A rchive Date
[ 11-07-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Egypt ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2004/07/11/535199.html
Mubarak mystery
By Eric Margolis - Contributing Foreign Editor
Sun, July 11, 2004
A SLIPPED spinal disc is certainly painful, but it's hardly an important international event - unless the disc belongs to the 76-year-old absolute ruler of the Mideast's most populous and important nation, Egypt.
Last week President Hosni Mubarak returned to Egypt after 17 days in a German clinic. His unprecedented absence from Egypt raised two important questions: Why was Mubarak unable to find capable doctors in Egypt for what was described as "minor surgery" and who will succeed him when he dies?
For the Arab world's leading nation, which spends $3.3 billionUS annually on its 450,000-man military, to not have a decent back surgeon sounds incredible and shameful. Or else Mubarak was secretly being treated by German specialists for cancer or another grave disease.
In 1800, Egypt had 3 million people. When I lived there in 1957, its population was 24 million. Today its 71 million to 73 million impoverished people are crammed into the 2.8% of Egypt's land that is arable. Cairo has nearly 10 million inhabitants.
Egypt comprises 30% of the Arab world's total population and 40% of the non-North African Mideast, or "Mashraq." When the back of the man who rules four out of 10 Arabs aches, all need pay attention.
While eyes are fixed on the bloody mess in Iraq and Saudi Arabia's growing instability, Egypt is beginning to tremble as its people worry about who will follow Mubarak's unchallenged 22-year rule. There is no clear line of succession; Mubarak has never even named a vice-president.
Mubarak, an able air force general, was engineered into power by the U.S. after the 1981 assassination of Egypt's ruler, Anwar Sadat, a longtime CIA "asset." My mother interviewed Egypt's leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Sadat in the mid-1950s. I remember her calling Nasser a "person of character" and "a true man," while she dismissed Sadat as a "phony" and "a poseur." Egyptians heartily shared this view.
The great Nasser, whom Egyptians adored, died in 1970 of a heart attack - or was poisoned, as many believe. Former CIA Cairo station chief Kermit Roosevelt confirmed at least one failed U.S. assassination attempt against Nasser.
The U.S. quickly manoeuvred Sadat into power as military strongman after Nasser's death. The Camp David accords soon followed, history's biggest bribe in which Sadat made a cold peace with Israel, and abandoned the Palestinians, in exchange for a 10-fold increase in annual aid, some of which went into the pockets of Sadat's family, generals and cronies.
In sharp contrast to President George W. Bush's sermons about bringing democracy to the Arab world, America's most important Arab ally, Egypt, remains an old-fashioned military dictatorship behind a fig-leaf of fake democracy.
Arab media centre
Egypt's press, the Arab world's media centre, is heavily censored and its judiciary a punitive organ of the regime. Egypt remains a repressive state with a brutal secret police where the use of torture against political opponents and Islamic militants is routine.
Some $1.3 billionUS in annual U.S. military aid keeps the armed forces and security apparatus loyal to Mubarak. CIA, DIA, FBI and NSA run major operations in Egypt to protect Mubarak's regime from domestic opponents. The U.S. tightly controls the military's communications and limits stocks of spare parts and munitions.
Sadat's Faustian Camp David deal left Washington and, curiously, Israel gripping Egypt's food jugular. The U.S. supplies Egypt 4 million tons of wheat annually, mostly under various aid programs that must be approved by Israel's friends in the U.S. Congress. Without this wheat, Egypt, which cannot feed its surging population, would starve.
Now, as Egypt faces a succession crisis, Mubarak has been grooming son Gamal to be leader, but Egyptians strongly oppose this idea as unworthy.
When Mubarak goes, Washington will discreetly install a new leader from the pro-U.S. elite - unless there is a massive uprising against foreign domination by nationalist-Nasserites and Islamists ("terrorists" in Bush-talk). But if nationalists somehow oust U.S. influence, how will they feed Egyptians?
The Bush administration's "crusade for freedom" in the Mideast has reportedly already selected intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, defence minister Muhamed Tantawi or another senior army general to be Egypt's next "democratic" ruler.
But, as Iraq shows, things can go terribly wrong.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at: margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com Letters to the editor should be sent to: editor@tor.sunpub.com Home Page
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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