tanks where fish fry are raised, or to warm the fish ponds in the winter.

“The project has demonstrated how farmers who switched to aquaculture after salinity rendered their fields infertile can increase their productivity and profits using the same volume of water,” says Sadek.

Other integrated projects on reclaimed desert land culture marine aquatic species such as sea bass and sea bream, directing the downstream wastewater to pools of red tilapia, a table fish able to tolerate high salinity. According to Sadek, the brine from these ponds can be used to grow salicornia, a halophyte in demand as a biofuel input, livestock fodder and as a gourmet salad ingredient.

“Salicornia can be irrigated with extremely salty water and produces seeds and oil, as well as fodder for camels and sheep,” says Sadek.

According to development experts, integrated aquaculture delivers greater efficiencies, requiring up to 70 percent less water than comparable non-integrated production systems. It is also a cost-effective method of disposing of wastes and saves resource-poor farmers from having to purchase fertilisers.

Beveridge says small-scale Egyptian aquaculture ventures unable to afford the complex closed-loop system employed at El Keram could still benefit from integrated practices that would allow them to harvest commercial food products year-round.

“Egypt’s aquaculture industry has a problem in that the growing season is relatively short,” he notes. “During the months of December to February temperatures are too low to sustain much (fish) growth. And during that period, farmers who try to overwinter their fish often lose substantial numbers to stress and disease.”

Pilot studies have shown that fish farmers are able to capitalise on the nutrients locked up in the mud at the bottom of their earthen fish ponds.

“The idea is that you drain down your ponds in November, harvest your fish, then plant a crop of wheat in your pond bottom that you would harvest in March before flooding the stubble area with water and reintroducing young fish,” Beveridge explains.

The water table is falling in Egypt's desert oases, raising questions of sustainability. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
BAHARIYA OASIS, Egypt, Jul 12 2014 (IPS)

Using a hoe, farmer Atef Sayyid removes an earthen plug in an irrigation stream, allowing water to spill onto the parcel of land where he grows dates, olives and almonds.

Until recently, a natural spring exploited since Roman times supplied the iron-rich water that he uses for irrigation. But when the spring began to dry up in the 1990s, the government built a deep well to supplement its waning flow.

Today, a noisy diesel pump syphons water from over a kilometre below the ground. The steaming-hot water is diverted through a maze of earthen canals to irrigate the orchards and palm groves that lie below the dusty town of Bawiti, 300 kilometres southwest of Cairo.

“The deeper source means the water is hotter,” Sayyid explains. “The hot water damages the roots of the fruit trees. It also evaporates quicker, meaning we have to use more water to irrigate.”

Bahariya, the depression in which Bawiti is situated, is one of five major oases in Egypt’s Western Desert. While Egyptians living in the densely populated Nile River Valley and Delta depend on the Nile for their freshwater needs, communities in this remote and arid region rely entirely on underground sources.“This [water drawn from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer] is fossil water, which means it was deposited a very long time ago and is not being replenished. So once you pump the water out of the aquifer, it’s gone for good” – resource management specialist Richard Tutwiler

Since ancient times, freshwater has percolated through fissures in the bedrock, making agriculture possible in the otherwise inhospitable desert. Water was once so plentiful in the five oases that they were collectively known as a breadbasket of the Roman Empire on account of their intensive grain cultivation.

Ominously, where groundwater once flowed naturally or was tapped near the surface, farmers must now bore up to a kilometre underground, raising fears for the region’s sustainability.

“Historically, springs and artesian wells supplied all the water in the oases,” says Richard Tutwiler, a resource management specialist at the American University in Cairo. “But water pressure is dropping and increasingly it has to be pumped out, particularly as you go from south to north.”

The water is drawn from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, an underground reservoir of fossil water accumulated over tens of thousands of years when the Saharan region was less arid than it is today. The vast aquifer extends beneath much of Egypt, Libya, Sudan and Chad, and is estimated to hold 150,000 cubic kilometres of groundwater.

But it is a finite resource, says Tutwiler.

“This is fossil water, which means it was deposited a very long time ago and is not being replenished,” he told IPS. “So once you pump the water out of the aquifer, it’s gone for good.”

Extraction is intensifying in all of the countries that share the aquifer. In Egypt alone, an estimated 700 million cubic metres of water is pumped from deep wells each year.

The increase in water usage is the result of agricultural expansion and population growth. Nearly 2,000 square kilometres of desert land has been reclaimed by groundwater irrigation in the last 60 years. Farmers employ flood irrigation, a traditional technique in which half the water is lost to evaporation and ground seepage before reaching the crops.

Since the 1980s, government programmes aimed at alleviating population pressure on the Nile Valley have encouraged Egyptian families to relocate to the desert. Existing oasis communities have grown while new ones have sprung up around deep wells.

One of these settlements, Abu Minqar, was founded in 1987 and now boasts over 4,000 residents. The isolated community only exists because of its 15 wells, which draw groundwater from depths of up to 1,200 metres.

“Water management in (places like) Abu Minqar must be sustainable,” says Tutwiler. “Because if the wells dry up, it’s game over.”

The number of wells in the Western Desert has increased immensely since the first appearance of percussion drilling machinery 150 years ago. Records show that in 1960 there were less than 30 deep wells in all the oases – today there are nearly 3,000.

In Dakhla Oasis, 550 kilometres southwest of Cairo, natural springs and 900 wells provide water for the 80,000 inhabitants of the oasis, as well as orchards that produce date palms, citrus fruits and mulberries. This was traditionally one of Egypt’s most fertile oases because of the proximity of the aquifer to the surface – less than 100 metres throughout the depression.

But here, as elsewhere, water sources that flowed freely less than a generation ago now only flow with the aid of mechanical pumps. Groundwater extraction has exceeded 500,000 cubic metres a day and the water table is dropping, in some places by nearly two metres a year.

“There are too many straws in the same glass of water,” remarks hydrologist Maghawry Diab

While Diab estimates the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer may hold enough water to last the next 100 years, Egypt’s desert communities could have a lot less time.

Over-pumping has created localised “dry pockets” in the aquifer, which behaves more like a layered damp sponge than a pool of water. Tightly-spaced deep wells are drawing down the water table, while their overlapping well cones intercept upward flowing groundwater before it can recharge the shallower wells.

“All the wells are tapping the same larger cone of depression,” Diab told IPS. “To gain years, we’ll have to find even deeper groundwater sources or (come to terms with) using saline water.”

In an effort to reduce pressure on groundwater resources, Egypt’s government has set restrictions on the drilling of new wells and reduced the discharge rates of certain high-productive ones.

At government wells, a formalised system of water sharing is in place. But farmers thirsty for more water have drilled their own wells, concealing them from authorities or bribing local officials to turn a blind eye.

“We have tried to control the drilling, but there is a lot of resistance from farmers,” says one former irrigation ministry official. “Every time we capped (an unlicensed) well, two more would appear.”

Egyptian HCV carriers will soon have cost-effective alternatives to interferon therapy. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Apr 9 2014 (IPS)

Mohamed Ibrahim first learned he had hepatitis C when he tried to donate blood. Weeks later he received a letter from the blood clinic telling him he carried antibodies of the hepatitis C virus (HCV). He most likely acquired the disease from a blood transfusion he received during surgery when he was a child.

“I needed a lot of blood, and this was at a time before they screened it,” Ibrahim recalls.Even with new drugs showing promise in reversing cirrhosis, it may already be too late for late-stage HCV patients.

Now, at 24, Ibrahim is living with the blood-borne virus, knowing it is slowly eroding his liver. Unless treated, by the time he reaches his forties the disease will likely advance to cirrhosis or liver cancer.

While Ibrahim has been undergoing treatment since he first learned of his infection, the medication is costly and yet ineffective.

“Nothing has worked, and the side effects of the medicine are as bad as the disease,” he says. “I can’t work in [other places such as) Dubai or Saudi Arabia, because they require a clean blood test before issuing a work permit.”

Ibrahim is one of an estimated eight to 10 million Egyptians living with hepatitis C.

Egypt is said officially to have the highest prevalence of hepatitis C in the world, with 10 to 14 percent of its 85 million people infected, and about two million in dire need of treatment. HCV-related liver failure is one of the country’s leading causes of death, taking over 40,000 lives a year.

But Egyptians infected with HCV now have fresh hope in novel treatments.

The Egyptian government recently struck a deal with U.S. pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences to purchase its new hepatitis C pill Sovaldi at a fraction of its American price.

Under the agreement, Gilead will supply a 12-week regimen of Sovaldi to Egypt for 900 dollars, instead of the 84,000 dollars the medicine costs in the United States. Egypt’s health ministry is expected to make the drug available at specialised government clinics in the second half of 2014, once local drug registration procedures are completed.

Studies have shown that Sovaldi is up to 97 percent effective in curing HCV type-4, the most common strain of hepatitis C among Egyptians. The pill is seen as a significant improvement over the traditional HCV treatment in Egypt, which is a 48-week course of the anti-viral drug interferon taken in combination with ribavirin tablets.

The existing treatment costs up to 7,000 dollars using pegylated interferon supplied by multinational pharmaceutical firms Roche and Merck, and is only about 60 percent effective. Many patients also report severe side effects such as anaemia and chronic depression.

Interferon is available without a prescription at pharmacies in Egypt, but at 150 dollars per weekly injection, the 48-week regimen is well beyond the reach of most Egyptians. Reiferon Retard, a locally manufactured interferon, costs a third of that price, but critics claim it is less than 50 percent effective.

Since 2006, the Egyptian government has treated more than 250,000 HCV patients at specialised units affiliated to the National Committee for the Control of Viral Hepatitis, a government body formed to tackle the disease. Interferon injections are provided at reduced cost or free to uninsured Egyptians, but as many as half of the patients treated suffer a relapse within six months.

A 2010 study by the U.S.-based National Academy of Sciences estimates that more than 500,000 new cases of HCV infection occur in Egypt each year. Researchers attributed the spread of the disease to the high background prevalence of HCV in Egypt – about 20 times higher than the global average – and to poor medical hygiene practices, including the use of unsterilised medical equipment and unscreened blood.

Egypt’s government claims the figures are highly exaggerated, and that the high prevalence is the clinical outcome of infections decades earlier.

Many HCV carriers were infected during a national campaign in the 1960s and 1970s to stamp out the water-borne disease schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia. Health authorities administered repeated injections of the bilharzia treatment to Egyptians in rural areas using unsterilised needles, inadvertently spreading hepatitis C among the population.

“Doctors at that time were unaware of HCV, which was only identified in 1987, and were using glass syringes instead of the plastic disposable syringes that is current practice,” explains Dr. Refaat Kamel, a surgeon and specialist in tropical diseases. “Once a needle got infected, the disease spread quickly.”

Kamel says a better understanding of the structure and reproductive mechanism of HCV has allowed scientists to devise more effective treatments.

Gilead’s Sovaldi received the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2013 after clinical trials demonstrated its effectiveness in curing HCV without significant adverse effects. The drug, one of a new line of direct-acting antiviral agents, combats the disease by targeting infected liver cells and inhibiting the enzymes that allow the virus to replicate.

The FDA has also approved Janssen Therapeutics’ Olysio, a direct-acting antiviral agent that is about 25 percent cheaper than Gilead’s pill. Pharmaceutical firms AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck and others are all hustling to develop their own oral therapies.

Sovaldi’s effectiveness on HCV type-4 is proven only when used with interferon and ribavirin. Further testing will establish whether the drug can be taken without weekly interferon injections, or as a combined therapy with other direct-acting antiviral agents.

“Trials here of six months of Sovaldi without interferon but with ribavirin showed similar success rates, higher than 96 percent (cured),” says Dr. Mohamed Abdel Hamid, director of the government-run Viral Hepatitis Research Lab (VHRL). “The drug might also be effective taken for three months without interferon. We just don’t know yet.”

He says that apart from the reduced cost and greater efficacy of Sovaldi, oral medication could reduce the manifold problems associated with long-term intravenous interferon therapy.

“Obviously, over 48 weeks there is a lot more that can go wrong,” Abdel Hamid tells IPS. “Adherence is a problem as patients must visit the treatment centre at the same time every week to receive the injection. There are also problems keeping the interferon cold, and the medication has many side effects.”

But he cautions that even with new drugs showing promise in reversing cirrhosis, it may already be too late for late-stage HCV patients. With a limited healthcare budget, Egypt is expected to prioritise treatment for those in whom the disease has not yet manifested.

Houseboats line the Nile bank in Cairo. Some 85 million Egyptians depend on the Nile for water. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Mar 21 2014 (IPS)

When Egypt’s then-president Mohamed Morsi said in June 2013 that “all options” including military intervention, were on the table if Ethiopia continued to develop dams on the Nile River, many dismissed it as posturing. But experts claim Cairo is deadly serious about defending its historic water allotment, and if Ethiopia proceeds with construction of what is set to become Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam, a military strike is not out of the question.

Relations between Egypt and Ethiopia have soured since Ethiopia began construction on the 4.2 billion dollar Grand Renaissance Dam in 2011.

Egypt fears the new dam, slated to begin operation in 2017, will reduce the downstream flow of the Nile, which 85 million Egyptians rely on for almost all of their water needs. Officials in the Ministry of Irrigation claim Egypt will lose 20 to 30 percent of its share of Nile water and nearly a third of the electricity generated by its Aswan High Dam."Hydroelectric dams don’t work unless you let the water through.” -- Richard Tutwiler, a specialist in water resource management at the American University in Cairo

Ethiopia insists the Grand Renaissance Dam and its 74 billion cubic metre reservoir at the headwaters of the Blue Nile will have no adverse effect on Egypt’s water share. It hopes the 6,000 megawatt hydroelectric project will lead to energy self-sufficiency and catapult the country out of grinding poverty.

“Egypt sees its Nile water share as a matter of national security,” strategic analyst Ahmed Abdel Halim tells IPS. “To Ethiopia, the new dam is a source of national pride, and essential to its economic future.”

The dispute has heated up since Ethiopia began diverting a stretch of the Nile last May, with some Egyptian parliamentarians calling for sending commandos or arming local insurgents to sabotage the dam project unless Ethiopia halts construction.

Ethiopia’s state-run television responded last month with a report on a visit to the site by army commanders, who voiced their readiness to “pay the price” to defend the partially-built hydro project.

Citing a pair of colonial-era treaties, Egypt argues that it is entitled to no less than two-thirds of the Nile’s water and has veto power over any upstream water projects such as dams or irrigation networks.

Accords drawn up by the British in 1929 and amended in 1959 divvied up the Nile’s waters between Egypt and Sudan without ever consulting the upstream states that were the source of those waters.

The 1959 agreement awarded Egypt 55.5 billion cubic metres of the Nile’s 84 billion cubic metre average annual flow, while Sudan received 18.5 billion cubic metres. Another 10 billion cubic metres is lost to evaporation in Lake Nasser, which was created by Egypt’s Aswan High Dam in the 1970s, leaving barely a drop for the nine other states that share the Nile’s waters.

While the treaty’s water allocations appear gravely unfair to upstream Nile states, analysts point out that unlike the mountainous equatorial nations, which have alternative sources of water, the desert countries of Egypt and Sudan rely almost entirely on the Nile for their water needs.

“One reason for the high level of anxiety is that nobody really knows how this dam is going to affect Egypt’s water share,” Richard Tutwiler, a specialist in water resource management at the American University in Cairo (AUC), tells IPS. “Egypt is totally dependent on the Nile. Without it, there is no Egypt.”

Egypt’s concerns appear warranted as its per capita water share is just 660 cubic metres, among the world’s lowest. The country’s population is forecast to double in the next 50 years, putting even further strain on scarce water resources.

But upstream African nations have their own growing populations to feed, and the thought of tapping the Nile for their agriculture or drinking water needs is all too tempting.

The desire for a more equitable distribution of Nile water rights resulted in the 2010 Entebbe Agreement, which replaces water quotas with a clause that permits all activities provided they do not “significantly” impact the water security of other Nile Basin states. Five upstream countries – Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda – signed the accord. Burundi signed a year later.

Egypt rejected the new treaty outright. But after decades of wielding its political clout to quash the water projects of its impoverished upstream neighbours, Cairo now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of watching its mastery over the Nile’s waters slip through its fingers.

“Ethiopia’s move was unprecedented. Never before has an upstream state unilaterally built a dam without downstream approval,” Ayman Shabaana of the Cairo-based Institute for Africa Studies had told IPS last June. “If other upstream countries follow suit, Egypt will have a serious water emergency on its hands.”

Ethiopia has sought to assure its downstream neighbours that the Grand Renaissance Dam is a hydroelectric project, not an irrigation scheme. But the dam is part of a broader scheme that would see at least three more dams on the Nile.

Cairo has dubbed the proposal “provocative”.

Egypt has appealed to international bodies to force Ethiopia to halt construction of the dam until its downstream impact can be determined. And while officials here hope for a diplomatic solution to diffuse the crisis, security sources say Egypt’s military leadership is prepared to use force to protect its stake in the river.

Former president Hosni Mubarak floated plans for an air strike on any dam that Ethiopia built on the Nile, and in 2010 established an airbase in southeastern Sudan as a staging point for just such an operation, according to leaked emails from the global intelligence company Stratfor posted on Wikileaks.

Egypt’s position was weakened in 2012 when Sudan, its traditional ally on Nile water issues, rescinded its opposition to the Grand Renaissance Dam and instead threw its weight behind the project. Analysts attribute Khartoum’s change of heart to the country’s revised domestic priorities following the secession of South Sudan a year earlier.

According to AUC’s Tutwiler, once Sudan felt assured that the dam would have minimal impact on its water allotment, the mega-project’s other benefits became clear. The dam is expected to improve flood control, expand downstream irrigation capacity and, crucially, allow Ethiopia to export surplus electricity to power-hungry Sudan via a cross-border link.

Some studies indicate that properly managed hydroelectric dams in Ethiopia could mitigate damaging floods and increase Egypt’s overall water share. Storing water in the cooler climes of Ethiopia would ensure far less water is lost to evaporation than in the desert behind the Aswan High Dam.

Egypt, however, is particularly concerned about the loss of water share during the five to ten years it will take to fill the dam’s reservoir. Tutwiler says it is unlikely that Ethiopia will severely choke or stop the flow of water.

“Ethiopia needs the electricity…and hydroelectric dams don’t work unless you let the water through.”

Yemen's preoccupation with the leafy stimulant qat is having dire consequences. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
SANAA, Jan 31 2014 (IPS)

The Yemeni capital of Sanaa is reputed to be over 2,500 years old, making it one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. But it is living on borrowed time.

Economists warn that if poverty trends continue, by 2030 more than half of the Sanaa’s projected four million inhabitants will be unable to afford their basic food needs. But before that happens, the city will run out of water.

“Sanaa is using water much faster than nature can replace it,” says Noori Gamal, a hydrologist at the Ministry of Water and Environment. “The water table is dropping by up to six metres a year. By 2025, Sanaa could be the first capital in the world to run out of water.”"By 2025, Sanaa could be the first capital in the world to run out of water." -- Noori Gamal, a hydrologist at the Ministry of Water and Environment

Yemen is an arid country, and Sanaa receives only 20 cm of precipitation per year. But climate is not the reason for the rapid depletion of groundwater stocks. The culprit is entirely man-made.

An obsession with qat, a mild narcotic plant whose bitter-tasting leaves release a stimulant when chewed, is ravaging Yemen’s fragile economy and sucking up precious water.

Thirty years ago, chewing qat leaves was an occasional pastime. Now it is an integral part of daily life in this poor Arab nation of 26 million, where 72 percent of men and a third of all women are reported to be habitual users. By one estimate, 20 million dollars is spent each day on qat, and 80 million work hours lost to its consumption.

“In Yemen, the day revolves around qat,” says Ali Ayoub, a leather merchant who chews qat for about four hours a day, or longer if there is a wedding or holiday celebration. “By 2 pm, you won’t find anyone at work. Everyone leaves early to buy qat.”

Like many poor Yemenis, Ayoub spends more money on the narcotic leaves than food for his malnourished family. He says qat stimulates the mind and offers an escape from the hardships of Yemeni existence: grinding poverty, high unemployment, and ongoing political strife.

“People say qat is the root of Yemen’s problems, but it is really just a symptom,” he says.

As the practice of qat chewing has grown, farmers drawn by the higher profits of the plant’s cultivation have abandoned traditional food and export crops. In 1997, some 80,000 hectares were planted with qat. By 2012, the number reached 250,000 hectares, according to official figures, and is growing at a rate of 10 percent per year.

The cultivation of qat has displaced staple crops like wheat and maize, which has sent local food prices soaring. The increase of food prices has had a deep impact on many households, especially among the poor, who account for 40 percent of the population.

“Until the 1980s, over 90 percent of produce was grown locally, but now because of qat Yemen must import 90 percent of its food needs,” Gamal tells IPS.

He estimates that qat fields consume about 50 percent more water per hectare than the cereal fields they have displaced. Farmers typically irrigate qat trees with water pumped from underground aquifers filled over thousands of years by the occasional rainfall that seeps through the soil and rock.

Government sources estimate that qat fields sucked up over a billion cubic metres of the country’s scarce water last year, accounting for about a third of all groundwater consumption.

Yemen already has one of the lowest annual per capita water shares in the world, estimated at 125 cubic metres, compared to the world average of 7,500 cubic metres. The annual water share is projected to drop to 55 cubic metres per capita by 2030 unless drastic measures are taken.

A population with an annual water share of less than 1,000 cubic metres per capita faces water scarcity, while humans need 100 cubic metres per year to survive.

As Yemen’s qat consumption has increased, health officials have noticed an alarming rise in related health issues. A study by Aden University found more than 100 types of pesticides used in qat cultivation, many known to transfer to babies through their mother’s milk.

According to Yemen’s health ministry, carcinogenic pesticides used by farmers to increase qat production are responsible for about 70 percent of new cancer cases in the country. Mouth and throat cancer are widespread in Yemen, far exceeding world averages.

Nasser Al-Shamaa of Eradah Foundation for a Qat-Free Nation, an NGO working to stamp out qat use in Yemen, compares qat chewing to cigarette smoking. He says as long as the practice remains socially accepted, it will be extremely difficult for eradication initiatives to make headway.

The efforts are further slowed by government officials with vested interests in the production and distribution of qat, who collect money through taxes and kickbacks.

“It will take time to change perceptions about qat,” says Al-Shama. “But we don’t have time, it is destroying our future.”

Unless barriers are built, a rise in sea level would inundate much of Egypt's Nile Delta. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
EL RASHID, Egypt , Jan 29 2014 (IPS)

It only takes a light covering of seawater to render land infertile, so Mohamed Saeed keeps a close watch on the sea as it advances year after year towards his two-hectare plot of land. The young farmer, whose clover field lies just 400 metres from Egypt’s northern coast, reckons he has less than a decade before his field – and livelihood – submerges beneath the sea.

But even before that, his crops will wither and die as seawater infiltrates the local aquifer. The process has already begun, he says, clutching a handful of white-caked soil.

“The land has become sick,” says Saeed. “The soil is saline, the irrigation water is saline, and we have to use a lot of fertilisers to grow anything on it.”“The soil is saline, the irrigation water is saline, and we have to use a lot of fertilisers to grow anything on it.”

Spread over 25,000 kilometres, the densely populated Nile Delta is the breadbasket of Egypt, accounting for two-thirds of the country’s agricultural production and home to 40 million people. Its northern flank, running 240 kilometres from Alexandria to Port Said, is one of the most vulnerable coastlines in the world, facing the triple threat of coastal erosion, saltwater infiltration, and rising sea levels.

According to Khaled Ouda, a geologist at Assiut University, a 30 centimetres rise in sea level would inundate 6,000 square kilometres of the Nile Delta. The flooding would create islands out of an additional 2,000 square kilometres of elevated land, isolating towns, roads, fields, and industrial facilities.

“The total (area of the Delta) expected to be impacted by a rising of the sea level by one metre during this century will be 8,033 square kilometres, which is nearly 33 percent of the total area of the Nile Delta,” Ouda told IPS.

In a report released last September, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a sea level rise of 28 to 98 centimetres by 2100, more than twice its 2007 projections. Even by the most conservative estimate, this would destroy 12.5 percent of Egypt’s cultivated areas and displace about eight million people, or nearly 10 percent of the population.

But it is not just rising sea levels that threaten Egypt’s northern coast, the delta itself is sinking.

Prior to the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, more than 120 million tonnes of silt washed down the Nile each year and accumulated in its delta. Without this annual silt flow to replenish it, the Nile Delta is shrinking – in some places the coastline is receding by as much as 175 metres a year.

The Egyptian government has attempted to slow the sea’s advance by building a series of breakwaters and earthen dykes along the northern coast and its waterways. Piles of concrete blocks help reduce coastal erosion, but without new sedimentation, the delta land has compacted and thousands of hectares now lie at sea level.

“You can build all the walls you want, but it won’t stop the seawater from advancing underground,” says Osman El-Rayis, a chemistry professor at Alexandria University. “The saltwater rots fields from below, killing plant roots and leaving behind salts (as it evaporates) that render the soil infertile.”

El-Rayis warns that as the delta substratum becomes more porous, seawater has begun to infiltrate the Nile Delta aquifer, a vital source of underground water spread over 2.5 million hectares.

Saltwater has always been a threat to coastal agricultural land, but salinity was traditionally kept in check by a steady flow of freshwater covering the soil and flushing out the salt. As Egypt’s population has expanded, upstream demand on water has increased, reducing the amount of Nile water that reaches the Delta. What does trickle in these days is choked with sewage and industrial toxins.

Faced with rising water levels and increased salinity, many farmers have abandoned their land or switched to fish farming. Others have resorted to adding sand or soil to their fields to keep them above the brackish water.

“Soil is very expensive, so many farmers buy a truckload of sand and spread it on their field then plant on top of it,” explains Saeed. “But it is difficult to grow anything on sand, so farmers have to use a lot of fertilisers.”

The sand is drawn from the dunes that line much of Egypt’s northern coast and act as natural barriers against the advancing sea. The plundering of these dunes for construction materials and fill has made the Nile Delta more vulnerable to a rise in sea level.

Scientists have proposed measures to protect the Delta lowlands from the sea’s incursion. They say the priority is to slow beach erosion by preserving natural coastal defences such as sand dunes, while building seawalls along the 240-kilometre coast that are strong enough to hold back the Mediterranean.

“These walls would be built facing the sea in places where low-lying gaps occur along the beach,” says Ouda.

He explains that in order to be effective, the barriers must include an impermeable substructure extending from three to 13 metres below sea level that prevents seawater from infiltrating freshwater aquifers.

The size is as formidable as the expected cost. One proposal submitted by Egyptian engineer Mamdouh Hamza put the price tag at three billion dollars. The plan envisions building concrete wall along the Delta’s entire coastline and skirting it with a plastic diaphragm to prevent saltwater seepage.

Ouda says the mega-project would be cost-effective in that it saves the Nile Delta lands, but it is unlikely to attract the necessary capital. He doubts Egypt’s cash-strapped government could cover the costs, while the international community appears unwilling to offer a lifeline.

“The project to establish the coastal walls is a service project…without economic gain and, thus, you will not find a financier for this project from companies or foreign governments,” Ouda says.

Yet some have argued that as Western nations are most responsible for climate change, their governments should foot the bill on behalf of the developing nations most impacted by its consequences.

A new constitution is poised to cement the Egyptian military's powers. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jan 9 2014 (IPS)

A draft constitution set to go before a public referendum next week gives the military more privileges, enshrining its place as Egypt’s most powerful institution and placing it above the state.

The new text, set to replace the constitution drawn up in 2012 under Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, has stoked fears that Egypt’s military leadership is pushing to consolidate its power and protect its political and economic interests.

“The powers conferred to the army (in the draft constitution) lay the foundation for a military dictatorship,” warns Tharwat Badawi, professor of constitutional law at Cairo University.“The powers conferred to the army lay the foundation for a military dictatorship."

The new charter was drawn up by a 50-member committee appointed by the military-installed government that has ruled since the army ousted Morsi in July 2013.

The document is seen as an improvement over the constitution passed under Morsi’s Islamist majority, which was widely criticised for its emphasis on Islamic law and curbs on personal freedoms. But legal experts have expressed concern over articles that diminish the role of representative government.

“If passed, the elected president and parliament would have no real authority over the military, which would in effect become a state unto itself,” Badawi told IPS.

Under the new constitution, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) holds final authority over the selection of the country’s defence minister. Badawi says the article will strip the elected president of the right to choose a defence minister, putting the military above any effective civilian oversight.

“By this way the military will not be accountable to the head of state, or the people,” says Badawi. “And this is very dangerous.”

Critics say Egypt’s military has repeatedly trampled rights and thwarted democratic change since the popular uprising that toppled the authoritarian regime of former president Hosni Mubarak three years ago. The new charter could serve to further insulate the armed forces from challenges by revolutionary activists and elected officials.

Rights watchdogs were disappointed to discover that an article upholds the widely condemned practice of trying civilians in military courts. At least 12,000 civilians were arrested and tried without due process in military courts in the months following the 2011 uprising.

Ahmed Maher, leader of the April 6 Youth Movement, denounced the article on military trials, calling its inclusion “treason” on the part of the 50-person drafting committee.

“Those who support military trials [of civilians] and forgot what happened in 2011 have sold their conscience and followed personal interests,” he wrote on his Facebook account.

Maher was sentenced last month to three years’ hard labour for organising an unauthorised protest against the committee’s attempt to enshrine military trials of civilians in the constitution. He was among the first to be incarcerated under a new law passed by the military-installed interim government that requires protesters to seek permission to hold public demonstrations.

As a concession to rights campaigners, the draft constitution is more limiting than previous charters on the types of cases for which civilians could find themselves before a military court. But it still allows the military judiciary to preside over disputes between civilians and army personnel in ‘military zones’.

“In Egypt, the military is so deeply entrenched that just about anywhere can be considered a military zone,” says Badawi.

The new charter fails to ensure any level of transparency for the military’s economic activities. According to the text, the budget of the armed forces will not be subject to parliamentary supervision, placing its allocations and expenditures at the sole discretion of the military leadership.

The same clauses shield the Egyptian military’s vast economic empire, estimated to account for between 10 and 40 percent of the economy. Military-owned companies engaged in everything from construction to macaroni production enjoy the benefits of free land, full tax exemption, conscript labour, and no obligation to report their balance sheets.

“Given the degree to which the military has penetrated the state, the state is more or less at its service,” says Robert Springborg, an expert on Egyptian military affairs. “The (armed forces) has access to state resources without any oversight or accountability.”

This appears unlikely to change. Egypt’s army has grown in popularity since removing President Morsi and cracking down on his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood. Analysts say it would be extremely difficult for anyone to challenge the powers granted to the armed forces in the new constitution.

Mohamed Mousa, a prominent member of the Al Dostour (Constitution) Party, says it is unfortunate, but the upcoming referendum is seen more as a vote of support on the July 2013 coup than on the constitution itself.

Egyptians who denounce military rule are still likely to vote in favour of the draft constitution, viewing a nod to pass the new charter as a strike against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We have concerns about the draft constitution, especially on some of the articles addressing military trials of civilians and the powers of the army,” says Mousa. “However, we are trying to deal with it as a package, and find it acceptable overall.”

Exotic pets such as vultures are trafficked and sold openly in Egypt. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Dec 26 2013 (IPS)

At a small pet shop in an upscale Cairo neighbourhood, puppies, kittens and sickly-looking parakeets occupy the cages behind the storefront window. But if you want more exciting and exotic animals – such as crocodiles or lion cubs – just ask behind the counter.

Trade in wild animals is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), of which Egypt is a signatory. But decades of ineffective border controls and police indifference have made the country a major hub for the trafficking of wildlife.

Conservationists suspect that criminal gangs have expanded their networks and stepped up shipments of protected and endangered species under cover of the political turmoil that has engulfed the region since the start of the Arab Spring.

“Since the revolution in 2011, Egypt has fewer resources for enforcement, and traffickers have recognised this,” an environment ministry official told IPS. “The country is facing many serious political and economic problems, and checking shipments for wildlife is not a priority.”"Since the revolution in 2011, Egypt has less resources for enforcement, and traffickers have recognised this."

Cairo is less a destination than a transit point for animals trafficked from Africa to markets in Asia and the Arab Gulf states. Rare and endangered animals are concealed in air and sea shipments, or smuggled overland through the porous borders of Libya and Sudan.

In recent years, authorities have seized satchels full of dying tortoises, rare birds stuffed into toilet paper rolls with their beaks tied shut, and a pair of dolphins floundering in a murky swimming pool. Foreign customs officers have also discovered baby chimpanzees drugged with cough syrup and crammed into crates shipped from Egypt.

Many of the trafficked animals are kept in rented apartments in Cairo and Alexandria that act as showrooms for prospective buyers. Others fill the overcrowded and dirty cages of disreputable pet shops, or end up in the country’s growing number of private zoos.

One licensed pet store in Cairo’s Zamalek district had its front end geared for the pampered pets of the district’s affluent residents, with imported pet foods, rhinestone studded dog collars, and colourful catnip toys. Further back the shop catered to more exotic tastes, with pens of juvenile crocodiles, caged fennec foxes, and a full-grown vulture that was eventually sold to a local businessman for 1,200 dollars.

The pet store was shuttered last year after municipal authorities acted on residents’ complaints.

“The store wasn’t shut down for selling endangered species or its appalling treatment of the animals,” says local resident Dalia Awad. “It was because the neighbours complained about the smell.”

Pet shops come and go. One business that has endured is Tolba Kingdom Reptiles, the flagship operation of the Tolba family.

Their showroom in Abu Rawash, 30 kilometres from Cairo, contains a macabre collection of desiccated lizards, rows of gazelle horns, and an ineptly stuffed lion. A series of pens and cages house hyenas, raptors, servals, fennec foxes, and mongooses. Gorillas are often kept in another building.

“We can get any animal and ship it anywhere,” boasts Salah Tolba, who heads up the family business. “Most dealers don’t know how to handle wildlife and many of the animals die from trauma. But our family has long experience in this business. We have large cages and we treat our animals better here than at the zoo.”

This is probably true, concedes animal welfare activist Dina Zulfikar, “but in general, neither has the acceptable standard for keeping animals in captivity.”

Trafficked animals confiscated by Egyptian authorities are sent to the government-run Giza Zoo, which was expelled from the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 2004 for its deplorable conditions and inhumane treatment of animals.

Many of the lions and chimpanzees at this zoo were seized during raids on private collections. The confiscated animals become a source of personal revenue for the underpaid zookeepers, who allow visitors to handle the sedated animals in exchange for tips.

“They receive no care… and die or are stolen, are used for photo sessions, or are sold to circus trainers,” says Zulfikar. “Zoo veterinarians conduct in vitro fertilisation experiments on the lions.”

Since the 1990s, private zoos and wildlife breeding centres in Egypt have mushroomed. Some, such as Lion Village, cater to paying tourists undeterred by the shocking conditions of the exhibits. Others are protected from prying eyes by fences and guarded by thugs with automatic weapons.

“Authorities in Egypt are toothless,” says wildlife photographer and conservationist Karl Ammann. “It is impossible to get anyone to take any action. The police are afraid of these smugglers, who are trafficking all types of animals.”

Amman’s 2006 documentary ‘The Cairo Connection’ exposed Egypt’s primate smugglers and illegal breeding centres.

One ringleader, who smuggled chimpanzees and gorillas from central Africa via Egypt for decades, is reportedly serving time in a Nigerian prison. But her three daughters have allegedly continued the trade, aided by a family member who serves as a Libyan border guard.

Another black market dealer operates a primate breeding centre under the pretext of a ‘national rescue centre’ in the Red Sea resort Sharm El-Sheikh. Dozens of gorillas and chimpanzees languish in its cages, their trade facilitated by a loophole in CITES regulations that set a quota on the total number of each species a facility is permitted to hold, rather than issuing individual permits for each animal.

Ammann says there is evidence that Egyptian wildlife officers, and even local CITES representatives, are complicit in the trade.

“Authorities know what is going on at these facilities and never intervene as (CITES) Article 8 demands,” he says.

The wages of Egypt's poorest workers have failed to keep up with rising living costs. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Oct 1 2013 (IPS)

Egyptian workers who mobilised during the 2011 uprising that toppled the regime of Hosni Mubarak have used the past two and a half years to organise into unions, press for labour reforms, and strike for better wages and working conditions.

But they face an uphill battle against a state that continues to restrict labour freedoms and to promote Egypt as a cheap-labour, business-friendly destination.

“Nothing has changed,” says journalist and labour activist Adel Zakaria. “The government is still not willing to give workers their rights… and overlooks labour violations under the pretext of attracting investment.”

Mubarak’s authoritarian regime (1981-2011) kept the country’s labour force under tight control, using its monopoly on union organisation to prevent collective action and mobilise workers to support the ruling party during election campaigns. The state flagrantly ignored its commitments to international labour treaties, denying workers basic rights and dispatching security forces and hired thugs to back employers during labour disputes.

Political economist Amr Adly says the regime’s neo-liberal economic policies and hugely unpopular privatisation programme pleased World Bank and IMF officials, but resulted in high unemployment and widening disparities between rich and poor.

“The economy was growing rapidly but the wealth concentrated at the top without any trickle down,” Adly told IPS. “The majority were excluded from the country’s economic growth.”

By 2011, on the eve of the mass uprising that toppled Mubarak, nearly a quarter of the population lived below the poverty line, and millions worked in a huge parallel economy where job security is absent.

Nearly two million Egyptians subsisted on the monthly minimum wage of 35 Egyptian pounds (about five dollars at today’s rate), the bulk of their salary coming from a series of bonuses and benefits that employers routinely withheld or used as leverage.

The twilight years of Mubarak’s rule saw a surge in the number of labour strikes as workers defied the state to demand unpaid bonuses and a livable wage.

“The labour protests were part of the social and economic discontent that led to the revolution,” says Adly.

Mubarak’s successors – both the Muslim Brotherhood and the ruling military junta – have continued to push his economic policies, working to contain labour unrest rather than address its underlying causes.

A 2009 International Labour Organisation (ILO) study showed that Egypt’s wages were among the lowest of 72 countries surveyed. The average monthly salary of 542 dollars put the country on par with Mexico and Thailand, and was less than a third of the average in Turkey.

Economic conditions have continued to deteriorate, whittling away at paychecks and pushing the national poverty rate to a record 25.2 percent last year. Political instability has spooked investors and devastated the tourism sector, previously the country’s biggest foreign revenue earner.

Government figures show the unemployment rate has climbed from nine percent before the 2011 uprising to over 13 percent, with more than a quarter of the country’s youth out of work. Inflation has averaged 10 percent, raising living costs and putting pressure on the country’s most disadvantaged citizens.

“There has been no attempt to link wages to rising living expenses,” says labour activist Zakaria. “Most Egyptians are worse off now than before the revolution.”

The 2011 uprising brought a heightened awareness of labour rights to workers, who have used the chaotic transition since Mubarak’s downfall to organise into thousands of independent trade unions, challenging the hegemony of state-controlled syndicates.

The free unions – estimated to represent nearly three million workers in this country of 85 million people – have been at the forefront of a wave of strikes that has grown in size and scope.

Zakaria says the emerging labour movement has empowered workers and increased their leverage. Last year there were a record 2,000 collective worker actions, with protests calling for better wages, payment of overdue bonuses, and the reinstatement of unfairly sacked employees.

Workers have also called on the government to abolish Mubarak-era labour laws and establish wage controls.

“Not all [strikes have been] successful, in fact many have failed,” Zakaria told IPS. “But since the revolution the government and employers have been more inclined to negotiate with workers, instead of beating them into submission – though they still do that too.”

In October 2011, the government caved in to pressure and revised the minimum wage for the first time in 25 years. It was a hollow victory for labour groups, which were disappointed by the decision to set the wage at 700 Egyptian pounds (102 dollars), less than half of what they had campaigned for.

The government recently pledged to increase the minimum monthly wage for six million public sector workers to 1,200 Egyptian pounds (174 dollars), but rejected calls to extend it to the 19 million employees in the private sector.

Fatma Ramadan, a board member of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), says the government has made some adjustments to public sector wages, but continues to provide cover for exploitative private employers, fearing worker concessions could push investors toward cheaper and more servile labour markets.

The average weekly pay of government and public sector workers grew 29 percent in 2012 to reach 845 Egyptian pounds (124 dollars), according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS). Private sector salaries saw piecemeal increases, but largely stayed the same, according to official information.

“The military and feloul (remnants of the old regime) have worked to keep workers from exercising their rights, including the right to organise into unions or strike,” says Ramadan. “They have claimed that strikes are hurting the economy, but it is not for workers to forfeit their rights in order to protect the interests of business tycoons.”

Striking workers: Egypt’s new military-led government has adopted the same tough line on labour activism and trade unions as its predecessors. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Sep 9 2013 (IPS)

It was the Egyptian state’s brutal restrictions on worker freedoms that transformed Kareem El-Beheiry from a disengaged lay worker into a tenacious labour activist.

In April 2008, El-Beheiry was arrested during mass demonstrations that followed a government crackdown on workers protesting low wages and rising living costs in Mahalla El-Kubra, an industrial city 100 kilometres north of Cairo. The young factory worker had used his mobile phone to capture and share video footage of fierce clashes between security forces and protesters until police swooped in and grabbed him.

Authorities accused El-Beheiry of using his blog on labour rights to instigate the Mahalla uprising, which originated at the textile mill where he worked. Three people were killed and hundreds injured in two days of rioting that engulfed the city after state security forces stormed the factory to prevent thousands of striking workers from gathering there.The Egyptian Centre for Social Rights reported 1,400 collective worker actions in 2011 and nearly 2,000 in 2012. It cited 2,400 social and economic protests during the first quarter of 2013.

El-Beheiry, now 28, recalls how he spent two months in prison, where he was abused, deprived of food, and tortured with electric shocks. Even after his release, he had to fight a legal battle to return to his job – the factory’s manager had sacked him for failing to show up for work during his imprisonment.

Reinstated on a court order, the flagged employee was transferred to the state-owned company’s Cairo office in 2009, where he was fired three months later on spurious charges.

“Every day I commuted to Cairo and signed in, but the management destroyed my attendance record and claimed I never showed up for work,” he says. “I have a court order (for my reinstatement), but the factory manager refuses to honour it.”

El-Beheiry’s ordeal exemplifies the extent to which the authoritarian regime of toppled president Hosni Mubarak was willing to go to isolate and intimidate dissident workers. The state tolerated a degree of political opposition, but when it came to labour issues, any action that threatened to galvanise workers into a cohesive labour movement was swiftly crushed.

Successive governments relied on the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), a colossal state-backed labour organisation with 24 affiliated trade syndicates, to control workers and prevent them from engaging in industrial action. When strikes did break out, the regime smothered them with the riot police and hired thugs – and if that failed, called in the army.

“Mubarak only knew one way to deal with labour disputes: force,” says El-Beheiry.

The former mill worker, now a project manager at an NGO that helps workers unionise, says the 2008 Mahalla revolt was a game changer for Mubarak’s regime. The labour movement that emerged from the city’s grimy factories stirred Egypt’s long-quiescent working class, sparking a wave of wildcat strikes that played a crucial role in persuading the army to remove Mubarak during the 2011 uprising.

But the strike wave did not end with Mubarak’s fall. It smouldered and spread under the 18 months of military rule that followed, and during the year-long rule of president Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Egyptian Centre for Social Rights (ECESR) reported 1,400 collective worker actions in 2011 and nearly 2,000 in 2012. It cited 2,400 social and economic protests during the first quarter of 2013, which coincided with Morsi’s presidency.

Joel Beinin, professor of Middle East history at Stanford University argues that despite small concessions aimed at ending strikes, Morsi largely relied on the same apparatus to quash labour dissent, and proved no more willing than his predecessors to address its underlying causes. At the heart of the underlying causes lie gross inequalities.

The Muslim Brotherhood leadership is “just as committed to the free-market fundamentalism promoted by the international financial institutions as the Mubarak regime was,” he writes. “When workers continued to strike and protest, Morsi’s administration, like the Mubarak regime, often granted their economic demands but ignored their political demands and undermined their organisational autonomy.”

Many of the demands are not new. During the twilight years of Mubarak’s rule, the government’s neo-liberal economic programme heightened unemployment, stripped welfare benefits, and widened the gap between rich and poor. Economic conditions have continued to deteriorate in post-revolution Egypt.

Impoverished workers are protesting for better wages, job security, payment of overdue benefits, and a liveable minimum wage. They have also demanded to exercise the right to freedom of association as guaranteed by international labour treaties to which Egypt is a signatory.

Workers have organised into thousands of independent trade unions since Egypt’s 2011 uprising, but their legitimacy is challenged by Mubarak-era legislation that only recognises ETUF-affiliated syndicates.

Adel Zakaria, editor of Kalam Sinaiyya (Workers’ Talk) magazine says that instead of reforming or dissolving the mammoth state-controlled labour body, Morsi’s administration “tried to co-opt it in order to control its four million members.”

Despite some promising signs, including the appointment of a veteran union organiser as labour minister, rights groups say the new regime is already shaping up to be a lot like its predecessors.

In August, security forces moved in to break up a month-long strike by steel mill workers protesting unpaid wages and bonuses. Days later, riot police forcefully put down a strike at a petroleum company over unpaid bonuses and intolerable working conditions.

Strike leaders have been sacked, and several protesting workers were reportedly referred to prosecutors under laws that criminalise unauthorised collective labour action.

The ruling regime has attempted to paint striking workers as counter-revolutionaries and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a loaded association given the military’s crackdown on the group.

Military leader General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has called on workers to take action against the “instigators” of strikes, and promised to deal firmly with those who disrupt the wheels of production.

“We will help quell this sedition,” he said. “Don’t let anybody interrupt production because this is another means of tearing the country down.”

Egypt's military rulers have set security solutions over political ones. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Aug 22 2013 (IPS)

Egyptian military leader General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said ousting the country’s first elected president was necessary “to preserve democracy” and resolve the political deadlock that had dangerously polarised the country. But six weeks after the coup he led, the notion that toppling Islamist president Mohamed Morsi would restore stability to Egypt has proven false.

Instead, the confrontations between the army and supporters of the ousted president have led to violent chaos and given the military a free hand to restrict freedoms and rebuild the apparatus of Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian regime. A court ordered the release of Mubarak himself on bail.

“The biggest threat facing Egypt remains the return of the police state. More specifically, the threat concerns not only the reconstitution of a police state, which never really left since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, but also the return of the implicit, if not overt, acceptance of the repressive practices of the coercive apparatus,” said political analyst Wael Eskander writing in the independent Jadaliyya ezine.

At least 1,000 Egyptians have been killed and thousands injured since the army stormed pro-Morsi demonstrations in Cairo on Aug. 14 using live ammunition. Another 160 protesters, mostly members of the Muslim Brotherhood that forms the core of Morsi’s support, were killed in clashes with security forces in July.“A Muslim Brotherhood driven underground, a leading military figure, an assertive police force, and submissive liberal bloc is perhaps the most apt description of pre-2011 Egypt.”

The post-coup casualty figure has exceeded that of the 18-day uprising that toppled former president Mubarak in 2011. By all accounts, the military operation to clear public squares of largely peaceful and unarmed protesters calling for Morsi’s reinstatement has been far more brutal.

Rights group Amnesty International described the crackdown as “utter carnage”, blasting Egypt’s military-backed government for its excessive use of force.

The level of violence is shocking but not surprising, says rights lawyer Negad El-Borai, who recalls the heavy-handed tactics the military used to intimidate opposition activists during the 17 months it ruled Egypt between Mubarak’s fall and Morsi’s election.

“The last time the army was in power anyone who spoke out against them was beaten, humiliated or killed,” El-Borai told IPS. “That’s just how these guys operate.”

Despite the military’s poor track record in domestic politics, many liberal and leftist Egyptians supported the army’s Jul. 3 coup, seeing military intervention as preferable to rule under the Muslim Brotherhood. Their virulent anti-Brotherhood sentiment in effect provided a mandate to remove Morsi and use force against the Islamic group’s members.

It has also “distracted them” from the striking return to the days before the 2011 uprising, say analysts.

Having ousted Morsi and suspended Egypt’s flimsy constitution, the military has used the façade of a civilian interim government to rebuild the institutions that propped up Mubarak’s corrupt and repressive regime.

The old guard is slipping back into place. Egypt’s cabinet has been stripped of Islamists and stacked with Mubarak-era figures, including former ranking members of Mubarak’s now-dissolved National Democratic Party. More than half of the 18 provincial governors appointed last week are former army or police generals – some with chequered records of conduct during the 2011 revolution.

The “militarisation of the state,” as one opposition party spokesman described it, has been carried out under the cover of a pernicious propaganda campaign aimed at vilifying Morsi’s supporters. The ruling junta and its media allies have whipped up hysteria against the Brotherhood, painting the group’s members as paid dupes and terrorists using the sort of patriotic rhetoric typically reserved for arch-enemy Israel.

Eskander argues that a “war on terror” is the perfect legitimising tool for a government without democratic credentials that is seeking to violently suppress its political opponents. The terrorism threat has allowed Egypt’s security services to regain “their traditional role as an arbiter of these conflicts, as well as their licence to employ abusive, repressive tactics.”

Since Morsi’s ouster, authorities have rounded up hundreds of Brotherhood leaders and supporters on charges of inciting violence and terrorism. The government has also hinted that it would ban the 85-year-old Islamic group – a move that could drive it underground, where it spent most of the past 60 years.

Security solutions “will only reinforce the Brotherhood’s rigidity… [and] further empower the coercive apparatus,” warns Eskander. “As extremist groups are pushed into hiding, the security leaders will find excuses to employ intrusive surveillance measures, interrogate, torture, and abuse, all with zero transparency and accountability.”

There are signs this is already happening. In short order, Egyptian security officials have restored Mubarak-era emergency laws, imposed a curfew, and issued a standing order to use live ammunition.

The interior ministry has also formally reinstated a number of state security departments dismantled following the country’s 2011 uprising. Among these are the notorious police units that were responsible for the investigation, forced disappearance and torture of thousands of Islamists and political dissidents during Mubarak’s rule.

Tarek Radwan, associate research director at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Centre, has not declared Egypt’s revolution dead, but sees alarming parallels emerging.

“If this picture sounds familiar, it is,” he wrote. “A Muslim Brotherhood driven underground, a leading military figure, an assertive police force, and submissive liberal bloc is perhaps the most apt description of pre-2011 Egypt.”

In Egypt, there are few resources for children with disabilities. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Aug 19 2013 (IPS)

Dina Gamal, whose 10-year-old son was born blind, says it is not him but Egyptian society that lives in the dark.

“They are the ones with the disability,” she says. “They have eyes, but cannot see past his blindness. He is able to do far more than most people think.”

Her son Mahmoud likes music, excels in languages, and with the aid of special software, can surf the Internet. He hopes to be a journalist one day.“A lot of parents feel shame. So they just hide their special needs children and never let them go out of the house.” -- Hanaa Helmy, founder and coordinator of NGO, MOVE Middle East

Sociologists say children with special needs or disabilities in Egypt face formidable barriers that prevent them from participating in society and exercising personal agency. The barriers are a result of ossified institutional structures and deeply-entrenched stereotypes that marginalise those who are physically or mentally different from perceived norms.

“Egyptian society is not ready to accept or integrate children with disabilities,” says Hanaa Helmy, founder and coordinator of MOVE Middle East, an NGO that works to improve the mobility of children with severe disabilities. “Children with disabilities are almost invisible to society, and those who do see them often don’t know how to deal with them. People feel bad, so they look away.”

Based on a 2006 census, government agencies recognise nearly a million Egyptians – about one in 80 – as having some form of disability. Civil society organisations argue that the actual figure may be closer to eight million, of which nearly half are minors.

“It’s hard to know the real number because many families are usually reluctant to discuss their children’s disabilities,” Helmy tells IPS. “They don’t tell their neighbours, and they certainly don’t tell strangers who show up at their door with surveys.”

The stigma of having a physically or mentally disabled child puts societal pressure on Egyptian families. Parents often worry about the impact the child’s disability will have on their siblings, fearing for example that prospective grooms will turn away when they learn that a girl has a brother who is handicapped.

Making matters worse, traditional Egyptian lore ascribes a child’s physical or mental disabilities to the curse of “jinn” (malevolent spirits). Many Egyptians believe that “jinn” inflict the disabilities on children to punish their parents for moral transgressions.

“A lot of parents feel shame,” says Helmy. “So they just hide their special needs children and never let them go out of the house.”

Disabilities also carry a heavy financial burden in a country where a quarter of the population lives below the United Nations-recognised poverty line of two dollars a day. Few families can afford the medical and physical therapies that could enrich the lives of children with disabilities. Fewer still can afford a basic education.

“Most of these children cannot go to regular schools,” says Helmy. “The schools here won’t accept children with physical or mental disabilities, and are not equipped to handle them.”

She says that most public schools, and all private institutions, require the parents and child sit for an admissions interview. Even a minor disability such as hearing disorder or a crippled leg is likely to disqualify the child.

One alternative is to send the child to the handful of “tarbiya fikriya” (conceptual schools), special schools set up to handle children with learning disabilities. But even these state-run institutions have a lot of conditions that exclude many disabled children, or make their admission prohibitively expensive, says Helmy.

“They often insist that the family provides a ‘shadow teacher’ for the child, but only rich families can afford this,” she says.

Sometimes just getting to school can be a challenge, says 22-year-old Eman Ibrahim, whose younger brother has Down Syndrome. She speaks of some of the difficulties in taking her brother to classes at a “tarbiya fikriya” in the southern Egyptian city Aswan, 15 kilometres from her village.

“My brother cannot get around on his own,” she explains. “There is no school bus, so I must accompany him on a microbus every morning and wait under the trees outside the school with the other mothers and sisters until his classes finish and I can take him home.”

Ibrahim says that besides the added cost of school transportation, the responsibility prevents her from working, further reducing the family’s income.

Abeer Eslam, a former programme manager at Wayana International Foundation for Integration and Awareness, a local NGO working to integrate people with disabilities into the community, says transportation is one of the biggest obstacles for Egyptians with disabilities.

“Our city planners have completely overlooked the disabled,” she says. “Moving in the streets is extremely difficult for them. Imagine not being able to hear cars honking and having to walk in the middle of the street because there are no sidewalks, or having to be carried up stairs because there is no wheelchair access.”

“Public transport and uneven sidewalks are hard enough for normal people to manage, let alone those with mobility disabilities or in a wheelchair,” she adds.

MOVE’s Helmy says the transportation gap typifies Egyptian society’s attitude towards people with disabilities, either ignoring their existence, or identifying them exclusively in terms of their disability.

“We need to change the culture, to make Egyptians aware that people with disabilities exist,” she says. “It’s not just about teaching people how to accept disabilities, it’s about making integration not the exception but the norm.”

Teenage girls in low-income areas of Egypt are vulnerable to trafficking. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
El HAWAMDIA, Egypt , Aug 5 2013 (IPS)

Each summer, wealthy male tourists from Gulf Arab states flock to Egypt to escape the oppressive heat of the Arabian Peninsula, taking residence at upscale hotels and rented flats in Cairo and Alexandria. Many come with their families and housekeeping staff, spending their days by the pool, shopping, and frequenting cafes and nightclubs. Others come for a more sinister purpose.

In El Hawamdia, a poor agricultural town 20 kilometres south of Cairo, they are easy to spot. Arab men in crisp white thawbs troll the town’s pot-holed, garbage-strewn streets in their luxury cars and SUVs. As they arrive, Egyptian fixers in flip flops run alongside their vehicles, offering short-term flats and what to them is the town’s most sought-after commodity – underage girls.

Each year, in El Hawamdia and other impoverished rural communities across Egypt, thousands of girls between the ages of 11 and 18 are sold by their parents to wealthy, much older Gulf Arab men under the pretext of marriage. The sham nuptials may last from a couple of hours to years, depending on the negotiated arrangement.“The girl may have 10 siblings, so the family considers her as a commodity.” -- Sandy Shinouda, a Cairo-based official at the IOM’s Counter-Trafficking Unit

“It’s a form of child prostitution in the guise of marriage,” Azza El-Ashmawy, director of the Child Anti-Trafficking Unit at the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) tells IPS. “The man pays a sum of money and will stay with the girl for a few days or the summer, or will take her back to his country for domestic work or prostitution.”

The girl is returned to her family when the marriage ends, usually to be married off again.

“Some girls have been married 60 times by the time they turn 18,” says El-Ashmawy. “Most ‘marriages’ last for just a couple of days or weeks.”

The deals are hatched in El Hawamdia’s myriad “marriage broker” offices, identifiable by the conspicuous presence of air-conditioners in a ramshackle town with intermittent power.

The brokers, usually second-rate lawyers, also offer a delivery service. Village girls as young as 11 are brought to the Arab tourists’ hotel or rented flat for selection. Arab men travelling with their wives and children often arrange a separate flat for such purposes.

The temporary marriages offer a way to circumvent Islamic restrictions on pre-marital sex.

“Many hotels and landlords in Egypt will not rent a room to unmarried couples,” explains Mohamed Fahmy, a Cairo real estate agent. “A marriage certificate, even a flimsy one, allows visiting men to have sexual liaisons.”

Engaging in sexual relations with minors is illegal in Egypt. Brokers can help with that too, forging birth certificates or substituting the identity card of the girl’s older sister.

A one-day mut’a or “pleasure” marriage can be arranged for as little as 800 Egyptian pounds (115 dollars). The money is split between the broker and the girl’s parents.

A summer-long misyar or “visitor” marriage runs from 20,000 Egyptian pounds (2,800 dollars) to 70,000 Egyptian pounds (10,000 dollars). The legally non-binding contract terminates when the man returns to his country.

The “dowry” that Gulf Arab men are prepared to pay for sex with young girls is a powerful magnet for impoverished Egyptian families in a country where a quarter of the population subsists on less than two dollars a day.

A NCCM-commissioned survey of 2,000 families in three towns near Cairo – El Hawamdia, Abu Nomros and Badrashein – found that the hefty sums paid by Arab tourists was the main motive for the high rate of “summer marriages” in these towns.

Some 75 percent of the respondents knew girls involved in the trade, and most believed the number of marriages was increasing.

The 2009 survey indicated that 81 percent of the “spouses” were from Saudi Arabia, 10 percent from the United Arab Emirates, and four percent from Kuwait.

The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) too has been studying these “marriages”. “The family takes the money, and the foreign ‘husband’ usually leaves the girl after two or three weeks,” says Sandy Shinouda, a Cairo-based official at the IOM’s Counter-Trafficking Unit.

“The unregistered marriages are not recognised by the state and afford no rights to the girl, or any children that result from these unions.”

Shinouda, who formerly ran a shelter for victims of the trade, says most of the young girls come from large families that see marriage to an older, wealthier foreigner as a way to escape grinding poverty.

“The girl may have 10 siblings, so the family considers her as a commodity,” she says.

Parents may seek a broker to arrange a marriage once their daughter reaches puberty. In about a third of cases the girl is pressured into accepting the arrangement, the NCCM study found.

This can have a profound psychological impact on the girl’s mental health, says Shinouda.

“The girls know their families have exploited them…they can understand that their parents sold them,” she says. “Reintegration is a big challenge because in many cases if you return the girls to their family the parents will sell them again.”

Egypt’s 2008 Child Law criminalises marriages to girls who have not reached the legal age of 18. Another law prohibits marriages to foreigners where the age difference exceeds 25 years.

But the laws are poorly enforced, concedes NCCM’s El-Ashmawy. Anecdotal evidence suggests the trade has grown since Egypt’s 2011 revolution as a result of worsening economic conditions and an ineffectual police force.

“It’s not simply about poverty or religion,” she asserts. “It’s cultural norms that support this illicit trade – people believe it is in the best interest of the girls and the families at large. And brokers succeeded in finding common ground with families in order to exploit young girls.”

The killing of Muslim Brotherhood members has only strengthened their resolve to fight on. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Aug 4 2013 (IPS)

Egypt’s military chief, General Abdel Fatah El-Sissi, who in July announced on state television that the army had ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, has tried to wrap a veneer of democracy around actions that most others have condemned as a coup.

In the weeks since he deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, the 58-year-old head of the armed forces has repeatedly claimed that military intervention was necessary to resolve a debilitating political impasse and “save democracy” in Egypt.

Morsi’s popularity had plummeted in the year since his election, and the Islamist leader had ignored demands for national reconciliation and mass demonstrations calling for early elections, leaving the army with no choice but to remove him by force, the military has said.“They’re clamping down on Islamists, and once they are firmly in power they will go after anyone else who speaks out.”

Since ousting the country’s elected leader on Jul. 3, Egypt’s de facto strongman has suspended the constitution and installed an interim civilian government that has waged a vengeful campaign of reprisals against the former president and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. Dozens of the Islamic group’s leaders have been arrested and face an array of criminal charges that include inciting violence, thuggery, and “insulting the judiciary.”

Morsi has been held virtually incommunicado by the army since he was removed from power. Prosecutors have charged the former president with murder and espionage in relation to a 2011 prison break – charges that some rights researchers say are politically motivated.

“The military is out to discredit and destroy the Muslim Brotherhood using any means necessary,” says rights lawyer Negad El-Borai.

Television channels sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood have been taken off the air. Several foreign media outlets were warned against spreading “misinformation”, and prevented from covering pro-Morsi rallies.

Meanwhile, state-run media, which trumpeted the praises of Hosni Mubarak during his 30-year rule, has flooded newspapers and television channels with patriotic montages and adulation of the armed forces. Many private media outlets have joined the chorus.

Having come to power by undemocratic means, El-Sissi spent much of the last month rallying public support and legitimising the military’s role as the final arbiter of democracy in Egypt.

The general’s staunchest supporters – liberal and secular Egyptians virulently opposed to Brotherhood rule – claim the military “had to destroy democracy in order to save it.”  But critics have censured the army’s foray into civilian politics.

The military’s intervention prevented “any last minute efforts that would save face and pave the way for constructive change, such as holding a referendum over the presidency or the building of a national unity government, leading to early elections,” writes political analyst Marwan Bishara.

With Morsi’s removal, the military promised to end divisive politics and restore stability. Instead, it has thrust Egypt’s largest political group outside the political stream, and dangerously polarised the country.

After three weeks of unrest, El-Sissi called last week for the public to take to the streets as a show of support for his rule, and to give him political cover for a brutal crackdown on his opponents in the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I ask… all honest and trustworthy Egyptians to come out… to give me a mandate so that I can confront violence and potential terrorism,” he said in a nationally televised speech.

Days later, at least 80 of Morsi’s supporters were dead and hundreds more injured after riot police targeted a mass demonstration in Cairo using live ammunition. It was the second bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since Morsi was toppled.

The killings have only hardened the group’s resolve. Brotherhood members insist the protests will continue until the military-backed government is dissolved and Morsi’s democratically elected one is reinstated.

But the military shows no signs of backing down. Rather it is stepping up pressure on Morsi’s supporters, widening its arrests, and positioning for an even tougher crackdown on its opponents, including peaceful protesters.

Analysts say the threat of “terrorism” is being used as a pretext to restore controversial Mubarak-era institutions and practices.

Earlier this week, Egypt’s interior ministry announced that several notorious state security departments dismantled following the country’s 2011 uprising would be reinstated. The interim government has also signalled it could bring back the Emergency Law that was used to stifle political dissent for decades.

While the army enjoys widespread support among those who called for Morsi’s overthrow, many Egyptians bitterly recall the rights abuses and violent repression under 18 months of military rule that followed the overthrow of Mubarak in 2011.

One senior Brotherhood member warned: “They’re clamping down on Islamists, and once they are firmly in power they will go after anyone else who speaks out.”

In Egypt, some families are turning to bio-gas digesters that convert organic waste into methane for fuel. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jun 12 2013 (IPS)

The bio-gas digester on the roof of Hussein Farag’s apartment in one of Cairo’s poorest districts provides a daily supply of cooking gas produced from the kitchen waste his family would otherwise discard in plastic bags or empty into the clogged sewer below his building.

Constructed of two large plastic tubs and mostly recycled materials, the zero-emissions bio-gas unit saves his family about LE 20 (three U.S. dollars) a month in gas bills. And in the ramshackle Darb El-Ahmar district where Farag lives, that works out to nearly a day’s wage.

Farag’s bio-gas digester converts organic waste fed into its 1,000-litre plastic tank into methane gas that can be used to heat water or cook food. Ordinary kitchen waste – everything from food scraps, to stale tea and mouldy bread – is soaked overnight in water to soften, then poured into the tank’s bacteria-rich soup to decompose. A pipe carries the methane gas produced to the family’s kitchen stove.

“I just empty my kitchen waste into it, but anything organic will work as feedstock,” Farag told IPS.

The digester produces about two hours of gas a day in the summer, and slightly less in the cooler winter months, according to Farag. Every week he drains a few litres of dark effluent from the tank.

“I bottle the residue and sell it as organic fertiliser to garden shops,” he explains.

Farag says the unit, which he built for less than LE 1,000 in 2008 (180 U.S. dollars at the time), requires virtually no maintenance, as it has no mechanical parts.

“Egypt needs a system like this, because there is a lot more organic waste now that all the pigs are gone,” he says, referring to the nation-wide pig cull that the Egyptian government carried out in April 2009 in a knee-jerk reaction to the swine flu pandemic."Most families produce enough kitchen waste each day to produce enough gas to meet all their cooking and water needs."
--Hanna Fathy

Pigs were the linchpin of Cairo’s traditional waste management system, consuming up to a third of the 20 tonnes of daily waste produced by the city’s 18 million residents. Without them, the volume of “wet” waste has swollen, clogging sewers and landfills and piling high in city streets and empty lots.

The rotting heaps of organic rubbish attract flies and rats, creating vectors for disease.

Farag says initial support and funding for building bio-gas digesters came from Solar CITIES, a non-profit initiative to develop sustainable energy solutions for low-income families. The non-governmental organisation (NGO) helped build more than half a dozen bio-gas units in Cairo, as well as rudimentary solar water heaters constructed from local recycled materials, before its funding dried up.

In Manshiyet Nasr, another low-income Cairo district, Solar CITIES coordinator Hanna Fathy constructed his own bio-gas digester in 2009. He has since travelled extensively instructing residents of poor and off-grid communities on how to achieve energy independence through home bio-gas production.

“Most families produce enough kitchen waste each day to produce enough gas to meet all their cooking and water needs,” Fathy says.

Fathy, currently working on environmental projects outside Egypt, says the government’s energy subsidies discourage Egyptians from investing in sustainable energy solutions. Recovering the initial capital cost of a bio-gas digester can take up to ten years but would take just one year if subsidies were dropped.

“The government doesn’t provide incentives for families to switch to clean energy, so they stick with the cheapest short-term solution, which is to buy gas cylinders,” Fathy told IPS in an earlier interview.

More than 12 million Egyptian households rely on butane cylinders, which retail for LE 8 (1.15 dollars). The tanks last about two weeks and are not without problems.

Apart from the enormous burden the heavily subsidised gas cylinders put on the economy, shortages of imported butane have resulted in long queues at distribution outlets. Disputes over cylinders have even led to fatalities.

The poorly maintained gas cylinders also have an alarming tendency to explode, resulting in catastrophic kitchen fires and injuries.

Electrician Mohamed Rageb, whose wife was severely burned when the gas cylinder she was cooking with exploded in 2010, says the accident pushed him to consider switching to a bio-gas digester. Using a design he found on the Internet he plans to build a compact unit on his balcony.

“I think they are safer, and save time [spent queuing for gas cylinders],” he says.

While instalment plans are available for purchasing energy-consuming kitchen appliances and air conditioners, no credit facilities exist for families switching to green energy bio-gas. Rageb must borrow the full amount to buy the parts for his homemade digester. It could take years to recover the costs, but he is confident his gas bill savings will grow as Egypt’s cash-strapped government phases out energy subsidies.

“Without subsidies, a gas cylinder would cost about LE 100 (14 dollars) to fill,” he points out.

Rageb maintains that if the government would subsidise clean energy technologies instead of unsustainable conventional energy use, price-conscious low-income Egyptians would be the first to make the switch.

Critics of a proposed law say it could harm women's rights and other groups' ability to operate (file photo). Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, May 27 2013 (IPS)

A controversial bill backed by Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood and submitted to the Islamist-dominated legislature surpasses previous laws used to repress Egyptian civil society, rights watchdogs say.

The legislation would allow the government to intervene in the internal governance and activities of civil society organisations and to control all funding.

If enacted, some critics say, Egypt’s 41,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) would become part of the state apparatus.

“If this bill passes, all of Egypt’s NGOs would essentially work under the government,” Hafez Abu Seada, chairman of the non-profit Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), told IPS. “We would operate not as independents, but as agents for the state.”

State interference in NGO affairs is nothing new, Abu Seada added. The authoritarian regime of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak used broad and repressive legislation to discourage civil society organisations from exposing electoral fraud, rights abuses and torture."If this bill passes, all of Egypt's NGOs would essentially work under the government."
-- Hafez Abu Seada,

In 2002, the government issued Law 84, which has been the target of continual criticism for the control it gives the state over NGO establishment and activity.

The National Salvation Front (NSF), Egypt’s main opposition bloc, has accused the Islamist government of President Mohamed Morsi of attempting to impose even tighter restrictions on civil society in a bid to silence those who would hold it accountable.

The bill “seeks to reproduce a police state by putting into law the role of security bodies in overseeing the work of civil society groups”, the NSF said in a statement. “[Its] main goal is to stop human rights organisations from pursuing officials for human rights abuses under President Morsi and his security apparatuses.”

Mokhtar El-Ashry, head of the legal committee of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, has accused opposition forces of failing to read or understand the NGO draft law. He said the bill aims to facilitate the work of civil society groups and “frees them of restrictions”.

El-Ashry’s argument is a tough sell. Critics say the draft treats NGOs as state institutions and their directors and staff as civil servants. The bill mandates that the Egyptian government intervene in nearly every detail of NGO affairs, from the composition and election of board members to their competencies and the organisation’s choice of affiliation, funding and activities.

“This is completely contrary to what an NGO is supposed to be,” one programme manager of a non-profit organisation that works in the education sector told IPS on condition of anonymity. “If it passes, we might as well ask Mr. Morsi how he would like us to implement his policies.”

More alarming, say rights groups, is that the law stipulates bimonthly administrative and financial inspections of civil society organisations and opens visitor logs and details of private meetings to the scrutiny of security agencies. The groups see this as an imminent threat to the confidentiality of political dissidents, victims of abuse, and whistleblowers.

One bright spot, Abu Seada conceded, is that the bill provides a process for registering NGOs.

Under Mubarak, NGOs faced significant hurdles in registering their organisations, and many operated in Egypt without licenses – a situation the government tolerated, as the threat of closure kept them wary of crossing red lines.

The draft law would establish a nine-member steering committee to approve the registration of civil society groups. The interagency panel is authorised to reject the registration of any NGO it deems inconsistent with the “needs” of Egyptian society – a vague term that critics say could be used, for example, to exclude groups that investigate torture or advocate women’s rights.

The steering committee will have absolute power to approve or reject any foreign or domestic funding for local NGOs.

Closing the spigot of foreign funding is one technique successive governments have used to pressure NGOs that stray into sensitive areas, explained the director of a Cairo-based development organisation, who did not want his name used.

“Charities have local sources of funding, but NGOs that engage in democracy building or human rights must rely almost entirely on foreign funding and without it must scale back their activities or shut down,” the director said.

Nearly all foreign funding has been shut off since 2011, when government officials under the military junta launched a crackdown on civil society organisations.

“Every funding request in the last year and a half has been refused,” says EOHR’s Abu Seada. “We’ve had to reduce our staff from 30 to 12 and close many of our projects. Most of the other NGOs in Egypt are facing similar problems.”

Negad El-Borai, an attorney for democracy and human rights activists, said the draft law’s articles are a minefield of obstacles and pretexts to deny funding.

NGOs that attempt to engage in activities that diverge from state policies or expose government abuses would quickly find themselves bogged down in bureaucracy and court cases, he added.

“They can deny funding or [close] NGOs for any number of reasons,” El-Borai told IPS. “And if it goes to court…we must stop all activities until we get a verdict, and that will take at least one or two years.”

The final draft of the Brotherhood-backed law has been submitted to the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament that currently holds legislative powers. Local and international rights groups fear the Islamist-stacked legislative body will rubber-stamp it into law.

“That would be a disaster [for civil society],” said El-Borai. “We managed to lobby hard for changes, but it is still far short of international standards.”

Women gather outside the Sayeda Zeinab mosque in Cairo, revered by Shia and Sunni alike. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Apr 26 2013 (IPS)

The mob that surrounded the home of Mohamed Nour, an Egyptian Shia living in Cairo’s Bab El-Shaariya district, claimed it was on a mission to “inoculate” Egypt against Shia religious beliefs. Without intervention, Shia doctrine would spread across Egypt “like a cancer,” they had warned.

Born a Sunni Muslim, Nour converted to Shia Islam nearly two decades ago. He has faced constant threats and harassment since his Sunni neighbours learned of his conversion early last year.

“My neighbours no longer talk to me and they are trying to get me to move from here,” he says. “People throw rocks at my house, make threatening phone calls, and set my car on fire. I am worried about my family’s safety.”

The schism between Sunni and Shia Islam dates back to the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632, but hostility towards Egypt’s minority Shia community is firmly rooted in modern politics.

During his 29 years in power, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is said to have expressed a visceral hatred of Iran, crafting his foreign policy to contain the “Shia tide”, the belief that Iran was exporting Shia Islam to expand its political influence in the Arab world.

The bad blood between predominantly Sunni Egypt and Shia-dominated Iran goes back to the early days of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The two countries severed diplomatic ties after former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel and granted asylum to Iran’s exiled Shah Reza Pahlavi.

“Mubarak’s regime was deeply suspicious of its Shia minority,” says Ishaak Ibrahim, a religious rights researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). “It assumed that all Shia were loyal to Iran, and closely monitored their activities and prevented them from gathering. Many Shia were arrested on (spurious) charges.”

Activists say Mubarak’s downfall in 2011 opened a brief window for Egypt’s Shias, whose estimated numbers range from 800,000 to about two million. But the window soon slammed shut, and conditions have worsened since the Islamist government of President Mohamed Morsi came to power last year.

The state continues to apply discriminatory measures against Shias, while leaving the community exposed to the growing danger of Salafi extremism, says Ahmad Rasem El-Nafis, a prominent Shia scholar.

“It’s much worse now under Morsi because there is no security,” he tells IPS. “The Salafis are spreading lies about us and committing crimes against us with (impunity). I had an attempt on my life back in July 2011… and I am receiving threats almost daily.”

Salafis, a radical Sunni sect influenced by Saudi Wahhabism, were forced underground by Mubarak’s authoritarian rule. Since the revolution, they have organised politically and managed to capture more than a quarter of the vote in last year’s parliamentary elections, second only to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Shia Islam has a long pedigree in Egypt. Cairo was founded in 969 by the Shia Fatimid dynasty, which ruled Egypt for 200 years and shaped its identity. Even today, Egyptian Sunnis visit revered Shia shrines such as El-Hussein and Sayeda Zeinab, and unwittingly incorporate Shia practices into their traditions and funerary rites."It's much worse now under Morsi because there is no security”

“You cannot readily distinguish between Sunni and Shia by their behaviour,” El-Nafis asserts. “The differences between the two Islamic sects are manufactured and exaggerated for purely political reasons.”

To avoid persecution, many Shia practise their faith under the umbrella of Sufism, a mystical brand of Islam that shares Shia reverence for the Ahl Al-Beyt, the family of Prophet Muhammad.

“We (Shia) still can’t meet openly as a group,” says El-Nafis. “If I visit a Shia in his home the Salafis will say we’re making a husseineya (Shia house of worship), and if I go to a mosque with other Shia for sure we will be harassed.”

In December 2011, Egyptian security forces prevented hundreds of Shias from observing Ashura religious celebrations in Cairo’s El-Hussein Mosque, a Shia holy site. Police forcibly removed the Shia worshippers from the mosque after Salafi groups accused them of performing “barbaric” rituals.

But even alone, Shias face bigotry and a legal system that rights groups say violates the tenets of religious freedom.

Last July, a criminal court sentenced Mohamed Asfour, an Egyptian Shia convert, to one year in prison for “desecrating a place of worship” and “insulting the Prophet’s companions.” Prosecutors said Asfour was found placing a stone beneath his head while praying in a village mosque, a practice frowned upon by Sunni Muslims.

The arrest followed weeks of abuse after villagers learned of Asfour’s conversion to Shia Islam. His conversion provoked the animosity of his neighbours and in-laws, who reportedly pressured him to divorce his Sunni wife.

“Egypt is a Sunni country and we must protect society from Shia influence,” says Khaled Fahmi, a Cairo textile merchant who accuses Iran of “using paid agents” to proselytise. “Poor and illiterate Egyptians are easily deceived by their lies.”

Like many conservative Sunni Egyptians, Fahmi is outraged by the Egyptian government’s tepid overtures toward rapprochement with Iran.

President Morsi faced sharp criticism at home for attending a regional summit in Tehran last August. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad endured the humiliation of having shoes thrown at him when he visited Cairo in February.

Earlier this month, a group of mostly Salafi demonstrators surrounded the residence of Iran’s charge d’affaires in Cairo to protest a new tourism exchange protocol that saw the arrival of Iranian tourists in Egypt for the first time in over 30 years.

The backlash prompted the government to suspend further tourist visits. [END]

Hundreds of young Egyptian Christian girls have mysteriously disappeared. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Apr 16 2013 (IPS)

When a young Christian girl goes missing in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, her family will call on a certain Muslim sheikh in the nearby town of El-Ameriya.

The local Salafi leader, whose ultra-conservative views condone the marriage of girls as young as nine, has a history of abducting Coptic Christian girls and forcing them to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men, claim rights activists.

And so the sheikh and his associates are the natural starting point for any investigation into missing underage Christian girls. And, according to activists, that is usually where they find them.

“Whenever a young girl disappears in the area the trail leads to this sheikh,” says Mamdouh Nakhla, chairman of the Al Kalema Organisation for Human Rights.

In a recent case, a 13-year-old Coptic Christian girl from a village near Alexandria was allegedly kidnapped and held for over a week as her abductors tried to force her to renounce her religion.

According to her testimony, she was drugged unconscious while in a taxi on her way home from school. She woke up in a secluded house with two Salafi sheikhs and an elderly woman. Her abductors forced her to wear niqab, a full veil covering the body and face, and beat her when she refused to convert to Islam.

Girgis claims she was released nine days later when the sheikhs became nervous after her family organised large demonstrations for her return. The Salafis turned her over to police, who feared the girl’s testimony would spark sectarian clashes, and so tried to convince her to claim she had wilfully gone to a sheikh seeking to convert to Islam.

“The only thing unusual (about this case) was that the girl was returned,” says Nakhla. “In one case I investigated a kidnapped girl was allowed to call her parents, but in all others the girl was never heard from again.”

Christian rights watchdogs say abductions and forced conversions of young Egyptian Coptic girls have been going on for decades right under the noses of local authorities. But the frequency of the kidnappings has increased alarmingly since the uprising in 2011 that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak and brought an Islamist-led government to power.

More than 500 Christian girls have been abducted in the last two years, according to the Association of Victims of Abduction and Forced Disappearance (AVAFD), which documents the disappearances. A growing number of cases involve girls between the ages of 13 and 17.

AVAFD head Abram Louis claims the abducted girls are taken to ‘safe’ houses, where they are manipulated or blackmailed into converting to Islam and forced to marry Muslim men, often to serve as second wives.

“If we inform the police where the kidnapped girl is being kept, they inform the Salafis, who then move her away to another home and then we lose all trace of her,” Louis said in a recent interview.

“Egypt has laws in place to protect girls under 18, but Salafis do not accept them,” says Amal Abdel Hadi, head of the New Woman Foundation. “To them, a girl is only a minor until she has her first period.”

However, Salafi leaders have categorically denied any role in abducting Christian girls or forceful proselytising. They claim that so far as they know, the girls converted to Islam of their own free will, in some cases after falling in love with a Muslim man.

Ishaak Ibrahim, a religious rights researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), says inter-faith love affairs and conversions are dangerously provocative issues in Egypt. Rumours of such have led to outbreaks of sectarian violence.

He says many of the alleged abductions involve young Christian girls who appear to have converted to Islam to escape bad relations with their families, or after having engaged in pre-marital relations (taboo in conservative Egyptian culture) with Muslim men.

“The girls appear to have chosen to change their religion,” Ibrahim told IPS. “But because the family is ashamed, and because the police don’t investigate to find their daughter, the family chooses the easiest solution, which is to say the girl was kidnapped by Muslim extremists.”

Such cases only present a problem when the girl is a minor, he says, as Egypt’s Child Law criminalises the marriage of any girl under 18, even if by her own free will.

But Nakhla, who is representing the families of 20 missing Coptic girls, says there are clear signs that young girls have been coerced into converting and marrying.

Referring to one recent case, he asks if it makes sense that a 15-year-old Christian girl would suddenly choose to convert to Islam and serve as a second wife, without any legal rights, to a firebrand Salafi sheikh over 40 years her senior. The girl has never spoken or written to her parents since her disappearance – unusual behaviour in a country where family ties run deep.

“In Egypt it is a crime to marry a minor, and you can’t legally change your religion until you’re 18… yet the government refuses to investigate these cases and arrest those responsible,” complains Nakhla.

While Ibrahim argues that all Egyptians should have the right to change their religion at any time, he says authorities also have a responsibility to ensure that women – particularly minors – are protected from coercion and exploitation.

“The family should be allowed to meet their daughter and get her to explain what she wants in the presence of the public prosecutor,” he says.

Salafi leaders have rejected any state intervention, and have warned against attempts by parents and human rights organisations to return the girls to their families.

As fishing gets tougher at home, Egyptian boats are venturing into troubled waters. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, Mar 24 2013 (IPS)

For Egypt’s commercial marine fishermen, making a living has never been more dangerous. Egyptian crews driven further afield in search of fish have faced pirate attacks, spent months in dingy foreign prisons, and come under fire from coast guard vessels. Dozens of fishermen have been held for ransom, abused by authorities, or shot and killed.

“It’s become a high stakes game,” says Ayman ‘the Anchovy,’ a crew member on an Egyptian trawler.

Decades of overfishing have left Egypt’s shallow coastal waters “almost barren,” he says. Many commercial fishing vessels now journey as far as Malta, Turkey and Djibouti in search of richer waters.

“Fishing is very difficult in Egypt and often doesn’t cover the cost of fuel and supplies,” Ayman says. “We can catch more fish in Libya (and other countries), but the journey there is risky. We know their coast guard can sink our boat, imprison us, or worse. But we must find fish to support our families.”

Annual production from Egypt’s marine capture fisheries has remained around 125,000 metric tonnes for nearly a decade. But the figures conceal the impact of pollution and overfishing on fish stocks. A significant portion of production now comes from remote fisheries and extra-territorial waters.

Competition has increased as Egypt’s fleet has grown. More than 4,000 commercial fishing boats are licensed to operate in Egypt’s Mediterranean waters and 120 in the Red Sea. Another 40,000 motorless vessels ply the country’s 2,500-kilometre coastline.

Madani Ali Madani, fisheries expert at Egypt’s General Authority for Fisheries Resources Development (GAFRD) says the problem is not overfishing, but rather poor distribution. The vast majority of Egypt’s fishing fleet operates from a cluster of ports at the mouth of the Nile River on the Mediterranean Sea, and from the port of Suez on the Red Sea.

“All these boats are concentrated in a very limited area, and operate not more than five kilometres from shore,” Madani told IPS. “Some have the ability to travel further out to sea, but they insist to work near shore, travelling parallel to the coast until they reach Libya. And that’s where the trouble begins.”

Sami Ibrahim, one of 16 fishermen arrested in 2010 when their boat crossed into Libyan waters told local newspapers he was beaten and humiliated during the nine months the Egyptian crew spent in Libyan custody. He said the fishermen had to buy food at their own expense and were only released after Egyptian authorities paid the hefty fine.

Egypt’s foreign ministry has intervened in cases where boat owners are unwilling, or unable, to secure the release of their crews. Hundreds of Egyptian fishermen have been detained and their boats impounded, according to ministry records.

Madani claims “not more than 10 Egyptian boats” are responsible for 90 percent of the sovereignty violations.

“They are repeat offenders,” he says. “We found that they work on behalf of private Libyan companies but don’t operate under the umbrella of government regulations in order to avoid paying taxes on their catch.”

Fisheries consultant Alaa El-Haweet concedes that some Egyptian crews fish illegally, but points out that many of the seized boats are captured without any nets in the water.

“For years, the western coast of Egypt was kept closed by the military,” he says. “Since it opened about 10 years ago Egyptian boats, especially trawlers, have travelled beyond to Malta, where they are allowed to fish. But to get there they must cross Libyan territorial waters.”

Egyptian fishermen say the westward journey along the North African coast has become an increasingly dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.

In September 2012, the Tunisian coast guard shot dead two Egyptian fishermen and wounded two others when their boat entered Tunisian waters. In May, a Libyan patrol boat opened fire on the ‘Eagle of the East’ after it allegedly drifted into Libyan territory. Four of the boat’s 12 crew members were seriously injured.

The Red Sea is equally perilous, say boat captains.

Earlier this month, a fisherman was shot in the leg when Yemeni gunmen stormed aboard an Egyptian fishing boat, looted its equipment and cargo, and took its crew hostage.

The “sea rage” incident was sparked after local fishermen claimed the Egyptian vessel, which was licensed to operate in Yemeni waters, had attempted to ram their shrimp trawler and sweep away its nets.

“Competition over fishing territory is fierce,” says El-Haweet. “Clashes are more likely to escalate when a foreign-flagged vessel is involved.”

The search for fish has taken Egyptian boats as far as the Gulf of Aden, where piracy is a real threat. At least a dozen Egyptian fishing vessels have been attacked or hijacked since 2005. Most incidents go unreported. [END]

Two years since the revolution, residents of low-income districts have little to celebrate. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Feb 24 2013 (IPS)

On a recent Friday, coppersmith Alaa Moussa parked himself in the same spot where two years earlier he had stood defiantly with a handwritten banner addressed to then president Hosni Mubarak. His petition that cold February morning in 2011 had listed the key demands of Egypt’s 18-day uprising: “bread, freedom, dignity”.

His new message for President Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood reflected the growing desperation among the nation’s poor and unemployed. It simply stated: “bread, bread, bread.”

Moussa, a father of three from Cairo’s ramshackle Ramlet Boulaq district, says he joined the uprising against Mubarak because he believed the dictator’s fall would end the suffocating corruption and government repression that blocked all paths out of poverty.

It did not, and the disillusioned artisan says his hope of a better life for his family has been crushed by the stark economic realities of post-revolution Egypt.

“We hear promises every day, but we never see any improvement and things are much worse now than under Mubarak.”

In the two years since the uprising, Egypt’s battered economy has taken hit after hit. Political turmoil and labour unrest have shuttered factories, forced layoffs, and scared away tourists and investors. Economic growth has slowed to a crawl, while foreign reserves have withered to critically low levels.

The small workshop where Moussa once fashioned ornamental brass lamps is closed, its owner having absorbed months of losses before laying off his six employees. Some have found jobs in other workshops at a lower salary. Others are still looking.

But with the national unemployment rate at 13 percent, competition for jobs is fierce. Like many, Moussa’s only option was to seek work in the informal sector, where job security is absent.

“Since the revolution, employers are reluctant to hire,” he says. “You work for a few days, then get laid off, and start looking for work again.”

Twenty-seven year old Ramy Shahin was working in an American company before the 2011 uprising. He now drives a taxi, earning about 120 dollars a month after expenses. With his second child on the way, he worries about rising living costs.

“We’re already living hand to mouth,” says Shahin. “We have no savings, so our only choice is to borrow money and pray tomorrow will be better.”

Inflation has averaged nearly 10 percent in the two years since the uprising due to a surge in food prices. Currency depreciation and a proposed government plan for tax increases and subsidy cuts are expected to accelerate inflation in 2013.

The Egyptian Food Observatory, a quarterly government study prepared in cooperation with the World Food Programme (WFP), found that 86 percent of Egyptian households surveyed in September 2012 were unable to meet their basic monthly needs – a 12 percent increase over the June figure. It noted that among vulnerable households, over 60 percent of income goes toward food.

Families surveyed reported a number of coping strategies, such as substituting cheaper food items, reducing portions, and borrowing to cover food expenses.

“At least a quarter of Egyptians live below the poverty line of two dollars a day,” says Cairo-based sociologist Madiha El-Safty. “You can imagine how dire their situation must be if they’ve resorted to borrowing to pay for meals.”

Across Egypt, rising prices and hoarding have created shortages of diesel, cooking gas, and food staples. Umm Farouk, a widow with four school-age children, queues for hours each day to buy subsidised bread made from low-grade flour pitted with pebbles and chaff.

“There were bread lines under Mubarak, there are bread lines under Morsi,” she says. “Nothing has changed. It’s a daily struggle.”

President Morsi has promised to solve the country’s economic problems and lure investors back. But his Islamist-led government has inherited corrosive bureaucracy and a crumbling infrastructure from decades of neglect and corruption.

The President’s supporters argue that it could take years to purge institutions and repair the economic damage from the Mubarak regime’s 29-year rule. Critics, however, accuse Morsi of mismanaging the economy and putting the Muslim Brotherhood’s political agenda ahead of fiscal prudence.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is only interested in the poor when they need votes,” says Shahin. “They have no experience running a country or setting economic policy, and their failures at both are destroying Egypt.”

Deteriorating economic conditions have created a backlash not just against the Islamists, but against the democratic process itself. Many Egyptians who supported the 2011 uprising have begun questioning its outcome.

“Of course I’m disappointed,” says Umm Farouk. “The revolution was supposed to make our lives easier. Everything is going backwards.” [END]

Grafitti in Cairo showing police brutality. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Feb 6 2013 (IPS)

Graphic video footage of an Egyptian man being dragged naked across a street and beaten by riot police during a protest in Cairo has sparked outrage in Egypt and heightened calls for police reform, a key demand of the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak.

The video shows Hamada Saber, a 48-year-old painter, lying on the ground with his trousers around his ankles as police in riot gear strike him with batons and punch him in the face. After he stops moving, police officers drag him face down across the asphalt and attempt to bundle him into an armoured vehicle.

The incident has angered opposition and rights groups, which accuse President Mohamed Morsi of relying on the same brutal tactics as his predecessors to crush dissent.

“It’s shocking footage, but not surprising,” says activist Mohamed Fathy. “We have the same police force now as we did under Mubarak. There has been no serious effort to reform it.”

Saber was assaulted on Feb. 1 after clashes between police and anti-Morsi demonstrators near the presidential palace spilled over into the streets where he was shopping with his family. The violence followed a week of civil unrest across Egypt that left nearly 60 people dead and hundreds injured.

Many Egyptians accused the interior ministry of coercing Saber after he insisted in a televised interview from his bed in a police hospital that security forces had rescued him from protesters who had stripped and beaten him. His account contradicted the video evidence, as well as statements by eyewitnesses including members of his own family.

“That a citizen be dragged in a public space is a crime against humanity. That he be forced to amend his testimony before the Public Prosecution is tyranny,” rights lawyer Nasser Amin wrote on his Twitter account.

Saber later recanted his testimony, indicating that it was indeed the police who beat him. His son Ahmed told independent newspaper Al Shorouk that his father phoned him in tears and told him the police had “terrorised him” into giving a false account.

The public outcry over Saber’s ordeal was further heightened by news of the death of a 28-year old activist arrested by police on Jan. 27 during a protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Mohamed El-Guindy’s body showed marks of electrical shocks, strangulation, three broken ribs, a cracked skull and brain haemorrhage, according to a medical report.

Morsi’s government has promised to investigate reports of police torture and abuse. The president announced in a Facebook message that there will be “no return to rights abuses of citizens and their freedoms” of the Mubarak era.

But images of El-Guindy’s battered face and the video footage of police beating Saber have raised doubts, say rights groups.

“The Egyptian police continue to systematically deploy violence and torture, and at times even kill,” the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said in a report published on the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Mubarak.

“There has been no thorough change, or even cosmetic improvement, in the police apparatus, whether related to its administrative structure, decision-making, oversight of police work or the reform and removal of leaders and personnel responsible for torture and killing,” the report said.

EIPR has documented at least a dozen people killed by police and 11 tortured inside police stations in the seven months since Morsi assumed presidency. Security forces are rarely held accountable, the report said.

Only two police officers have been jailed for the deaths of more than 800 protesters killed during the 2011 revolution. Over a hundred officers have been acquitted.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Morsi hails, has tried to distance the president from recent incidents of police abuse and torture. A group spokesman argued this week that Morsi needed more time to purge the police force of a culture that condoned the torture and humiliation of detainees, excessive use of force, and routine bribe-taking.

Yasser Hamza, a member of the Brotherhood’s legal committee, pointed the finger squarely at the interior minister. He said Egypt’s new constitution, hastily cobbled together and passed in a controversial referendum in December, absolves the president of accountability in cases of police abuse.

“Morsi bears no responsibility in cases of torture and killing of demonstrators according to the new constitution,” independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm quoted Hamza as saying.

He elaborated that the constitution stipulates that the cabinet is responsible for domestic matters, while the president only bears responsibility for foreign affairs.

Activists are not buying it. Some have accused Morsi of abandoning plans to reform the police because he needs a blunt instrument to secure his tenuous grip on power.

“The police are only good at one thing, beating and humiliating Egyptians,” says Mohamed Fathy, a member of the April 6 youth movement.

In a televised address last week, Morsi praised security forces for their crackdown on protests in the Suez Canal region that left dozens dead, including bystanders allegedly killed by police snipers. He described the protesters as thugs and Mubarak loyalists intent on toppling his democratically elected government.

He also announced a 30-day state of emergency in the Canal cities, granting security forces there arbitrary powers to detain or arrest civilians, in effect restoring the sweeping powers police enjoyed under Mubarak’s 29-year rule.

“Morsi gave the police a licence to use indiscriminate force against protesters,” says Fathy. “He shouldn’t be surprised that they did.” [END]

Egyptian workers have demanded the right to hold peaceful protests. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jan 24 2013 (IPS)

Workers played a pivotal role in the mass uprising that led to former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s downfall. Now, two years on, the same labour movement that helped topple the Arab dictator is locked in a stalemate with the government and employers over long-denied labour rights and untenable working conditions.

In recent months, thousands of disenfranchised workers across Egypt have taken collective action to secure better wages and working conditions, paralysing sectors of an economy still recovering from the 2011 uprising. The country’s new Islamist-led government has promised to resolve labour disputes quickly and equitably, but faces formidable challenges as it grapples with restive workers, unyielding employers, and depleted state coffers.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the conservative Islamic movement that dominated last year’s parliamentary and presidential polls, ran on a platform that emphasised social justice. Yet the once-outlawed group has a poor track record on worker rights, and a history of anti-union activities.

“We had a revolution but the only change is from (Mubarak’s) National Democratic Party to the Muslim Brotherhood,” says labour activist Kareem El-Beheiry. “The Brotherhood has never done anything for the labour movement, and never supported workers or independent unions.”

President Mohamed Morsi, a former Brotherhood leader, has faced a number of tests since taking office last June. There were over 2,000 labour protests in 2012, with the rate of protests more than doubling during the second half of the year, according to a new study by the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR).

“We cannot but notice the clear failure of Morsi’s administration to resolve these protests or even set a clear plan for dealing with their demands. Rather, the administration has continued to adopt the same old policies, which only aggravates the matter,” the ECESR report said.

Labour Minister Khaled El-Azhary, a prominent Brotherhood member, has repeatedly urged striking workers to return to work while the government considers their demands. He says Egypt’s fragile economy cannot afford any more loss of production and must be given a chance to recover from the 2011 revolution.

Egypt is struggling to plug deficits in the state budget and balance of payments as it burns through its last remaining foreign reserves. Tourism, a key foreign revenue earner, plummeted after the uprising and is still off by 20 percent. Foreign investment has retreated, and many projects remain on hold due to ongoing political and economic uncertainty.

While the government has generally tried to avoid confrontations with striking workers, it has taken a tough stand on those who “obstruct the wheels of production.” In the months following Morsi’s appointment, riot police broke up labour protests and arrested local strike organisers, while public sector employees found engaging in collective actions were fired, transferred or referred to disciplinary hearings.

“More than 200 employees and workers were individually sacked during the first three months of Morsi’s term, and more than 100 others were subjected to investigation after they were arrested while peacefully protesting…In addition, many employees and workers were physically assaulted during their sit-ins by thugs hired by (their) employers and businessmen,” the ECESR report said.

Morsi’s government has also borrowed the old regime’s tactic of using state media outlets to smear labour movements and intimidate their leaders, says Hadeer Hassan, a local labour journalist.

“The Muslim Brotherhood views strikes as undermining the economy and Morsi’s rule,” she says. “Rather than addressing workers’ demands, it has tried to turn public opinion against striking workers by using the press to portray them as traitors and thugs.”

And where that fails, she adds, the same “lies and false accusations of worker sabotage” are fed to sympathetic courts.

At least a dozen workers have been convicted under legislation passed by Egypt’s military-run transitional government in March 2011 that criminalises “economically disruptive” strikes. President Morsi has yet to strike down the controversial law or overturn the sentences, though he has the power to do so.

Meanwhile, the government is formulating new legislation that labour activists fear will restrict freedom of association and re-establish the state’s dominance over syndical activities. An early draft of the Trade Union Liberties Law, intended to replace antiquated and restrictive legislation on union organisation, would have enshrined the right to strike and legally recognised the hundreds of independent unions that have sprung up since Mubarak’s fall.

The draft law was scrapped, however, in favour of a new bill drawn up by labour minister Khaled El-Azhary and other prominent Brotherhood figures. Their version proposes stiff penalties for striking workers who disrupt production. It also curtails union pluralism by requiring each enterprise to select just one trade union to represent its workers.

The bill would complement “anti-union” articles in Egypt’s new constitution, which was passed last month in a highly divisive referendum. Article 52 affirms the right of workers to form syndicates, but another article stipulates that each profession can have only one trade union.

The new legal framework threatens to eliminate many of the more than 1,000 independent trade unions that exist alongside their larger and more established state-controlled counterparts.

That’s the point, says Hassan. “The Muslim Brotherhood only wants unions it can control.” [END]

Egyptian protesters post their criticism of the president on a board in Tahrir Square. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jan 19 2013 (IPS)

Egyptians love to have a good laugh. At every opportunity they rattle off jokes and take jabs at themselves, their society, and – where they dare – their ruler.

Former president Hosni Mubarak was a regular target of the country’s satirists and wisecrackers. The egregious corruption, cronyism and social injustice under his three decades of authoritarian rule provided rich fodder for their quips and snarky critiques.

But draconian press laws and a network of strait-laced government informants discouraged Egyptians from overtly expressing their incorrigible political wit. Criticism of Mubarak was something to be shared among trusted friends, sent as an SMS, or masterfully veiled in symbols and allegory.

With the fall of Mubarak and easing of media restrictions Egyptians felt free to express their political views and subversive humour without fear of reprisal. The shifting political landscape and new climate of freedom set the stage for Bassem Youssef, a cardiologist turned comedian who became a household name in early 2011 after posting clips on YouTube lampooning state television’s fumbling take on the revolution.

He now hosts a slicker weekly show, Al Bernameg (The Programme), which is aired on a private satellite channel and is consciously modelled on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the U.S. In it he mocks biased local news coverage and irreverently satirises public figures, taking shots at politicians, Islamists, members of the old regime, and even his own network heads.

But Youssef’s acerbic wit touched a nerve when during a recent episode he spoke sarcastically to a red pillow stamped with the image of Mohamed Morsi, ridiculing the Egyptian president’s purported authoritarian tendencies. The comedy show presenter is now under criminal investigation on charges of “insulting the president” and “undermining his standing.”

While rights lawyers think it is unlikely that Youssef will serve time for his jokes, the case has underlined the limits on free speech that insulate Egypt’s new Islamist president from criticism. In the six months since Morsi took office the country has seen unprecedented use of a Mubarak-era law that mandates custodial sentences for those whose comments are deemed “to affront the president of the republic.”

Heba Morayef, Egypt director of Human Rights Watch, describes the “rise in criminal defamation cases, whether it is on charges of defaming the president or the judiciary” as the “greatest threat to freedom of expression” now facing Egypt. She says the cases are likely to increase “because criminal defamation is now embedded” in the constitution that was passed last month in a highly divisive referendum.

Morsi’s administration has repeatedly denied any intention to censor opinion and insists it had nothing to do with the charges brought against Youssef. The lawsuit was filed by an independent Islamist lawyer with a history of lodging defamation suits against public figures seen to offend Islam. Another individual has filed a separate lawsuit demanding that authorities shut down Al Bernameg and revoke the station’s licence.

Under Egypt’s legal system, anyone can file a lawsuit for libel or slander, even if they are not the target of the alleged offence. It is up to the public prosecutor to decide whether there is enough evidence to refer the case to the courts.

The public prosecutor has been unusually busy since Morsi took office, says Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), a Cairo-based rights group. He is aware of at least 24 individuals formally accused of “insulting the president”, which carries a maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of defamation cases in the six months under Morsi when compared to 30 years under Mubarak,” Eid told IPS.

The barrage of lawsuits has had a chilling effect on journalists, caricaturists, writers and television presenters. It has also made Egyptians wary of what they say online. In September, a court handed down a prison sentence to a citizen for insulting the president in comments posted to his Facebook page.

Earlier this month, the public prosecutor launched an investigation against columnist Gamal Fahmy after the presidency filed a complaint accusing him of insulting the president. Fahmy had accused the president of complicity in the death of journalist Husseini Abu Deif, who he claimed was targeted by armed Morsi supporters during violent clashes last month because he had exposed how the president “abused his power” to have his brother-in-law released from prison.

Fahmy, who served a six-month prison sentence under Mubarak for his critical writings, now faces the prospect of incarceration under Morsi.

Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali has said the president is committed to the principle of freedom of expression. He stressed that the presidency welcomes criticism, but objects to “false news that includes clear accusations against the president.”

ANHRI’s Eid says that rather than reforming Mubarak’s repressive media laws, the Morsi Administration is using them to intimidate and silence its political opponents. Article 179 of the Penal Code criminalises insulting the president without defining what constitutes an insult, permitting broad room for interpretation.

“It is the right of any citizen to criticise the president,” says Eid. “The president is a public servant whose conduct and performance directly affect the lives of millions of Egyptians.”

He adds that granting the president immunity from critical opinions – whether expressed through commentary, caricature or satire – leaves the door wide open for dictatorship.

Salafi groups are calling for Egypt to adopt Sharia. Some appear to have taken to the streets to punish perceived transgressions. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Dec 6 2012 (IPS)

As Egyptians debate how deeply Sharia should influence the new constitution, and in the face of clashes that left five dead on Wednesday, some extremists have taken to the streets to enforce their own interpretation of “God’s law”. In recent months, these self-appointed guardians of public probity have accosted Muslims and minority Christians they accuse of violating the provisions of Islamic law.

Ishaq Ibrahim, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), says reports of incidents began after the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak. Witnesses have reported seeing “bearded zealots” threaten women they deem dressed immodestly, break up parties playing “un-Islamic” music, vandalise shops selling alcohol, and in one case, chop off the ear of a man accused of abetting immorality.

Ibrahim says evidence is circumstantial, as only a few of the perpetrators have been caught, but the attacks appear to be the work of ultraconservative Salafi Muslims.

Salafis follow a puritanical school of Islam, aspiring to emulate the lifestyle of Prophet Muhammad and his companions, and putting conspicuous emphasis on beards and veils. Salafi political parties won nearly a quarter of the seats in the now dissolved lower house of parliament and have vigorously demanded Sharia as the sole source of legislation in Egypt.

While homegrown Salafi groups once carried out a bloody insurgency aimed at carving out an Islamic caliphate, their leaders have since renounced violence and pledged peaceful dialogue. Prominent Salafis, however, have threatened violence against “idols and blasphemers” – one recently vowing to “cut off the tongue” of anyone who insults Sharia or Islam.

Or cut off their hair perhaps?

Mirette Michail was standing with her sister in downtown Cairo when six women wearing niqab (the full Islamic veil) attacked her, beating her and attempting to set her hair on fire – presumably as punishment for not veiling. The women disappeared into the crowd when two male passersby intervened, she reported.

It was the third tonsorial assault in less than a month. Earlier, two women in niqab cut the hair of a Christian woman riding the subway and pushed her off the train, breaking her arm. A 13-year-old Christian girl also had her hair cut by a fully veiled woman while on the subway.

Such incidents are unusual in Cairo. The capital still retains its relatively cosmopolitan atmosphere, with young couples holding hands in public, tourists piling off buses in shorts and t-shirts, and many upscale establishments serving alcohol.

But in provincial cities and rural areas, long governed by a culture of conservative Islam, activists have reported an alarming increase in cases of moral vigilantism. Extremists appear to be organising small groups to patrol neighbourhoods and enforce their own interpretation of Sharia – by brute force if necessary.

Amal Abdel Hadi, head of the Cairo-based New Women Foundation, says the absence of an effective police force since last year’s uprising and the expectation that Egypt’s new constitution will mandate stronger application of Islamic law has given these groups a sense of legitimacy.

“When you have in your constitution that the state should ‘safeguard ethics and public morality’, it’s a green light for these groups to operate,” Abdel Hadi told IPS. “You’re constitutionalising the role of the community in defending traditions using vague and rhetorical phrasing that allows for extreme interpretations.”

Last January, a shadowy group claiming affiliation to the Salafi Calling announced on Facebook that it had established the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, an Islamic morality police modeled on Saudi Arabia’s mutaween.

In Saudi Arabia, mutaween agents and volunteers patrol the streets, enforcing strict separation of the sexes, conservative dress codes, observance of Muslim prayers, and other behaviour they consider mandated by Sharia. Until 2007, these government-sanctioned enforcers of Islamic law carried rattan canes to mete out corporal punishment.

While there is no proof that the Egyptian group ever transformed its online presence into a physical force, its unveiling coincided with a series of incidents in the northern delta provinces. The Arabic press reported that groups of bearded men armed with rattan canes raided shops, threatening to flog shop owners caught selling “indecent” clothing, barbers found shaving men’s beards, or any merchant displaying Christian religious books or icons.

The attacks culminated in the murder of Ahmed Hussein Eid, a university student stabbed to death during a run-in with some roving enforcers last June. According to police reports, three Salafi men approached Eid and his fiancee as they were out walking in Suez’s port district. The men castigated the couple for standing too close, and when Eid rebuked them, one of the men pulled out a knife and fatally stabbed him.

Al-Azhar, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, has issued statements condemning reports of individual efforts to enforce Sharia. As has the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.

But Salafi leaders have been equivocal, denying any affiliation to moral vigilante groups while defending the concept – provided it is through “peaceful intervention”.

“The idea of having such a committee is legitimate and in accordance with the Quran,” Islamist lawyer Montasser El-Zayat told one local media outlet. “Such a committee should promote virtue with virtue, and prevent vice with virtue as well. And, of course, it would be better if (it were) run by the government and not by an independent group.”

Police, criticised for mothballing reports of vigilante incidents, responded to a public outcry following the fatal stabbing in Suez. The three Salafi assailants were apprehended and each sentenced to 15 years in prison.

EIPR’s Ibrahim says moral vigilantes have kept a low profile since the sentencing. But this may simply be the calm before the storm.

“Islamists (control the political agenda) so it’s not in their interest to create problems for the time being,” he says. “They want to focus on the constitution first, then comes the application of Sharia.” [END]

Protesters gather near Tahrir Square beneath a banner that reads "No entry to the Muslim Brotherhood". Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Nov 28 2012 (IPS)

Brandishing flags and carrying banners denouncing “the new pharaoh”, thousands of protesters thronged to Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Tuesday to voice their opposition to President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to expand his powers.

By dusk, the iconic square had filled with demonstrators. But the protest marches from different neighbourhoods kept coming late into the night, backing up far beyond the square’s perimeter.

Commentators drew comparisons to the mass demonstrations that marked the start of the 18-day uprising that toppled the authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak. But judging by the scale of the turnout, the scene more closely reflected the dictator’s final days.

“The people want to topple the regime,” the crowd chanted, echoing the flagship slogan of the revolution that toppled Mubarak.

Anger against Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been welling since he issued a decree last week granting himself broad new powers. The democratically elected president had already extended his power in August with a decree that sent the military back to its barracks and left him with sole executive and legislative authority. His new declaration carves out judicial powers as well.

The edicts appear to wrap revolutionary demands, such as retrials of police and Mubarak regime officials implicated in the killing of protesters in last year’s uprising, around ominous portents of authoritarian rule. Most significantly, Morsi assumes the authority to take “any measures he sees fit” to protect the revolution, national unity or national security. His blanket clause is backed by a decree that his decisions cannot be appealed or revoked by any authority.

“I’m here tonight to say no to dictatorial rule,” says Hamdi Hassan, who travelled from the Nile delta city of Zagazig to join the protests in Tahrir Square.

The president’s power grab, ostensibly made to cut through the legal deadlock that has stalled Egypt’s democratic transition, has polarised the country dangerously. Clashes have broken out in cities across Egypt, pitting Morsi’s predominantly Islamist supporters against a broad spectrum of mainly liberal and secular political forces. Several people have been killed in the violence, and hundreds injured.

Analysts say Morsi appears to have overestimated his support. But the president has showed no sign of backing down – which threatens to lead the country deeper into turmoil.

His supporters have argued that figures from the old regime and a politicised judiciary are obstructing the path to democracy and can only be purged by extra-legal measures. They remain confident that the Islamist president will use his near-absolute powers wisely and benignly to shepherd the country through the tortuous transition, relinquishing them once a parliament and constitution are in place.

“The presidency reiterates the temporary nature of the said measures, which are not meant to concentrate power but…to devolve it to a democratically elected parliament…as well as preserving the impartiality of the judiciary and to avoid politicising it,” a statement from the president’s office said.

But many of Morsi’s opponents suspect his allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood, of which he was a long-term member, trumps any interest in following the rules of liberal democracy. They argue that the Brotherhood has used every opportunity to aggregate political power and monopolise state institutions, and cannot be trusted.

Youth movements that led the 2011 uprising against Mubarak regard the Muslim Brotherhood with suspicion as the group was late in joining the revolution, yet appears to have hijacked it to consolidate its power base and the political agenda.

A principal fear is that Morsi’s decree, which shields the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly from dissolution, could hand the 84-year-old Islamic group the ultimate prize: a chance to draft a constitution largely of their own design.

Morsi has attempted to portray his administration as inclusive and transparent. But reports that he failed to consult his appointed advisers before issuing his latest shock decree, as well as other important policy issues, have raised concerns about his governance.

Even the president’s justice minister appeared to have been caught off guard – all the more surprising given the declaration’s enormous implications on the judiciary.

A fundamental problem, suggests one analyst, is that Morsi and the Brotherhood view political life and democratic politics through a majoritarian lens. Writing in Foreign Policy’s online edition, Michael Wahid Hanna says the president has repeatedly issued edicts with little or no discernible consultation, and either unaware or wholly dismissive of the opposition they might engender.

“Morsi’s majoritarian mindset is not anti-democratic per se, but depends upon a distinctive conception of winner-takes-all politics and the denigration of political opposition. Winning elections, by this perspective, entitles the victors to govern unchecked by the concerns of the losers,” he writes.

Protester Wael Darwish says this is “an absurd way of thinking” for a president elected into office on a razor-thin margin.

Less than 25 percent of Egyptians voted for Morsi in the first round of the presidential election. The Brotherhood candidate is widely believed to have won the run-off with 51.7 percent of votes because many Egyptians preferred to elect him than face the prospect of Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak’s last prime minister and longtime confidant, becoming head of state.

“I voted for Morsi,” Darwish admits. “Maybe he’s still better than Shafik, but we elected a president, not a dictator.” (END)

A protester rests during a day of clashes after President Mursi expands his powers. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Nov 24 2012 (IPS)

When Mohamed Mursi was sworn in as president in June there were concerns that the first democratically elected president in Egyptian history would be subservient to the military council that had ruled the country since dictator Hosni Mubarak was toppled in early 2011.

But by August, Mursi had pulled off a political coup, issuing a decree that purged the military of its leadership and left him in sole control of the government, with full executive and legislative authority. A decree issued Thursday expanded Mursi’s power even further, putting his decisions beyond dispute and neutralising the judiciary that was one of the last institutions challenging his Islamist government.

“Not since the days of the pharaohs has an Egyptian leader amassed so much power,” says Ahmed Hamid, an activist protesting in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “Even Mubarak never dared to go this far, and you saw what happened to him.”

Mursi’s decision to expand his own powers set off a political firestorm, exposing deep rifts between his supporters – predominantly members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other conservative Islamic groups – and the liberal and secular Egyptians who are his main opponents. Clashes erupted as the rival camps held demonstrations in cities across Egypt on Friday.

In a seven-article declaration, Mursi sacked the Mubarak-era prosecutor general and ordered new investigations and trials of all those accused of killing or injuring protesters since the start of last year’s uprising – a decision that could see Mubarak retried.

More contentiously, he declared the upper house of parliament and the constituent assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution immune from dissolution by any court. The move appears aimed at pre-empting the verdicts of ongoing legal challenges that could see either body declared unconstitutional.

Mursi gave the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly an extra two months to draft a new constitution to replace the one suspended after Mubarak’s ouster. He ordered work to continue despite resignations by almost all of the assembly’s secular and Christian representatives, which have cost it much of its legitimacy.

Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali announced on national television that Mursi’s expanded powers were necessary to “protect the revolution’s gains” and end the stalemate with the judiciary that has stalled Egypt’s democratic transition. He said the presidential decree was aimed at “cleansing state institutions” and “destroying the infrastructure of the former regime.”

Egyptians who fought to bring down Mubarak’s authoritarian regime were particularly alarmed by a clause in the decree that states the president’s decisions cannot be suspended or revoked by any authority. Banners carried by protesters warned that Mursi had become “the new pharaoh.”

“The decree effectively renders presidential decisions final and not subject to the review of judicial authorities, which may mark the return to Mubarak-style presidency, without even the legal cosmetics that the previous regime employed to justify its authoritarian ways,” journalist Hesham Sallam wrote in an op-ed piece.

Mursi also granted himself the authority to take “any measures he sees fit in order to preserve and safeguard the revolution, national unity or national security.”

The clause assigns the president broad and only vaguely defined powers. Some activists drew comparisons to emergency laws under Mubarak that allowed security forces to arbitrarily arrest, torture and imprison political dissidents with impunity.

“Protesting here today against Mursi could be viewed as a ‘threat’ to the revolution or national unity,” says protester Mustafa Abbas, a primary school teacher. “This is a dangerous article that opens the door for witch hunts of the president’s opponents.”

Mursi’s declaration evoked strong reactions across Egypt, filling squares with demonstrators and reviving the spirit and slogans of the uprising last year that toppled Mubarak.

“The people want the downfall of the regime,” protesters chanted in Cairo.

And in a scene reminiscent of the heady days of the revolution, television stations used split screens to cover Friday’s pro- and anti-government rallies. As riot police rained tear gas down on his critics in Tahrir Square, Mursi triumphantly took the stage at a rally organised by the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming the mantle of the revolution.
“I never sought legislative authority and I would never use it to settle scores, but if my people, my nation, or Egypt’s revolution are in danger then I must,” he said.

Hoping to assuage fears, Mursi promised to relinquish his supplementary powers once a new constitution is adopted and a new parliament elected.

Nathan J. Brown, an expert on Egyptian law and politics at George Washington University, interpreted the underlying message: “I, Mursi, am all powerful. And in my first act as being all powerful, I declare myself more powerful still. But don’t worry – it’s just for a little while.” (END)

Women demonstrating to demand equality with men. The big banner says "No to child marriage". Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Oct 25 2012 (IPS)

During the uprising that toppled Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak women stood shoulder to shoulder with men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, pressing the revolution’s demands for freedom, justice and dignity. But those who hoped the revolution would make them equal partners in Egypt’s future claim they may be worse off now than under Mubarak’s authoritarian rule.

“After the revolution, most of Egyptian society – and especially the Islamists – began attacking women’s rights,” says Azza Kamel, a prominent women’s rights activist. “They started to claw back rights that women had fought for and gained before the revolution, and are trying to change divorce and custody laws, push FGM (female genital mutilation), and reduce the age of marriage from 18 to nine years old.”

Kamel says women have been almost entirely excluded from leadership and decision-making positions since Mubarak’s ouster. The Committee of Wise Men, an advisory panel formed during the uprising, included just one woman among its 30 members. There have been no women appointed as governors, no women allowed in the authoritative State Council, and weak female representation in all post-Mubarak governments.

“We expected more,” Kamel laments. “There can be no democracy without equality, yet women are being excluded at every step.”

Women were granted the right to vote in 1956, but have historically been underrepresented in Egyptian political life. The country’s first free and fair parliamentary elections resulted in further setbacks. Women won just eight of the 508 seats in the now dissolved lower house of parliament, down from over 60 in the 2010 parliamentary elections when a quota was in place.

Political parties established since Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011 welcomed women as members, but appeared unwilling to gamble on them as candidates when it came time for elections. Electoral laws required all parties to field at least one female parliamentary candidate, but even liberal parties placed the women far down their candidate lists, weakening their chance of success.

Kamel accuses political movements, particularly the conservative Muslim Brotherhood, of disingenuously supporting calls for enhancing women’s rights and political standing in order to secure female participation in public demonstrations and at the ballot box.

“All of the political parties are using women for political leverage,” Kamel told IPS. “This has always been the case in Egypt.”

Many women saw the writing on the wall when President Mohamed Morsi reneged on his grandstand promise to appoint a female vice-president. The former Muslim Brotherhood leader has so far surrounded himself with an almost exclusively male corps of advisors, while the only two women in his 35-member cabinet are holdovers from the previous government.

But more worrying, says Kamel, is that the Muslim male-dominated constituent assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution for Egypt is in a position to enshrine discriminatory limitations on women in the national charter. Not only are women almost entirely excluded from the constitution writing process, the assembly is stacked with Islamist figures who activists claim are attempting to impose their conservative religious values on all Egyptian society.

Many of the constituent assembly’s liberal and secular members resigned in objection to what one described as “a set will to produce a constitution that would be the cornerstone of a religious state, which will preserve the principles of the fallen regime and ignore the pillars of the Egyptian uprising of freedom, dignity and social justice.”

One particular point of contention is the wording of Article 68 in the draft constitution, which states that women are equal to men in political, economic, and social life provided that equality does not contradict the provisions of Sharia (Islamic law). Rights groups have opposed the article’s ambiguous religious framing.

Nehad Abu Komsan, director of the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR), explains that Sharia has in many instances been used to reinforce negative social attitudes towards women and impose restrictions on their freedom. Linking women’s rights to undefined provisions of Islamic law “opens the door to radical interpretations that can be used against women.”

“Sharia can be interpreted in many different ways,” says Abu Komsan. “Saudi Arabia considers Sharia as a reference (in its constitution) and prohibits women from driving a car, while Pakistan considers it a reference and had a woman leading the country.”

Although Egypt’s Islamist-led government has not completely ignored women, its policy changes have focused on paving the way towards a more conservative, patriarchal society. A recent ministerial decree allowed female flight attendants of state-owned EgyptAir to wear hijab (Islamic veil) for the first time, while new rules have extended the option to female television presenters.

“This is good, as wearing the veil is a personal right,” says domestic worker Umm Gamal, who is veiled herself. “But what we really need is to see more effort toward protecting the right of women to full participation in society. We should be 50 percent (in all leadership positions), not just a quota or novelty.”

Egypt’s workers get little support from employers, or unions. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Oct 18 2012 (IPS)

Ahmed Hassanein works in a modern factory in an industrial enclave west of Cairo. He wears a neatly pressed uniform and operates precision calibrated machinery on a line that produces components for foreign-brand passenger vehicles.

When his shift ends, he returns home to a simple two-room flat with no air conditioning and sporadic water and electricity. The bedroom fits a bed and little else. His two children share a small cot in an alcove that was once a balcony.

Hassanein’s salary covers the rent, utility bills, and meals that occasionally include meat or fish. But even with the income his wife earns from a part-time clerical job, his family rarely has money left over at the end of the month.

The 37-year-old industrial worker is just one among countless Egyptians who toil in factories for meagre wages, unable to afford the products they help manufacture.

“My father had a Fiat, which I drove for a number of years until it gave out, but I’ve never bought my own car,” says Hassanein, who like most of his colleagues takes a bus to work.

Hassanein wasn’t born into poverty, he fell into it, along with millions of other middle-class Egyptian families pulled downwards by diminishing purchasing power.

In the four decades since former president Anwar El-Sadat announced his ‘Infitah’ (Open Door) economic policy, private capital has flooded into Egypt on the back of measures that promoted the country as an owner-friendly, low-wage investment destination. Firms enjoyed cheap land, tax holidays and subsidised energy while the state repressed union activity and eviscerated labour standards.

Political economist Amr Adly says market liberalisation and neoliberal economic policies were a boon for foreign corporations and wealthy Egyptians, but the resulting unemployment, corruption, and uneven distribution of wealth were primary factors behind the uprising last year that toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

“The economy was growing at seven or eight percent before the revolution, but there was no trickle down effect,” Adly told IPS. “Wages in many sectors lagged far behind inflation.”

Mubarak’s legacy is a country of 83 million people in which a quarter of the population lives below the UN-recognised poverty line of two dollars a day. About 13 percent of Egypt’s 26-million-strong workforce is officially unemployed, and many work in a huge parallel economy where job security is absent.

Wages here are among the lowest in the world. The national minimum wage was set at 700 Egyptian pounds (115 dollars) a month last year after stagnating at 35 Egyptian pounds (under six dollars at today’s rate) for over two decades.

“We want better pay, but every path is blocked,” says Hassanein. “In the end you take your salary and thank God that at least you have a job.”

Under Mubarak, workers were discouraged from unionising – or if they did, required to join one of 24 syndicates affiliated to the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF). Activists say the colossal state-controlled labour organisation served the interests of the government and factory owners by blocking workers’ attempts to strike or engage in collective bargaining.

ETUF’s board was dissolved after the 2011 uprising, but many of its union heads, chosen in sham elections for their loyalty to Mubarak’s regime, are still in place. The federation’s 3.5 million members pay union dues, but receive few benefits or support in return.

When textile worker Kareem El-Beheiry joined a strike to demand better wages, it was his own trade union – in league with the publicly-owned factory’s manager – that tried to stop him.

“The state-backed unions have never respected the rights of workers,” says 27-year-old El-Beheiry, now a project manager at an NGO that helps workers unionise. “Workers are forced to pay syndicate dues every month, but the (official) unions are only interested in supporting the government and company management.”

El-Beheiry was among the 24,000 workers at a state-owned textile mill in the northern Egyptian town Mahalla El-Kubra who defied their official stooge union heads and went on strike in December 2006 over unpaid bonuses. The defiant act sparked a flurry of wildcat strikes now widely seen as a catalyst for the mass uprising that ended Mubarak’s rule.

The strike wave has continued to this day, encompassing every economic sector and region of the country. Last year saw a record 1,400 collective actions, according to Sons of the Land, a local human rights group.

One consequence of the labour unrest is that emboldened workers have increasingly challenged ETUF’s hegemony over trade union activities, organising themselves into independent syndicates that protect their interests, not the state’s. Workers managed to establish four independent trade unions before the 2011 uprising. More than 800 have been formed in the last 18 months, representing an estimated three million workers.

“We’re building independent and democratic unions that are accountable to workers and give them their rights,” says Kamal Abou Eita, president of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), an umbrella for hundreds of independent unions.

But analysts say the new regime, much like its predecessor, wants to keep workers contained and controlled.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Egypt’s new president hails, has extensive business interests and a long history of anti-union activities. The group’s members in government have signalled a continuation of the old regime’s economic policies – which critics say come at the expense of labour wages and security.

“The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t want strong unions,” asserts Hadeer Hassan, a local labour journalist. “They label striking workers as ‘thugs’ and want to prohibit union plurality.”

Egypt’s new labour minister, a prominent Brotherhood member and former ETUF deputy, has submitted a draft law that would require workers in each enterprise to select just one trade union to represent them. If passed, labour rights advocates say the legislation would eliminate most independent unions, which exist alongside their larger ETUF counterparts.

“Then we’re back to the way it was under Mubarak,” says Hassan.

Activists want military leaders prosecuted for killing protesters during crackdowns. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Sep 16 2012 (IPS)

When Egypt’s army was deployed to restore order in the streets during the uprising that ended president Hosni Mubarak’s rule, Egyptians greeted the troops as saviours. But by the time the generals handed the country over to a civilian president in June this year, many Egyptians regarded the 16 months of transitional military rule as more oppressive than the 29 years under Mubarak.

“The military claimed to be the guardian of the revolution, and at first we all believed it, but over time we realised we’d been deceived,” says youth leader Mohamed Abbas.

Activists accuse the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which assumed power after removing Mubarak in February 2011, of transforming Egypt from an authoritarian police state into a military dictatorship. They claim military leaders must be held accountable for the human rights violations and crimes committed during the interim period, including repeated crackdowns on unarmed protesters that left scores dead and injured.

Many of the alleged crimes stem from the military’s efforts to stamp out dissent during its rule. Protesters report suffering torture and humiliation while in military custody. They were among some 12,000 civilians handed down harsh sentences by military kangaroo courts.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) says dozens of protesters were killed as army forces violently dispersed a series of sit-in demonstrations in central Cairo late last year. It also accuses the military establishment of inciting soldiers and mobs to attack a group of mainly Christian protesters in Cairo’s Maspero district last October, killing 28 protesters and injuring hundreds.

President Mohamed Morsi, who took office on Jun. 30, sent senior military leaders into retirement and put together a fact-finding committee to investigate responsibility for alleged abuses by the military during the transition period. The committee, comprised of government and civilian representatives, is expected to present its findings and recommendations later this month.

But Morsi’s decision to award the state’s top honours to former SCAF head Hussein Tantawi and former Chief of Staff Sami Anan has worried activists, who fear the new president may have cut a deal to grant military leaders immunity from prosecution. A “safe exit” would allow the generals to keep their wealth and receive amnesty for any crimes or mistakes committed while in power.

Activists who saw blood spilled during clashes with military police are not willing to let the country’s former leaders off that easy.

“Before the revolution Egyptians were afraid to claim their rights,” says Abbas. “Now, we will never back down.”

The April 6 Youth Movement, a grassroots activist group that was instrumental in organising the protests that led to Mubarak’s ouster, has announced plans to bring charges against Tantawi and other former SCAF members for the deaths of protesters during the transition period. The group has also accused former military leaders of inciting violence against peaceful demonstrators.

“We hold SCAF leaders responsible for killing protesters in clashes, the deaths of Christians at Maspero last October, and rumours and lies about protesters (that led to violence against them),” says Ahmed Maher, the group’s leader.

The case is one of many. Lawyers and activist groups have filed over two dozen complaints with military prosecutors against former SCAF members and senior security officials they accuse of betraying the revolution and committing crimes against the Egyptian people.

One obstacle, say campaigners, is that Egyptian law grants military officers immunity from civil prosecution. Article 8 of the Code of Military Justice stipulates that military courts are the only judicial authorities able to try serving or retired military officers.

“Military courts would neither be credible nor transparent,” argues Heba Hegazi, coordinator of the Hakemohum (“Prosecute Them”) campaign, which aims to move the trials to civilian courts.

Hegazi, a corporate lawyer turned rights activist, says earlier investigations by the military prosecution into the army’s rights abuses demonstrated its partiality. In March, a military court acquitted an army doctor charged with public obscenity for forcibly administering “virginity tests” on female detainees last year.

In another case, a military court convicted three soldiers of manslaughter for running over Coptic demonstrators with armoured personnel carriers during clashes at Maspero last October. Yet no senior officers were put on trial, despite evidence that SCAF had purposely spread fear and rumours in order to stoke the violence and inflame sectarian sentiments.

The Hakemohum campaign hopes to enact legislation that would strip former military leaders of their immunity, allowing them to be tried in special civilian courts in cases where crimes against the public are involved. A draft law submitted to parliament before it was dissolved in June outlines the jurisdiction and procedures of these “revolutionary justice courts” which would adhere to international standards of integrity and transparency.

“The courts would be presided over by judges selected (from a list of candidates) vetted to guarantee they had no loyalties to the old regime,” Hegazi explains.

Many Egyptians were disappointed by the outcome of the trial of Mubarak and his senior aides. While a civilian court sentenced Mubarak and former interior minister Habib El-Adly to 25 years in prison for killing over 800 protesters during last year’s uprising, the tedious and farcical trial absolved senior security personnel of any responsibility in the killings.

Prosecuting the military could present far greater challenges.

Hegazi says SCAF has consistently worked to protect its leaders and cover up abuses. Yet she is confident that those who abused their power will be held accountable for their actions.

“Before the revolution we would never have imagined that we could remove Mubarak and put him on trial, but we did,” she says.