News from Democracy Egypt: Cairo intellectuals complain (fwd)

["Clement M. Henry" <chenry@mail.la.utexas.edu>]

Not fully germane to your course content but this is an interesting
disucussion of other ways to encourage democracy in the Arab world..

*****************************
Clement M. Henry
Professor of Government
University of Texas at Austin
Austin TX 78712
tel 471-5121, fax 471-1061

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 06 Oct 2002 21:53:29 -0000
From: democracy_egypt <democracy_egypt@yahoo.com>
To: free_saadeddin_ibrahim@yahoogroups.com
Subject: News from Democracy Egypt:   Cairo intellectuals complain

Squawk Like an Egyptian
Cairo intellectuals complain when an American shows them respect.

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, October 2, 2002

The U.S. ambassador to Egypt, David Welch, has "deviated from all
diplomatic norms," complains Mustafa Bakri, editor of the Egyptian
weekly Al-Usbu. Good for Mr. Welch. His rogue act was to publish a
Sept. 20 article in the Arabic-language Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram
headlined "Time to Get the Facts Right," in which he called on
Egyptian pundits to practice "truth and accuracy in reporting."

Mr. Welch answered a spate of columns and stories in the Egyptian
press pegged to the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Local
journalists and scholars seized on the date to give yet another
airing to conspiracy theories that circulate widely in the Middle
East, which claim Israelis or Americans themselves had staged the
atrocities. "Leading Egyptian newspapers and magazines in the past
two weeks alone have published columns by senior columnists who
suggested governments or groups other than Al Qaeda were
responsible," wrote Mr. Welch. "A leading Egyptian professor of
sociology, in a public lecture on Sept. 11, spent nearly half an hour
trying to cast doubt on Al Qaeda's culpability, and even went to far
as to implicate the American government by asserting that America had
benefited from the attacks."

The ambassador noted that al Qaeda members themselves had claimed
responsibility for the attacks, in interviews on the al-Jazeera TV
network, which airs in Egypt. He concluded that "disregard for the
facts in such a serious matter can tarnish the reputation of the
Egyptian media in the eyes of the world," and that "responsible media
should be dedicated to telling the truth, not spreading falsehood,
and knowing the difference between the two."

In Cairo, this produced quite a ruckus. In a signed public statement,
some 40 prominent intellectuals declared Mr. Welch "persona non
grata" and demanded that the U.S. recall him from Egypt "because he
has harmed democracy." The statement charged that "the ambassador
spoke as if he were addressing slaves or the citizens of some banana
republic, not those representing the voice and conscience of the Arab
nation whose roots lie deep in history and whose culture is, as
Western and American writers have acknowledged, the cradle of the
conscience of the entire world."

Fortunately, the State Department seems to have taken this in stride.
Mr. Welch is still at his post, a senior diplomatic source confirms
by phone from Cairo. My own suspicion is that despite the 40 Egyptian
intellectuals who deem themselves keepers of the world's conscience,
there are probably a fair number of Egyptians--the nonintellectuals,
perhaps--who would privately agree with Mr. Welch. For one thing, he
is right. Truth, if spoken audibly and often enough, has its own
persistent way of buoying up an argument.

Beyond that, in talking straight, Mr. Welch was not talking down to
the Egyptian people. On the contrary, in offering honesty instead of
patronizing them with deferential diplomatese, or simply keeping
silent, he was addressing them as equals. He was treating them with
respect.

Respect is something Egyptians seldom get from their own government--
or from ours. On the homefront, the intellectuals' concern that Mr.
Welch has damaged their democracy is absurd for several reasons, not
the least of which is that they don't have a democracy to begin with.
Egypt has the trappings of democratic government, but Egyptians do
not enjoy the basic dignity of a vote that truly counts. In 1981,
following the assassination of Anwar Sadat, they got Hosni Mubarak as
their president. Twenty-one years later, they have him still--with no
institutional way to choose anyone else. During Mr. Mubarak's reign,
the country has been continuously under "emergency law" which the
government wields to jail people at whim, and to restrict such vital
rights as freedom of assembly and of the press.

One of the clearest signs of the repressive character of Mr.
Mubarak's rule has been the imprisonment of an outspoken democrat,
Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who heads a liberal think tank in Cairo, and
whose plea was precisely that the Egyptian government respect the
basic rights of its own people. Mr. Ibrahim, a naturalized American
citizen, was convicted in an Egyptian court in July of embezzling
funds from the European Union (despite explicit protests from the EU
that he had done no such thing) and "tarnishing" the reputation of
Egypt. What's actually tarnishing Egypt's reputation in this case is
that Mr. Ibrahim has now begun serving seven years at hard labor.

On the Web site Democracy-Egypt, you can read the statement he wanted
to deliver in court, but was not allowed to. Titled "A Cry for
Freedom," it is an argument not so much for his own liberty as for
the freedom of Egypt. He notes that one of the "modest successes" of
his center "was to introduce the concept of transparency--meaning
frankness and full disclosure in all public affairs that are
important to the Arab world and the Arab citizen." Mr. Ibrahim
concludes: "Perhaps we are being persecuted because we have been
pioneers in discussing openly and practicing what we preach about,
and because we dared to say publicly what millions of Egyptians and
Arabs think privately."

In response to Mr. Ibrahim's imprisonment, the Bush administration
said there would be no increase in aid to Egypt, which already gets
$2 billion of so a year. Here, again, one could hardly argue that
Egyptians are being treated with respect. The problem, however, does
not lie in any U.S. decision to withhold a little money at the margin-
-which at least conveys a message of reproach. The real problem, the
sense in which America has for years been patronizing Egypt, is that
whacking flow of aid, which began in the 1970s as a payoff for Egypt
recognizing Israel.

Egypt withdrew its ambassador to Israel two years ago and this spring
further limited official contacts. But the aid continues, totaling
more than $24 billion to date through the U.S. Agency for
International Development alone. By now it might as well be described
as just a great big welfare program, putting a nation on the dole in
hopes it will achieve something we want--namely, peace in the Middle
East (and perhaps some jobs for U.S. aid bureaucrats). The U.S. in
effect treats Egypt as a charity case; Egypt takes the money. The
U.S. overlooks the dictatorial habits of Mr. Mubarak and the
corruption for which the country is notorious (political humorist
P.J. O'Rourke, who recently visited Egypt, notes in the September
Atlantic Monthly that in the corruption index of Transparency
International, Egypt ranks worse than Colombia). Egyptians take note
that the U.S. money just keeps rolling in. All around, it's a formula
unlikely to engender respect among any of the actors involved.

In the face of all this, it may be small stuff that the U.S.
ambassador in Cairo chose to stray from the norms. But if one
believes that Egyptians deserve the same rights and responsibilities
as the citizens of any free nation, offering them the respect of
honest talk seems a move in the right direction.

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved




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