Contemporary Egypt: Through Egyptian Eyes: Essays in Honour of P. J. Vatikiotis

Contemporary Egypt: through Egyptian eyes

The essays in this volume provide invaluable insight into the social forces, the political conflicts and the personalities that have shaped contemporary Egypt, and Egypt’s current economic, political and diplomatic dilemmas. The press has been extraordinarily influential in shaping Egyptian political debate, and two essays here are devoted to an examination of its activities, and the efforts of those in power to control it, at different periods in Egypt’s modern history. The careers of individuals politically active during the period of the Monarchy can offer considerable insight into contemporary currents in Egyptian political life, and studies are provided here of al-Nahhas, Makram Ebeid and Ali Mahir. The influence of foreign powers has been of critical importance in the development of Egypt, and this is an issue taken up in an essay on the relationship between Nasser and the United States. Finally, three chapters on the problems facing Egypt at political, economic and diplomatic levels—the last by Secretary-General of the United Nations Dr Boutros BoutrosGhali—provide an authoritative assessment of the general situation of contemporary Egypt. One purpose of the publication of this volume is to honour Professor P.J.Vatikiotis, Emeritus Professor of Politics with reference to the Near and Middle East in the University of London. The author of numerous works on Egypt—among them The Modern History of Egypt, The Egyptian Army in Politics and Nasser and his Generation—he has been the teacher of most of the contributors to this book, and remains the friend of all. Charles Tripp is Lecturer in Politics with reference to the Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University.

Contemporary Egypt: through Egyptian eyes

Essays in honour of Professor P.J.Vatikiotis

Edited by

Charles Tripp

London and New York

First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 1993 Charles Tripp All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Contemporary Egypt: through Egyptian eyes: essays in honour of Professor P.J.Vatikiotis/edited by Charles Tripp. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Egypt—History—1919– I. Tripp, Charles. II. Vatikiotis, P.J. (Panayiotis J.), 1928– . DT107.C75 1993 962.05–dc20 92–13471 CIP ISBN 0-203-41316-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-72140-3 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-06103-2 (Print Edition)

Contents

Notes on the contributors Foreword Acknowledgements

vii viii xi

1

The political press in Egypt, 1882–1914 Abbas Kelidar

2

Makram Ebeid: politician of the majority party Mustafa El-Feki

3

Ali Mahir and the politics of the Egyptian army, 1936–1942 Charles Tripp

4

Mustafa al-Nahhas and political leadership Alaa al-Din Al-Hadidy

5

Relations between Egypt and the United States of America in the 1950s Muhammad Abd al-Wahab Sayed-Ahmed

1 22

45 72

89

6

Nasser and the Egyptian press Sonia Dabous

100

7

Egypt in the balance Walid Kazziha

122

8

Interpretations and misinterpretations of the Egyptian economy Adel Beshai

v

132

vi

Contents

9

Egyptian diplomacy: East-West detente and North-South dialogue Boutros Boutros-Ghali

142

Index

151

Notes on the contributors

Adel Beshai currently lectures in the Department of Economics and Political Science, the American University in Cairo. Boutros Boutros-Ghali is Secretary-General of the United Nations and was formerly Deputy Prime Minister of Egypt for Foreign Affairs. Sonia Dabous currently lectures in the Department of Mass Communication, the American University in Cairo and is also Assistant Editor for Political and Diplomatic Affairs for Akhbar alYawm, Cairo. Mustafa El-Feki is attached to the Office of the President of the Republic of Egypt and also lectures in the Department of Economics and Political Science, the American University in Cairo. Alaa al-Din Al-Hadidy is attached to the Embassy of the Republic of Egypt, Washington D.C. and formerly lectured in the Department of Economics and Political Science, the American University in Cairo. Walid Kazziha currently lectures in the Department of Economics and Political Science, the American University in Cairo. Abbas Kelidar currently carries out independent research on the Middle East and formerly lectured in the Department of Economics and Politics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Muhammad Abd al-Wahab Sayed-Ahmed currently lectures in the Department of History at the University of Ain Shams, Cairo. Charles Tripp currently lectures in the Department of Political Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

vii

Foreword

Egypt does not fit easily into the generalisations made about the rest of the Arab world. It is true that, as a society and as a state, it has much in common with the countries to its east and to its west. It is inhabited by people who are Arabic-speaking. They are also overwhelmingly Muslim, but they coexist with a substantial and venerable Christian community which constitutes a vital part of the society. Its economy is characterised by many of the problems afflicting developing countries, seeking to industrialise and to realise the human and material potential within its borders. Historically, Egypt has been the site of splendid and powerful empires, but it also came under the sway of European imperialism and won its full independence relatively recently. It has experienced the seizure of power by military officers, the establishment of an authoritarian regime and the foundering of that regime in military defeat and financial insolvency. Furthermore, it has played an active and, at times, decisive role in the politics of the region, causing some, not least its political leaders, to see Egypt as the model for its neighbours. However, despite these apparent similarities, it would be a mistake to believe that other states can necessarily follow where Egypt leads, or that they should see their future reflected in its present condition. The long and relatively stable history of the peoples inhabiting the valley of the Nile north of Aswan has laid moral foundations for the unitary state which are not easily found elsewhere in the region. Regardless of whether or not Egypt was regarded officially as the province of a larger empire, political life has centred unmistakably on Cairo for hundreds of years. If the weight of historical experience transforms quantity into quality, so too does the very size of Egyptian society and the scale of its viii

Foreword

ix

activities, whether these be cultural or political. More is written, discussed, broadcast and talked about by more people in Egypt than in any other country of the Arab world. The authoritarian impulse has been frequently in evidence and has perhaps been a predictable response to the challenge of social control posed by the very scale of Egyptian society. Nevertheless, it has been unsuccessful at imposing the uniformity so beloved of authoritarian leaders. On the contrary, as the possibilities of education, self-expression and self-determination have grown for increasing numbers of Egyptians during the past century, so too have the visions, views, opinions and prescriptions offered by them for the plurality of interests which exist in Egyptian society. Some of these might seem to threaten to redefine the identity of the national community, agreement on the fundamentals of which is so marked a feature of contemporary Egyptian politics. However, few would take their proposals to such extremes. This has sometimes given governments which claim to speak for the ‘national interest’ an easily abused licence to operate with relative impunity. At the same time, it has set students of Egyptian history and politics a series of problems, since it challenges them to understand where the limits not simply of the permissible, but also of the imaginable lie. The answers to the questions raised by such problems are likely to be found in the connected histories of the formation of the Egyptian state, of the development of the political discourses which have characterised and shaped the dispensation of power in Egypt, as well as in the current direction of trends in both the polity and the economy. It is to be hoped that the essays gathered here will shed some light on these processes, or at least on those aspects of the processes which lie within the view of each author. Seeking to understand the politics and society of contemporary Egypt is a task and an interest which all the contributors to this book have in common. Whether as servants of the Egyptian state, teachers at Egypt’s universities, writers for the Egyptian press or students of Egyptian society, we have been concerned to apprehend the ways in which Egyptians have encountered and dealt with the challenges of the past century. Their struggles have contributed to the making of contemporary Egypt and form the basis for the studies collected here. However, these essays also serve another purpose and indicate yet another interest which the authors have in common, since they

x

Foreword

are intended, collectively and individually, to honour Professor P.J.Vatikiotis. For some of us he has been a friend and colleague, for others a friend and teacher. For all of us, he has been an inspiration and guide in the study of contemporary Egypt. His own work on Egyptian history and politics has been a source of ideas, questions and observations which have affected the ways in which all of us have looked at Egypt. Whether from his published writings or from the countless debates and discussions in which we must have engaged with him, we have derived the stimulus needed to pursue lines of enquiry hitherto neglected. It gives all of us great pleasure, therefore, to offer this book to him, in the hope not simply that he will accept it as a gesture from some of his friends, but also that it may, indirectly, transmit some of his inspiration to those who have yet to come to the study of that unique and curious country, Egypt.

C.T. London

Acknowledgements

The idea for this book originated in discussions among former fellow students of Professor Vatikiotis in Cairo in 1989. Between that time and the book’s final appearance, many have helped in the process of its production, not least the contributors of the essays themselves. However, as editor, I would like to acknowledge with particular thanks the assistance of David Croom, whose enthusiastic support for the project has been instrumental in ensuring its publication. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Alaa al-Din Al-Hadidy and Sonia Dabous who helped to co-ordinate the project in Cairo, thereby sparing me many of the problems involved in trying to put together in England a book largely written in Egypt. Finally, my thanks go to Janet Marks and to Nalini Vittal who played the vital role of transforming the various manuscripts into a more easily edited form.

xi

Chapter 1

The political press in Egypt, 1882–1914 Abbas Kelidar

The rapid growth of the native press in the 1870s marked it for a major role in the evolution and development of Egypt’s political consciousness. It featured so prominently in the events leading to the Urab revolt that a Press Law was passed to regulate its activities in 1881. The defeat of Urabi by British forces brought about a lull which only lasted a few years. By the turn of the century, the press had not only resumed its former role, but had become a legitimate platform for the expression of public opposition to the British occupation of Egypt. Although its tone was as strident as that of the Urabist press, it did not receive the attention of the authorities until 1903. In his annual report for that year, Lord Cromer, who, in his capacity as British Consul-General in Cairo, had become the virtual ruler of Egypt following the British occupation in 1882, insisted that there was no such phenomenon as a ‘press question’.1 This assertion was valid only for the first seven years which followed the entry of British troops into Cairo. Between 1882 and 1889 there was hardly a native newspaper to speak of. This was perhaps scarcely surprising, since the British occupation had led to the imprisonment or deportation of many of the journalists who had played a leading part in mobilising public opinion during the events which had led to the deposition of Khedive Ismail in 1879 and to the Urabi revolt two years later. However, prior to the occupation, the concern expressed and the measures taken to deal with the activities of the press showed that there was not only a press question, but that it had made a significant impact on politics and the conduct of public affairs. In the absence of legitimate institutions through which the Egyptians could participate in the government of their country, political activity was conducted through the press. Newspapers 1

2

Abbas Kelidar

became a substitute for political parties and thus acted as the main vehicles for the expression of views and opinions on matters of national importance. The press also served as a legal means for the propagation of anti-British nationalist sentiment. As such, it made an important contribution to the radicalisation of political trends in Egypt. The general agitation generated by newspaper articles made life extremely difficult for the British occupation authorities. Egyptian editors and publicists of diverse political opinions and outlooks employed the medium of the press to such an effect that this period in the development of Egyptian nationalism was aptly described as the ‘journalistic phase’.2 Egyptian journalism was not the exclusive preserve of the nationalists. There were a few leading newspapers which owed their allegiance to other parties with direct interest in Egyptian affairs. Some of the press was backed and financed by foreign powers like Great Britain, France, and the Ottoman state; others were supported by the Khedive of Egypt and/or rival political groups. Each was to promote its own respective interest or those of its patrons. By 1903, the Egyptian press had several decades of growth and development behind it. The modern press, like so many other aspects of European culture, had originally come to Egypt with the French expedition led by Napoleon in 1798. The expedition was accompanied by two printing presses. One of these was equipped with Greek, Arabic and French characters.3 In Arabic, only official proclamations, notices and communiqués were printed. However, following the murder of General Kléber in 1800, the first Arabic newspaper, Al-Tanbih was founded by General Menou, who appointed Ismail al-Khashab as its first editor. There is some doubt as to whether the paper was ever published, but it seems certain that its appearance was short-lived.4 Some thirty years later, Muhammad Ali, by then the absolute ruler of Egypt, ordered the publication of an official newspaper in 1828 which became known as Al-Waqa’ial-Misriyya.5 Al-Waqa’i was followed by several papers sponsored by various government departments, such as the Military Gazette in 1833, and the Commerce and Agriculture Journal in 1848.6 It was this period which Al-Hilal, in an historical review, called the first stage in the development of the Egyptian press.7 The main feature of the press at this stage was its official character. It contained various administrative, economic and judicial items of information. This

The political press in Egypt, 1882–1914

3

type of journalism continued to dominate the press in Egypt until the accession of Khedive Ismail in 1863. Under the rule of Khedive Ismail, the Egyptian press underwent a major transformation. It became overtly politicised, giving expression to a ferment of new ideas in a style of Arabic prose which marked the introduction of modern journalism. The main preoccupations of writers and editors were political matters related to the movement of Islamic reform, the westernisation of Egyptian society and politics, as well as the question of Egyptian independence. Ismail’s headlong drive for the modernisation of Egyptian culture, accompanied by the desire for the assertion of his independence from both the Ottoman state and his European creditors, namely Great Britain and France, provided fresh impetus for the growth and development of the press. The modernising Khedive employed the press to serve his interests and purposes, not only in Egypt, but also in Turkey and Europe.8 The Khedive’s political mouthpiece was a publication named Wadi al-Nil, edited by Abdullah Abu al-Sa’ud, whose main task was to promote Ismail’s interests.9 Ismail encouraged, financed and protected newspaper editors, journalists and writers from all parts of the Islamic world. The immigration into Egypt of prominent men of letters from the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, especially from Syria, had a stimulating influence on the native press of Egypt. These men, mainly Christians who had been educated at the Protestant missionary schools in Beirut, were much more receptive to European notions and norms than their Muslim counterparts. They settled in Egypt to practise their profession away from the restrictions and censorship of the Ottoman authorities. The presence of Muslim writers like Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi and Rashid Rida, as well as the arrival in Cairo of Jamal al-Din alAfghani in 1871, served to reinforce the ranks of those engaged in a nascent publishing industry of some repute and standing in the Muslim world. A further stimulus to the emergence of a political press was provided by the apparent success of the Ottoman constitutional movement in the 1870s. All these factors helped the rapid development of political journalism in Egypt, and some of the most important Muslim and Arab publicists made their best contribution to the changing nature of Muslim politics in this period. By the end of Ismail’s reign in 1870 there were sixteen wellpresented journals in Egypt, ten of which were in Arabic.10

4

Abbas Kelidar

The policies of Khedive Ismail imposed an impossible financial burden on Egypt, and the extravagance in which he indulged caused his rule to grow weaker. It was not long before the European powers intervened to assume supervision of the country’s finances, under the dual control of Great Britain and France—a measure which served to curb the Khedive’s autocratic excesses.11 An immediate reaction to this was the emergence of a bolder political press. Some journalists began to criticise Ismail, demanding the introduction of constitutional rule to Egypt.12 Journalists like Abu Nazzara, the Egyptian Jewish publicist James (Ya’qub) Sanu’a, and the editors of Al-Ahram, the Syrian Taqla brothers, who started their pro-French publication in 1875, led the campaign against the autocracy and the financial policies of Ismail.13 In the meantime, journals like the weekly Jaridat Misr, founded and edited by the Syrians Salim al-Naqqash and Adib Ishaq, respectively, continued to defend Egyptian interests and to oppose European control. Following the imposition of Anglo-French financial control in 1876, Egypt became virtually a European colony. Under Ismail the country experienced rapid and radical change. The spread of activist political ideas was accelerated by the deposition of Ismail in 1879. The willingness of his successor, Khedive Tawfiq, to cooperate with the European Control Commission brought down upon his head the wrath of the nationalist press which characterised his reign. This was particularly noticeable in the segment of it which was influenced by the religious reform movement of al-Afghani and his Egyptian disciple, Muhammad Abduh.14 Newspapers which had enjoyed some licence during the last days of Ismail’s rule basked in almost unlimited freedom under Tawfiq.15 This was made possible by the liberalising attitude of the European powers under whose tutelage Tawfiq came to administer the country. Journalists took full advantage of the new conditions to criticise the regime, and to demand the introduction of constitutional reform and representative government.16 The emergence of the military officer, Ahmad Urabi, as a nationalist leader at the beginning of the 1880s, was accompanied by the appearance of several newspapers representing the views of the nationalist movement and its National Party.17 Foremost among these publications, which included Misr al-Fatat, Al-Mufid, Al-Mahrusa and Al-Burhan, was Al-Ta’if, edited by the orator of the Urabi revolt, Abdullah al-Nadim. All these newspapers condemned the Khedive, called on the Egyptians to rally to the support of Urabi,

The political press in Egypt, 1882–1914

5

and demanded Ottoman intervention to save the Muslims of Egypt from European domination. Press attacks became so violent and the appeals so emotive that the government was forced to issue the Press Law of 1881, to curb and regulate the press. The Law empowered the government to suspend or suppress any publication in the interest of public order, or of religious and social propriety.18 The Law of 1881 was soon overtaken by political events in the country. The vociferously violent campaign against European control of Egyptian affairs came to an end with the defeat of the Urabi revolt in 1882. The rout of the Urabists by British military forces gave Great Britain exclusive control over Egypt and caused a lull in the activities of the press. Many of the revolutionary journalists were either gaoled, deported or went into hiding.19 However, the pause served a useful purpose. It enabled writers, publicists and journalists to take fresh stock of the situation as it developed and to reorient themselves accordingly. Previously, they had been concerned with the twin problems of Islamic conservatism on the one hand, and religious reform on the other. Henceforth they had to contend with aspects of the ‘Egyptian Question’, namely, the problem of foreign control and national independence. For many of them, the British occupation of Egypt became the most important issue in their lives. Focusing on it, almost to the exclusion of all other matters, gave rise to a renewed and vibrant national struggle for the independence of Egypt as an independent nation-state. In response to the requirements of changing circumstances, the Egyptian press began to develop new themes and to consider fresh prospects. In doing so, it became entangled with a constantly shifting political situation in Europe and the Middle East. Editors and publicists sought to exploit the rivalry and alliances among the European powers to Egypt’s advantage, and became divided accordingly until the outbreak of the First World War. Newspapers like Al-Zaman and Al-Muqattam supported Great Britain and defended British interests in Egypt and the Middle East. Others, like Al-Ahram and Al-Liwa, the latter for the first few years only, backed France and called for French intervention to contain total British domination of Egypt. While newspapers such as AlMu’ayyad and Al-’Alam (the latter a successor to Al-Liwa), invoked Ottoman sovereignty over Egypt and demanded effective Ottoman resistance to British designs in the region, as well as protection for

6

Abbas Kelidar

the people of Egypt. By 1907 when Al-Jarida appeared, its editor, Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, was able to confine the columns of his newspapers to the application of the European concept of the nation-state to Egypt. However, until the appearance of Al-Liwa in 1900, edited by the flamboyant Mustafa Kamil, and Al-Jarida by the more reflective al-Sayyid, the Egyptian press was dominated by Al-Ahram, Al-Muqattam and Al-Mu’ayyad.20 Al-Ahram was the oldest of these papers. It was started in Alexandria by Salim and his brother Bishara Taqla in 1875. The paper was pro-French and therefore anti-British, a function of Anglo-French rivalry in Egypt.21 Al-Ahram was also pro-Ottoman, due mainly to the editors’ deference to Egypt’s position in the Muslim world. The Taqla brothers were strong advocates of Ottoman independence and unity, an endeavour for which they were remunerated and honoured by the Ottoman sultans.22 Opposed to Al-Ahram was Al-Muqattam whose editors, like those of Al-Ahram, were Syrian Christians, namely Faris Nimr and Ya’qub Sarruf. They had established themselves in the world of journalism earlier with their periodical Al-Muqtataf which they published in Beirut. Nimr and Sarruf, like so many of their compatriots, found Turkish censorship too restrictive and moved to Egypt where, with the co-operation of Shahin Makariyus, they founded Al-Muqattam in 1888. The paper was sympathetic to Great Britain and supported the British occupation of Egypt. It defended British interests and sought to discredit the Egyptian nationalists as bigoted demagogues. Al-Muqattam was regarded as the Arabic version of the Egyptian Gazette, a journal published in English and generally considered the mouthpiece of the British Agency in Cairo.23 Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that Al-Muqattam was financed by the Agency.24 The editors were staunch advocates of Ottoman constitutional reform and outspoken critics of the Turkish Sultan— so much so, that the latter made numerous representations to the Egyptian authorities in a series of vain attempts to have the paper suppressed.25 Less than a year after the launch of Al-Muqattam, a group of Egyptian political leaders, incensed by its campaign in favour of the occupation, started the publication of a newspaper intended to promote and defend the national interests of Egypt. In 1889, Shaykh Ali Yusuf, a journalist and an Islamic nationalist, was asked to become the editor of Al-Mu’ayyad. Both the editor and his paper had a colourful and reputable career in journalism and politics.26

The political press in Egypt, 1882–1914

7

The primary motivation of the publication was to challenge both Al-Muqattam and Al-Ahram, and its purpose was the promotion of nationalist sentiment and Islamic values. It was the first newspaper of its kind since the suppression of the Urabi revolt in 1882. Lord Cromer described Al-Mu’ayyad in the following terms: ‘It poses as the distinct organ of Egyptian Mohammedan opinion in contradiction alike to el-Ahram and el-Makattam which are both edited by Syrians and advocate, the former French, and the latter English policy’.27 Although Al-Mu’ayyad had a difficult and trying beginning, it soon found in the new Khedive, Abbas Hilmi II, a powerful patron and supporter. Unlike his father Tawfiq, Abbas Hilmi felt antagonistic toward Great Britain, and particularly toward Lord Cromer whom he regarded as the usurper of Khedivial authority. He adopted the nationalist cause and came to lead the opposition to Cromer’s dominant position in the administration of Egypt. The young Khedive was eager to assert his right as the legitimate ruler against the holder of effective power and control. Consequently, Al-Mu’ayyad and its editor became Abbas’s instrument in marshalling public sentiment against Cromer and the occupation. Ali Yusuf was joined by the Urabist firebrand, Abdullah al-Nadim, whose paper Al-Ustadh, joined Al-Mu’ayyad in a vituperative press campaign, exhorting their readers to intensify the struggle for the evacuation of British military forces from Egypt.28 The paper of Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi, Misbah al-Sharq, lent its support to the Khedive’s cause, as did the young nationalist leader, Mustafa Kamil, in his frequent contributions to Al-Ahram, before the start of his own newspaper, Al-Liwa in 1900.29 The release of imprisoned journalists, and the return of those who had been deported for their involvement in the Urabist movement, reinforced the ranks of anti-British writers and publicists. Their re-engagement sharpened the intensity and the violence of polemics employed by the press against Great Britain and Cromer. The attacks became extreme and indiscriminate. Condemnation of Cromer led to articles abusing the Queen of England, for which two papers, Al-Waqt and Al-Munir, were suppressed under the provisions of the 1881 Press Law.30 The invocation of the law did not prevent the division of the press into Muslim and Christian camps. Syrian Christian and Egyptian Coptic editors began to take exception to articles by Muslim journalists

8

Abbas Kelidar

who were inclined to denigrate all Christians when they sought to abuse and condemn the editor of Al-Muqattam. The language of the press deteriorated to such an extent that the sober and staid Al-Hilal was prompted to editorialise on the ethics of journalism. The articles pleaded with journalists to refrain from making personal attacks either on each other, or on prominent personalities in Egyptian society and politics. It advised editors to abandon ‘futile and bygone argument about religions’. 31 Nevertheless, the vilifications continued and the political press became divided between the so-called ‘nationalist’ and the ‘occupationist’ newspapers, a split that roughly corresponded to the Muslim-Christian divide in their attitudes. The main protagonists were Al-Mu’ayyad and Al-Muqattam. In many ways the accession of Khedive Abbas Hilmi in 1892 marked a turning-point, not only in the development of the political press, but also in the revival of Egyptian nationalist sentiment. At the core of this revival was the slogan ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’. Abbas, like his grandfather Ismail, employed the press to rally support to his cause against foreign European domination. He protected, encouraged and financed many journalists who emerged to lead the anti-British nationalist campaign. Prominent amongst these were Ali Yusuf, Abdullah al-Nadim, and Mustafa Kamil.32 The fulminations of the press against the occupation were made possible by Cromer’s reluctance to have the freedom of expression curtailed by official measures. Cromer was no libertarian. The reason for his attitude lay in the complexity of inter-European relations under the Capitulation Powers. Faced with the difficulty of obtaining the Powers’ concurrence for such measures, he preferred to extend to the Egyptian press a certain degree of free expression.33 Moreover, the British Consul-General felt that overt reliance on the British military presence served as a sufficient deterrence against nationalist agitation. As such, his aim was not simply to afford the nationalists a medium through which they could disseminate their views, but also to protect pro-British papers like Al-Muqattam which both the Khedive and the Sultan, as well as the nationalists, wanted suppressed. To restrict the native press alone would have served no useful purpose, since most editors were able to claim protection from Egyptian law under the Capitulations. Indeed, some native editors like Lutfi al-Sayyid contemplated the acquisition of the status of a foreign

The political press in Egypt, 1882–1914

9

national to escape the application of Egyptian law to his newspaper.34 Unrestricted press freedom had a negative impact on Egyptian society. Egyptian notables, sensitive to any criticism, were subjected to an intense wave of personal abuse and vilification by a few unscrupulous journalists in what could only be described as the gutter press. Furthermore, the press of the early 1900s manifested aspects of corruption, such as blackmail and extortion.35 Contrary to Cromer’s belief, the presence of the British military garrison did not deter editors from heaping abuse and insults on respected dignitaries in Egyptian public life. No one was immune. The bestknown victim of such degradation was none other than the Mufti of Egypt, the redoubtable Muhammad Abduh. He was appointed to his venerable post in 1899, much to the resentment of the Khedive, but with the approval of Cromer, in the wake of one of their many confrontations.36 The slighted Khedive, who had several newspapers under his control, resolved on retaliation. He seized upon the ‘Transvaal Fatwa’ issued by Abduh, in an attempt to discredit the Mufti.37 A merciless press campaign was mounted against the Mufti, with the intention of forcing him to resign his position. Abduh was depicted as unfit for the high office he occupied, and the Fatwa was declared contrary to the shari’a. The newspapers Al-Zahir, edited by Abu Shadi, and Misbah al-Sharq of al-Muwaylihi, as well as a little-known publication, Al-Hammara, wrote bitterly of Abduh’s irreligiosity, and accused him of currying favour with Cromer.38 This type of journalism did not pass unnoticed or unchallenged. It provoked almost universal revulsion and indignation among the Egyptian public. Attacks on Britain and the representative of its authority in Egypt were appreciated, but to do the same to the holder of the foremost religious office in the country could not be easily countenanced. The matter was brought before the Egyptian General Assembly in 1902, where a resolution was adopted calling on the government to seek the agreement of the Capitulation Powers for the introduction of appropriate measures to deal with a deteriorating situation. 39 In 1904 the Legislative Council considered the question of the press, and demanded action to rein in flagrant violations of public decency. Cromer, however, remained adamant in refusing to sanction such action, despite his admission that the existing regulations were lacking with regard to libel,

10

Abbas Kelidar

slander and extortion. His considered view was that amendment of the existing Penal Code to cover the press would be the preferred course of action.40 Cromer continued to ignore nationalist agitation against the British, as well as the press campaign of public derogation of Egyptian officials, instigated and supported by the Khedive. The British Consul-General managed to rebuff and humiliate Abbas’s assertions of Khedivial authority. The Khedive received little assistance from either the Ottoman Sultan or France in checking Great Britain’s dominance in Egypt, and the conclusion of the Entente Cordiale in 1904 closed a chapter of Anglo-French rivalry in the region. Abbas had pinned his hopes on the Ottoman and French intervention to free Egypt from the clutches of British control. The disappointment of Egyptians at the turn of events marked a watershed in the development and intensification of the nationalist struggle led by Mustafa Kamil until his death in 1908. However, it took the furore that followed the Denshway incident in 1906 finally to persuade Cromer to recommend measures to curb the nationalist campaign in the press. Less than a year later, he thought it wise to have the freedom of the press curtailed, but proceeded to call for the reinforcement of the British garrison in Egypt. He wanted to indicate to the Egyptians that neither would British policy be influenced nor the occupation disturbed by a passing wave of public disenchantment. Cromer offered the press a resounding piece of advice: ‘If they wish to be taken seriously and to obtain the ear of any but those who are wholly ignorant of Egyptian affairs, they will do well to base their conclusion on real instead of on purely imaginary facts.’41 The press reacted violently, accusing Cromer of intimidation and demanding his dismissal. The trial and sentences imposed on Egyptian peasants allegedly responsible for the attack on a British hunting party at Denshway, followed by a gruesome public exhibition of legally sanctioned violence, outraged liberal opinion in Great Britain, Europe and the Muslim world. Under pressure both in Egypt and in Great Britain, Cromer decided to go. His resignation was hailed as a sensational triumph for the nationalists and their press, represented by Al-Mu’ayyad and Al-Liwa, to be joined later by Al-Jarida. While Al-Mu’ayyad concentrated on the Islamic credentials of Khedivial authority bestowed by the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph, Al-Liwa emphasised the question of independence. For its part, Al-Jarida maintained that nothing short of the

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11

introduction of representative government was likely to resolve the problem of Egypt’s relations with Great Britain. Lutfi al-Sayyid sought to steer a middle course between the radical nationalist tendency of Mustafa Kamil and the distinct Islamic inclination of Ali Yusuf. Eldon Gorst, Cromer’s successor in Egypt, soon found out that neither the reinforcement of the British garrison nor his policy of reconciliation was sufficient to check the vehement language of the press. In his second report to London he referred to the increased virulence of a certain section of the vernacular press. He graphically described a main feature of the press as the publication of false news, as well as the publication of misleading comments on the actions and motives of the Egyptian government and its leading officials. The press, noted Gorst, was making the administration of the country very difficult and added, ‘Many of the articles published in these newspapers are calculated to arouse the passion of the mass of people who are far too ignorant to appreciate the absurdities and falsehood of the diatribes which are out daily in the villages.’42 The repercussions of the press campaign on Egyptian public life were extremely wide-ranging. Gorst found that respectable members of the Egyptian middle classes, who would normally support the policy of gradual administrative reform, were being terrorised into outward political hostility by the abuse showered upon any who did not oppose the Anglo-Egyptian administration totally. He also observed that Egyptian officials found it extremely difficult to carry out their duties conscientiously because of the intimidation to which they were exposed. The Consul-General became particularly concerned at the way the press undermined respect for traditional authority. He wrote, ‘The Oriental is, indeed, far more sensitive to press criticism than is realized in the West, and a personal attack by the newspapers may often cause social life to be intolerable. The lower-class journals indulge in scurrilous abuse of the highest dignitaries in the country, both in their public and private lives, which apart from the annoyance it causes, must tend to undermine all respect for authority’.43 The Young Turk revolution of 1908 afforded the Egyptian nationalists a fresh incentive to press their own demand for constitutional government and independence from Britain. AlAhram which had been a critic of Abdul Hamid’s rule, joined the ranks of the nationalist press. Only Al-Muqattam refrained from

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joining the fray; it continued to defend and promote British interests in Egypt. However, it was Shaikh Abd al-Aziz al-Jawish who conducted the most virulent and abusive campaign against the occupation, its clients and collaborators. He singled out the Coptic Prime Minister, Boutros Ghali, for extremely intemperate and seditious defamation. In an article entitled, ‘Islam: a Stranger in Its Own House (al-Islam gharib fi darihi)’, he maligned the Copts and denigrated their religion. In an obvious appeal to traditional religious sentiment, al-Jawish pronounced the Coptic Christian leader unfit to be Prime Minister of Egypt and called for his resignation.44 The articles of al-Jawish engendered a wave of religious prejudice and bigotry. They enraged the Coptic community and precipitated answers in kind from their newspapers. The two journals, Al-Watan and Misr, led the way. They cast aspersions on Islamic religious practices, and made similar charges against Muslim leaders. Referring to this dimension of the press, Gorst noted the frequent appeals calculated to stir up religious fanaticism either between native Christians and Muslims, or between Egyptians and Europeans. He deplored this feature of the press, and thought it to be particularly dangerous in a country like Egypt. Nevertheless, the government felt helpless to influence the situation because of the inadequacy of the Penal Code to deal with press offences.45 The campaign of religious demonstrations continued to escalate. It was aggravated by the proposal to extend the concession of the Suez Canal Company, seen as a manifestation of European domination. The move heightened nationalist and Muslim opposition to the Ghali government. The press went wild in its denunciations, and, in February 1910, Boutros Ghali was assassinated by a member of al-Jawish’s National Party. Ghali was a victim of inter-communal incitement, generated by the press, and aggravated by constant appeals to religious fanaticism. Gorst’s attempts to control the situation were to no avail. He had already recommended to the Egyptian government two years earlier the revival of the defunct Press Law of 1881. The Law empowered the authorities to suspend or suppress, in the interest of public order, any journal for seditious incitement. It also demanded the registration of all publications and granted the government powers to impose fines on printing presses or close them down for the violation of these regulations.46 The ConsulGeneral, however, was aware of the inadequacy of the legal

The political press in Egypt, 1882–1914

13

provisions to deal with press offences, but preferred them to court prosecutions since the latter tended to create public agitation. He was careful that legitimate criticism of the administration by ‘the high-class Arabic and European press’ should not be curtailed. Gorst also thought that he could obtain the consent of the Capitulation Powers to these measures, which he hoped would restrain offending editors.47 Although the 1881 Law was not applied with great severity, its revival caused an uproar in nationalist circles. Scores of articles were published demanding its abolition. The warnings issued to newspapers under the provisions of the Law were not sufficient to check the mounting campaign against the occupation. Gorst noted that the warnings did not prevent ‘extreme nationalist journals from continuing to pour odium and contempt on the authorities’. He blamed the Egyptian ministers, against whom the press diatribes were directed, for refraining from utilising the regulations available to them. He was critical of their attitude which was to look upon ‘unfounded and libellous accusations with silent contempt’. Gorst did not think such a disposition served the purpose, as the murder of Boutros Ghali was to indicate.48 Gorst died in 1911. He was succeeded by Lord Kitchener at a time when the political climate in Europe and in Egypt was changing rapidly. As war loomed large in Europe and the Middle East, an important phase in the development of the Egyptian press was closed. The press had acquired an influential position, not only as the purveyor of news and views, but also in moulding and manipulating public opinion. It was able to boast a considerable degree of sophistication and a reasonably wide readership, estimated to stand at about 100,000, in a population of ten million. In 1909 there were 144 journals in Egypt, published in several languages. Eighty-four of these publications were purely political, and more than half of them were in European languages.49 A survey conducted by Al-Muqattam of their own subscribers showed that 51 per cent were property owners, 23 per cent civil servants, 10 per cent merchants, 10 per cent ulama, 4 per cent lawyers, and 2 per cent judges.50 A number of conclusions may be drawn from these figures. The most remarkable feature is the low percentage of judges and lawyers among the subscribers. The explanation for this lies in the fact that this segment of Egyptian society was the most active in the anti-British nationalist movement. Its contribution to the nationalist press was immense. It was among

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this group that Egyptian nationalism found its ideologues, publicists and spokesmen. They would not have subscribed to a newspaper regarded as the mouthpiece of the British Agency in Cairo.51 The high figures of Al-Muqattam’s subscribers among the landed gentry and the civil servants could also be explained with reference to the custom acquired in the days of Muhammad Ali and his immediate successors, when subscription to the official journal was regarded obligatory as a mark of loyalty to the ruler. The custom persisted, particularly since private newspapers could not be distributed throughout the country without the assistance of government officials.52 Besides, it was not only those who were literate or politically aware who subscribed to these papers. J.E. Marshall made the following observation: ‘I remember one Omda, or village headman, who was quite illiterate and subscribed to no less than six, for fear it should be said that he could not read’.53 Journalism in Egypt was a poor man’s profession in this period. Its practitioners were extremely fickle. Journalists were liable to change their views and switch their allegiances. They were prepared to offer their services for financial remuneration or other rewards, such as an official appointment in the civil service.54 Several newspapers were regarded as vehicles for hire to the highest bidder. They served the purpose of furthering the interest of the contending parties in Egypt, represented by the Khedive, the Ottoman Sultan, the British and the French.55 As early as 1890 Chamberlain asked Cromer whether the native press of Egypt was subsidised, adding, ‘It appears to me it would be most politic, and well worth a little money’.56 There was at least one journalist who complained that the £100 paid to him by the India Office was not sufficient recompense for his services.57 It was only with the publication of Al-Jarida that journalists were paid regular salaries as professional writers and reporters. It was a novelty when Lutfi al-Sayyid, its editor, advertised the posts available at his paper, stating the rate of payment and conditions of employment.58 Although it did not become common practice, this innovation led to an improvement in the standard and quality of news reporting and the production of newspapers. The political press of Egypt in the period between 1882 and 1914 not only mirrored in its reporting the political conditions and events in the country, but also provided a school where political and literary aspirants could be initiated into the art of public debate.

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Different political notions were taken up, discussed, supported and opposed, advocated and rejected, praised and condemned, and finally compromised over and adapted by a multiplicity of political groups and their publicists. The press in Egypt represented a range of views, opinions and trends. Until 1882 the prevalent political theme was the question of Islamic reform and Muslim solidarity propagated by al-Afghani and his Egyptian disciples. Although these matters continued to be a subject of concern, they were gradually overshadowed by the more immediate problems of domestic politics and the requirements of dealing with the more tangible questions of British political domination and its military presence in Egypt. As it dawned on most Egyptians that they would not be able to drive the British out of their country by their own efforts alone, they sought the manipulation of the power politics inherent in the rivalry among the European states and the Ottoman Empire. While Mustafa Kamil, and Al-Liwa, looked to France to check British influence in Egypt, traditional opinion viewed the Ottoman state—the principal Muslim power—as the state whose assistance and support in the resolution of the Egyptian predicament should be sought and enlisted. This was regarded as particularly appropriate since the Ottoman state still enjoyed suzerainty over Egypt and its rulers. It was for this reason that Muslim conservatives like Ali Yusuf of Al-Mu’ayyad invoked Ottoman sovereignty over Egypt, and solicited the intervention of the Ottoman Sultan to save Egypt for Islam and the Muslims everywhere. Yusuf, who combined editorial ability with astute, if at times not too scrupulous management, sought to win for Al-Mu’ayyad the position of the leading Muslimoriented newspaper in the Arabic-speaking world. He proclaimed and defended the interests of Muslim unity from India to North Africa. His paper provided the only platform for nationalist writers until the appearance of Al-Liwa in 1900, when it assumed a more pronounced pan-Islamic stance. Al-Mu’ayyad appealed largely to conservative Muslim orthodox sentiment and, in the view of its opponents, was not above stirring up religious bigotry.59 Although he was a close friend of Muhammad Abduh, Yusuf showed scant interest in the concepts of a reformed Islam as preached by alAfghani’s disciple. Both Abduh and Rashid Rida contributed to Al-Mu’ayyad, with the latter describing it as ‘the meeting place for the thoughts of all Muslims and the echo of their conscience’.60

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Mustafa Kamil and his newspaper epitomised the nationalist trend in Egyptian politics. He started his career as a protégé of Khedive Abbas, and was tireless in his efforts to mount a forceful challenge to the British position in Egypt, looking initially to France and then to the Ottoman state. His primary concern was to free Egypt from the shackles of British domination, hence the alliance with the Khedive. However, he became increasingly ambivalent on the utility of pan-Islamism, to the extent of being willing to compromise the territorial integrity of Egypt as an independent nation-state. This was clearly indicated in the territorial dispute over the Taba district which was claimed by the Ottoman Sultan in 1906, and defended by Cromer as an integral part of Egypt. Kamil joined Ali Yusuf in supporting the Ottoman claim, not only to Taba, but to the whole of Egypt.61 Kamil himself saw no contradiction between the affirmation of Ottoman sovereignty over Egypt and his primordial slogan of ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’. His call for an independent Egypt was directed more pointedly against the British and their Egyptian supporters who advocated the policy of gradual reform. Al-Jarida stood neither for pan-Islamism nor for continued British involvement in Egyptian affairs. Lutfi al-Sayyid, its editor, set his sights on Egypt as a separate and independent nation-state in the accepted European mould. He advocated the promotion of territorial nationalism focused on the land of Egypt, based on the strength of the common elements which bound all Egyptians together, irrespective of their religion or ethnicity. Unlike Kamil, al-Sayyid did not stigmatise the Syrian Christians active in public life as ‘intruders’ (dukhala’), but called upon them to express their loyalty, first and foremost to Egypt as their motherland. He criticised Egyptians who defined their national identity in other than purely Egyptian terms, and he rejected the pan-Islamist contention that Egypt was the home of every Muslim who decided to settle there as an ‘imperialist notion’. He accused the panIslamists of undermining Egyptian nationality. ‘We are told’, he wrote in Al-Jarida, ‘that Egypt is not the home of the Egyptians only, but of every Muslim who makes it his residence, whether he is Ottoman, French, English, Chinese or Japanese; thus there would be no Egyptian nationality and no Egyptian independence since Egypt would belong to the Muslims of the world.’62 The clusters of editors, writers, contributors and reporters associated with each newspaper were eventually to take on the

The political press in Egypt, 1882–1914

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identities of political parties. Until 1907, when party politics became organised, following the departure of Cromer from Egypt, the newspapers served as a worthy substitute. They performed all the functions of parties in the representation of a particular socioeconomic interest, the formulation of a political stance and the proposing of different courses of political action. Their transformation into political parties followed a move by the Al-Jarida group to become the People’s Party (Hizb al-Umma). The group supported by Saad Zaghlul had shifted from its original position of advocating a gradualist, almost evolutionary approach to selfgovernment under British guidance, to a disposition as extreme in its denunciation of British tutelage as that of the most radical nationalist. Its ideological stance served as a precursor for the Wafdist movement led by Zaghlul at the end of the First World War. Al-Liwa, long regarded as the official mouthpiece of nationalist politics, became the acknowledged organ of the National Party (al-Hizb al-Watani), under the leadership of Mustafa Kamil. Although both the party and the paper survived the early death of Kamil in 1908, neither could maintain the political vigour with which the founder had endowed them. The party became moribund until after the end of war, while the newspaper was taken over by Abd al-Aziz al-Jawish who gave it a completely different orientation. Nonetheless, the essence of Kamil’s political ideology based on the slogan ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’, and coupled with that of ‘Complete Independence’, continued to be the central theme in the political programme of the revived National Party under the leadership of Muhammad Farid. Shaikh Ali Yusuf, for his part, organised the Al-Mu’ayyad group into the Constitutional Reform Party (Hizb al-Islah ’ala al-Mabadi al-Dusturiyya). Although it was regarded as the Khedive’s party, there was little doubt of its pan-Islamic orientation and sympathies. The party and its official organ continued to promote Islamic solidarity and to support the Khedive’s assertion of his authority to rule Egypt against British dominance, although its expression of anti-British sentiment became somewhat muted. Neither AlMu’ayyad, nor the party which it had precipitated, survived the war. However, the political trend articulated by Al-Mu’ayyad has continued to be a significant feature of Egyptian politics. The outbreak of the First World War marked the end of an era in which the political press dominated public affairs in Egypt. While the political trends represented by the press remained prevalent in

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Egyptian politics, only one newspaper survived the Egyptian revolution of 1952. Al-Mu’ayyad became colourless when Ali Yusuf left it to retire from public life in 1912. Al-Liwa lost its appeal to the urban educated groups after the death of its founder in 1908. Its successors, as official organs of the National Party, were Al-’Alam, edited by Abd al-Aziz al-Jawish, and Al-Sha’ab, edited by Amin alRafi’i. The former was discontinued in 1912, and the latter stopped publication in 1914. Al-Jarida also ceased to appear in 1914. Only Al-Ahram and Al-Muqattam continued publication. The latter, however, was discontinued in 1952, whereas the former is still in existence as the oldest Egyptian newspaper. NOTES 1 Egypt No. 1, 1904, Cd.1951, p. 31, Parliamentary Papers, vol. CXI. 2 George Young, Egypt (London, 1927), pp. 179–80; C.C.Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt (London, 1933), p. 220. 3 Ibrahim Abduh, Tarikh al-Tiba’a wa-al-Sahafa khilal al-Hamla al-Faransiyya 1798–1801 (Cairo, 1941), pp. 7–16. 4 ibid., pp. 97–107; and Philippe de Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sahafa al-’Arabiyya (Beirut, 1914), vol. 1, pp. 48–9; and Abid Muruwa, Al-Sahafa al-’Arabiyya (Beirut, 1961), p. 132. 5 Ibrahim Abduh, Tarikh al-Waqa’i al-Misriyya 1828–1942 (Cairo, 1946); and Martin Hartmann, The Arabic Press of Egypt (London, 1899). 6 Ibrahim Abduh, ‘Alam al-Sahafa al-’Arabiyya (Cairo, 1944), p. 11. 7 ‘Tarikh al-Nahda al-Sahafiyya’, Al-Hilal, vol. XVII, 1909–1910, pp. 483– 92. 8 Abduh, ’Alam, pp. 12–15. 9 P.J.Vatikiotis, The Modern History of Egypt (London, 1969), pp. 178–88; and Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (London, 1962). 10 J.M.Ahmed, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (London, 1960), p. 18; while Al-Hilal gives a number of more than 20, Al-Hilal vol. XVIII, 1909–1910, p. 48. 11 Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt (London, 1908), vol. 1, pp. 11–149. 12 Abd al-Rahman al-Rafi’i, ’Asr Ismail (Cairo, 1932), vol. 1, pp. 145–8. 13 Ibrahim Abduh, Abu Nazzara: Imam al-Sahafa al-Fuqahiyya al-Musawwara (Cairo, 1953), and his Al-Suhufi al-Tha’ir (Cairo, 1955); and Irene L. Gendzier, ‘James Sanua and Egyptian Nationalism’, Middle East Journal, vol. XV, 1961, pp. 16–28. The editor of Al-Ahram was spared imprisonment by Ismail through the intervention of France. Ibrahim Abduh, Jaridat al-Ahram: Tarikh Misr fi Khamsa wa Saba’in Sana (Cairo, 1951), pp. 116–18. 14 Abd al-Rahman Al-Rafi’i, Al-Thawra al-’Urabiyya wa al-Ihtilal al-Inglizi (Cairo, 1939), pp. 66–8. 15 ‘Hurriya al-Sahafa’, Al-Hilal, vol. XVI, 1907, pp. 31–4.

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16 al-Rafi’i, ’Asr Ismail, vol. 11, pp. 145–8. 17 Ibrahim Abduh, Tatawwur al-Sahafa al-Misriyya 1798–1951 (Cairo, 1951), pp. 103–30. 18 Text of the Law in Al-Hilal, vol. XVII, 1908, p. 415. 19 Muhammad Abduh was imprisoned and later deported; Adib Ishaq was deported; Abdullah al-Nadim went into hiding, was caught and deported. All these men were allowed to return to Egypt subsequently. 20 In addition to these papers, there were the Young Turk journals Mizan and Al-Qanun al-Asasi, as well as newspapers in Turkish, Greek and Italian. 21 Besides Al-Ahram, France supported a number of French newspapers that were published in Egypt. They tried to undermine the British position in Egypt. Cromer complained to the British Foreign Secretary about them in his letters, particularly Le Bosphore Egyptien and Le Journal Egyptien, as well as L’Echo d’Orient. Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office records (FO) FO 78/4513 Cromer to Rosebery, No. 17, Cairo, 20 June 1893; FO 78/4862 Cromer to Rosebery, No. 174, No. 1, Con., Cairo, 4 January 1897. 22 FO 78/4453 Cromer to Rosebery, No. 195, Cairo, 16 November 1892. On the position of Al-Ahram, see Abduh, Jaridat al-Ahram; and Helen A.Kitchen, ‘Al-Ahram, The Times of the Arab World’, Middle East Journal, vol. IV, 1950, pp. 155–69. 23 Hartmann, op. cit., p. 11. 24 ibid.; see also a letter from J.M.Robertson to Grey dated 18 July 1907, in which he described Al-Muqattam as ‘subsidized by the Agency’, FO 633/14, Cromer Papers. 25 In refusing the Sultan’s demands, the British government maintained that Egypt enjoyed administrative independence, and that that status gave him no right to interfere in its internal affairs. FO 78/4453 Cromer to Rosebery, No. 195, Cairo, 16 November 1892; and FO 78/5024 Rodd to Salisbury, No. 153, Con., Cairo, 15 August 1899. 26 For a detailed study of Ali Yusuf, his journalistic and political career, see Abbas Kelidar, ‘Shaykh Ali Yusuf: Political Journalist and Islamic Nationalist’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of London 1967; and my essay under the same title in Marwan R.Buheiry (ed.), Intellectual Life in the Arab East, 1890–1939 (Beirut, 1981), pp. 10–20. 27 FO 78/4513 Cromer to Rosebery, No. 24, Con., Cairo, 27 January 1893. 28 The violence of al-Nadim’s articles led to the suppression of the paper and the deportation of its editor once again. FO 78/4513 Cromer to Roseberry, No. 59, Con., Cairo, 15 February 1893; and M.A.Khalaf Allah, Abdullah al-Nadim wa Mudhakkiratuhu al-Siyasiyya (Cairo, 1956); and Ali al-Hadidi, Abdullah al-Nadim, Khatib al-Wataniyya (Cairo, 1962). 29 Abd al-Rahman al-Rafi’i, Mustafa Kamil (Cairo, 1962), p. 48. 30 FO 78/4763 Cromer to Salisbury, No. 119, Cairo, 12 September 1896. 31 Al-Hilal, vol. IV, 1895, pp. 9–17. 32 Valentine Chirol, The Egyptian Problem (London, 1920), pp. 91–2; and Young, op. cit., p. 179. 33 FO 78/5024 Rodd to Salisbury, No. 163, Secret, Cairo, 25 August 1899; and Egypt No. 1, 1904, Cd.1951, p. 31, Parliamentary Papers.

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34 At the suggestion of the Khedive, Lutfi al-Sayyid took up residence in Geneva in an attempt to acquire Swiss nationality so that his paper would not be subject to Egyptian laws. Ahmad Lutfi Al-Sayyid, Qissa Hayati (Cairo, n.d.), p. 36. 35 Egypt No. 1, 1906, Cd.2409, pp. 58–60, Parliamentary Papers, vol. CIII; and Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, Haya Qalam (Cairo, 1964), pp. 74–107. 36 Elie Kedourie, Afghani and Abduh (London, 1966), pp. 37–8. 37 In the Fatwa, Abduh answered in the affirmative questions regarding the permissibility for a Muslim living in a Christian country: (a) to wear a European-style headdress; (b) to eat meat slaughtered by Christians; and (c) for Muslims of different rites to pray together. Rashid Rida, Tarikh al-Ustadh al-Imam, vol. I (Cairo, 1931), pp. 681–9; and M.H.Kerr, Islamic Reform (Berkeley, 1966), pp. 145–6. 38 Rida, op. cit., pp. 668–9; and Ibrahim Abduh, Tatawwur al-Sahafa, pp. 169–70. 39 Text in Egypt No. 1, 1905, Cd.2409, p. 58, Parliamentary Papers, vol. CIII. 40 Egypt No. 1, 1907, Cd.3394, p. 6, Parliamentary Papers, vol. C. 41 Egypt No. 1, 1909, Cd.4580, p. 3, Parliamentary Papers, vol. CV. 42 ibid. 43 ibid. 44 Anwar al-Jundi, ’Abd al-’Aziz al-Jawish, (Cairo, 1965), pp. 90–101, and ‘The Newspaper Fight in Egypt’, Muslim World, vol. 1, 1911, pp. 216– 17. 45 Egypt No. 1, 1909, op. cit., pp. 3–5. 46 ibid. 47 Egypt No. 1, 1910, Cd.5121, p. 2, Parliamentary Papers, vol. CXII. 48 ibid. 49 Al-Hilal, vol. XVIII, 1909–1910, p. 489. 50 These figures were for Al-Muqattam and Al-Muqtataf-Al-Muqtataf, vol. XXVIII, 1903, pp. 666–8. 51 Young, op. cit., p. 179. 52 Al-Hilal, vol. XVI, 1907, pp. 31–4. 53 J.E.Marshall, The Egyptian Enigma 1890–1928 (London, 1928), p. 27. 54 In his semi-autobiography, al-Aqqad cites the corruption rampant among journalists as the reason why he hesitated to take up journalism as a profession. al-Aqqad, Haya Qalam, pp. 109–47. 55 Khedive Abbas supported a number of newspapers such as AlMu’ayyad and Al-Liwa; the British Al-Zaman and Al-Muqattam; while the Ottoman Sultan backed Al-Fallah, whose editor, Salim al-Hamawi, was paid £40 a month. FO.78/4453 Hardinge to Rosebery, No. 170, Secret, Ramleh, 8 October 1892. The Sultan also sent Hassan Husni to Egypt to start Al-Nil as a rival to Al-Mu’ayyad. Ilyas Zakhura, Mira’a al-’Asr fi Tarikh wa Rusum Akabir al-Rijal fi Misr (Cairo, 1897), p. 541. The French subsidised Al-Ahram and several other French journals. 56 FO 633/11, Cromer Papers, Chamberlain to Baring, 25 January 1890. 57 The journalist was Salim Faris, son of Ahmad Faris al-Shidiyaq—FO 663/5, Cromer Papers, Baring to Villiers, No. 208, Cairo, 3 January 1887, and to Pauncefote, No. 207, Cairo, 3 June 1887.

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58 Abd al-Latif Hamza, Adab al-Maqala al-Sahafiyya fi Misr, vol. VI, Cairo, 1961, p. 81. 59 C.C.Adams, op. cit., pp. 225–6. 60 Al-Manar, vol. I, 1898, p. 950. 61 Egypt No. 2, 1906, Cd.3006, Parliamentary Papers, vol. CXXXVII. 62 Al-Jarida, 1 September 1912, text in Hamza, op. cit., vol. VI, pp. 18–19; and Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, Al-Muntakhabat (Cairo, 1945), p. 170.

Chapter 2

Makram Ebeid: politician of the majority party Mustafa El-Feki

The effects of the 1919 revolution were noticeable in the relations between the Muslim majority and the Coptic minority. The latter played an active part in the national uprising, and the common struggle had welded the two communities together as never before. Saad Zaghlul, who was opposed to religious fanaticism, had much to do with this achievement. He made co-existence one of the golden rules of the Wafd (his first cabinet contained two Copts and one Jew), and a Copt, Wisa Wasif Pasha, succeeded him as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. Thanks to the revolution, the Wafd appeared to have solved the religious problem and to have achieved a measure of national unity.1 After Zaghlul’s death on 23 August 1927, Mustafa al-Nahhas was chosen by the Wafdist leaders to be his successor. For some days it seemed probable that the presidency of the Wafd would be left forever vacant, to be eternally occupied by some spiritual emanation of the lost leader. Alternatively, Madame Zaghlul might have been elected honorary president, the affairs of the party itself being managed by an executive committee of three, Fathallah Barakat Pasha, Mustafa al-Nahhas Pasha, and Wisa Wasif. Nahhas’s chances improved considerably, however, when it was known both that his candidacy was favoured by the extreme nationalist wing of the party and that personal relations between Madame Zaghlul and Fathallah Barakat were under some strain.2 The choice of Nahhas as President of the Wafd was followed by the appointment of Makram Ebeid in his place as Secretary-General of the party. The choice of Ebeid as Secretary-General was the result of several factors. However, it could be seen in part as a testimony to the strength of the trend of Zaghlul’s policy of including Copts with Muslims in the leadership of the national movement. The 22

Makram Ebeid: politician of the majority party

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singling out of Ebeid among the Copts, rather than Wisa Wasif, who was elected Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, or Wasif Boutros Ghali (who was more interested in foreign affairs), was, in large measure, due to the degree of personal understanding and co-operation which existed between him and Nahhas. They had been in the Seychelles together and both of them had shown particular loyalty to Zaghlul and to his policies. In addition, Ebeid had played an active role in the choice of Nahhas as party leader. The political adroitness of Ebeid, his skill as a negotiator, his facility in foreign languages and his experience in dealing with European politics and politicians, his visits to London and Paris on political missions as a propagandist and party spokesman— these were all qualities which seemed to complement the character of Nahhas. The latter was known for his honesty, frankness and dignity, but he was not an experienced statesman, nor was he a particularly clever negotiator. Furthermore, he had had little direct contact with foreign cultures. On 17 March 1928, Nahhas was asked by King Fuad to form the first government of his political career. It was a coalition government, including Muhammad Mahmud, the leader of the Liberal Constitutional party, as Minister of Finance, together with some of his colleagues. In this government, Ebeid also took office for the first time as Minister of Communications. The Nahhas government lasted only a few months. He was dismissed on 20 June 1928, when the coalition collapsed, as a result of the resignation of Muhammad Mahmud and his party colleagues.3 Muhammad Mahmud then became Prime Minister and was to earn the soubriquet ‘the man of the iron hand’. When Nahhas’s government fell, it was rumoured that Ebeid might become the next Egyptian minister to London. The British government at that time was undecided on the matter, especially as to whether Ebeid could be considered persona grata and could be received in that capacity.4 In the event, Ebeid was not appointed minister to London. However, Nahhas sent him to London in 1929, entrusted with the mission of opposing the policies and the negotiations of the new Prime Minister, Muhammad Mahmud. In this, Nahhas was following the precedent of Zaghlul who had entrusted Ebeid with a very similar mission during Adly Yeken Pasha’s premiership. It was the accepted practice that every new Egyptian Prime Minister, particularly in the period from 1919 to 1936, should begin his term of office by seeking to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain.

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The intention after 1922 was to remove the ‘Four reserved points’ which had accompanied Great Britain’s grant of limited independence to Egypt and thus to secure Egypt’s complete independence. When Muhammad Mahmud became Prime Minister he followed this practice. After dissolving Parliament, he made contact with the new British Labour government and initiated the so-called Mahmud-Henderson discussions. The Wafd opposed both the domestic and foreign policies of Mahmud, and tried to use their overwhelming popular support to that end. Ebeid’s mission started in August 1928 in London, where he joined Dr Hamid Mahmud, the permanent representative of the Wafd in London, and also another Wafdist, Abd al-Rahman Azzam.5 Ebeid broke his journey in Paris on his way to London, but the immigration officers at Dover refused him permission to land for political reasons. As a result, he and his wife were compelled to spend the night in detention in Dover, despite the fact that his wife was ill.6 Subsequently, after resolving the situation with the Home Office, he was allowed to proceed. On his arrival in London, he arranged propaganda meetings, and made public speeches against the dictatorial regime of Muhammad Mahmud. One of these meetings was held under the auspices of the Egyptian Association of Great Britain and Ireland,7 and during it he delivered a long speech dealing chiefly with the alleged horrors of the Mahmud dictatorship. He stated that no students were allowed to participate in politics, and that everything in Egypt was labelled ‘political’. The Mahmud government, he charged, had created a turbulent atmosphere in the country. Among its tactics, Ebeid alleged, was the use of agents provocateurs to cause disturbances. He went on to say that over fifteen newspapers had been suppressed and that the police had the authority to disperse peremptorily any gathering. Ebeid gave harrowing instances of police tyranny. At this juncture in the meeting, the members rose and shouted three times, ‘Down with Mahmud’.8 Ebeid continued his activities in London by writing articles in the press, or by meeting British public figures and attacking the policies and claims of Mahmud’s government. He organised the publication by the Egyptian Association of a political bulletin under the name of Egypt and had it distributed among political circles in Britain. The Egyptian government naturally opposed Ebeid’s mission and had attempted from the start to prevent him from travelling to London, claiming that he was in London to establish

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direct relations between the Wafd and the British authorities.9 Through his special contacts, Ebeid did have some success in motivating some British Labour Members of Parliament—a group of five members headed by Mr Conorthy—to criticise their government for its negative attitude towards the suspension of the Egyptian Constitution and dissolution of its Parliament.10 In September 1929, his mission in some senses accomplished, Ebeid returned to Egypt, to the acclaim of his party. On his arrival at Alexandria, some newspapers named him ‘the Great Struggler, (al-Mujahid al-Kabir). Addressing a tea-party audience of five hundred at an Alexandria hotel, Ebeid said that, regarding the British proposals for an Egyptian settlement, Mahmud was merely a communicator of the Labour government’s proposals to the Egyptian people. Consequently, he stated, Mahmud’s casual participation in these talks should not prevent Egyptian opinion from considering these proposals on their own merits. The Wafd’s decision to reject these proposals until the Egyptian parliament reassembled, he added, should be taken as indicating a friendly spirit on the part of the Egyptian people. ‘Moreover,’ he continued, ‘Labour’s move in wishing to establish friendly relations with Egypt is a friendly step which Egyptians highly appreciate and reciprocate. All we demand is that our Constitution and Parliament be fully restored, a condition which we consider essential, because there can be no free friendship unless there is a free atmosphere.’11 Speeches were also delivered at that party by other Wafdists, but perhaps the most interesting was that delivered by Hafiz ’Awad Bey. He was a Wafdist, who had been in Europe at the same time as Ebeid. Alleging that Mahmud had gone to the Labour government carrying his book, The Iron Hand, in which he sought to prove to the British that dictatorship was the most suitable system of government for Egypt, Hafiz ’Awad stated that Ebeid had challenged Mahmud. Although the latter was Prime Minister and had all doors open to him, Ebeid had countered his influence, making extraordinary efforts to advance his views and claims by every means possible. He continued that Ebeid had had patience and determination, combined with political will and that he had had the opportunity of observing Ebeid closely during his mission in London.12 In the meantime, while the Wafdists were celebrating Ebeid’s arrival and praising his achievements in London, Muhammad

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Mahmud’s supporters issued a statement attacking Ebeid’s mission. This was widely distributed in Alexandria, under the title ‘The Great Struggler Who Failed’ (Al-Mujahid al-Fashil al-Kabir). In it, they stated that he had failed to blacken the image of Mahmud’s government, and had merely given the British a demonstration of the split in the Egyptian nation. In addition, they claimed that Copts had collected £10,000 for his mission.13 Furthermore, Al-Siyasa, the journal of the Liberal Constitutional party, published a long article attacking Ebeid, his mission and the Wafd party. It stated that the Wafd was under the increasing influence of William (Ebeid)14 and ‘his prejudiced group’: We are not saying that for prejudicial reasons, but simply because we have in our party more Copts than the Wafd has. The issue is not a question of religious bias, but this is the plan of William and his group. Nobody in Egypt can control his astonishment at the Wafd, which is the only party to have had two Coptic ministers in all their cabinets, in spite of the fact that all the Egyptian cabinets headed by Copts like Boutros Ghali or Yusuf Wahba had only one Coptic minister in them. Only a few people knew that we had suggested that the Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies should be from our party or the Watani party since they are the main pillars of the coalition. However, the Wafdists insisted on keeping the post of the Deputy Speaker for a Coptic Wafdist as long as the Speaker himself is a Muslim. It is clear that William and his supporters want to dominate the Wafd party to serve their own purposes. They have succeeded. Muslims have no weight in the party; William is everything and Nahhas is nothing but a zero or an instrument in William’s hand.15 This was an example of the methods used by his rivals in other political parties against Ebeid. Exploiting the matter of his faith, they alluded to him as the politician of the Coptic minority who tended to dominate the majority party. In all his political activities, Ebeid never acted as a representative of the Copts, but rather as a national leader in Egypt, or, when abroad, as an advocate of the national movement represented by the Wafd. He gave a speech at the Wafdist rally held on 13 November 1929, to commemorate the anniversary of the visit of Zaghlul to the Residency in 1918. It was a remarkable oratorical effort. In the most pure and mellifluous Arabic, he hailed Zaghlul as the father of the modern Egyptian

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national movement and criticised the dictatorship of Mahmud’s government. He talked about the relation between Muslims and Copts, answering the allegation put out by the anti-Wafdists and their press. He said: ‘Finding that the nation, despite all efforts of the dictatorship, remained united, the late government decided to pull down the whole structure of the nation. (After us the Deluge.) An attempt was made to revive religious antipathies. They tried to set Muslims against Copts. But the attempt failed miserably, as will all similar attempts.’16 This period of Ebeid’s political life reflects his position as the guiding light of the most outspoken wing in the Wafd party. He greatly influenced Nahhas, and in fact dominated him, especially by convincing him to take an extreme anti-treaty position and to insist upon the realisation of maximum Wafd aspirations.17 In January 1930, Ebeid became the Minister of Finance in the Nahhas cabinet and from March to May 1930 he was a member of the delegation, headed by Nahhas, for the treaty negotiations in London. The delegation also included Wasif Ghali, Osman Muharram and Ahmad Mahir.18 In an official conversation between Ebeid and Watson, at the British Embassy in Cairo, on 17 June 1930, only a day before the Nahhas cabinet resigned, Ebeid said that the Prime Minister was on the point of submitting the cabinet’s resignation to the king. This was due to the king’s refusal to sign the law dealing with ministerial responsibility, as well as to his attitude in regard to the nomination of senators. Ebeid said that there was a very strong feeling in Wafdist circles that if the British government’s desire to keep the door open for a treaty had been genuine they would have found some way of averting the present crisis.19 That conversation clearly showed that the Wafd intended to take a hard line with the king and to show him that they were not disposed to stay in power unless they enjoyed full authority. It also indicated a change for the better in the relations between the Wafd and the British. They had both become more reasonable and more understanding of the other’s position. During his term of office as Minister of Finance, Ebeid paid more attention to the political, partisan aspects of his post than to his daily ministerial duties. In general, he appeared to have neglected departmental work in favour of political intrigue and dealt with financial affairs and the economic problems from a party political angle. However, realising the importance of cotton as the main

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product of Egypt at the time, he was keen to establish a stable cotton policy. Soon after the resignation of the Wafd cabinet, he wrote an article explaining that policy: I declared in the Senate two days before the Ministry’s resignation that we intended to adopt a stable cotton policy, and not one of makeshifts, and that such a policy would tend to protect prices against artificial factors and fraudulent speculation. With this object in view the Wafd Ministry succeeded, within the incredibly short time at its disposal, in introducing a Bill setting up an agricultural bank for the help of small peasants and agricultural co-operatives, and in drawing up a scheme of reform for the Minet al-Bassal Exchange, after consultation with leading members of the Alexandria Produce Association. Furthermore, I was fortunate in obtaining the services of a British cotton expert, Professor Todd, who was to study the cotton question in Egypt during this summer and report to me on the matter.20 When Ismail Sidqi Pasha formed his cabinet in June 1930 and suspended the constitution of 1923, the Wafd strongly opposed his autocratic methods. It was perhaps inevitable, therefore, that when they considered launching a political propaganda campaign against Sidqi in London, they again chose Ebeid as their envoy. Ebeid carried out this task in London from July to September 1930. It was then that one of the most interesting aspects of Ebeid’s character emerged. This was on the occasion of a pan-Islamic congress held in London in honour of Ebeid early in August 1930. Views were expressed at that congress regarding the independence of Muslim states and the struggle against imperialism. No British newspaper made any mention of the congress. However, a French magazine L’Echo de Paris, on 24 August 1930, published a report of the meeting under the title Le reveil de l’Orient (The Awakening of the Orient). According to the magazine, more than eight hundred people attended the meeting and the participants were mainly Egyptians, Indians and Palestinians.21 The Imam of the London Mosque, Shaikh Abdel Majid from India, introduced Ebeid as a Christian and declared that Egypt and India were united in a common aim, which was liberty. In his speech, Ebeid said that the congress was not only a symbol of nationalism, but also an expression of the long suffering of the

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eastern nations. He added that east is east and west is west and that they were struggling against the barriers dividing them, to create a new link. Several Egyptian politicians had visited European capitals, without thinking of attending or encouraging an Islamic congress. However, Ebeid, the Copt, was keen to have such a meeting held in his honour, because he was always anxious to identify with the Muslim majority. As far as he was concerned, the identification was essential to his political career. Ebeid engaged in other political activities in London against Sidqi’s government and had several meetings with prominent British personalities. He published articles to justify the economic policy of the Wafd (since he had been the Minister of Finance), one of which was published in The Times. In it he stated: Apart from the grave constitutional, and possibly political issues involved in the present crisis in Egypt, may I, as a former Minister of Finance, be permitted to deal, in the dispassionate language of facts and figures, with the purely financial aspect of the present unrest in Egypt? According to all reports from Egypt, business is completely at a standstill and the financial position at its worst owing to the present unsettled condition of the country. Doubtless the financial position will be much worse a month or two hence, when the Wafd campaign for nonpayment of taxes will take full effect. Taxes will begin to be due by next October, and it seems certain that the success of the Wafd’s campaign cannot be promoted by the present financial misery of Egyptian taxpayers, mostly of the peasant class.22 On 24 October 1930, Ebeid delivered a lecture to the Union of Democratic Control on the subject of democracy in Egypt with reference to the present situation. He stated that democracy in Egypt and the Wafd were synonymous. He added: Democracy in Egypt has been dealt what was intended to be a mortal blow by the publication of a Royal Decree making surprising changes in the Constitution and the franchise. By a stroke of the pen the King had abolished the Constitution of 1923. He had introduced a new Constitution which he would maintain by brute force, for in this age of democracy force is still the ruling principle of human intercourse. Egypt was patrolled from end to end by troops and police, and the King has assured us that ‘no voice should be heard throughout the

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land but that of the cannon and that there should be no law but the law of the mailed fist’.23 Ebeid always demonstrated an extreme tone in his criticism of his political opponents. He employed all his talents in his battles against his party enemies whoever they were—Adly, Mahmud, or Sidqi. In his three main missions as an envoy of the Wafd to Britain, Ebeid succeeded in furthering his party’s cause as well as in enhancing his own political image. Thus, during the three years of Sidqi’s regime, Ebeid played a leading and dynamic role in the Wafd, portraying it as the popular party of the majority which had been denied power. In 1931 Ebeid visited Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. His visit reflected a possible new dimension in the attitude of a Coptic politician towards the idea of Arabism. He gave several speeches in Beirut, Damascus, Shtura, Jerusalem, Acre, and Jaffa, in which he argued that the idea of ‘pharaonism’, reflected in certain literary trends, represented a movement to separate Egypt from the other Arab countries.24 This attitude was rather unorthodox, not only for a Copt, but also for any Egyptian politician of the time, whatever his religious faith. Ebeid declared that he was opposed to the Coptic trend which entertained fears of Arab nationalism, and claimed that Copts had Egyptian roots before and above all. Later, in 1939, he published an article discussing ‘the one Arab nation’, and explaining how Egypt was an integral part of the movement for Arab unity. He elaborated his Arab nationalist ideas thus: Arab history is a chain, the links being connected to each other because the unity of language and Arab culture among these countries is stronger than in any other countries on earth. The religious non-fanatic and unprejudiced spirit has deep roots among the religions in these neighbouring Arab countries. By stating that Egyptians are Arabs, I mean those connections which are unaffected by geographical borders or political barriers—in spite of the endeavours of those who wish to kill the Arab spirit, and to sever relations between the Arab countries. The Arabs need unity and solidarity to face aggressive European policies. They also need to believe in Arabism, whose strong elements established a glorious civilisation, the culture of which dominated foreign countries for a long time. We are Arabs and should remember that we have been unified

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by common trials and shared hopes to the extent that it has made us similar in all aspects of life. We are Arabs, supporting the struggle in every country for complete liberty and for raising Arab civilisation. We should be aware of our own dignity and discover the modern life around us, so as to pick and choose the useful elements to help us build an up-to-date system of life, founded on our glorious history. Its excellent merits will provide the spiritual power and the religious belief, which can then be synthesised with the best of modern life, such as scientific progress and industrial development. We are Arabs from the depths of our civilised history and its extension, through the Semitic race which migrated to Egypt from the Arabian peninsula. Thus we have to work together in solidarity and strengthen our unity through such factors as our common history, language and the qualities of nationalism. Arab unity is an established fact. It does exist, but it needs to be organised by the setting up a national front against imperialism, by retaining our nationalist spirit and by working for prosperity through the development of our economic resources, the encouragement of our local production, and the co-ordination of our commerce. We should do what the Europeans have done. We should create a centre where we can meet and bring our countries together into one national league. Why should it not be possible to organise our Arab unity on the theory of harmonised nationalities? We have already seen in the last few years that efforts are being made to unify cultures and to exchange benefits. Holding conferences and exchanging views would lead to a general Arab solidarity, on a strong basis, dedicated to the common Arab struggle for freedom and independence.25 It should be noted here that Ebeid had a clear idea of Arabism, and was competent to discuss such aspirations in those comparatively early years of debate about Arab nationalism. Ebeid also used the term Al-Jami’a Al-’Arabiya (Arab League), six years before the organisation by that name was created. However, Ebeid’s interest in the Arab dimension did not lead to his playing an active pioneer role in pan-Arab politics as it did another colleague, Abd al-Rahman Azzam. Nevertheless, Ebeid’s interest in Egypt’s Arab dimensions, in addition to his readiness to participate in Islamic events, gave rise to the idea that Ebeid wanted to be more Muslim than the

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Muslims themselves, largely because he felt that those two elements—Islam and Arabism—were a handicap to any Copt. Possessed of great political ambition, Ebeid wanted to overcome those two barriers which he believed stood between him, as a Copt, and his political future on a wider popular stage. Makram Ebeid’s views on economics, and his thoughts on the solution of socio-economic questions in Egypt, can be gleaned from two speeches delivered by him in 1936 and 1942, respectively. In both instances, he was introducing the Egyptian budget to the Parliament as the Minister of Finance of Wafdist governments. He stated in the first speech, in 1936: Egypt can be considered a rich country if the criterion is that it is independent and has its own resources, or if we measure it by government wealth, as translated in its budget figures. But if we see how the wealth is distributed among the classes of the nation, we will discover that 1 per cent owns nearly 46 per cent of all property. The other fact is that more than 90 per cent of the Egyptian people are employed at very low wages, as slaves in the service of the rich. Cheap manual labour in our country makes the gap between poverty and wealth wider than in any other country of the world. The fellaheen are paying the greater part of the land taxes. These taxes represent the only fixed source which supports our economic structure, amounting to £E6,300,800. According to what social law or to what economic system do the poor bear the burden of taxes, while the rich escape? Besides that, the average of what the Egyptian owns in his country is 2.34 per cent of the cultivated land, while the foreigner owns an average of 78.97 per cent. That is the condition of public wealth in our country. If it continues like that, we will find that the poor are the slaves of the rich, and the rich are the slaves of the foreigners.26 In his speech introducing the Egyptian budget to Parliament in 1942, Ebeid described the miserable condition of the Egyptian peasant, who was the backbone of the Egyptian economy, saying: I never pass a village or see a peasant without feeling that he suffers poverty, disease and lack of services, in order to provide a soft life for others. Have we achieved real independence in Egypt, if the peasants and workers are the slaves of the land? What exploitation is worse than when a people’s dignity and

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spirit of independence are destroyed by poverty and need?…We are still too far from social justice or any kind of socialism.27 In his introduction to the Makramiyyat, Hifni Mahmud Bey, a Wafdist and a brother of Muhammad Mahmud Pasha, recalled that while Ebeid was giving one of his annual budget speeches in the Chamber of Deputies, as Minister of Finance, using terms such as the ‘Egyptian peasant’ and the ‘feudal lord’, one of Hifni’s fellow deputies exclaimed in surprise. He was apparently alarmed at the use of such dangerous words and expressions and accused Ebeid of having extreme socialist sympathies.28 In another annual report to the Chamber as Minister of Finance, Ebeid said: You may enquire what I mean by saying a ‘popular policy’? Is it socialist or liberal? But I say the answer emerges from the nature of the evolution of the Egyptian democratic system which is still unsettled. If I talk about fixing minimum wages for workers, or giving exemption for land taxes to poor peasants or ending slavery; if I use these expressions, it does not mean that I have become a real socialist. I am still at the stage of simply talking about social equality.29 These speeches of Ebeid as Minister of Finance, and the similarity of their basic social attitudes, raise the question of the progressive nature of his philosophy in dealing with the subjects of property and wealth. He was well aware of the class differences and the wide gaps in the standards of living in his country. It is also highly probable that he was affected by the ideas of French socialism while he was studying in Lyon. However, one can hardly call Ebeid a socialist, let alone a Marxist. All that one can say is that he believed in social equality and in the necessity of raising the standard of living for the Egyptian people, in particular those in the countryside. On 15 December 1933, Ebeid had been re-elected as bâtonnier, President of the Bar Association. This inspired the government of the day to try to prevent him from taking office through various emergency measures, causing widespread resentment among lawyers in Egypt. The measures were eventually rescinded by Nessim Pasha’s government in December 1934 and Ebeid’s reelection was ensured thereby. Gouda introduces his chapter on ‘Makram, the lawyer’, by stating:

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Makram Pasha succeeded, by his talents as an orator and jurist, in occupying the foremost position in the Bar in Egypt. He was particularly involved in political and national cases. At the end of his defence on behalf of Al-Nukrashi and Ahmad Mahir on 13 May 1926, he declared that his duties as a lawyer were complete, but that his role as a human being had only just started, because it was completely wrong to judge persons merely from the point of view of situations and behaviour, without taking into consideration the circumstances and the human motives involved.30 He acted as a lawyer on behalf of Abbas al-Aqqad, who, while a Member of Parliament, was accused of lèse-majesté. Ebeid said in court: ‘It is clear that al-Aqqad, the writer, and al-Aqqad, the Member of Parliament, has committed no mistake nor made any insult against the name of the king. Al-Aqqad has suffered much in prison and has claimed several times that his health has worsened, but nobody has given this any attention.’31 Ebeid continued with a comparison between the resolute determination of al-Aqqad and the struggle of the Prophet Muhammad against those who rejected his new religion. The point which Ebeid emphasised in his speech was that al-Aqqad was, first and foremost, a well-known intellectual and famous writer, before being a politician. Ebeid’s defence of al-Aqqad is one of the most arresting and famous in the history of the Egyptian Bar. He had, consequently, won an outstanding reputation, as a lawyer in both political and civil cases. When he was bâtonnier of the Egyptian Bar, he had the idea of organising a general strike against the British, as ‘Lawyers are in Egypt the last element a government should provoke, and a lawyer’s strike, if properly organised, would prove effective in dislocating public life.’32 In the event, the mooted strike did not take place since an improvement in relations with Britain made it irrelevant. However, in his political activities, Ebeid never forgot that he was a lawyer; he always gave his profession ample attention, especially at times when the Wafd was not in power. He played an active role as bâtonnier, adding to it political colour by virtue of his position as Secretary-General of the Wafd. At the same time, of course, Ebeid, like Nahhas and other political leaders, was deeply involved in the conduct of AngloEgyptian relations, through a prolonged series of negotiations,

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from the Zaghlul-Milner discussions in 1920 to the Sidqi-Simon talks in 1932. Ebeid always viewed Great Britain in the context of the Egyptian demand for full independence, which did not exclude, however, the idea of maintaining a permanent alliance of friendship with Great Britain. He once explained his views by saying, ‘The restoration of the constitution of 1923 and the achievement of an Anglo-Egyptian treaty are paramount aims of Wafdist policy.’33 From 1933, Wafdist relations with the British slowly improved. It was then that the possibility emerged that the Wafd might achieve a real step forward with Great Britain when the party next came to power. At a Victoria College Old Boys’ dinner on 27 March 1934, Ebeid, who was present as a guest of honour, made a sympathetic and conciliatory speech bearing on the AngloEgyptian problem. He praised British education and particularly its effects on character building. He considered one of the greatest advantages of English education was the fact that it fostered and encouraged, in those who received it, a spirit of liberty and independence.34 Great Britain meant different things to Ebeid. It was the country in which he had been educated, and in which he had spent some of his formative years. He considered it to have partly moulded his character and to have widened his cultural outlook. At the same time, it was the occupying power in Egypt. It was in this capacity that he opposed it, through his activities in the national movement. In an earlier speech, delivered in September 1920, in honour of Muhammad Mahmud by the Egyptian graduates of Oxford University, Ebeid said: A year ago we were not happy even to say that we were graduates of Oxford. I say this with pain and with pride at the same time. Those days of study were emotional and full of great hopes and sentimental feelings. The days we spent in Oxford left us with the best memories and we will always miss its atmosphere—the students, professors, buildings, streets and even the cold weather, snow and fog. Those happy memories have been shaken by the recent events but we, the graduates of Oxford, succeeded in putting our memories to one side, and involved ourselves in the stream of revolution. In the same speech, he criticised some British writers, who had blamed Egyptians educated in Britain for their subsequent

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participation in the 1919 movement as being ungrateful to the country which had given them the chance for the best education available. He countered this by arguing that British schools and colleges foster in their students from all nations the spirit of sacrifice for their mother countries. In that speech, Ebeid expressed his admiration for the qualities of the British people, such as their love of their own country, but also their sympathy for the foreigner, and the care and attention which he had been shown. He added that he could not see any conflict between his respect and admiration for the British people, who stood for freedom and democracy, and his own feelings of opposition to the policy of the British authorities in Egypt.35 In spite of the fact that Ebeid was considered a nationalist extremist, he always affirmed that Great Britain was a centre of democratic and liberal thought. He always dealt with Anglo-Egyptian relations within a framework of equality and reciprocal friendship. His articles and speeches during his political missions to London reflect his admiration for the English way of life and for the British parliamentary system. In 1935 the more relaxed atmosphere of Anglo-Egyptian relations was reflected in the statements of the Wafdist leaders. In a speech made by Ebeid at a tea party given in honour of Nahhas by the Egyptian Bar at Alexandria, he declared: ‘There is now a golden opportunity for agreement and friendship between England and Egypt.’36 At an earlier function Ebeid had said: An Anglo-Egyptian treaty settlement is essential, sooner or later. It must be negotiated by a parliamentary government. It must, to bind Egypt, be negotiated by the Wafd. The government negotiating the treaty must remain in office to execute it. A treaty negotiated by the Wafd cannot be attacked by any other party. The Liberal Constitutionalists are committed to the Muhammad Mahmud-Henderson project of 1929. The Ittehadists and even the President of the Watani Party gave these proposals their official blessings at the time. A treaty negotiated by any minority government, even if more favourable to Egypt’s cause than that so nearly signed by the Wafd in 1930, is unacceptable to the Wafd because it is vitiated by the background of an unconstitutional regime.37 During 1935, the British government began to sound out the views of the Egyptian political leaders to discover their attitudes towards the possibility of negotiations. Sir Miles Lampson, the British High

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Commissioner, had meetings with the leaders of the various parties, particularly those who had held negotiations with Great Britain before: Nahhas of the Wafd, Mahmud of the Liberal Constitutional Party, and Sidqi of the Shaab Party. The British obviously wanted to negotiate with a national delegation, representative of all the political parties, in order to avoid criticism from any sector of public opinion in Egypt. On 13 February 1936, a Royal Decree was issued which included the names of the members of a national delegation to conduct negotiations with the British government. These were: Mustafa Nahhas (chairman), Muhammad Mahmud, Ismail Sidqi, Abd al-Fatah Yahia, Wasif Boutros Ghali, Ahmad Mahir, Ali alShamsi, Osman Muharram, Ahmad Hamdi Saif al-Nasr, Hilmi Issa, Makram Ebeid, Hafiz Afifi and Mahmud Fahmi al-Nukrashi (members). Ebeid joined the all-party National government as a representative of the Wafd and became Minister of Finance in the Nahhas cabinet, in May 1936. He was given the title of Pasha, and was a member of the Egyptian treaty delegation. He was Nahhas’s constant companion and adviser and as such held a position of a certain weight, both in the cabinet and in the Wafd party. The role of Ebeid in the negotiations for the 1936 treaty, and his evaluation of it, were described in a lecture he gave on that subject at the Egyptian University in November 1936.38 Ebeid delivered this lecture in polished and refined Arabic, using the apt and vivid words of his well-known literary style. There is no doubt that he made effective propaganda not only for the treaty but also for the Wafd and for himself. He considered that the treaty included material benefits for the nation, which would make independence a real fact and not merely a theoretical gain. Ebeid recounted all the recent steps of the negotiations between Egypt and Great Britain39 until the two sides reached the agreement embodied in the 1936 treaty. He judged that the Nahhas-Henderson talks, carried out under the previous, Wafdist, government were a solid basis for the 1936 treaty, since the latter included most of the items discussed in those 1930 talks. The talks in 1930 had failed mainly because the two sides could not reach a common ground about the question of the Sudan. Ebeid underlined his party’s role in this, since he considered that only an agreement by the Wafd would imply acceptance by the nation. This point was known even to some of the British politicians themselves. It was recognised and recorded by Hugh Dalton, the

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British Labour politician (later Chancellor of the Exchequer), who wrote in his memoirs: We had a second innings with the Egyptians in the spring of 1930. This time they sent a large delegation, headed by Nahhas Pasha, their Prime Minister, and Makram Ebeid. It was a Wafd government and I believed, and had often said openly, that in carrying out an Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, if we could get one, only a Wafd government could deliver the goods. Any other Egyptian government, even if it signed a Treaty, would be outbid and upset by the Wafd.40 It is obvious that Ebeid was influenced in his evaluation of the treaty, in a lecture at the Egyptian University, by his party bias. While publicly not prejudiced in his religious feelings, he was fiercely partisan in his political beliefs. His lecture was described by one student as being passionate in style and marked by an extreme party bias.41 In it he repeatedly praised Nahhas (who was in the audience), and made clear his appreciation of the party leader’s efforts in achieving the treaty of friendship and alliance, or as Ebeid the Wafdist called it, the ‘Treaty of Honour and Independence’. Ebeid had taken a very strong line in defending and justifying the treaty, which was strongly opposed by the Watani Party, by a large section of the student population and by the Young Egypt Society, headed by Ahmad Husain.42 Many students of the Egyptian nationalist movement mark the beginning of the decline of the Wafd with the signing of the treaty. They argue that it robbed the party of its militant nationalist appeal, transforming it into the establishment party of moderation and co-operation with Britain.43 This is the reason why the Wafd, which was then in power, had to exert every effort to justify the treaty and give the impression that it was its main achievement. Ebeid played the part of the propagandist, trying to sell the treaty to Egyptian public opinion on behalf of the Wafd, both as a party and as a government at the same time. Fortunately for the Wafd, the treaty was followed by another step towards complete independence. This was the Capitulations Conference at Montreux, which opened on 12 April 1937, when an Egyptian delegation under the chairmanship of Nahhas Pasha44 negotiated with the countries concerned and obtained their agreement to end the system of Capitulations for their citizens in Egypt.45 This achievement seemed to raise the morale of the

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Egyptians since it rendered Egyptians and foreigners equal before the law for the first time in nearly four centuries. Possibly in connection with the forthcoming conference, Nahhas and Ebeid were received by Hitler in Berlin in October 1936. It is not clear whether this was a courtesy visit or whether it had a political intent. There was a cover story for the visit at the time: ‘The ostensible, and, no doubt a genuine reason for the visit of the Egyptian Prime Minister and Minister of Finance to Germany was their desire to consult a German doctor. The Egyptian Minister in Berlin told Sir Eric Phipps that Makram Pasha’s health was in fact precarious and that the doctor consulted in Berlin stated that he might die at any moment. On the other hand, Amin Osman Bey informed a member of the British Embassy that the main object of the visit concerned Germany’s attitude as regards the Capitulations.’46 Amin Osman’s version can be given a good deal of credence, since he was very intimate with both the Wafd and the British. In spite of the fact that Dr Abdel Hamid Badawi47 made the principal contribution in the conference as a legal expert, Ebeid also had an active part to play, especially regarding the period of transition for the ending of the Capitulations. The Egyptian delegation insisted on making the transition period as short as possible, while the western delegations were keen to make it twelve years at least. While the Wafd was successful as a government in achieving the 1936 treaty and securing the end of the Capitulations, there were adverse developments within the party itself. The main event occurred in 1937, with the defection of Mahmud Fahmy alNukrashi and Ahmad Mahir, who then established the Saadist Party. The influence of Ebeid on Nahhas, and on the Wafd as a whole, had been increasing. Ahmad Mahir and al-Nukrashi were envious of Ebeid’s domination of the party and this was a feeling shared by the widow of Zaghlul, Umm al-Misriyyin (‘Mother of the Egyptians’), who had often criticised the policy of Nahhas and Ebeid.48 For his part, Ebeid mistrusted Ahmad Mahir. According to Lampson, there had been considerable friction between Ahmad Mahir and Ebeid during the interim premiership of Ahmad’s brother, Ali Mahir, in 1936. Ebeid had accused Ahmad Mahir at the time of being in the pay of Ali Mahir and of carrying on secret intrigues with his brother for the purpose of keeping him in power, in order to reduce or destroy the power of the Wafd.49

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Nahhas, meanwhile, did accord Ebeid special treatment, possibly motivated by the principle of ‘national unity’ which had emerged with Zaghlul. As Nahhas was concentrating all his attention on national unity, he did not anticipate the split in the Wafd which was to be precipitated by al-Nukrashi and Ahmad Mahir.50 The breaking point came when a difference of opinion arose in Nahhas’s cabinet on the subject of generating electricity at the Aswan Dam. Mahmud Ghalib, Minister of Justice, and alNukrashi, Minister of Communications, supported by Ahmad Mahir, the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, wished to offer the project to international tender. However, Ebeid and other members of the cabinet, supported by Nahhas, insisted that a certain British company should undertake the project, even though the costs would be higher. Nahhas reshuffled his cabinet in August 1937, dropping al-Nukrashi and Ghalib. Afterwards, the Wafd Higher Committee held a meeting to discuss the matter, and Mahir, having little support, withdrew.51 It was one of the most important splits in the life of the Wafd party, and led to the subsequent birth of the Saadist party, under the leadership of Ahmad Mahir and al-Nukrashi. The split was to increase the political weight of Ebeid and his influence on Nahhas and the party. ‘The presence and influence of Makram in the cabinet were contributing factors in the early downfall of Nahhas. Within the cabinet itself, Makram’s domination over Nahhas was the cause of growing resentment, and the enemies of the Wafd did not scruple to invoke religious prejudice in their campaign against a cabinet which they pilloried as dangerously subservient to Coptic influence’.52 The period of the 1930s represented the zenith of Ebeid’s career as a politician. In simple terms, he was the real power behind the leadership of the majority party. His charisma was his chief asset in his political activity because he had the ability to reach and to influence the masses. Being a first-class speaker, with the ability to choose appropriate words, in rhythmical cadences, he directed his advocacy to the heart of an emotional nation rather than to the mind of its intellectuals. ‘“Charisma” is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which one is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These powers are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the

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basis of them, the individual concerned is treated as a leader.’53 If that is the meaning of the term ‘charisma’, then Ebeid can be considered a leader of charismatic quality. His colourful personality, at home in both cultures, Arab and Western, and his easy and effective communication with the masses gave him a political star quality, above and beyond that of an official party leader. He was, in some respects, a political demagogue. In a developing society, such as that which existed in Egypt, he was able to attract the common people to himself. If one compares Ebeid with other Egyptian politicians, for example Ismail Sidqi, one finds that the latter lacked the easy communication and vital rapport with people that Ebeid possessed. Being a good speaker was, of course, a great asset, and Ebeid is considered to have been the most renowned orator in modern Egyptian political history. Unfortunately, any translation of his speeches cannot convey their real force because his particular style of rhetoric cannot be sustained in translation. For instance, he was well known for his use of rhymed prose to drive home his point of view. He gave speeches on countless occasions; some for patriotic purposes, others for political or party reasons, in addition to his ministerial and parliamentary speeches. To these must be added his intelligent advocacy in the famous legal cases where he showed himself to have been an excellent trial lawyer in both political and civil cases. Abbas al-Aqqad, the writer and journalist, whose own relationship with Ebeid had had its ups and downs,54 described Ebeid in his introduction to the Makramiyyat as ‘A mixture of various interests, engaged in different activities, with talents in both literature and politics.’55 Ebeid’s experience as a lawyer greatly helped him as a politician, because the Bar, as a profession, was an extension of his political work. In fact, most Egyptian ministers, regardless of specialisation, were originally lawyers. Ebeid was a famous lawyer, and enjoyed one of the most active practices in the history of the Egyptian Bar. It is said that he won all the cases which he took on. He would defend his client through the logical analysis of motives, and by putting himself in the place of the accused and acting out his part before the court.56 This was Ebeid, the effective power of the Wafd party, the star performer in the Parliament, the famous lawyer, the renowned orator, the active minister and the popular writer. Moreover, he occupied for fifteen turbulent years ‘the post of Secretary-General

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of the Wafd [which] was the most important politically, as well as being the most popular one in Egypt at that time’.57 The many talents, moods and preoccupations of Ebeid mean that his character must remain elusive, in some respects. However, an intellectual and a friend of Zaghlul, Mahgub Thabit, managed to sum up Ebeid’s character and his gifts succinctly when he described him as ‘a sentimental orator like a musician, a faithful friend, a severe enemy—he is an angel in his friendship and a devil in his enmity.’58 NOTES 1 J. and S.Lacouture, Egypt in Transition (tr. F.Scarfe) (London, 1958), p. 90. 2 Fathallah Barakat was expected to be Zaghlul’s successor as he was his nephew and had participated in all his uncle’s efforts in the national movement. Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office records (FO) FO 371/12359, 3 October 1927, N.Henderson to Chamberlain. 3 ‘The real reason for Nahhas’s dismissal was that he had acted as defence lawyer on behalf of Prince A.Saif al-Din, who had been accused of attempting to assassinate King Fuad.’ See E.M.Sulaiman, Azamat Al-Hukm Fi Misr 1919–1952 (Cairo, 1969), p. 39. 4 FO 371/13141, 1 June 1928, Hoare to Chamberlain. 5 Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha became the first Secretary-General of the Arab League in 1945. 6 FO 371/13123, 25 September 1928. Foreign Office (Egyptian Department) to Cairo Chancery. 7 Formed in 1919, in London, it included a considerable number of Egyptian students studying at universities in the United Kingdom. 8 FO 371/13845, 23 July 1929, Metropolitan Police (Special Branch) to the Home Office. 9 From a speech by Nahhas in a political conference at Mansura, A. Shafiq Hawliyyat Misr al-Siyasiyya, vol. 5 (Cairo, 1928), p. 1291. 10 ibid., p. 1257. 11 Daily Herald, 9 September 1929. 12 A.Shafiq, op. cit., vol. 6 (Cairo, 1929), pp. 828–32. 13 Al-Balagh, 8 September 1929. 14 It was the habit of Ebeid’s political enemies to call him by his English Christian name in order to stress his difference from the vast majority of Egyptians. 15 Al-Siyasa, 8 September 1929. 16 FO 371/13849, 25 November 1929, Lorraine to Henderson. 17 FO 371/13849, 12 November 1929, Lorraine to Henderson. 18 FO 371/14607, 25 February 1930, Lorraine to Henderson. 19 FO 371/14615, 21 June 1930, Lorraine to Henderson. 20 The Times, 14 August 1930. 21 In an answer from the Foreign Office to the Spanish Embassy in London concerning their enquiry about the conference, they estimated the

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22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

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audience at not more than 150. FO 371/14652, 30 September 1930 (Home Office to the Spanish Chargé d’Affaires in London). FO 371/14641, 18 August 1930, Henderson to Lorraine. FO 371/14621, 28 October 1930, Henderson to Hoare. A.Sayigh, Al-Fikra al-’Arabiya Fi Misr (Beirut, 1959), pp. 127–73. M.Ebeid, ’Al-Misriyyun ‘Arab’, Al-Hilal, April 1939, p. 32. A.K.Gouda, Al-Makramiyyat (Khuttab wa-Bayanat Sahib al-Ma’ali Makram Ebeid Basha), (Cairo n.d.), pp. 173–5. (A selection of Ebeid’s orations, speeches and articles on various political occasions, collected and edited by A.K.Gouda, the editor-in-chief of Al-Kutla newspaper.) ibid., pp. 177–81. ibid., p. 5. ibid., p. 181. ibid., pp. 194–6. Anis Mansur, ‘Al-Aqqad Fi Dhikra’, Akhir Sa’a, 26 March 1975. FO 371/17983, 23 July 1934, Lampson to Simon. FO 371/17980, 5 October 1934, Peterson to Simon. FO 371/17982, 16 April 1934, Lampson to Simon. A.K.Gouda, op. cit., pp. 142–4. FO 371/19074, 9 September 1935, Kelly to Hoare. FO 371/17980, 5 October 1934, Peterson to Simon. M.Ebeid, Muhadarat Ma’ali al-Ustadh Makram Ebeid Basha Fi al-Jami’a al-Misriyya, Cairo, 1 November 1936 (76 pages). Zaghlul-Milner, Adly-Curzon, Zaghlul-Macdonald, Sarwat-Chamberlain, Mahmud-Henderson, Nahhas-Henderson and Sidqi-Simon. H.Dalton, Call Back Yesterday, Memoirs 1887–1931 (London, 1953), p. 249. M.F.Hashish, Mu’ahada 1936 wa-Atharuha Fi al-’Alaqat al-Misriyya alBaritaniyya Hatta 1945, Unpublished PhD thesis, Ein Shams University, Cairo, April 1975. P, (C) from the introduction. FO 371/20119, 16 September 1936, Kelly to Eden. The Young Egypt Society was a political movement that emerged in the early 1930s and was influenced by some Fascist ideas and organisation. It was headed by a young lawyer, Ahmad Husain, with some assistants such as Muhammad Subaih and Ibrahim Shukri. See A.Husain, Imani (Cairo, 1936). See e.g. E.Sulaiman, op. cit., p. 65. This view was also confirmed in an interview with Muhammad Hassanain Haikal, 30 September 1975. The Egyptian delegation members were: Ahmad Mahir, Wasif Boutros Ghali, Makram Ebeid and Abd al-Hamid Badawi. ‘The Capitulations refer to a class of commercial treaties which Western powers concluded with Asian and African states and under which Western nationals enjoyed extraterritorial privileges. European residents were thus subject to the laws of their home governments and immune from those of their host countries. Among the Near and Middle East lands the system developed most fully in the Ottoman empire.’ See: J.C.Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, vol. 1 (Princeton, 1956), pp. 1–21.

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46 FO 371/20122, 20 November 1936, Phipps (Berlin) to Eden. (The irony here is that Ebeid died twenty-five years later.) 47 Dr Badawi had started his public life as a political secretary to Sarwat Pasha. He was, in a way, anti-Wafd. The Wafdists used to call him Mufti al-Qarya (‘The village mufti’). He was not on good terms with Ebeid, and they were always critical of each other. 48 Personal interview with Sa’ad Fakhri Abd al-Nur, Cairo, 13 September 1974. 49 FO 371/20105, 27 April, 1936, Lampson to Eden. 50 A.Ramadan, ‘Al-Watha’iq al-Sirriyya Fi al-Tarikh al-Misri’, Sabah alKhair, 17 February 1977. 51 M.H.Haikal, Mudhakkirat Fi al-Siyasa al-Misriyya, vol. 2 (1937–52), pp. 35–6, 48–9. 52 FO 371/22004, 13 April 1938, Lampson to Eden. 53 Max Weber, ‘On Charisma and institution building’, Selected Papers— edited and with an introduction by S.N.Eisenstadt (Chicago, 1968), p. 48. 54 For instance, see the vehement exchange between Ebeid and al-Aqqad in the pages of Kawkab al-Sharq (6 October 1935) and Rose Al-Yusuf (17 October 1935). Nevertheless, al-Aqqad wrote an introduction to the Makramiyyat, praising Ebeid and recalling that they had both come from the school in Qena which was famous for its pupils who had subsequently made names for themselves in literature. See A.K. Gouda, op. cit., p. 9. 55 A.K.Gouda, op. cit., p. 10. 56 Personal interview with Salah al-Shahid, Cairo, 20 January 1975. 57 I.Tal’at, ‘Ayam al-Wafd al-Akhira’, Rose Al-Yusuf, 21 February 1977. 58 Salah Issa Al-Sudani, Al-Asrar al-Siyasiyyali-Abtal al-Thawra al-Misriyya (Cairo, n.d.), p. 266.

Chapter 3

Ali Mahir and the politics of the Egyptian army, 1936–1942 Charles Tripp

The formal ending of the British military occupation of Egypt, marked by the signing of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, placed the obligation for the defence of Egypt on the Egyptian army for the first time since 1882. More importantly, the imminent British military withdrawal promised to remove the threat of British military arbitration from Egyptian politics. For many in Egypt, therefore, this period seemed to offer an opportunity to put into effect their visions for the political future of the country. The variety of political visions circulating and the conflict between them inevitably meant that opportunity for one, might also be seen as threat by others. It was in this spirit that Ali Mahir Pasha, Head of the Royal Diwan, approached the new beginning promised not simply by the treaty, but also by the accession of the young King Faruq to the throne of Egypt in the same year. In essence, Ali Mahir’s was an autocratic vision, involving his own seizure of power, ostensibly on behalf of King Faruq. Ali Mahir realised the need to root such an exclusive organisation of power in the changed conditions of mass politics, through the skilful use of myth and through agencies of mobilisation which would address the expanded political public. Nevertheless, at the heart of his vision lay the autocratic ethic which holds that whatever the autocrat can do, he has the right to do. There were to be no restraints regarding the choice of instruments deemed appropriate to the implementation of the vision, up to and including the use of force. Indeed, precisely because of the expected vehemence of the opposition, from the Wafd in particular, during the early years of this experiment in absolutism, it became imperative for Ali Mahir that he should have full control of the coercive apparatus of the

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state. Thus, in 1936, at a time when British withdrawal was making it possible to develop the Egyptian army and to adapt it to this political role, Ali Mahir’s political agenda was making it imperative that he do so. As a consequence, the political loyalties of the officers of the Egyptian army became once more a major concern of those who wished to wield power in the state. In conformity with his innovatory conception of mass autocracy and its requirements, Ali Mahir was to show considerable ingenuity in his effort to bind the officer corps to his ideal of the role of the Palace in Egyptian politics. However, his plan suffered from two flaws which were to undermine his endeavour at the time. Furthermore, they were to leave, as a legacy, a substantial number of Egyptian army officers who saw their own roles in specifically political terms, but who held political convictions at odds with the interests of the Palace. The first flaw was caused by the irony of the fact that the major development with which Ali Mahir’s efforts in the army were designed to cope—the withdrawal of the British from Egyptian politics—failed to take place. On the contrary, the advent of war in 1939, and of war in the Middle East in 1940, meant a reinforcement of the British military presence and a redoubled determination on their part to prevent any development in Egypt which jeopardised their military position. The critical nature of that position made the British more ruthless in the imposition of their will on Egypt. However, it also caused Ali Mahir to seek to dissociate himself, his king and the political and military organisations deemed necessary for their survival, from what he regarded as the losing British side. This had dire effects on Ali Mahir’s own position and ended with his elimination as a powerful figure in Egyptian politics. The second flaw stemmed from Ali Mahir’s failure to appreciate the degree to which the politicisation of the officer corps would take on its own dynamic, as the officers themselves began to define their interests with reference to the wider dispensation of power in Egypt. One might see this as a natural outcome of his autocratic penchant for exploiting political sentiment and organisation purely for his own ends, seeking to deny them any life beyond the goals and methods he had set for them. He had little sense of the independent political developments taking place among the individuals who made up the groups which he patronised. Ali Mahir was, to some extent, tied to a traditional conception of patronage in order to sustain autocracy, despite his radical

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departures in other respects. Consequently, just as he miscalculated badly in his view of the war and of Great Britain’s resolve, he misjudged the degree to which those whom he had sought to enlist as simple, loyal adherents to the king’s cause in politics and war, would begin to deviate from the path he had mapped out. The army officers who adhered enthusiastically to Ali Mahir’s organisation were precisely those who were most likely to develop their political ideas under the stress of outside events and of their own perceptions. These men could not be fixed in their attitudes as courtiers could be fixed. The war itself began to put considerable strain upon their support for a course of action which seemed to benefit the king alone. Similarly, there were other influences working in Egyptian politics which caused them to look rather more closely and critically at the king and the cause of the Palace in general. While the rejection of this cause did not necessarily lead them to the Wafd, it could—and did—lead them in other directions: towards the idea of an Islamic state, towards the idea of a military government, and, in some cases under the stress of war, to the British military authorities. It was perhaps scarcely surprising, therefore, that the revolution of July 1952 should have been carried out by army officers, many of whom had received official and unofficial encouragement to think of their roles in political terms. The Free Officers had mostly escaped any direct tutelage to their erstwhile mentors and had embarked upon their own interpretations of what needed to be done. However, the rationale for acting in this way had already been supplied to them by Ali Mahir. Independence and the Egyptian army The relinquishing of British command of the Egyptian army in 1936–7, while a Wafd government was in power, disrupted the existing loose pattern of Palace patronage in the armed forces. The opportunity now offered to expand the army meant that the net for the recruitment of officers could be cast that much wider. In 1937 there was a dramatic increase in the number of admissions to the Military Academy. A noticeable feature of this new intake was the substantial proportion of officer cadets from considerably more modest backgrounds than had hitherto been the case.1 This did not mean that they would necessarily be more hostile to the dynasty than had their immediate predecessors. It did mean, however, as Ali Mahir and his associates were later to discover to their

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advantage, that their very lack of family connections allowed those with political power to exercise considerable patronage within the army. This departure into the unknown caused serious alarm at the Palace. It led the Prince Regent, Prince Muhammad Ali, to seek to persuade the Wafdist Prime Minister, Mustafa al-Nahhas Pasha, that the British should retain some control of the army by trying to frighten him with the spectre of a politically-minded officer corps hostile to the Wafd.2 Of course, the possibility which was really troubling the forthright, if transparent, Prince Regent was precisely the reverse of this comforting thought. In the conditions of growing antagonism between Palace and Wafd, and in view of the latter’s development of a paramilitary wing such as the Blueshirts, there was obvious anxiety about the degree of civil disorder which might follow a Palace coup against the government. In such circumstances, it was feared that local attachments and sympathies might make the army an unpredictable instrument in the Palace’s attempt to suppress violent Wafdist reaction.3 Concern about the lengths to which the Wafd might go to shape the still undeclared, but potentially malleable sympathies of the officer corps was underlined by two issues which arose in 1937 between the government and the Palace in connection with the Egyptian army. The first was the Army Law. In April 1937 the government unveiled a draft bill to deal with the expansion and reorganisation of the army, proposing the establishment not only of a General Staff, but also of a Higher Defence Council (HDC). The latter was in effect a cabinet subcommittee with the right to intervene in all aspects of the armed forces.4 Nahhas made it clear that he was ‘determined to keep politics out of the army’ (by which he meant, of course, the king’s political influence), and he stated that he would be using the legislation to ensure that, in this respect at least, the king would play the role of ‘Constitutional Monarch’ as commonly understood.5 It seemed to many that the Wafd government, through its control of appointments to the General Staff and throughout the army, was indeed trying to create an officer corps loyal not to the person of the king, but to the Wafd government and to its conception of the state. This fear was underlined by the second, largely symbolic, issue of contention: the Army Oath. When Sultan Fuad became king of Egypt in 1922, the officers of the Egyptian army had sworn an elaborate oath pledging their loyalty to him. On King Faruq’s

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assumption of full constitutional powers in July 1937 it was planned that the officer corps should swear an oath of allegiance, but in a significantly different form of words. Instead of swearing loyalty to the king alone, the officers would be required to swear loyalty to the country above all else and to obey the Constitution and the laws of Egypt. 6 This seemed to be an attempt by the Wafd government to dilute the officers’ explicit attachment to the person of the king as head of state by making them swear an oath of loyalty to the political principles on which that state, and thus the power of the Wafd, was founded. The reaction from the Palace was predictably hostile. The Palacesponsored press accused the government of attempting to bring the army into politics by assigning it the political task of protecting a particular form of political organisation.7 At the Palace itself there was anxiety that the reference to the Constitution in the oath might serve as the pretext for a coup d’état against the king. Again there was an attempt to persuade the British authorities to intercede. They again refused, but in this case British intervention was not necessary since the government agreed to postpone the oathswearing ceremony.8 The rapid rate of deterioration in relations between Nahhas and the king in 1937 prevented the government from using its new powers over the army to its own advantage. However, during the worsening crisis it was clear that the question of the political allegiance of the Egyptian officer corps had become a factor in political calculations in a way which would have been impossible prior to the treaty. King Faruq made a point of inviting a conspicuously large number of senior army officers to an Iftar (a celebration of the breaking of the fast) held at the Palace during the month of Ramadan and took the opportunity to remind them of their duties, to stress his own keen interest in the army and to warn them specifically against involvement in politics.9 At the same time Ali Mahir was suspected of having started a rumour that the Wafdist Minister of War had been busy sounding out army officers about their support for the Wafd government in the event of a conflict with the Palace. The government vehemently denied this report, but there remained nevertheless a feeling both that some kind of Palace coup was imminent and that, from this time forward, the Egyptian army would be playing a decisive part in such political moves.10 It was noticeable that the Palace-sponsored press, while it

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deprecated such ‘political’ involvement of the army when initiated by the Wafdist government, wrote in euphoric terms of an incident a few days later when, in the midst of a number of Wafdist demonstrations outside the Abdin Palace, a group of forty army officers called at the Palace to express in public their absolute loyalty to the king. These officers were on the retired list, but this did not detract from the symbolism of their action: if the Wafd could organise student demonstrations outside the Palace calling for revolution, then the king could respond by drawing attention to the fact that he could rely on the support of the army.11 In the event, the king succeeded in dismissing the Wafd government less than a fortnight later, without any noticeable disruption of public order, or any recourse having to be made to specifically military action. Outwardly, therefore, the army appeared still to be ‘above politics’. The reality was rather different. Not only had the conditions arising from the 1936 treaty made the growth and encouragement of political movements within the armed forces easier, they had also made the armed forces an essential element in the Palace’s political strategy. The army could not be allowed to come under the influence of the king’s potential enemies. The example of the Wafd government had been a warning, showing that there were few inhibitions in the Wafd about extending its political influence in that direction—it had simply been denied the opportunity to do so by the king’s peremptory dismissal of Nahhas. The uses of patronage With the appointment of Muhammad Mahmud Pasha as Prime Minister, a systematic Palace intervention in military affairs became visible. It was organised chiefly by Ali Mahir and it seems that he was intent on establishing the supremacy of his cause in the Egyptian army by using the potent instrument of patronage. Political control of any of the institutions of the Egyptian state was quintessentially a matter of placing protégés and political allies in positions of power. Both ex officio and, even more importantly, through a descending pyramid of political ‘subcontractors’, these protégés could deliver complete political support of the organisation in question to their political mentors. The problem arose when the client, either through his own independent connections or his carefully constructed power base, threatened to rival his patron on the wider stage of national politics. This

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consideration led Ali Mahir to eschew the traditionally powerful figures in the armed forces and to look specifically for relative outsiders in order to create the kind of organisation which he envisaged. Towards the end of 1938, therefore, Ali Mahir found a seemingly ideal protégé for his purposes in the shape of Aziz Ali al-Masri Pasha.12 Al-Masri had been appointed by his old friend Muhammad Mahmud, to the post of Inspector-General of the Egyptian army in early 1938. Since there was already a Chief of the General Staff (CGS)—Shukri Pasha—the duties of al-Masri’s new post were very unclear. He tended to see himself as occupying the senior post in the Egyptian armed forces, but this view was not shared by anyone else.13 In particular, the senior officers of the army resented the fact that al-Masri had been promoted over their heads, although he had never held a commission. They made their displeasure plain by organising a boycott of him by the officer corps, denying him rank, office, staff and even a uniform.14 Al-Masri responded by denouncing the senior officers in the army, the officials at the Ministry of War and all other ‘saboteurs’ of Egypt’s military progress who, he claimed, were preventing him from reorganising the armed forces. This outburst caused a considerable stir and brought a sharp rebuke from the Minister of War, as well as an explanation that al-Masri’s duties as InspectorGeneral involved no command duties whatsoever.15 This did seem to produce the desired effect and a chastened al-Masri virtually retired into private life. It is possible that Mahmud was finding him to be something of an embarrassment and had been genuinely taken aback by the degree of opposition to his appointee among the officer corps. For his part, al-Masri continued to hold the post of Inspector-General, since no one wanted to incur Mahmud’s displeasure by pressing for the removal of his protégé. However, he had little contact with the Ministry of War or with the armed forces.16 Al-Masri’s friendship with Mahmud had given him merely the shadow of army command; the substance remained with those who enjoyed good relations with the Palace and, increasingly, with Ali Mahir in the Palace. As a result, al-Masri began to look towards Ali Mahir for patronage at the same time as Ali Mahir was looking for clients in the army. Al-Masri seemed well suited to the task. He did not have a very high opinion of King Faruq. Indeed, a conversation between al-Masri and the Turkish Foreign Minister

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so shook the latter that he came away convinced that King Faruq would be lucky to keep his throne much longer.17 However, this made him less of a courtier-soldier, and thus less of a threat to Ali Mahir himself. More relevantly, he was convinced of his own destiny as commander of the Egyptian army and seemed pragmatically willing to come to terms with anyone who had the power to help him fulfil this ambition.18 In addition, he appeared to share many of Ali Mahir’s political preoccupations, especially insofar as these concerned the bankruptcy of the parliamentary regime and the need for the armed forces to play a decisive role in the reshaping of the political order.19 In al-Masri, Ali Mahir had found a man highly receptive to the idea that the army should be ‘the king’s sword’.20 Al-Masri was not the only focus of Ali Mahir’s attention in the armed forces at the time. Hassan Sabri Pasha, the Minister of War in Muhammad Mahmud’s government, found himself under pressure to appoint Salih Harb, another ‘outsider’ with better political than military qualifications. In 1939 Ali Mahir was seeking to put him in charge of the Frontiers Administration, arguably the most active and up-to-date unit in the Egyptian armed forces. Harb had, admittedly, had some experience of the Western Desert in which the Frontier Force operated, having fought with the Turks and the Sanussi against the British during the First World War. However, since 1928 he had been an official in, and subsequently assistant director of, the Prisons Administration.21 However, Harb had become a particularly suitable candidate for Ali Mahir’s patronage. He began his political career as a Wafdist in the 1920s, but his activity in the Young Men’s Muslim Association (YMMA) had drawn him progressively into the orbit of the Palace. During 1936–7, the participation of a large portion of the YMMA leadership in Ali Mahir’s effort to project an image of King Faruq as the ‘Muslim King’ had brought Harb into contact with a number of the extra-parliamentary and anti-Wafdist groups which enjoyed Palace patronage. At the same time, Harb could claim no direct link to King Faruq himself, nor had he any already formed power base within the armed forces. Consequently, he represented little threat to Ali Mahir. The one-way dependence of the relationship was manifest and he could, therefore, be useful in the armed forces as a man whose political preoccupations tallied with those of Ali Mahir. The obstacle to these plans was Hassan Sabri Pasha. The latter refused to appoint Harb and seemed to mistrust him precisely

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because of his known political affiliations.22 When Sabri resigned in 1939, his more complaisant successor, Hussain Sirri Pasha (an uncle of King Faruq), sanctioned the appointment of Salih Harb— not to the Frontiers Administration, but to the post of DirectorGeneral of the Coastguards.23 The appointment of Ali Mahir as Prime Minister in August 1939 opened the way for a more thorough and more systematic form of control of the armed forces. The only limitation on this opportunity was the increasing British wariness in wartime of allowing any aspect of Egyptian administration to operate free of their own supervision. This applied with particular sharpness in military matters, and was augmented by the growing mistrust between Ali Mahir and the British authorities in Egypt. These circumstances appear to have encouraged an already visible trend in the Palace’s strategy: the more or less overt assertion of Palace control of the state through traditional means; the less visible control of political loyalties and instruments to serve the Palace in a radically altered political dispensation in Egypt. These two strands, although obviously not wholly separable, were especially relevant with regard to the armed forces. The first few months of the new regime were characterised by large numbers of transfers, dismissals and promotions, with little regard for military competence, but with considerable attention being paid to the political sympathies of the officers in question. This was accompanied by a series of moves by al-Masri (appointed by Ali Mahir to the post of CGS in August 1939) to bring all aspects of the army under his personal control. The attention he paid to the office of Adjutant-General, who controlled all personnel matters, and the numerous transfers of officers which could not be justified on professional grounds, made it clear that al-Masri was establishing a power base within the armed forces, founded on his personal patronage, but on behalf of his own political patron, Ali Mahir.24 As far as Ali Mahir was concerned, it was important to assure himself of unchallenged support within the armed forces. At the same time, as part of his wider political strategy, he was seeking to reduce British influence within the armed forces, with the possible aim of eliminating the British Military Mission completely.25 Apart from the question of the Sudan, the military clauses of the 1936 treaty were thought by many to have been the greatest single issue over which the Wafd had compromised its claim to be the main

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guardians of Egypt’s national interest. Ali Mahir was seeking to draw on nationalist sentiment to reinforce the king’s authority and was, therefore, interested in eliminating anything which seemed like British tutelage. However, 1939–40 was an unfortunate time to choose to assert such personal control over the Egyptian armed forces, independent of British supervision. The British Foreign Office had tended to look indulgently upon the exercise of blatant and disruptive patronage in the armed forces, since they saw the resultant inefficiency as being greatly to British advantage. With their growing distrust of Ali Mahir, however, his uses of patronage began to seem sinister, if not positively dangerous.26 If the timing was unsuitable, so too was the instrument. Aziz alMasri was not particularly well fitted for work which required both discretion and delicacy. He began to show a strong streak of military eccentricity and allowed his enthusiasm for German military organisation and successes to lead him into indiscretions.27 Al-Masri regarded himself as the ultimate authority on military matters and personally resented having to accept advice from the British. Quite apart from the cramping effects which acceptance of such advice would have on his attempt to create networks of patronage, his amour-propre was at stake and he made no secret of his resentment. However, as a known political appointee of Ali Mahir, it was assumed that al-Masri was playing a role specifically approved by Ali Mahir.28 As such, he became a focus of British attention. His dismissal was requested not simply because of the damage he was assumed to be doing in the Egyptian armed forces, but also because his removal had become, in the words of the British Ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson, ‘an ideal test case to prove to Ali Mahir and the Egyptian public…that there are limits to our patience and that where questions of allied war interest are involved we mean to have no nonsense.’29 Ali Mahir tried to avoid having to comply with this request, but in January 1940 he was informed that Great Britain would tolerate no further delay over al-Masri’s dismissal and there was a strong suggestion that he no longer had the support of the king in this matter.30 This seems to have decided the matter for Ali Mahir. Continued defence of al-Masri was no longer serving any useful purpose. Indeed, it appeared to be jeopardising Ali Mahir’s position not only with the British, but also with the king. On 7 February 1940, it was reported that al-Masri had been granted three and a half months’ sick leave ‘at his own request’.31

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The Secret Officers’ Organisation Al-Masri’s forced dismissal was an ominous political setback for Ali Mahir and for the Palace. As far as control of the armed forces was concerned, it was perhaps less severe. It was useful to have so close an associate as CGS, but al-Masri’s main value to Ali Mahir did not lie in the strict functions of his public office. Ali Mahir’s vision of the role which the armed forces would play in Egyptian politics was not simply that of a field of patronage in which senior appointments would be bartered for the sake of relative advantage. While this was important for the Palace’s overall command, a more thorough system of control within the officer corps itself would be required to make the armed forces a reliable instrument of Palace policy. Concentration solely on the senior officers could well lead to that identification between them and the regime which would provide a motive for a future Urabi in the neglected lower ranks. Ali Mahir had shown himself well aware of the dangers of a disaffected rising generation, which was now supplying the officer corps. Their discontents had contributed to the nervousness in the Palace at the prospect of the graduates of the expanded Military Academy acquiring their initial experiences of military life under the aegis of a Wafdist government.32 Ali Mahir intended to channel the impatience of the younger generation into a form which would help him to dismantle the existing political order, while leaving the Palace in complete control. In this respect, the younger officers seemed to provide ideal material for the controlled experiment in revolution which Ali Mahir envisaged. Their recruitment and organisation into a military stratum, politically committed to serving the interests of the Palace, would ensure that the option of using decisive force in politics would remain with the Palace, rather than with its opponents. It also meant that the sense of discipline so necessary to Ali Mahir’s authoritarian vision of politics—and to his control of the organisations he patronised—could be maintained through the hierarchy and command system of the armed forces.33 To this end, when Ali Mahir became Prime Minister in 1939, he made a determined effort to create within the armed forces an association of young officers whose first loyalty would be to the king. In this endeavour he was helped by the fact that since 1936– 7 a large number of young officers from relatively poor backgrounds had entered the armed forces. The advantage of this for the Palace

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(or, indeed, for anyone who possessed the power of patronage at the time) was that these young men came into the army with no significant family connections. They stood in need of patrons, since without patronage it was unlikely that they would receive equal treatment with their better connected contemporaries.34 These circumstances naturally provided anyone who could promise advancement or protection with a potential group of protégés. The reciprocal support of the young officers would create in turn one of the many political subgroupings which formed the basis for the informal associations permeating all branches of the administration. In this respect, Aziz al-Masri had played a key role. His rejection by the senior members of the officer corps in 1938 and Muhammad Mahmud’s subsequent neglect, had led him to look not only to Ali Mahir for salvation. He had also begun to look for clients of his own within the armed forces. This network of support made him, in turn, a more attractive client for Ali Mahir to adopt. Al-Masri had already been in contact with political youth groups of an anticonstitutional and paramilitary nature, with whose ideas he had much sympathy—particularly insofar as they stressed the need for the use of force and the role of the armed forces in politics. This was, after all, the chief function for which al-Masri’s background had qualified him. 35 Indeed, as one contemporary observer remarked, al-Masri might have appeared visionary and erratic to some, but ‘his personality might have considerable appeal to restless people, and especially to the mentality of young “patriots” in the Middle East’.36 Ali Mahir, who had sponsored much of the extra-parliamentary political activity in Egypt as Head of the Royal Diwan, was aware of al-Masri’s political preoccupations and of the kind of following which al-Masri was seeking to form in the officer corps. Accordingly, when Ali Mahir became Prime Minister and al-Masri was appointed CGS, work began in earnest to transform a rather loose following of admirers into an effective secret political organisation within the army. As far as Ali Mahir was concerned, the function of such an organisation was not simply to recruit the younger elements of the officer corps to the cause of the king, but also to act as the military section of a larger political movement which would be formed of young, educated Egyptians explicitly grouped round the throne.37 The civilian side of the venture corresponded to Ali Mahir’s recurrent desire to form a distinctive

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party in Egypt and reflected the exasperation he frequently felt at having to rely on such awkward instruments as the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary parties already in existence.38 It never took any coherent shape, however, and remained a vague association of frequently disparate groups, loosely linked to the Palace through the patronage of Ali Mahir, but existing to serve a variety of leaders and ideals. By contrast, the military section was to be the subject of considerable attention and organisational development, although it too was largely dependent for its coherence on the patronage and direction of Ali Mahir. This created problems, but corresponded with an ideal which was the very antithesis of civilian, voluntarist association. Ali Mahir had little time for challenges or ideas coming up from below. He demanded a disciplined and acquiescent organisation which could be mobilised at the appropriate time to provide the Palace either with an important show of support, or with the type of coercive backing associated with successful extraparliamentary politics. He began to create this within the army. The Officers’ Organisation had originated in the fear of the dangers which the Wafd seemed to represent for the interests of the Palace in Egyptian politics. Al-Masri, and others connected with Ali Mahir, had founded the group with the specific idea that such an organisation would be able to seize control of the country from any civilian government hostile to the Palace. The stated aim of the organisation was simply the protection of the throne from both the Wafd and the British—the throne being represented as the ‘only guarantee of the liberty and the greatness of the country’. While the government of Ali Mahir remained in power, therefore, the purpose of the organisation was somewhat muted: it was to form the backbone of a loyal army which would ensure that in future the Wafd could never pose a threat to the Palace. The idea of future use meant that care was taken from the outset to lay the foundations for an organisation which could be steadily expanded, but which would remain highly centralised. For this reason, as much as for the secrecy it conferred on the movement, the cell system was adopted, whereby each member would form a cell of which he would be the leader. The members of the organisation would not normally know many of their fellows, save those in their cell, as well as the man who had recruited them. However, they would all be known to the heads of the organisation, whose orders would be unquestioningly obeyed.39

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In essence, this represented the formal arrangement of a traditional system of patronage: the impulse to create and direct the Officers’ Organisation came from the Palace and depended on Ali Mahir’s power therein. From this source it spread through the armed forces. It was intended to be a formidable obstacle to any domestic threat to the Palace, since the latter would now have at its exclusive disposal the coercive force upon which, in the shape of the British army, the king had hitherto only intermittently been able to rely. However, in the summer of 1940, the dismissal of Ali Mahir and the immediate danger to the power of the Palace came not from a domestic enemy, but from what was, in effect, a British coup d’état. The Palace had no force at its disposal sufficient to resist the British army, but the coup had been largely provoked by developments in the war which promised the very removal of the British from Egypt. Nevertheless, despite a presumed shared dislike of British tutelage, there was no guarantee that, in the conditions of the Second World War, nationalist sentiment in the armed forces would necessarily agree to the direction which the king and Ali Mahir were mapping out. For instance, the anxiety of the Palace not to provoke Italy began to look somewhat at odds with the interests of the king’s subjects. The early attacks by Italian units on Egyptian army frontier posts caused a number of casualties, but had been publicly dimissed by Ali Mahir as incidents of little importance which could be settled by diplomatic means. 40 Similarly, in accordance with Ali Mahir’s argument that the war had nothing to do with Egypt, the Egyptian air force refused to help defend Alexandria from air attack.41 It is hard to know what the reactions to this posture were, but, as the first Italian bombs began to fall on the civilian quarters of Alexandria, some doubts must have arisen as to whether this attitude was really in conformity with Ali Mahir’s much publicised desire to ‘save Egypt from the horrors of war’.42 The Palace’s attempts to avoid any engagements between the Italian and the Egyptian armies spared the latter many casualties, but the galling consequences of this policy were not easily accepted by an officer corps which was just beginning to find its professional role. The Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940 was met by a strenuous effort on the part of the Egyptian government, under pressure from the Palace, to withdraw all Egyptian troops from the path of the invaders, leaving some of their newest equipment behind in the hands of the British.43 Furthermore, any officer who

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showed himself to be willing to go beyond the strict limits of acceptable co-operation with the British ran the risk of active discrimination by the Palace.44 Possibly as a means of refocusing discontent within the officer corps, Zaidi Pasha, the acting CGS in the summer of 1940, was also involved in the cultivation of a mood of hostility to the British. He was so successful that he was responsible for a near mutiny among the junior officers of the Egyptian army in July 1940. This had arisen from a British proposal that all Egyptian troops should be withdrawn from the Western Desert, since Egypt would not be declaring war on Italy. Great Britain would then buy back some of the modern heavy equipment recently supplied to the Egyptian army. Zaidi had distorted this request by telling a group of officers that Great Britain intended to disarm the whole of the Egyptian army. This naturally provoked feelings of outrage among the officers. The British managed to quell the rumour, but were disturbed that Zaidi should have believed that his actions would win favour at the Palace and thus secure for himself the permanent post of CGS.45 It was also significant that the unrest encouraged by Zaidi should have crystallised among some of the officers into a plan to reimpose the government of Ali Mahir by force of arms.46 However, Ali Mahir’s fall from office had not seriously impaired either his power in the Palace or his consequent power in Egyptian political life. His fall and its attendant circumstances did, however, mean a certain singleness of purpose, now aimed at ensuring that the king survived the coming vicissitudes of the war. In this strategy, the army was estimated to have as crucial a role to play as in the purely internal setting mapped out by Ali Mahir in peacetime. The dilemma for the king was how to survive present British suspicion without jeopardising his position in the event of a future Axis victory. The answer seemed to lie in precisely that conspiratorial use of the army which Ali Mahir had been instrumental in starting. The succession of German military victories and the entry of Italy into the war seemed to foretell a successful Axis invasion of Egypt. In such an event, the king’s survival lay with his army: it could both prevent the British from insisting that he accompany them in the retreat from Egypt and might be able to prove to the Axis the king’s goodwill, by participating in the rout of the British forces.47 Meanwhile, since British military superiority in Egypt remained a fact in the immediate present, the official attitude of the Egyptian army, while remaining within limits set by the Palace,

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could allay British suspicions by being one of willing co-operation— the mistake of al-Masri’s public defiance having been learned. However, this ambivalent strategy was to cost the Palace dear. Not only did the British eventually discover its darker side, but it also introduced a dilemma for the officer corps. This was to lead to dissent and to the rejection of the king’s authority. The idea of using units of the Egyptian army against British forces went considerably further in operational terms than had the original idea of using armed forces’ support to dislodge a civilian government or to suppress civil disorder. However, the ground-work had been laid in the strongly anti-British line followed by Palace agents recruiting young officers to the king’s cause. This conformed with the impression which Ali Mahir had been at pains to create—that the Wafd had abdicated its right to speak for the nation, and that it was the king who would henceforth lead the struggle to liberate Egypt from the British. It was undoubtedly heady talk for young officers disillusioned with the slow progress towards real independence and encouraged to think of themselves, in al-Masri’s words, as the ‘Nation’s Chamber of Deputies on the frontiers’.48 In addition, Great Britain’s repeated military setbacks tended to encourage the belief that action by forces in Egypt against the British might stand some chance of success. Accordingly, although the Palace’s Officers’ Organisation never engaged the British forces in action (there may have been sporadic acts of sabotage by a few of its members) recruitment to the organisation and activity within it were at their greatest whenever the Axis armies approached the Delta. Soon after his fall from office, Ali Mahir began to think once more of establishing a political party to strengthen the authority of the throne and he attempted to draw army officers into this project. The scheme did not get far but, as in the past, it did provide yet another means of enlisting the loyalties of a section of the officer corps.49 In this task Ali Mahir was helped, as always, by his associates and protégés. Salih Harb, the recently displaced Minister of War, was engaged in encouraging anti-British sentiments among the officer corps with which he had kept in close touch. Similarly, Aziz al-Masri was seen to be busy attempting to recruit officers to Ali Mahir’s circle and was responsible for the distribution of virulently anti-British pamphlets in the armed forces.50 Nevertheless, the British were still too powerful in Egypt for the Palace to risk military action. The Officers’ Organisation was

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maintained and recruitment proceeded, but in a less obvious form, through the channels of the king’s bodyguard and aides de camp (ADCs). During the autumn of 1940 and into 1941, there was no outward sign of defiance. By contrast with the Italian advance of 1940, the German defeat of the British in Cyrenaica and their rapid advance on Egypt in 1941, coinciding as it did with the attack on the British by the Iraqi armed forces, led to speculation in the Palace as to whether the time might not soon come for similar military action against the British in Egypt. The king contacted the Germans to assure them of his goodwill and to express the hope that they would succeed both in defeating the British and in preventing the Italians from establishing an equally burdensome occupation of Egypt. At the same time he pointed out that, although the Egyptian army was loyal to him alone, it was powerless to take any significant action against the British.51 This was indeed the case. The secret Officers’ Organisation was put on the alert and a number of the more junior officers who formed the bulk of the organisation were eager for action, but the signal was never given.52 Ali Mahir and his colleagues had sent an emissary to Baghdad to contact Rashid Ali, reportedly with a view to carrying out a similar coup in Egypt and they were certainly open in their praise for what they regarded as the aims of Rashid Ali’s movement.53 Nevertheless, whatever their enthusiasm for events in Iraq, the situation in Egypt was scarcely comparable. Cultivating and maintaining an officer corps which was not simply immune to political influences hostile to the king, but also unquestioningly willing to serve the political purposes of the Palace, depended crucially upon two factors. The first was the capacity of the Palace to exercise control in the army through the use of key personnel and of a specifically designed organisation. This could only be satisfactorily achieved if the Palace retained supreme executive power. The second, equally important factor, was the Palace’s ability to establish a firm hold on the political imaginations and loyalties of the officer corps, by inculcating ideals similar to those represented by the Palace in Egyptian politics, thereby convincing the officers that they could make common cause politically with the king. During the war, as mentioned above, an intolerable and ultimately dangerous strain was to be placed on the Palace’s capacity to retain control of many officers’ political imaginations. As far as retaining useful control of the feelings of the officer

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corps was concerned, it is significant that a recurrent theme of reports on the Egyptian army during these years was the increasing demoralisation and confusion as Egypt became more deeply involved in the war. This was in part a consequence of the effort to encourage simultaneously public friendliness towards the British and secret enmity. However, it seems also to have been a result of the growing difficulty of asserting that there was an unambiguous identity between the national interest and the interests of the king. Ali Mahir had made much of this theme, since it played upon the perceived failures and compromises of the Wafd and, furthermore, implicitly promised deliverance from British tutelage—felt more keenly in the army, perhaps, than elsewhere. While the war remained remote from Egypt, this was an effective and defensible theme and suffered from no very obvious contradiction. The entry of Italy into the war in 1940 transformed this state of affairs, especially insofar as the army was concerned. With the increase in attacks by the Axis forces on Egypt, questions began to be asked within the officer corps as to whether there might not be a conflict between defending Egypt and doing the bidding of the king. The Italian invasion had provoked this dangerous confusion, even among those officers most closely involved in the Palace’s secret Officers’ Organisation. For instance, in a revealing conversation of 25 November 1940, between General Wilson and a group of young Egyptian army officers (arranged by one of the Palace’s notorious go-betweens, Samir Zulfikar), the officers showed a general resentment of Great Britain, but a particular confusion in their attitude to the war. They blamed the British for preventing them from fighting in the war, but, at the same time, tended to blame Great Britain for threatening to make them do so. Two-thirds of the officers named at this meeting are also named on the lists of members of the Officers’ Organisation. Furthermore, the conflict and confusion of loyalties became too great for one of the conspirators at this meeting—Abbas Zaghlul— since, in September 1941, he was the first to give British Military Intelligence hard information on the Officers’ Organisation.54 The British victory over the Italian army in the winter of 1940– 1, in which the Egyptian army had played no active part, understandably caused a certain amount of discontent among officers who felt that they had missed valuable experience and that, in doing nothing to defend their country, they had suffered a blow to their self-esteem.55 In short, the dangers and opportunities of

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the war were putting a strain on the loyalty of some officers to the king, augmented by the growing suspicion that the Palace was perhaps keener on defending itself than on defending Egypt. This was a suspicion which the Wafd cheerfully encouraged by pointed references to Khedive Tawfiq and the British occupation of 1882, intending that people should draw a parallel with King Faruq and the Axis powers in 1941.56 Some army officers expressed their dissatisfaction with the Palace’s line by volunteering to fight with the British in the Western Desert, regardless of the effect on their careers. Others did what they could within the Egyptian army to combat the pro-Axis propaganda emanating from Palace agents.57 These were not the only indications that the Palace was losing control over the currents of political opinion within the armed forces. Ali Mahir had encouraged the younger officers to see their role in political, rather than in strictly professional terms, defined by the common usage of the Palace’s general assault on the Wafd. As such, these terms were compounded of anti-parliamentary, nationalist and sporadically Islamic elements, and the enthusiasm generated by these ideals seemed to be tantamount to enthusiastic endorsement of the monarchy. However, this only remained the case if the alternatives and consequences were identical with those envisaged by Ali Mahir. By the end of 1941, it was no longer so easy to assume that this identity of interests and views existed. Some officers, while remaining nominally loyal to the king, showed that their ideas of nationalism, extra-parliamentary organisation and Islam in politics entailed consequences which had little in common with Ali Mahir’s perception of the king’s interests—they looked instead to Nahhas, to military dictatorship and to the restoration of the Shari’a. In a petition sent to the Prime Minister in 1941 by a group calling itself ‘The Executive Organisation of Soldiers of the Egyptian Army’, there is an amalgam of very specific demands and very general ones, as well as a hint as to the original inspiration of such thinking. It called for the release of Aziz al-Masri and the appointment of Salih Harb as Minister of War. However, it also called for the appointment of Nahhas as Prime Minister and demanded that the army be allowed to play the chief role in domestic politics ‘as is the case in other countries’.58 Yet another strand of dissent, which had nevertheless enjoyed Palace protection, was discernible in the summer of 1942 when two pilots of the Egyptian air force flew to join the Axis forces. The

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first was shot down and killed in his attempt to do so by the Germans themselves. The second, however, survived. The king claimed, in a message to the German authorities, that these men were his emissaries, sent to Field Marshal Rommel with ‘important maps and plans’ (none were found) in response to a friendly communiqué which the king had received the day before from Hitler. This may have been the case, but the pilot in question, once out of the king’s power, showed no love for the monarchy. He did echo some of Ali Mahir’s preoccupations by stressing that the Wafd, and all the politicians associated with the parliamentary regime, were bankrupt and should give way to a new military order. However, he departed sharply from the ideas which Ali Mahir had been seeking to inculcate when he asserted that the king, whom he dismissed as a Turk only concerned about his own and not the country’s interests, had no part to play in this new order. 59 Interestingly, while the king claimed this man to have been an emissary of his, the group which was later to become the core of the Free Officers’ movement in the Egyptian armed forces was later to claim him as an emissary of theirs. In 1942 there was as yet no obvious contradiction between these two groups—rather the contrary, especially insofar as attitudes to the Axis powers were concerned. The question of the future political dispensation in Egypt was clearly a more doubtful matter.60 The development of these ominous differences of opinion into potentially dangerous political directions was exacerbated by the political eclipse of the Palace in 1942 and the simultaneous dismantling of Ali Mahir’s power. In his efforts to ensure a loyal and pliable army, Ali Mahir had not relied simply on a vague ideological sympathy, but had established the organisation to control and to shape the political support generated thereby. The cell structure, the conspiratorial nature of the enterprise, the effectiveness of the hierarchy—all depended upon the descending network of patronage exercised by Ali Mahir and his associates. It thereby remained within the orbit and under the control of the Palace. While this control was exerted, dissent could be contained and dealt with. However, if control were to weaken, dissent had a ready-made structure in which to proliferate, as well as the licence to do so, since there could be few inhibitions henceforth within the officer corps about organising themselves for explicitly political purposes. The British coup d’état of 4 February 1942 was to destroy this

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system of control. Initially, the forceful British imposition of a Wafdist government on the king had a stimulating effect on recruitment to the Palace’s secret Officers’ Organisation. The outrage caused by the British show of force and the hope inspired by simultaneous British defeat in Cyrenaica, led to thoughts of military action against British units.61 This was discouraged by senior officers, and by the Palace, but the king was evidently eager to exploit the situation—within limits—to rally political support for himself.62 Nevertheless, such a course was clearly considered too timorous by some and there were signs of impatience among the more junior officers. They disagreed with the Palace assessment that any action would be foolhardy until the Axis forces had reached the Delta.63 There was already a danger, therefore, that in widening the net of recruitment to the king’s service, the Palace might have lost its hitherto firm grip on the officers whom it recruited. Instead it had created a constituency of unknown proportions in the army, the expectations of which the king would then have to meet—or suffer the consequences. Ali Mahir had always sought to avoid this aspect of answerability, particularly in the armed forces. However, the coup of 4 February spelled the end of the power on which Ali Mahir had relied to make his patronage effective. It had thus loosened his grip on the organisations which he had established and encouraged. His subsequent arrest in April 1942 and detention in the hands of the Frontier Force (directly answerable to the Wafdist Minister of War, not to the CGS and thus outside Palace control) began the fatal loosening of his links with both the king and the army.64 The Wafd government’s determination to ensure that the army should not be used against them and that the bonds between the senior officers and the Palace should be dissolved, meant an inevitable shuffling of senior appointments and an exercise of specifically Wafdist patronage after February 1942.65 The alarm of the British authorities in May 1942 when they realised the size and aims of the Officers’ Organisation, which they had spent the previous six months uncovering, led to a decision to act. Accordingly, they handed the details to the Wafd government. Nahhas, who had long suspected something of the kind, was thereby provided with the material, in the lists of the names supplied, for thoroughgoing action against the Palace in all ranks

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of the army.66 This continued during the summer as more details emerged, despite vigorous opposition from the Palace and despite the fear of Nahhas that, as the Axis forces once again approached the Delta, the Egyptian army would attack the government at the instigation of the king.67 By the autumn of 1942, Ali Mahir’s power in the army was broken and the futility of the Palace attempting to use the armed forces against the British was emphasised by the defeat of the Axis armies at al-Alamain. However, the Palace’s moves, and the Wafd’s countermoves, ensured that the army came fully into the distribution and reward system of Egyptian politics. Ali Mahir had foreseen this as one of the consequences of the withdrawal of British armed arbitration from an Egyptian polity riven by fundamental political differences. He had sought to ensure his victory—and thus the victory of a revitalised monarchy—in this struggle by binding the officer corps to the Palace. He had succeeded in catching the imagination and in enlisting the support of a large number of young officers, but the war prevented any steady development of these plans. Initial enthusiasm became frustration and disillusionment. More crucially, the eventual dismantling of Ali Mahir’s power by the British and the Wafd meant that he lost control of the networks he had set up within the army. These, together with the ideas which had fuelled them, split up, changed and developed in directions of their own. They were free from any unifying and restraining influence from the Palace and were thus, in some cases, free to contemplate the ultimate elimination of the monarchy itself. It is, therefore, significant that a number of the Free Officers who were to be responsible for the overthrow of the king in 1952 obtained their political ‘initiation’ within the army through Ali Mahir’s secret Officers’ Organisation. The most obvious examples are Yusuf Mansur Sadiq, Abd al-Wahhab Salim al-Bishri and Muhammad Rashad Mahanna. In addition, Muhammad Nagib and his brother Ali were members of the organisation.68 Indeed, it has been suggested that virtually all of the most prominent Free Officers were members of what became known later as King Faruq’s ‘Iron Guard’.69 This claim should be treated with caution. Nevertheless, one of its aspects receives unwitting corroboration by one of the Free Officers, Anwar al-Sadat.70 Al-Sadat had already expressed great admiration for Ali Mahir and had admitted his contacts with Aziz al-Masri. Furthermore,

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his account of the activities of his ‘revolutionary group’ during 1940–2 shows a scarcely coincidental correspondence with the activities of the Officers’ Organisation. It is also significant that the objectives of such activities, without exception, appeared to have been the restoration of Ali Mahir to the Premiership.71 This was an objective finally achieved in the revolution of July 1952, when Ali Mahir was called upon by the Free Officers to head the first postrevolutionary government. As Ali Mahir was soon to discover, the process which he had set in motion in the late 1930s had, by 1952, developed independently of his direction and, in doing so, had involved people with political goals very different from his own. Although he was to be discarded by them, Ali Mahir had helped to demonstrate to the young officers of the Egyptian army the power which they held in their hands: it was not simply that they needed to be cultivated and placated by those who sought to rule Egypt, but, as they discovered, they themselves could seize control of the Egyptian state. Ali Mahir had tried to ensure his own domination of Egypt, through a purely instrumental use of the armed forces. However, in organising the officer corps in this way and to this end, he had set in train a series of developments which were to have fateful consequences for the future shape of Egyptian politics, long after the memory of his own fears, preoccupations and strategies had faded. NOTES 1

2 3

4 5 6 7

Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office records (FO) FO 371/ 20912 J5050/244/16 British Military Mission (BMM) Report No. 3; P.J.Vatikiotis, The Egyptian Army in Politics (Bloomington, 1961), pp. 45–50. FO 141/775 (35/2/37). This did not impress Nahhas, since he almost certainly regarded the officer corps as it was then constituted with deep suspicion. Prince Muhammad Ali had foreseen the dangers of this and had been suggesting not only that Sudanese troops should be used to quell any serious civil disturbances, but also that the king’s bodyguard should be exclusively Sudanese—FO 371/20119 J7726/2/16. FO 371/20910 J3240/244/16. ibid.; Abd al-Azim Muhammad Ramadan, Tatawwur al-Harika alWataniyya fi Misr (Beirut, 1973), vol. I, pp. 66–7. Ramadan, Tatawwur, pp. 67–8. Al-Balagh, 26 July 1937, Abdin Palace Press Files, Centre for Contemporary History and Documentation, Dar al-Kutub, Cairo (henceforth PPF).

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8 FO 371/20910 J4147/244/16; Lampson Diaries (Private Papers Collection, Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, Oxford), 29 July 1937, p. 144. The oath-swearing was not carried out until January 1938—after the fall of the Wafd government—when the old form of the oath was used. 9 Al-Misri, 1 December 1937 PPF. 10 FO 371/20888 J5222/20/16. The Palace press took advantage of this to warn against the army’s involvement by holding up the cautionary tale of Iraq—the inference being that unless the army remained in the hands of the king, it could not be barred from active intervention in the political process, to the chagrin of the civilian politicians who had encouraged its participation initially to suit their own ends. Al-Balagh, 17 December 1937, PPF. 11 Al-Balagh, 19 December 1937, PPF; FO 371/21945 J187/6/16. 12 See M.Khadduri Arab Contemporaries (Washington DC, 1973), pp. 8– 12. 13 FO 371/21936 J266/5/16, Marshal-Cornwall to Director of Military Operations and Intelligence, 16 January 1938. 14 The officer corps was equally annoyed by further exceptional promotions of Palace or Prime Ministerial favourites. Ominously enough, the British Military Mission speculated about the possibility of this interference leading to the resentment and chaos in the armed forces which had sparked off the revolt of Ahmad Urabi Pasha in the nineteenth century. FO 371/21938 J1068/5/16, BMM Report No. 4. See also Lampson Diaries, 24 January 1938, pp. 16–17 and 25 January 1938, pp. 19–20; FO 371/21936 J549/5/16; FO 371/21937 J660/5/16. 15 La Bourse Egyptienne, 26 February 1938 and 5 March 1938, PPF. 16 FO 371/23331 J2130/21/16. 17 Lampson Diaries, 26 April 1938, p. 74. 18 In 1936 he had even approached the British, soliciting their help and declaring that in return he would ‘put his sword at the service of the British Empire in Egypt’. The British authorities did not respond since they tended to think of al-Masri as ‘slightly cracked’. See Lampson Diaries, 12 May 1936, p. 119; FO 141/772 (616/7/36); FO 371/19073 J2520/110/16; FO 371/20102 J2543/2/16. 19 With al-Masri’s volatile political opinions it is unwise to be dogmatic. However, running through them all is a strain of anti-parliamentary feeling, combined with a great admiration for the use of force and a belief in the destiny of the military in politics, FO 371/21936 J458/5/ 16; FO 371/23331 J2241/21/16. 20 As al-Masri himself called it in December 1939. FO 371/24608 J224/ 31/16. 21 Mahmud Diyab, Abtal al-Kifah al-Islami al-Mu’asir (Cairo, 1978), pp. 115–20. 22 Lampson Diaries, 7 December 1938, p. 209; FO 371/21949 J4578/6/16. 23 FO 371/23331 J2303/21/16, BMM Report No. 9. The Coastguards represented in effect the fledgling Egyptian Navy.

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24 Public Record Office, London, War Office records (WO) WO 201/2665, pp. 1E, 1F and 1G; FO 371/24610 J753/31/16 BMM Report No. 12, pp. 21–2. 25 WO 201/2665, p. 1B. 26 FO 371/23337 J4837/21/16 and J2303/21/16 BMM Report No. 9, pp. 2–3; FO 371/21948 J2895/6/16; WO 201/2665, p. 1A, Lampson to Wavell, 16 November 1939. 27 Ali Mahir had originally promised the British that al-Masri would be dismissed if he proved unsuitable and Lampson received further assurances from Ali Mahir that al-Masri would go if he continued in this vein; FO 371/23306 J3525/1/16; Lampson Diaries, 6 September 1939, p. 172. 28 Lord Wilson, Eight Years Overseas (London, 1948), p. 24; WO 201/2665, pp. 3A, 3B, 5A and 6A; FO 371/24610 J753/31/16, BMM Report No. 12. 29 WO 201/2665, pp. 1A, 1B and 13A; Lampson Diaries, 21 December 1939, p. 287. 30 WO 201/2665, p. 26A; Lampson Diaries, 30 January 1940, p. 27. 31 WO 201/2665, pp. 24A and 32A; Subaih, Batal la Nansahu, p. 110. 32 FO 371/21937 J639/5/16. 33 See Ali Mahir’s speech, reported in La Bourse Egyptienne, 19 September 1939 (PPF). 34 As BMM Report No. 9 points out, the severity of disciplinary measures against a junior officer were in inverse proportion to the influence wielded by his family; FO 371/23331 J2303/21/16. The example of Anwar al-Sadat, an officer of precisely this generation, shows how hard it was even to enter the Military Academy without family connections. Anwar al-Sadat, In Search of Identity (Glasgow, 1978), pp. 24–7. 35 Subaih, Batal la Nansahu, pp. 105–6; FO 371/23305 J1980/1/16. 36 FO 371/23331 J2241/21/16, Memorandum by Hindle-James, 23 May 1939. During 1938–9 al-Masri had been assigned the job of Inspector of Military Schools and appears to have made good use of his time. Anwar al-Sadat, later to be closely connected with al-Masri, mentions the deep impression left on him by al-Masri during a visit by the latter to his unit at this time—a visit, the purpose of which was not strictly military, but part of al-Masri’s ‘dissemination of culture’, as al-Sadat rather oddly put it. Al-Sadat, In Search of Identity, pp. 30–1. 37 FO 371/31561 J2609/16/16, p. 1, Report No. 1. 38 After he fell from office in 1940, Ali Mahir had tried once again to form such a party. It came to nothing—see FO 371/24627 J2231/92/16, para. 7. He returned to this idea in 1945, but again without success, partly because he no longer had the support of the king—see FO 141/ 1028 542/14/45 and 542/18/45; Lampson Diaries, 5 April 1945, p. 106 and 22 April 1945, p. 121. 39 FO 371/31561 J2609/16/16, pp. 2–3, Reports 3a and 3b. 40 FO 371/24633 J1582/1582/16 Lampson to Halifax, 19 June 1940. 41 FO 371/24612 J1761/31/16.

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42 The Wafdists had already seized upon this inconsistency—see Mudabit Majlis al-Nuwwab (Debates of the Chamber of Deputies) 3rd Ordinary Session, 71st Sitting, 19 June 1940. 43 Lampson Diaries, 18 September 1940, pp. 239–40. 44 For example, Prince Ismail Daoud, erstwhile confidant of the king— see FO 371/27434 J3429/18/16. Later, in 1941, there was suspicion that the Palace was trying to arrange his dismissal from the army by alleging his involvement in a fairly sordid scandal—see Lampson Diaries, 7 October 1941, p. 272 and 20 October 1941, p. 285. 45 Lampson Diaries, 8 July 1940, p. 183; FO 371/24612 J1665/31/16; Dar al-Watha’iq, Cairo Security Reports No. 2173, 9 July 1940. 46 Abd al-Azim Muhammad Ramadan, Tatawwur al-Harika al-Wataniyya fi Misr 1937–1948, vol. II (Beirut, 1973), p. 139; Anwar al-Sadat, Revolt on the Nile (London, 1957), pp. 23–5—although he sets the incident in November 1940. 47 FO 371/31575 J5085/38/16; FO 371/31561 J2609/16/16, p. 4, Report 3c. 48 FO 371/31561 J2609/16/16, p. 2, Report 2. 49 FO 371/24627 J2231/92/16. 50 FO 371/24626 J1647/92/16, Lampson to Halifax (No. 745); FO 371/ 24610 J753/31/16, BMM Report No. 14, pp. 4–5. In fact, al-Masri’s unpopularity among the senior officers was such that they immediately denounced him to the British authorities. 51 Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D, vol. XII (London, 1962), pp. 558–60, Document No. 350. 52 A.W.Sansom, I Spied Spies (London, 1965), pp. 59–70. 53 FO 371/27430 J1241/18/16; WO 208/1560 MEIC Intelligence Summary No. 495, 29 April 1941. 54 Centre for Contemporary Egyptian History, Dar al-Kutub, Cairo: Cabinet 6/Drawer 3, Malaf (File) 27: Al-Mawqif al-Siyasi 1942 (sic)–1945, Cards 11–33; FO 371/31561 J2609/16/16. 55 FO 371/27384 J1200/2/16, BMM Report No. 16. 56 Centre for Contemporary Egyptian History, Dar al-Kutub, Cairo cabinet 7/Drawer 7 Security Reports, Card 700 18 February 1941. 57 FO 371/31573 J3079/38/16; FO 371/31561 J2609/16/16, p. 9, Report 10. By 1941, it was also clear that a certain number of air force officers were no longer willing to sit idly by during Axis air raids on Egyptian towns—see Ahmad Hamrush, Qissa Thawra 23 Yuliyu: Al-Juz’ alAwwal—Misr wa-l-’Askariyyun (Beirut, 1974), pp. 96–7. 58 Centre for Contemporary Egyptian History, Dar al-Kutub, Cairo cabinet 7/Drawer 7, Security Reports, Cards 784–5, 7 December 1941. 59 L.Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East (London, 1966), pp. 242–3; FO 371/63073 J962/962/16, Ettel to Ribbentrop, 24 July 1942; FO 371/69271 J3624/3624/16, Sonnenleither to von Neurath, 28 July 1942; Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi Mudhakkirat Part I (Cairo, 1977), pp. 21–2. 60 FO 371/45997 J1838/281/16 and J2462/281/16. The pilot in question, Muhammad Radwan Salem, when interrogated after the war, hinted that he had indeed been sent on his mission by the king—using the

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euphemism ‘a high personage’—in a bid to persuade the Axis forces to stop bombing Egyptian towns. From his account, it was an illplanned and hastily prepared mission. FO 371/31571 J2609/16/16, pp. 5–6, Reports 5 and 6; Lampson Diaries, 10 February 1942, p. 48; FO 371/31567 J701/38/16. FO 371/31568 J909/38/16, Lampson to Eden, 23 February 1942 (No. 653). FO 371/31561 J2609/16/16, pp. 8–9 and 11–12, Reports 7b, 7c, 7d and 14; Al-Baghdadi, Mudhakkirat, pp. 18–21. Lampson Diaries, 9 April 1942, pp. 97–9; FO 371/31571 J2079/38/16. Lampson Diaries, 10 March 1942, p. 74 and 28 April 1942, pp. 114–15; FO 371/31569 J1087/38/16. FO 371/31561 J2392/16/16 and J2609/16/16, Lampson to Eden, 24 May 1942; Lampson Diaries, 19 May 1942, p. 140 and 21 May 1942, p. 143. Lampson Diaries 2 June 1942, p. 160, 3 June 1942, pp. 163–4 and 29 July 1942, p. 228. A measure of the government’s nervousness was the fact that, as the German army advanced on the Delta, the government, instead of concentrating the Egyptian army for defence, dispersed it in small units all over Egypt. See the lists in FO 371/31561 J2609/16/16 and J2900/16/16. Ahmad Murtada al-Maraghi, Ghara’ib min ’Ahd Faruq (Beirut, 1976), pp. 56–70 and 108–11. Anwar al-Sadat, In Search of Identity, pp. 122–3. In these pages, he gives his account of his own, highly irregular, readmission to the Egyptian army in 1950, arranged by Dr Yusuf Rashad, an army doctor attached to the Palace and a close friend of al-Sadat since 1941. Al-Maraghi cites an army doctor attached to the Palace—Dr Yusuf—as one of the chief organisers of the ‘Iron Guard’. Al-Maraghi, Ghara’ib, pp. 56–70. Anwar al-Sadat, Revolt on the Nile, pp. 21–5, 30–4 and 41–3. Hints of a similar, although more oblique kind may also be found in Abd alLatif al-Baghdadi, Mudhakkirat, pp. 13, 15 and 20–1.

Chapter 4

Mustafa Al-Nahhas and political leadership Alaa al-Din Al-Hadidy

In order to have a better understanding of the role played by Mustafa al-Nahhas in Egyptian politics, one must try to examine the framework, both social and ideological, in which Nahhas operated. The character of Nahhas, important in itself, is not a sufficient guide to the understanding of his policies. Nahhas shared some of the traits of people of his own social class, of similar educational background, and of his generation. This has led some to say that any other person in Nahhas’s position would have adopted the same stand towards the British and the Palace. Yet Nahhas was not just the mere instrument of history which such an interpretation suggests. Without his own personal traits Nahhas would never have remained a popular leader for so long a period. After all, he was the leader of the largest Egyptian political party for a longer time than any other Egyptian leader in recent history. Nahhas, therefore, should be seen in the context of what he himself represented in Egyptian political thought in general, and particularly within the Wafd Party. Contrary to widely accepted belief, the Liberal Constitutional Party was not the sole heir of the old Umma Party. Those who have claimed that it was, have argued as follows: there were two main parties, representing two different ideological trends before World War One, the Umma Party and the Watani Party. Since most of the Umma Party members joined the Wafd later, and then defected to form the Liberal Constitutional Party, the latter was merely an extension of the old one. In some respects, this argument is based on similarities between the two ideological positions. However, it is chiefly based on the simple physical existence of the same men in the two parties, such as Lutfi al-Sayyid, ‘the philosopher of the Party’. For its part, the rival Watani Party 72

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maintained a continuity of ideology and organisation, but with a different membership and with much diminished influence. Thus, it is argued, the two parties did indeed exist both before World War One, and after it. Although this argument is basically correct, it fails to notice that the Wafd Party was also an heir of the old Umma Party. It was the ideology of the Umma Party which became the dominant ideology among the elite of politically minded Egyptians after World War One, and it triumphed over the ideology of the Watani Party. More significantly, its ideology and programme became that of the Wafd Party. The difference between the two rival parties—the Wafd and the Liberal Constitutionalist—lay chiefly in the social backgrounds of their members and in the changes in political attitudes which occurred in Egyptian society as a result of the revolution of 1919. Thus, their approaches differed in degree, but not in content. Both parties were for ‘Egyptianness’ versus Ottomanism; they supported a constitutional monarchy, in preference to either a republic or an absolute monarchy. Most important was their similarity of approach to the solution of the national problem. That is, they advocated a solution through peaceful, legal means, and through negotiations with the British, in contrast to the Watani Party which called for a more radical approach. One could further argue that the Liberal Constitutional Party came to betray the original principles of the Umma Party while the Wafd remained more faithful to its ideological heritage. Because of the mass support enjoyed by their rivals, the Liberals soon abandoned their ideas and their faith in institutions, such as the Constitution and Parliament. Having failed to win the elections as they had hoped, they came out in favour of a more autocratic notion of government and, as a result, became closely allied to the autocratic monarch. The main reason for the defeat of the Liberals was their continuing belief in the efficacy of family connections and of wealth as the key to political power. Their continued use of these methods in electoral campaigns contrasted sharply with the more modern and skilful methods used by the urban middle-class effendis. It was not long before the rural landowners discovered that their main rivals in governing post-independence Egypt were not their old enemy, the Palace, but their old allies in the urban middle class. This competition between the landowners and the effendis was to dominate Egyptian politics from 1919 to the military coup in 1952.

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The competition between Saad Zaghlul and Adly Yeken, or between Nahhas and Muhammad Mahmud, epitomised and reflected the struggle between these two social groups for political primacy. After the social structure of the Wafd had become similar to that of its old rival, the competition continued, in part through the more radical wing of the Wafd itself, but largely through the activities of the new parties which gave a voice to the same social groups which the Wafd had once represented. Another difference may be inferred from the political power and structure of the leadership of the party. There were two main competing wings in the Wafdist leadership, the urban middle class, and the rural landowners. The term ‘urban middle class’ refers largely to the first generation of the urban intelligentsia who were mainly professionals, frequently lawyers. The leaders of the national movement came from this segment of society. Its main representatives were Saad Zaghlul and the ‘Gang of Four’ which succeeded him, Mustafa al-Nahhas, Makram Ebeid, Ahmad Mahir and Mahmud Fahmi al-Nukrashi. Although Nukrashi was not a lawyer—not all of them were lawyers—he belonged to that school of thought, the intellectual background of which was predominantly influenced by lawyers and government officials. Although they neither constituted a numerical majority, nor formed the main bulk of the second or other strata of the Wafd, which was nevertheless their main power-base, they possessed immense power and an influence disproportionate to their actual numbers, due to their professional skills. The second wing consisted of large and medium landowners. With the defection of the large landowners to form the Liberal Constitutional Party, their numbers in the leadership of the Wafd declined. A further setback came with the election of Nahhas as successor to Saad Zaghlul and the defeat of Fathallah Barakat. With the defections in 1932,1 the control of the ‘Gang of Four’ was absolute. Each wing had its own set of policies which differed from those of the other. This meant that, at any given time, the Wafd’s general policies reflected the internal balance of power between these two wings of the party’s leadership. Thus the urban-rural divide, as it could be called, was reflected in one section being more militant than the other. Furthermore, the internal balance between these two wings decided their policy against the other two powers, the king and the British, as well as their shifting alliances.

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By and large, the urban lawyers advocated the more militant policies, although it was noticeable that they preferred a closer relationship with Great Britain at the expense of the power of the king. This was evident in 1932, when the two factions argued about whether to accept the king’s terms for entry into a coalition government or to reject them. This was to result in the defeat and the defection of the landowners. Thus, from 1932 to the end of the 1940s, the urban wing dominated the leadership, although it was to suffer two major setbacks during this period. The first was the defection of two strong pillars of the old guard, Ahmad Mahir and Fahmi al-Nukrashi. The second was the defection of Makram Ebeid in 1942. Although they were replaced with men from similar backgrounds, such as Sabri Abu Alam, the replacements were not of the same calibre or influence. Thus, this period was characterised by a very close relationship with the British, and a corresponding sharp hostility to the king. It was not surprising that these were the men who signed the 1936 treaty with Great Britain, and who returned to power as a result of the events of 4 February 1942.2 One explanation for their attitude to the monarchy might be that, since the king represented the head of a social pyramid consisting of landowners, they were bound to be antagonistic towards him. However much the landowners differed with the king over issues of constitutionalism and liberalism, in practice they shared a common social and class base, and their conflict of interests was secondary rather than primary. The story was different with the urban intellectuals. For these people, a more open and less autocratic system was the only way for them to ensure their social and political advancement in a society which was still controlled by those who enjoyed landed wealth, of which they had none. Thus they were ready to challenge the social system in order to acquire more votes, even if it meant upsetting certain rules and laws. They understood that it was the nation, as embodied in the voting masses, which was the source of their power. Saad Zaghlul enshrined this idea in national lore. This concern was, to some extent, reflected in the social policies of the Wafd. By comparison with the other parties in Egyptian government prior to 1952, it was the most progressive of all, in terms of social legislation. Two examples which illustrate this were the legalisation of the trade or labour unions, in the labour laws of 1942, and the introduction of free education in 1952.3 There is no

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doubt that even by the mere fact of their wide patronage, favouring supporters, they served the interests of a larger constituency than any other party. The eventual defeat of the ‘urban’ wing of the party was due, in some measure, to the absence of three of its most celebrated leaders, Nukrashi, Ahmad Mahir and Makram Ebeid. Also important was the gradual transformation of Nahhas into a member of the establishment as a result of his marriage, and the rise once more of the large and medium landowners in the leadership of the Wafd. This was best exemplified and personified by the election, as Secretary-General of the Wafd, of Fuad Siraj al-Din, a scion of one of the largest landowning families, the Badrawi. With the decline of the role of the urban middle class in the party’s higher echelons, the Wafd became a second edition of the Liberal Constitutional Party, but with a populist coloration. On the other hand, the urban middle class expanded rapidly during the Second World War. However, it comprised new social forces, different from the effendi class which had existed at the beginning of the century. This time they were not only lawyers and government officials, but army officers and members of the free professions. The growth in the ranks of the working class as a new force was closely linked, at least in theory, to the additional strength of this emerging middle class of the 1940s, and affected its members’ way of thinking. In this way, a new generation of the urban middle class emerged. It found political expression, to a great extent, in the Muslim Brotherhood, and to a lesser extent in new groups of the Marxist Left. The Wafd lost its grip over the middle classes, as a result, and became increasingly a party of the big landowners, despite its efforts to maintain its popularity by abrogating the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1951, a self-defeating and, as it transpired, suicidal act. The landowner-dominated Wafd now had to contend with new groups which had a different perspective on the national question. In order to maintain its popularity and national appeal, it had to respond—or succumb—to the pressure from these new groups whose votes it needed. The Wafd was, in effect, abandoning whatever ideology and raison d’être it had had. It was to play into the hands of its rivals when it unleashed forces not under its own control and found itself dealing with a situation of armed struggle. Given its own structure, its fate was sealed in 1952. The situation went out of the leadership’s control on 26 January 1952 and the whole system collapsed seven months later.

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The Wafd, for a long time, had articulated the aspirations of the emerging middle class of the preceding century. Since it was not capable of breaking the old monopoly of power exercised by the Palace, it had to share power with the landowners, either inside the party itself or outside it, as in the case of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party. After the Second World War, however, the urban middle classes were no longer opposing the king alone, but, under the banners of socialist or Islamic parties, were increasingly critical of the Wafd itself. One may argue that the Wafd, at a certain stage in the social development of Egypt, represented the attempts of the rising urban middle class to break the aristocracy’s monopoly of power—that is, the power of the old Turkish ruling class before and after the 1919 revolution, and of the big rural landowners after the 1919 revolution. The cabinet of 1924 which included for the first time elements of the effendi class, was the first attempt, to be followed by others in 1928, 1930, 1936–7, and 1950–2. They were resisted bitterly throughout this period, and the regime of Ismail Sidqi represented an attempt to destroy them. It is against this background that the role of Nahhas himself should be judged. As the leader of the Wafd and through his own personality (which had enabled him to assume the role of leadership in the first place), Nahhas naturally played an important role in the struggle between the two wings of the Wafd party. Nahhas was a typical representative of the urban middle-class wing. When his own position moved closer to that of the rural landlords, the final defeat of that wing inside the party was not long in coming. One might even suggest that he let them down. With the leader of the Wafd no longer representing the urban middle class, the character of the Wafd changed, although his presence still gave the party its popular appeal, perhaps for reasons of nostalgia. Nahhas was the personification of the development of the party from an urban middle-class party to one dominated increasingly by rural landowners. Nahhas’s personal development is a classical case of the effect of occupying a position of power on an ex-revolutionary. Being Prime Minister, or even a government minister, greatly changed his social status. Equally, his involvement with the trusteeship of the Saif al-Din Da’ira not only gave him a substantial income, but also opened his eyes to a new and extravagant life style.4 Furthermore, his marriage to Zainab alWakil, daughter of a pasha, transformed him into a landowner, even though the land had been acquired through his wife. The

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elderly Nahhas had little in common with the young militant Nahhas of the Watani Party. It was not surprising, therefore, that he finally sided with Fuad Siraj al-Din and chose him as his successor—a choice which clearly indicated his new social preferences and political leaning. The rural landowners not only benefited from the departure from the party of such strong personalities as Ahmad Mahir, Nukrashi and Makram Ebeid, they also benefited from the personal change in the position of the leader of the Wafd himself. His defection from one wing (that of the urban middle class) to join the other, brought the latter weight and prestige. Nahhas began as a representative of the urban middle class and ended as the representative of the landowners, or at least, the patron and protector of their true representative, Fuad Siraj al-Din. He ended protecting the very group he had once opposed. This was not a change in his political position, as much as a result of his moving upwards from the bottom of the social ladder to the top, through the enhancement of his social-political status and his newlyacquired landholdings. This leads us to another aspect of Nahhas’s personality: the role played by his co-partners and the effects these had on him. Two particular examples are his wife and Amin Osman. As for the latter, his reputation was at least that of a very close friend of the British. Some people even accused him of treason. Yet the astonishing thing is that whatever Amin did, whether on his own behalf, or on behalf of the Wafd (meaning, in effect, on behalf of Nahhas), this did not apparently raise any doubts in people’s minds about the feelings of Nahhas towards the British. One might argue that it is doubtful whether Amin would have contacted the British without the approval of Nahhas, or whether Nahhas, who was so keen about his anti-British image as a national leader, would have allowed anything which seemed likely to damage his reputation and stand between him and the Egyptian people. Nevertheless, it was Amin who was labelled as the friend of the British, not Nahhas. Nahhas’s wife, Zainab al-Wakil, married him when her financial status was modest in spite of being the daughter of a pasha. Her subsequent activities became the focus of attention and a target for criticism by the opposition. Nahhas did not say or do anything to restrain her from leading her own provocative life style which appeared to differ completely from what was known about himself. If Nahhas himself did not get rich, the same could not be said about

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Zainab. However, one cannot but note the fact that she was his wife. It was scarcely conceivable that he could have been unaware of her activities and of the rumours to which they gave rise. The same could also be said about Fuad Siraj al-Din. It is interesting to note that while many writers labelled Siraj al-Din a feudalist reactionary, nothing is said about Nahhas’s role in promoting, or at least encouraging Siraj al-Din’s rise to the post of Secretary-General of the party. All three cases have one feature in common. All three had close relationships with Nahhas, yet he somehow avoided identification or association with any of them. What makes this more puzzling is the example of three of Nahhas’s other close relationships, with Ahmad Mahir, Makram Ebeid and Fahmi al-Nukrashi, respectively. In the party leadership election of 1927, it was assumed that these three were instrumental in ensuring Nahhas’s election. To put it more strongly, it has even been suggested that Nahhas was their tool. However, during the subsequent fifteen years, these three alleged masterminds fell, one after the other, leaving, as survivor and master of the field, the man who had been characterised as their stooge. In all three cases, they were the ones who became the outcasts, obliged to form new parties without any substantial popular following. Three explanations can be offered. Firstly, it is possible that being leader of the Wafd gave Nahhas such immunity that he was protected in all of the six above-mentioned relationships, whether in the open conflicts with Ahmad Mahir, Nukrashi or Makram Ebeid, or in making him above suspicion in the cases of Zainab alWakil, Amin Osman and Siraj al-Din. Secondly, one could attribute his immunity to his political adroitness. He was a skilful public relations man. He was also a consummate politician, in the sense of knowing how and when to associate himself with others, as well as how to do so without becoming too closely associated with them. In short, he knew how to use people to his own advantage. The third explanation is that both of the above factors combined to allow him to escape with his reputation intact. There is no doubt of the sincerity of Nahhas as a national leader. However, sincerity does not always shine through when it comes to political action. Nahhas, as a devout disciple of Zaghlul, inherited the latter’s fear of another 1882. That is, he feared another British intervention which would impose direct rule over Egypt, under the pretext of protecting the monarch. Nahhas, therefore, regarded any ‘revolutionary’ activity as an unnecessary provocation of the

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British which might lead to disaster. Instead, he decided on a strategy of using peaceful, legal means, of entering into negotiations with the British. At the same time, he sought to curtail the powers of the monarch, and to bring the Palace into the mainstream of the national movement. In effect, of course, this meant bringing the Palace firmly under Wafdist control. However, the Palace presented the Wafd with something of a dilemma. On the one hand, the main aim of the Wafd was to demand national independence, but independence could not be achieved in the presence of what they considered to be a ‘fifth column’. This ‘fifth column’ was not only politicians such as Adly Yeken and his kind, but also in a more direct way, the king himself. For Saad Zaghlul and his successor, the main challenge was to get rid of these parties first and independence, it was thought, would follow naturally. In domestic politics, Adly and his group, although not identified with the monarch at the start, nonetheless became so due to the pressure exerted on them by the Wafd. The latter’s command of the great majority of the popular vote left them no power base, except the monarch. In the ensuing struggle between the Wafd and its rivals, it fell to Nahhas to devote most of his career to the fray. This conflict between the Wafd and the Liberal Constitutionalists and the king was two-fold. In the first place, it revolved around the question of who was to conduct the negotiations with Great Britain. In the second place, it entailed the question of who would inherit the political benefits of independence. Naturally, the group which conducted successful negotiations, would be the one to reap the fruits of independence. It was not, therefore, simply a personal struggle between Saad Zaghlul and Adly Yeken, although there is no doubt that there was an element of personal antagonism in the proceedings. Other social, political, and cultural, possibly ethnic, elements contributed to the underlying causes of the conflict which consumed the national struggle for almost thirty years. The rising urban professional middle class from an originally Egyptian rural background had acquired Western liberal ideas, and was pitted against an upper-class, Turkish landed aristocracy with a tendency towards a more feudal and autocratic regime. It was a struggle that served as a prelude to the final struggle for independence from the British. The main immediate objective of the liberal group was to secure the Constitution, since it was through the Constitution that an

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elected government (presumably Wafdist) would win office and would conduct the negotiations with the British. The fight for the Constitution replaced the fight for independence in the years between 1930 and 1936. The Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936 was considered by the Wafd to have secured the struggle for democracy and the Constitution, and Wafdist-British co-operation reached its climax in 1942. However, the Wafd and Nahhas did not realise that the early ideological framework of the Wafd, and the legal framework into which they had locked themselves, left them no choice but to ask for British assistance against the king. This led to the hopeless contradiction of the Wafd being a party primarily established to ensure British withdrawal, but at the same time forced to depend completely on them. They came to power, that is, in order to negotiate with them. Being more representative of the people than the aristocrats and large landowners of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party, they had acquired a mass following, which tended to conceal the reality of their situation until this was gradually exposed after 1936, culminating in the events of February 1942. In calculating the balance of power in local politics, the British saw the Wafd as serving their interests, especially when the latter was in power in 1936 and 1942. They met the Wafd’s demands and made their co-operation possible. However, when this co-operation did not serve the Wafd, a more militant policy was adopted, as occurred between 1930 and 1935, as well as after 1945. The argument used by Nahhas and the Wafd regarding the British was that the British had no choice but to negotiate with them, because they had the support of the masses and could sabotage or wreck any agreement reached by the British with rival political factions. This was not always a sound argument and did not convince the British all the time. In fact, the British became convinced that what the Wafd really wanted was for them to heed the Wafd’s request to share power in the government. Consequently, the relationship of dependence seemed to be mutual. Furthermore, it was clear that the British, for the sake of their own interests, would never have allowed any force to upset the delicate balance of power which they maintained and which allowed them to control Egypt with the least possible cost. Nahhas was trying in vain to disturb that equilibrium, by altering the relationship between the king and the Wafd in favour of the latter. The attempt to promote the use of Blueshirts was one

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example.5 It remains unclear as to whether Nahhas really believed that the British would let him carry this to extremes, or whether he was simply bluffing in order to extract the maximum possible price from a stronger bargaining position. The situation reached a deadlock in which Nahhas could achieve nothing more than the 1936 treaty, largely because of the unrestrained or undiminished power of the king and the restraint placed upon him by the British when he tried to dilute these powers. Eventually, the policy of depending on the British to curb the king in order to check the British came to a standstill. It had led the country nowhere after twenty-five years of a vicious circle in which the Wafd’s major achievement was the 1936 treaty. However, that was not enough, especially in post-Second World War Egypt. The final collapse of the professional middle-class wing in the leadership of the Wafd Party, with Nahhas turning to the old large landowners’ wing, also contributed to the final collapse of the Wafd and its leader. This time, by adopting a policy of rapprochement with the king, which Nahhas had rejected throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Nahhas put himself in a much tighter and increasingly indefensible corner. With this new alliance to a decaying monarchy, Nahhas had tied himself to a sinking ship. New radical and militant groups on the left and the right were attracting more of the support of the new generation and the new social groups away from the Wafd. With the monarch becoming a target of criticism and opposition, Nahhas’s conciliatory tone towards the king could not have come at a worse time for his own political prospects. Not only was he abandoned by the British, whom he had vigorously denounced in an unprecedented way by unilaterally abrogating the 1936 treaty, but he also failed to maintain his grip over the masses. It was a final act of obeisance by a desperate and dying hero. When all the forces were unleashed and the situation had grown out of control, Nahhas’s actions seemed like those of Samson as he brought the temple crashing down on his own, as well as on his enemies’ heads. These were not the ‘peaceful, legal means, via negotiation’ hitherto adopted, but guerrilla warfare and acts of terrorism which Nahhas could neither control nor follow, even had he wanted to. The burning of Cairo in January 1952 and the army’s intervention, in July of the same year, were virtually foregone conclusions. Nahhas was neither a mere instrument of history, nor simply a representative of specific social forces at a certain period of time.

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There is no doubt that he did share many of the values and ideas of the larger groups to which he belonged, whether it was a class, or a nation. However, one could argue that there are two levels on which to understand the role of any personality in history, politics or society. One is the social level, and the other is the personal level. To translate this into political terms, one would be examining the strategy adopted by the collectivity, and the different tactics adopted by each person. One could enter into endless discussions on where to draw the line between the two levels. For Nahhas, one might argue that his strategy was that of the Umma Party, shared by the rest of his colleagues in the Wafd. However, the question arises as to whether the Wafd would have been the same, had it been led by Ahmad Mahir or Nukrashi. That is where the personal level comes in. There is no doubt that Nahhas was a charismatic leader in his own right. It is true that being the heir of Zaghlul and President of the Wafd were powerful factors in acquiring the attributes of national leadership. There is no doubt also that Makram Ebeid played a considerable role, by constructing an image for Nahhas as that of the ‘Sacred Leader’. Neverthless, all of these factors would have been insufficient to explain his role. In order to do so fully, one must take into account certain personal characteristics which Nahhas alone possessed, and which made him such a charismatic leader. One could argue that others may have been better educated, more experienced, but it was only Nahhas who possessed the charisma. It is sometimes difficult to find out why a particular person is liked or loved, because it requires an attempt to explain feelings which are not always accessible to rational explanation. It seems clear, for instance, that Nahhas’s physical appearance, his general attitude and behaviour, his ideas and principles, all played a part in ensuring the success of his appeal in Egyptian politics. However, it is much more difficult to establish clearly the complex formula which allowed all these elements to have the political impact which Nahhas evidently succeeded in creating. Jean Lacouture has written that what delighted the Egyptians was to find themselves reproduced in Nahhas, in his moods, enthusiasms, resentments and quirks. He called this a ‘sounding echo’. According to Lacouture, Nahhas gave the Egyptians the feeling that they themselves were exercising power, or if not, that they were being excluded for personal reasons.6 Another European, Barrie St Clair McBride, wrote that Nahhas’s

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personal honesty and character were never in question and spoke of his eloquence and persuasion in both Arabic and French. He also described Nahhas as ‘a tall man with a striking face which clearly showed all his emotions when he was addressing an audience. He had a cast in his left eye which gave the unnerving impression from his photographs that he was able to see those to his side, as well as those in front.’ McBride concluded that Nahhas was, on the whole, a likeable, attractive man with a sense of humour and a pride in his appearance.7 Naturally, there were those among the non-Egyptians who did not think well of him. Although the following remarks came from one of Nahhas’s bitterest enemies, nevertheless they give some idea of why he was loathed, as well as liked: ‘Good heart, a very large street value, by reason of his form of oratory, and obstinacy. His defects are boundless. Vanity, a deficient third dimension in his reasoning capacity, and a not quite immaculate moral courage. The personal element ranks with him too highly, and his talent is for party politics of a rather hectic kind, rather than for statesmanship.’8 These not altogether complimentary views were also shared by Nahhas’ opponents, Egyptian or not. It can be argued that all these qualities did exist in him at the same time. It is quite possible that each group saw in Nahhas that which suited it best. There is, after all, no contradiction in being both honest and egocentric. However, some would see one side of the coin rather than both sides. For those who loved Nahhas, he was no less a man or a leader than Zaghlul, and possibly he was even better. Fuad Siraj al-Din said that Nahhas went through all that Zaghlul went through, but while the latter came from the establishment, the former did not. Furthermore, he asserted that by comparison with Zaghlul, Nahhas was the stronger in character, since he would never have resigned as Zaghlul did in 1924.9 Equally important is the opinion of one Egyptian scholar, Dr Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid. She argues that Nahhas was not entirely the irresponsible buffoon that some of the opposition claimed him to be. Rather, he was an astute politician, despite his lack of finesse and subtlety. His approach was one based on vested interest, and it served him well in garnering votes in the rural areas, since he was not averse to promising much that he had no intention of delivering. She states that his speeches were geared to the man in the street, who appreciated Nahhas’s style, and that contact with the public gave him a ‘kick’, an excitement which the more

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mundane attributed to a touch of hysteria.10 A further insight into Nahhas’s persona is provided by the novelist, Najib Mahfuz, who recalled that Nahhas had some of the characteristics of the shaikh of a tariqa (religious brotherhood), affecting a simple religiosity which appealed to those of rural origin, as did his evident simplicity and honesty.11 One last description of the man is worth noting. It is that of Salah al-Shahid, who worked closely with Nahhas as an official, not as a member of the party. He described Nahhas as a democratic man by nature, liberal in his thought, a free person by inclination who was neither biased nor prejudiced. He had a judge’s mentality, and would let everyone speak first, before speaking himself. When it came to national issues, which did not relate to day-to-day government work, but to the Wafd, then, for Nahhas, the Wafd meant the nation. Much as with Zaghlul, this also meant that he tended to regard the President of the Wafd, as the leader of the nation. It was also noteworthy that his opinion prevailed, even when he was in the minority.12 This last sentence leads us to one basic component in Nahhas’s personality. He personified the Wafd, and the Wafd, according to Wafdists, was the nation. Thus he was the nation. Whether this idea was inherited from Zaghlul, or was a basic characteristic of Nahhas, does not change the outcome. Here we are faced with a basic contradiction in Nahhas’s perception of democracy, since, officially, the Wafd insisted that people are the source of all power. This suited Nahhas as one of the people, outside the ruling establishment. He saw no reason why he should not share in power. Nahhas held firmly to the belief that the 1923 Constitution was the ‘Magna Carta’ of Egypt, and was an expression of the changes which were taking place in Egypt. Unfortunately, the constitutional battle coincided with the national battle, and as explained by Tariq al-Bishri in his analysis of Egyptian history, it needed to consolidate all efforts in one camp. No dissent was allowed. Unity, or in other words, the monopoly over the national as well as the constitutional movement, was a basic component of the Wafd’s strategy.13 This led to the unfortunate result that while the the slogan of ‘democracy’ was upheld against the autocracy of the king, no such ‘democracy’ was allowed in the democratic camp itself. There were reasons for the equation of the Wafd with its president, but this could hardly be justified with reference to any democratic principles. In the cases of political disagreements, the most basic

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idea of democracy—decision by majority vote—was never seriously followed. Although one might support the struggle of Nahhas against the monarch as a necessary process in the political development of Egypt, one must remain sceptical about the degree of commitment to democracy by the allegedly ‘democratic’ Wafd. Nahhas was transformed by this process not simply into the President of the Wafd, but into the personification of the Wafd itself. Not surprisingly, this resulted in his adoption of certain attitudes and modes of behaviour which led many to accuse him of vanity. This can be seen in his relationships with most of the characters mentioned in this chapter. Since he saw himself as the Wafd, and since the Wafd was Egypt, he fell into the trap of regarding whoever differed from him, for any reason, as outcasts, opposed to the nationalist movement. Nukrashi, Ahmad Mahir and Makram Ebeid were expelled from the party. Equally, as long as his associates did not challenge his personal authority, they were allowed to flourish, as was the case with Amin Osman, Zainab al-Wakil and Fuad Siraj al-Din. Naturally, Nahhas was not judging everything according to the degree to which they related to his person. Nevertheless, personal matters became a major factor simply because he came to believe that he was the people. This belief that he did not simply represent the people, but somehow personified them, was a trait which made Nahhas different from other politicians, whether inside or outside the Wafd Party. For other politicians the ‘people’ were a convenient myth which could be used to further their interests and ambitions. Whether it was Makram Ebeid or Ismail Sidqi, both saw themselves as intellectuals and statesmen, separate and distinct from the ‘people’. Any one of them could claim to ‘serve’ or ‘represent’ the people, but still the fact remained that Makram or Sidqi were one thing and the ‘people’ another. It did not, of course, follow that their interests were the same. For Nahhas, on the other hand, it was an altogether different matter. He did not distinguish himself from the people, but he was united with them in the same way a Sufi or a mystic would feel one with God. Thus, whatever Nahhas saw as benefiting the people, he interpreted as being of benefit to him and vice versa. Hence his popularity. He was not playing a role, and he did not need to do so. As Lacouture rightly observed, Egyptians found themselves reproduced in Nahhas.14 This leads to the question concerning the kind of charismatic leader Nahhas was, compared to Zaghlul. Nahhas was not from

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the establishment, and even when he joined the cabinet, he did not join it as a member of the establishment. This influenced his behaviour to the extent that even when he was finally integrated into the establishment, he was rather like a member of the nouveaux riches, or a latecomer. This may explain his lack of subtlety and finesse. However, this also kept him popular. He was not the charming prince, or indeed a model which ordinary people aspired to emulate, as Zaghlul had been. He was someone who appealed to the ego of every middle-class Egyptian, not to their superego, as Zaghlul had done. Nahhas aspired to be like Zaghlul, but he never achieved his ambition. With his own physical appearance and personal behaviour, he could not be otherwise. He was not an outstanding hero who could capture the imagination of the people by his bravery or intelligence, as Mustafa Kamil or Saad Zaghlul or Hasan al-Banna succeeded in doing. Nahhas was an ordinary man who shared the simple ways of the ordinary fallah. He would know when to bow to the storm and to wait until it passed. He was quite aware of his own weaknesses and would try to gain points without ever performing outstanding acts of heroism or displaying sufficient imagination to upset the whole balance of power. His steps were cautious, and only when he was sure that his opponent was completely helpless, would he attack. This can be seen in his actions concerning the Blueshirts in the 1930s, in the incident of 4 February 1942, or in his abrogation of the treaty in 1951. It can also be seen in his fear of provoking the monarchy. In fact, it is frequent enough to suggest that there were certain taboos, as far as he was concerned. This would explain his firm belief in the political framework in which he persisted in operating, without seeking to change the rules of the game. As he once admitted, he was not a revolutionary. It is possible that posterity has asked too much of this man. Free of the formative influences which shaped Nahhas and his environment and free of the pressures and constraints under which he operated as a politician in the Egypt of his day, it is easy for those who come after him to criticise his behaviour with the benefit of hindsight. In fact, Nahhas was an original. He served Egypt as best he could, and as he saw best.

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NOTES 1 This was when a group of prominent Wafdists broke with Nahhas and left the party. They were headed by Fathallah Barakat, Muhammad al-Gharabli, Hamid al-Basal and Fakhri Abd al-Nur and the dispute was ostensibly about the strategies to be used in confronting the Sidqi government and the British authorities. 2 This refers to the incident when the British authorities forced King Faruq to choose between abdication and the appointment of a Wafdist government, headed by Nahhas. The king chose to appoint Nahhas. 3 J.Beinin and Z.Lockman, Workers on the Nile (Princeton, 1987), pp. 291– 304. 4 This was the estate of Prince Saif al-Din, a prince of the Egyptian royal house who had attempted to murder his cousin Prince (later king) Fuad. He had been declared mentally ill and unfit to manage his own affairs. Consequently, his estate was managed by trustees, providing a lucrative income for those, like Nahhas, fortunate enough to be appointed to such a post. 5 The Blueshirt organisation was a uniformed, paramilitary grouping founded by the Wafd in 1935–6. It was originally recruited from the students who demonstrated on the Wafd’s behalf in 1935, demanding a restoration of the 1923 Constitution. However, during the Wafdist government of 1936–7, the organisation was expanded and was used to combat similar, rival groupings, as well as the enemies of the leadership of the Wafd, in the ‘politics of the street’, so visible during this period. 6 J. and S.Lacouture, Egypt in Transition (tr. F.Scarfe) (London, 1958), p. 93. 7 B. St C.McBride, Farouk of Egypt (London, 1967), pp. 45–6. 8 J.J.Terry, The Wafd 1919–1952: Cornerstone of Egyptian Political Power (London, 1982), p. 220, quoting Percy Loraine to P.G.Elgood, 25 January 1937. 9 Personal interview with Fuad Siraj al-Din, Cairo, 4 March 1981. 10 Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, Egypt’s Liberal Experiment 1922–1936 (Berkeley, 1977), pp. 148–9. 11 Personal interview with Najib Mahfuz, Cairo, 23 April 1981. 12 Salah Labib al-Shahid, Dhikriyyati fi ’Ahdain 1918–1972 (Cairo, 1976). 13 Personal interview with Tariq al-Bishri, Cairo, 9 April 1981. 14 Lacouture, ibid.

Chapter 5

Relations between Egypt and the United States of America in the 1950s Muhammad Abd al-Wahab Sayed-Ahmed

It is important to bear in mind the fact that when we speak of ‘Egypt’s policy in the 1950s’, or of ‘Egyptian-US relations’ during this period, we are in effect referring to the policy of President Nasser. He was his own decision-maker and relied only on a marginal input from his advisers. He had no inner cabinet, or equivalent of the US National Security Council. He did occasionally consult key personalities, such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he did convene the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) from time to time.1 However, he used them more as sounding boards, rather than as instruments for policy guidance. For most of the time in question, the RCC simply rubber-stamped his decisions, especially after 1954 when Nasser had come to dominate the political system. In short, one can say that Nasser was his own man and charted the course of Egypt’s foreign policy with little reference to others. The domestic and the regional factors which he was obliged to take into consideration in order to maintain this position of supremacy help to explain much of his foreign policy, including the relationship with the US. During most of the 1950s, relations between Egypt and the US resembled a game of chess, played out between Nasser and John Foster Dulles (US Secretary of State, 1953–9). The young Egyptian leader aspired at the time to the leadership of the Arab Middle East. For their part, Dulles and Eisenhower, whilst they professed support in principle for the anti-colonialist nationalism represented by Nasser, were in practice constrained by the fact that the US was a status quo power. Nasser found the status quo invidious, since he regarded it as unfairly loaded to the advantage of the West and to the disadvantage of Egypt. He was intent on doing his utmost to right the balance. In other words, there existed 89

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the grounds for a conflict between a regional and a global power, with each trying to outmanoeuvre the other, in the belief that they would eventually win. In 1953, the new American administration, led by Eisenhower and Dulles, was particularly concerned with the marked decline in Western and American prestige in the Middle East. The region, as a whole, appeared to constitute a major gap in the Western defence system.2 The Eisenhower administration began to form a new American strategy towards the Middle East, in which ‘Egypt is obviously the key’ and which was aimed at the defence of the Middle East. The American National Security Council (NSC) report of March 1953 confirmed this intention and recommended that ‘[the USA]…should develop Egypt as a point of strength’.3 Such American assessments persuaded the US administration to send Dulles to investigate the situation in person. The purpose of his visit was to generate support for a regional alliance, known as the Middle East Defence Organisation (MEDO). After speaking with Nasser, Dulles became convinced that MEDO would never materialise, that the original MEDO proposal no longer met the situation and was, as a consequence, outdated. At the end of May 1953 Dulles returned from his mission. He submitted an extensive secret report to President Eisenhower, explaining the main reasons behind his decision that the idea of setting up a defence system centred on Egypt should be temporarily shelved.4 Dulles now perceived the success of MEDO as a very remote possibility. He stated that many of the Arab peoples ‘are more fearful of Zionism than of Communism’ and that they were so engulfed in their quarrels with Great Britain and France that they paid little heed to the Soviet threat.5 His assessment of the role of MEDO and of Egypt can be attributed to a number of factors. According to Dulles’s top secret file ‘the Suez Canal base was not important’.6 Furthermore, it had become evident both to American and to British strategists that the defence of the Middle East against the USSR called for several bases in the ‘Northern Tier’, that is, on the borders of the USSR itself. Moreover, the existence of nuclear weapons made the need for a dispersal of military resources all the more imperative and it was, therefore, necessary to build up the facilities available in the countries which constituted the ‘Northern Tier’, ranging from Turkey in the west to Pakistan in the east. These countries felt, in Dulles’s words, ‘the hot breath’ of the Soviet Union more directly

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than did Egypt and, as a consequence, promised to be more amenable to American influence.7 Nevertheless, the failure of Dulles to secure Egyptian participation in an American-inspired Middle East defence organisation did not affect American hopes that Egypt might become the first Arab country to make peace with Israel. While negotiations dragged on between Egypt and Great Britain, Egyptian-Israeli contacts moved even more slowly. The Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Muhammad Fawzi, speaking to the UN official, Ralph Bunche, suggested that Egypt could accept one partition, but not two. These feelers were abandoned when information concerning them was leaked to the press. However, both Bunche and the State Department agreed that an Arab-Israeli settlement might yet be possible.8 In 1953–4, the US did not want to see Nasser weakened. In Ambassador Caffery’s view, ‘Nasser is the only man in Egypt with strength enough and guts enough to put over an agreement with Britain’.9 With the Anglo-Egyptian treaty signed in 1954 and with Nasser’s control secured, US policy-makers, especially the architect of American foreign policy, Dulles, believed that a gradualist approach would resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Furthermore, the Egyptian government appeared to show a greater willingness to compromise.10 The Egyptian inclination to ease the tension with Israel at any cost should be viewed in conjunction with the regime’s policy of improving its relations with the US, as well as with its eagerness to consolidate its domestic power base as rapidly as possible, in the face of strong opposition. However, the hopes of easing this tension were dashed when Israeli forces attacked Gaza on 28 February 1955. The Israeli raid marked the end of the relative calm which had hitherto prevailed along the Egyptian-Israeli border. A chain reaction of increasingly violent confrontation was initiated between the two countries, reaching a climax in the Suez war twenty-one months later. As one historian has observed, ‘with the Gaza raid, the count-down to war began’.11 Nasser’s humiliation in Gaza and the almost simultaneous announcement of the establishment of the Baghdad Pact, led him to assume that there was pressure being brought to bear to force Egypt to participate in the Pact.12 Egypt’s historical rivalry with Iraq for leadership of the Arab world led Nasser to think that he must not appear to be weak, nor must he submit to any Israeli threat. As a result, it seems that the timing of the Gaza raid, rather

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than the Egyptian military defeat, was the main factor behind Egypt’s later policy towards the Baghdad Pact and Israel. Nasser felt that his emergence as one of the leading figures in the Arab world would be seriously damaged if he were to show a greater willingness to compromise, especially after the visible destruction wrought by the raid. This episode marked the inauguration of an Arab ‘cold war’, between Cairo and Baghdad. This, in turn, helped to shape the course of the peace process between Egypt and Israel. The chain of events did not help Egypt to become a bridge for peace, as the US administration had hoped. Rather, it became a barrier against any such peace for some time to come. As for the Americans, they believed that ‘the raid put an end to any hope for the steps towards peace’.13 The sequence of events touched off by the Gaza raid does, in fact, seem to have driven a wedge between Egypt and the US, since it marked the end to the honeymoon between the governments of the two countries.14 Nevertheless, Nasser was still hoping to keep on good terms with the US and hoped eventually to acquire American arms. Before leaving for the Bandung Conference, Nasser did his utmost to see Dulles, in order to discuss a matter of mutual interest.15 However, it was all in vain. The Egyptian president became convinced that no Egyptian argument could change an American strategy which was based on the assumption that all Arab countries, and Egypt in particular, should be maintained simply as defensive powers, not offensive ones.16 As a result, at Bandung, Nasser informed the Chinese of his eagerness to obtain arms from the Eastern bloc. This did not prevent him from simultaneously continuing to press the US for arms, since he was eager to avoid any further rift in relations with the US. Undoubtedly, also, Nasser was wary of some of the political implications of arms purchases from the Eastern bloc. For his part, Dulles did not take the matter seriously, since he was convinced that Nasser was bluffing and was simply trying to blackmail the US.17 However, events were soon to prove him wrong. On 27 September 1955, Nasser made public the details of his arms purchases from the Eastern bloc (known as the Czech arms deal), thus facing the US administration with a fait accompli. In a memorandum to his brother, Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA, offered his own assessment of Nasser and of Egyptian policy: ‘Nasser has won prestige and a position of leadership in the Arab world by the Soviet arms deal. He is determined to do everything

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possible to maintain this position…. If he can maintain his independence and prestige through an arrangement with the West, he would prefer that to a closer tie-up with the Soviets.’18 Despite the arms deal and the improvement in Soviet-Egyptian relations, Egypt continued to demonstrate a willingness to improve its bilateral relations with the US. Egypt’s diplomacy was aimed at mitigating American disappointment at Egypt’s deal with the Eastern bloc. The Egyptians were keen to deny that, because of the arms deal, Egypt ‘is going to open the door to the Soviet penetration of the area’.19 However, the American leadership did not remain passive in the face of this development. Dulles revealed the American peace initiative for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. This was considered to be one of the most comprehensive such plans of the 1950s. American hopes were centred on the mission of Robert Anderson. In January 1956, eighteen years before Kissinger, Anderson shuttled between Cairo and Tel Aviv. However, in spite of his optimism, as well as that of Dulles, his mission was a failure.20 This failure marked a turning point in the thinking of the Eisenhower administration in general, but specifically in that of Dulles himself, regarding both Nasser and Egypt. The US administration now began to move towards the achievement of three political aims. Firstly, it tried hard to form a competing antiNasser and anti-Soviet camp, under the banner of the leadership of Saudi Arabia.21 Secondly, in seeking to limit Nasser’s influence in the Arab world and to counter his activities in the Middle East, Dulles suggested to President Eisenhower that the US should encourage Great Britain to maintain its existing relationship with Jordan and thus help to prevent a situation in which a pro-Egyptian coup d’état might succeed.22 Thirdly, Dulles increased American support for the Baghdad Pact.23 It was clear that American policymakers’ real concern was to find a new strategy in the area, aimed at isolating Egypt from the rest of the Arab world, and leaving it no ally but the USSR. In Eisenhower’s view, this might lead Egypt to ‘join us [the United States] in the search for a decent peace’.24 However, the sequence of events moved rapidly. Not only did Dulles consider Nasser wholly responsible for the failure of Anderson’s peace mission, more importantly, he was never to forget that Nasser helped the USSR to ‘leap over the northern tier of defence’. For the first time since 1946, the USSR was a full participant in Middle East politics.25 Dulles’s frustration and Nasser’s stubbornness led the former

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to take unusual military and economic measures against Egypt. On the one hand, from April 1956 onwards, Dulles actively used his influence to ensure that Israel solved its major defence problems, by putting pressure on Canada and France to provide Israel with more arms.26 On the other hand, Dulles, as an international lawyer, began to study the legal aspects of imposing an arms embargo on Egypt. However, for Egypt the major blow came on 19 July 1956, when Dulles withdrew the American offer to help finance the construction of the Aswan High Dam. It appears that it was Dulles’s personal decision to withdraw the offer of American funding and that President Eisenhower was content to be guided by him in this respect.27 Neither Great Britain, nor the World Bank, as equal partners with the US in funding the scheme, had been consulted prior to this sudden change in American plans.28 The abrupt manner with which Dulles revoked the American offer reflected the new American approach towards Egypt. It marked the use of the tactic of the ‘big stick’, aimed at punishing Nasser for his refusal to cooperate with the West. On 26 July 1956, seven days after Dulles’s decision, Nasser reacted to ‘the slap in the face received from the West’ by nationalising the Suez Canal Company, the revenue from which would henceforth be used to construct the dam at Aswan. Faced with this startling development, the major concern of the US administration was the reaction of France and Great Britain. Dulles called the apparent Anglo-French eagerness to use force and to drag the US along with them ‘a crazy policy’. The American attitude can be attributed to a number of causes. Firstly, the US administration wanted to keep the Anglo-French dispute with Egypt over the Suez Canal separate from the Arab-Israeli conflict. The fear that the two western countries would find a willing partner in Israel for a military solution to their problems increased the Eisenhower administration’s pre-election anxieties.29 Added to this, was the attitude of Dulles himself, who was still hoping to win over Nasser, since he saw him as the only Arab leader capable of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Secondly, the American leadership understood that US interests were not greatly affected by Egypt’s decision to nationalise the Suez Canal, as long as it continued to function efficiently. The US had no financial interests in the Canal, whereas it did have considerable economic and military interests in the Middle East as a whole.30 There was clearly some concern about the adverse effect which American military involvement might have, not simply on world public opinion, but especially on attitudes in the Arab and Muslim worlds.31

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Finally, it was clear to the US administration that only the USSR stood to gain from the poor image of the US which such action might encourage. Subsequently, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff stated in their assessment that ‘it would be harmful to the US and to Western interests, if the Middle East became more closely affiliated with the Communist bloc, or more firmly neutralist’.32 In addition, the CIA warned that the resort to force by Great Britain and France in the Suez crisis ‘would result in increased Soviet pressure on Iran’ and that this would undoubtedly affect adversely the American strategy of containing Soviet penetration in the area.33 As a result of these considerations, the US insisted upon the withdrawal of British, French and Israeli forces after the AngloFrench-Israeli invasion of Egypt in October 1956. In advising President Eisenhower to take this course of action, not only had Dulles played a major role in preserving Western interests in the Middle East, he had also helped to enhance Nasser’s prestige and popularity. Nasser, however, deceived himself, not realising that his popularity would cause the American policy-makers to consider him as the Grand Master of the Middle Eastern chessboard, under new American rules. From 1956 onwards, Soviet-Western rivalry in the area of the Arab-Israeli conflict had been transformed into a Soviet-American rivalry. This consequence became more apparent in January 1957, when Eisenhower outlined the new American initiative to fill the ‘vacuum’ created by the Anglo-French withdrawal from Egypt. The ‘Eisenhower Doctrine’ of January 1957 sought to mobilise the Middle East against the perceived Soviet-Egyptian threat. The US promised to help countries by protecting their independence and integrity against overt armed aggression from communist or ‘communist dominated’ countries.34 This was necessary, Dulles explained, because Great Britain’s unwise attack on Suez destroyed British credibility and crippled the Baghdad Pact. Although Dulles refused to cite any particular ‘communist dominated’ country in the Middle East before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Admiral Radford identified Egypt and Syria as the states in question.35 Nevertheless, in the late summer of 1957, after the Jordanian and Syrian crises, the US State Department’s Office of Intelligence Research produced a new assessment of Nasser. This report declared that ‘He [Nasser] expects Arab nationalism to save the Near East from Communism, just as it is freeing the Near East

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from Western imperialism.’36 Eisenhower began to reconsider his own attitude towards Nasser and decided that it might be a good idea to try to come to terms with him. In a secret memorandum to his Secretary of State, the president asked, ‘Do you think there would be any percentage in initiating a drive to attempt to bring back Nasser to our side?’ In this memorandum, Eisenhower said that he did not have in mind ‘anything spectacular, nor indeed anything that would get in the papers’. Rather, he was thinking in terms of a trusted envoy who would ask Nasser whether he saw ‘any basis for a rapprochement’.37 This change of attitude by Eisenhower and his staff can be attributed to a number of factors. During the Jordanian crisis in April 1957, Nasser had proved that he had the ability to whip up the support of the Arab people and the Arabs had come to look upon him as symbol of their unity and their independence.38 The Syrian crisis in August-September 1957, was a demonstration of the new political reality: Egypt under Nasser— not Iraq under Nuri al-Said, or even Saudi Arabia under King Saud—had become the main champion of the Arab world.39 Nasser had proved his ability by ‘saving Syria from communism’ and was thus estimated to have put an end to communist penetration of the area.40 By the end of 1957, and the beginning of 1958, the US National Security Council analysts had come to the conclusion that ‘Nasser has become so clearly identified with great success, that no rival is likely to challenge him.’41 Consequently, it should have been evident to American policy-makers at the time that their approach to the Middle East was likely to fail, if it came into conflict with Arab nationalist sentiments promoted by Nasser. By lending its support to unpopular regimes, the US might have been able, momentarily, to subdue nationalist resistance, but such regimes would be unable to resist indefinitely the internal pressures of such forces. In fact, by ignoring its tremendous popular appeal, American policy tended to unify and to strengthen Arab nationalist sentiment.42 In conclusion, it is possible to say that US-Egyptian relations in the 1950s represented the epitome of a conflict between the interests and needs of a growing regional power—Egypt—and those of an established, Western, global power—the United States. One of Nasser’s principal ambitions was to diminish any foreign influence in the region. This was based in part on his experience of Egypt’s national movement, and thus on his memories of the long struggle

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to bring about the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country as a precondition for full independence. More immediately, Nasser’s aim was also based on his belief that the Arab collective security system was the only valid solution to the area’s defence problems. Quite apart from the relative efficacy of such a system, it would mean primarily that Egypt’s regional hegemony could be assured. For their part, the US administration took some time to perceive that, by assisting Nasser to achieve some of his regional aims, they might also be serving their own long-term objectives, at least with regard to the East-West conflict. The Eisenhower administration had originally tended to operate on the principle that ‘those who are not with us, are against us’. However, when they realised that Nasser, in pursuing his own interests, and the interests of Egypt as he conceived them, was far from uncritical of the behaviour and the policies of the USSR, let alone of regional communist parties, grounds for common interests could be established. Conditional and unspectacular as this might have been, it nevertheless suggested that the US had come to recognise, in Nasser and in Egypt, a leader and a country worth cultivating, rather than antagonising. NOTES 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

National Archives, Washington, D.C. (NA) RG 59—Box 4020–774–11/ 3–1745 from Cairo to Secretary of State, 17 March 1954. Also, personal interview with Fathi Radwan, Cairo, 1985. Dulles’s statement to the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate, 25 May 1953. See also J.C.Campbell, Defence of the Middle East (New York, 1960), p. 49. Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower Papers, National Security Council (NSC). Summaries of discussions of the NSC, 31 March 1953. Princeton University, Dulles Papers Box 73: ‘Near East Trip’. There is an important point made by Dulles on pp. 1–2. See also NA RG 59 Department of State, from American Embassy, Ankara to the State Department, 28 May 1953. ibid. NA RG 59, Top Secret File (Washington, bilateral talks with the United Kingdom, concerning the Suez Canal base), 11 July 1953, p. 9. Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower Papers, NSC meeting 147, 1 June 1953. Washington National Record Centre, Diplomatic Branch (WNR) Reports of 28 August 1953 and 10 September 1953, US Embassy Files, Box 2667, file 320 ‘Egypt and Israel’.

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9 NA RG 59—Box 4016–A 774–00/3–154, from Cairo to Secretary of State, 3 March 1954 (Secret). 10 NA RG 59—Box 2979–764–87/9–154, from Cairo to Secretary of State, 11 September 1954. 11 Donald Neff Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower takes America into the Middle East (New York, 1981), p. 33. 12 The agreements, marking the establishment of the Baghdad Pact (grouping together Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Great Britain in a single defence organisation), had been signed on 24 February 1955, a few days only before the Gaza raid. 13 Princeton University, Dulles oral history project, Francis Russell, pp. 6–7. 14 NA RG 84—Box 2 from US Embassy, Cairo to Department of State 28 September 1955. In an interview with C.Foster, Nasser said ‘the behaviour of Israel was standing as an obstruction between the United States and the Arab world’. 15 Princeton University, Dulles Papers Box 96: ‘Nasser 1955’. 16 NA RG 59—Box 4042–780–5 MSP/9–453. 17 Personal interview with Ambassador H.Byroade, Washington D.C., 1984. 18 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, John Foster Dulles Papers, White House memo series, from Allen Dulles to John Foster Dulles, undated. 19 New York Times, 30 September 1955, ‘Cairo Statement’. 20 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower Papers, International Series, Box 8, folder 1: ‘Egypt’ 27, from Eisenhower to Colonel G.A. Nasser, 27 February 1956. 21 NA RG 59, CIA Papers, personal and private copy by Allen Dulles. 22 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Dulles-Herter Series, Box No. 5: ‘Dulles’, 28 March 1956, Top Secret. 23 ibid. 24 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower Diary, Box No. 9, File No. 1: ‘Diary’, 8 March 1956. 25 B.Lewis, ‘Middle Eastern Countries’ Reaction to Soviet Pressure’, Middle East Journal, vol. 10, Spring 1956, No. 2, p. 136. 26 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Telephone Call Series, Box No. 4, memo of telephone call to the Canadian Prime Minister, 11 April 1956. 27 Princeton University, Dulles oral history project, Anderson Dillons, p. 38. 28 Princeton University, Dulles oral history project, Black p. 23. 29 Neff, Warriors at Suez, p. 288. 30 NA RG 218 CCS—092 ‘Egypt’, note by Secretary of State to JCS, 31 July 1956. 31 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Dulles-Herter Series, Box No. 6 ‘Dulles’, draft letter from Eisenhower to Sir Anthony Eden, September 1956: ‘The use of military force against Egypt under present circumstances might have consequences even more serious than causing the Arabs to support Nasser.’ 32 NA RG 218 CCS—092 ‘Egypt’, JCS 2105/38, July 1956.

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33 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower Papers, Ann Whitman File, Box No. 8, NSC 297, meeting of the NSC, 7 September 1956, CIA Report. 34 Text in US Department of State, United States Policy in the Middle East, September 1956–June 1957 (Washington D.C., 1957), pp. 144–50. 35 Executive Session of the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate, 29 January 1957, vol. 9, pp. 10 and 151. 36 NA RG 59 Intelligence Report 7577, 1 September 1957. 37 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Memo Series, Eisenhower to Dulles, 13 November 1957. 38 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower Diary Series, Box 23, April 1957, telephone call from Dulles to Eisenhower, 26 April 1957. 39 Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Memo Series, Box No. 5, Meeting with the President, memo of conversation with the President, 2 September 1957; see also Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Telephone Call Series, Box No. 7, telephone call from Mr Rowntree, 26 October 1957. 40 NA RG 59–674–83/9–657, memo of conversation, subject ‘Egypt’s relations with Syria and Saudi Arabia’, 6 September 1957. See also Dwight D.Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Telephone Call Series, to Secretary of State, 28 October 1957, Dulles: ‘The Arabs now realize that Syrian conduct is being dictated from Moscow and even the Egyptians are concerned…’. 41 NSC 580/11, ‘Policy towards the Near East’, p. 4. 42 G.E.Meyer, Egypt and the United States: the formative years (Rutherford, N.J., 1980), p. 194.

Chapter 6

Nasser and the Egyptian press Sonia Dabous

The relationship between the press and the government during the post-revolutionary period may be examined in four stages. The first is from the start of the revolution until 1954. This period was characterised by the unstable relationship which existed between the new military leaders and the established press. Censorship was imposed and lifted several times. The second stage lasted from 1954 to 1960, during which Nasser consolidated his power and the Revolutionary Command Council issued its own publications. The third stage, from 1960 to 1968, saw the press, together with several other institutions, nationalised and brought under total government control. The fourth stage, from 1968 to 1970, is the period during which the press (especially Al-Ahram) began to realise the importance of its role in criticising the government’s errors, and tried to propose solutions. After the abdication of King Faruq in July 1952, the new regime slowly but surely began to develop its own policy on the press. At first, there was much hesitation and fumbling, since the junta of young army officers who had seized power had only the vaguest ideas as to what the press was really doing. Immediately after the coup, in July 1952, censorship powers were assigned to the newly created Ministry of National Guidance, the first head of which was Major Salah Salim. A censor (an army officer, in each case) was placed in every newspaper, in an effort not just to censor news and views, but also to ‘re-educate’ journalists in the new policies which the Free Officers were proposing for the country. These censors were handed two copies of the proofs of every news item or article before publication. The censor then returned one copy, signed and approved, or else rejected it. He kept the other copy for his Ministry

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as reference.1 At first the arrangements were somewhat confused, since the censors were young officers who had never had anything to do with the press. One of these once told the newspaper to which he had been posted: ‘Do not include anything about cotton. I don’t know a thing about it and I prefer to avoid errors.’ As a result, important news concerning the possibilities for cotton exports was never published in this newspaper for the simple reason that the censor knew nothing about the cotton question.2 When journalists protested against the censorship, the Revolutionary Command Council lifted it on 31 July 1952, and an RCC spokesman said that the revolution would rely on editors’ consciences and on their sense of duty to make fair decisions about what to publish and what to withhold. This lifting of censorship, which actually took effect on 11 August 1952, lasted only until 21 October 1952. On that date, publications both of the extreme right and of the extreme left were suppressed. Clearly, the ‘positive’ role which the Free Officers had expected the press to play, had not materialised. The first two years were in fact awkward for both the Free Officers and the press. The Free Officers functioned as a secret society; they neither explained nor clarified their policies to the press. Newsmen had to piece together their stories, and it was very hard to predict the officers’ next move, to explain the reasons behind their decisions or to find out who their real leaders were. Very few were aware that Colonel Gamal Abd al-Nasir (Nasser) was the true leader of the revolution and that General Muhammad Nagib was a figurehead. Nagib used to make pronouncements about the future form of government without consulting the Revolutionary Command Council members. On the other hand, the RCC used to issue decisions without informing Nagib. This situation rendered the task of newsmen harder. Nasser’s name first appeared in the Cairo press three weeks after the revolution. This was the occasion on which he lost his temper with Prime Minister Ali Mahir and paid him a formal call to ask why no progress was being made with the land reform scheme.3 The newspaper article referred to him as ‘Colonel Nasser, one of the revolutionary leaders’. It was not until September 1952 that the first hint of his real importance was given by Mustafa Amin, the publisher of Akhbar al-Yawm.4 Amin took a photograph of Nasser and used it to illustrate the first of a series of articles entitled ‘The Secret of Nine Officers’, in which Nasser was referred to as ‘the leader’. Nasser was angered

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by this development, and the remainder of the series of articles never appeared.5 The uncertainty of newsmen about the identity of the true leaders of the regime and about their future policies, led to a spate of rumours and increased public anxiety. Stronger penalties against those who propagated false or malicious rumours did not help, and rumours continued to circulate. The Egyptian Broadcasting Service, therefore, started on 28 November 1952 a new programme entitled La Tusaddiq (Do not believe). This programme was broadcast after the 8.30, p.m. and 11.00, p.m. news bulletins and its main aim was to refute unfounded rumours. A transcript of the programme was distributed to all newspapers. Furthermore, the public was requested to call certain telephone numbers, or to write to the Ministry of National Guidance, to find out the truth and to obtain answers to their questions, instead of depending on rumours circulated by the press.6 Until the February-March crisis of 1954, nothing serious happened to disturb the relations between the Revolutionary Command Council and the press. However, in early 1954, the disagreement within the RCC was made public, when Nagib announced his resignation from the office of President and Prime Minister. On 25 February, the Revolutionary Command Council issued a communiqué, explaining that Nagib had been aiming at personal dictatorship, and stating that he had not been an Original member of the revolutionary group. It explained that he was called in by the officers to be their official leader just before the revolution took place in 1952. The real leader all along, it was indicated, had been Nasser. The sharp public reaction to Nagib’s resignation was a clear indication of the extent of his popularity, not only in Egypt but also in Sudan. On 27 February it was announced that General Nagib had been restored as ‘President of the Parliamentary Republic’, with Nasser as Prime Minister and Chairman of the Council of the Revolution. However, Nagib did not remain for long in this position.7 Press censorship was briefly lifted on 7 March 1954.8 The press exploited this opportunity liberally, prompting Nasser to reimpose censorship one month later. However, before he could do so, Cairo newspapers started to campaign for the complete restoration of political freedom, and the press clamoured for an end to military controls. On 22 March, Ihsan Abd al-Qudus, the editor of Rose alYusuf magazine and a close friend to all the Revolutionary

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Command Council members, explained the newsmen’s position during the first two years of the revolution. He claimed that a wave of fear and anxiety had followed the shift in power after the revolution. The officers preferred to work in secret. They were unwilling to come out in the open and declare their policies or to show themselves to the people. Only Muhammad Nagib was known to the people. The rest preferred to work as a secret organisation. They would meet in secret and issue sudden and surprising decisions. No one knew on what basis these decisions were made, nor how the issues were debated and studied. Colonel Nasser used to attend public meetings, sitting in the third or fourth row. Major Salah Salim would not appear at all. The only one who appeared in public political deliberations was Anwar Sadat. The Free Officers thought that if they denied themselves publicity and worked in silence, the public would appreciate them the more. The civilian cabinets of Ali Mahir and Muhammad Nagib were always surprised by the Revolutionary Command Council’s decisions, which they learnt from the press. As a result, these two cabinets assumed only technical, administrative responsibilities, while decision-making itself was in the hands of the secret society, the ‘Revolutionary Command Council’.9 Ihsan Abd al-Qudus wrote that stability could be achieved only when the people understood the ruler’s mentality and logic, and then the people would share in decision-making. However, with a secret society ruling the country and issuing conflicting reports, stability could never be achieved. The editor of Rose al-Yusuf gave, as an example, the decision to declare Egypt a republic. Until the very declaration itself, many believed that the RCC considered those who had been advocating the idea of a republic to be harbouring evil intentions. 10 Nasser would not make any declaration, and whenever he spoke, he left the door wide open to different interpretations. During the brief lifting of censorship in 1954, some journalists adopted extreme positions. For example, they started to question the effectiveness of the Agrarian Reform Law and whether maximum ownership should be 200 or 500 feddan. This led to disturbances in some parts of the country where land had already been distributed to the peasants.11 In any event, censorship was reimposed in April 1954. The government claimed that when censorship had been lifted ‘elements affected by corruption in the past era had betrayed themselves, by spreading suspicions and

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doubts against the revolution’. These elements, the announcement continued, described land reform, the clean-up of the bureaucracy, the prosecution of corrupt politicians, and the confiscation of properties of the ‘people’s enemies’ as illegal actions which should be repealed once the revolution was over.12 On 5 April 1954, the Revolutionary Command Council ordered the dissolution of the press syndicate, of which all journalists were members, and appointed a ministerial committee under Major Salah Salim, then Minister of National Guidance, to take over its assets. A list of twenty-three press syndicate members who had received bribes of up to £E48,000 was produced. It included some of the country’s leading journalists who had at times criticised the government. A revolutionary tribunal tried and sentenced several of these journalists, among them the chairman of the press syndicate, Husain Abu al-Fath.13 Probably no press criticism had irked the government more than that made by Mahmud Abu al-Fath and his brother Husain, owners and publishers of the Al-Misri, the organ of the defunct Wafd party, and one of the largest newspapers in Cairo. When censorship was lifted in March 1954, the two brothers launched furious attacks on Nasser, not only in Al-Misri, but in the other newspapers and magazines controlled by their publishing empire. Among these were the Egyptian Gazette, the only Cairo English daily, and two French-language dailies, Le Journal d’Egypte and La Bourse Egyptienne. Determined to purge the press of these two outspoken critics, the government charged the Fatahs with committing acts against the regime and the national interest. Mahmud was accused of fostering propaganda against the regime abroad, and Husain was charged with attempting to obtain an arms contract from the Ministry of War and Marine for his own benefit and in disregard of the country’s interests. Describing the case as one involving the principles of a free press, Dr Wahid Rafat, the defence counsel, argued that it was no crime for a newspaper to urge the return of parliamentary life, and that the Revolutionary Command Council itself had been divided on this issue.14 Nevertheless, Mahmud Abu al-Fath, tried in absentia while in Switzerland, was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. Thereafter, no journalist openly criticised the regime or demanded a return to parliamentary life. By the end of 1954, the junta had emerged as the undisputed ruling elite of Egypt, and all serious opposition had been crushed.

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After suppressing these critical voices, the government decided, in 1955, to revive the press syndicate under a new administration. The syndicate’s ostensible objectives were to increase the efficiency of the press, promote a spirit of co-operation among its members, and raise their moral and material standards. The new organisation of journalists was thus completely subjected to the revolutionary regime. This state of affairs was confirmed by the law of 30 March 1955, which placed most professional and trade union organs of the press under the direction of the new Ministry of National Guidance. A symptomatic consequence of the Press Union’s subjection to the new authority was its public praise of President Nasser. In a telegram addressed to him, the Union used the term Al-Za’im (The Leader) and Al-Qa’id (Supreme Chief), although his official title as head of state was Al-Ra’is (President).15 Now that the threat of the press had been neutralised, the government, in May 1955, eased press censorship slightly. This move was probably also prompted by the fact that the transition period (proclaimed in 1953) was scheduled to end in 1956, and the regime sought to provide a seemingly free atmosphere in which people might discuss and vote on the officially proposed plan for a future political structure. President Nasser’s declared aim was to open ‘free discussion’ on all questions bearing on the system of government after 1956. He invited all Egyptians to ‘express their opinion without reserve’ on his plan to restore parliamentary government without political parties. However, censorship on other matters was retained. Nasser’s plan specified that no political parties would be allowed to function. Instead, a National Union— made up of peasants, labourers and professionals—would be established. In June 1956, Nasser’s plan was approved in a plebiscite. As a result, the Revolutionary Command Council was dissolved. Nasser was proclaimed President of the Republic, and a new constitution was enacted.16 Little time was left for the press to work up any public debate either on the candidate for president, or on his constitution. As a result, there was no discussion of these matters in any local publication. The plebiscite was a landslide for Nasser. Of five and a half million voters, 99.9 per cent voted for him and 99.8 per cent voted for the constitution. Certain articles in the constitution gave rise to hopes of some democratic revival. Article 45, for instance, stated that ‘Freedom of the press, publication and copyright is safeguarded in the interest of public welfare and within

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the limits of law’. Article 44 proclaimed that ‘Freedom of thought and of scientific research is guaranteed’.17 Despite these trappings of constitutional protection, the press continued to function under rigid censorship. In fact censorship alone did not appear to satisfy the government’s desire to mobilise the press in the ‘service of the people’. The search for a more effective control system resulted in a number of proposals, including the threat of nationalisation. Finally, on 4 January 1957, censorship was lifted and the government established the ‘Office of Censorship over Publications’ in the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance. 18 The office did not assign censors to newspapers or issue instructions and regulations as before, but its director would, from time to time, summon the editor-in-chief of a newspaper and ‘advise’ him on certain matters. Because the editors in 1957 of Al-Gumhuriyya, Al-Sha’b and AlMasa’ were all ex-military men, possible trouble could only have come from Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar. However, the latter was, until July 1957, edited by a close friend of President Nasser, Muhammad Hasanain Haikal. Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar, the last major publications to remain more or less independent, no longer represented a danger to the regime. The reduction in the size of newspapers, to six or eight pages, adversely affected the large independent dailies which began to publish fewer reports from special correspondents abroad. Like other newspapers supporting the regime, these more independent ones were obliged to sing the praises of the leaders of the revolution—in particular those of President Nasser. The king of Egypt in all his glory never had his photograph in the press as often as the president of the Republic in 1957.19 Although the whole of the Egyptian press was in tutelage after 1957, there still remained a certain diversity of expression. For example, in April 1957 the daily Al-Masa’ energetically attacked the government on account of a proposed law about industrial development. Although maintaining that it favoured a planned economy, the paper declared that the government’s law tended to ‘control totally and arbitrarily the industrial life of the country’ and it reproached the government for envisaging ‘excessive measures of control’.20 In the same year Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar accused four deputies of having received payment for technical advice given to the higher authorities of the Liberation Province. This province had been won from the desert and was regarded as

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a show case in the new regime’s programme of land development. The deputies concerned appealed to the President of the Parliament, Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, to defend them against the attacks of the Cairo dailies. This press campaign showed that the government sometimes allowed newspapers to investigate the doings of political personalities without interfering. This gave the public the impression that the press defended their rights and allowed the authorities to claim that journalism in Egypt was free. Such an example appeared real enough to the mass of the population. In practice, however, a hidden threat constantly menaced journalists. Without any reason needing to be given, anyone accused of having spoken unfavourably about the regime could be punished. Furthermore, censorship was reimposed on 30 December 1957.21 The political leaders, however, urged the editors directly to reflect the new realities in Egypt. In his speeches, Nasser criticised what he called the irresponsible press which perpetuated the old patterns and did not reflect the new realities. He said that the independent press was too frivolous, too much taken with sensational news and scandal-mongering. He went on to complain that the papers gave too much space to sensational trivialities, adding: ‘The social interest of the press did not reflect our new reality. The new reality in our society is that of the village, the peasant and the workers, and not the Hilton Hotel.’22 On 24 May 1960, the government suddenly issued a decree nationalising the press.23 This decree was undoubtedly the most drastic measure affecting press freedom since at least 1900. Termed the Press Organisation Law, the decree transferred the following publishing houses from private to public ownership: Dar Al-Ahram, Dar Akhbar al-Yawm, Dar Al-Hilal and Dar Rose al-Yusuf. After nationalisation, press-government relations were perhaps the most stable and consistent in Egypt’s history. Press ownership remained in the hands of the National Union, later to become the Arab Socialist Union. Journalists continued to abide almost religiously by the Union’s directives and guidelines. If they were not willing to do so, they had to stay mute and at home. Changes in the editorship and management were carried out according to the general policy of the state and its relationship with the two great power blocs of the East and the West. No journalist could stray far from the guidelines set by the government. Mustafa Amin sums up the situation after 1960, by saying that

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no profession in the world had suffered as much as the Egyptian press. Not one single editor, with the exception of Muhammad Hasanain Haikal, had avoided being either exiled, imprisoned, arrested, banned from writing or dismissed. Take the editors of Egypt’s papers: Mr Husain, Mr Ahmad Abu al-Fath, Mr Mahmud Abu al-Fath and Mr Ali Amin were exiled. Mr Ahmad Baha’ al-Din, Mr Fikri Abaza, Mr Anis Mansur and Mr Ibrahim Nawwar were all dismissed for varying lengths of time. Mr Galal al-Hamamsi was banned from writing for fourteen years. Mr Ihsan Abd al-Qudus was imprisoned and Mustafa Amin was accused of spying and imprisoned. The younger generation of journalists were transferred from their jobs to shoe factories, or farms far from Cairo. The editor of AlGumhuriyya was changed fourteen times from 1960 to 1970.24 This was the situation in the 1960s, despite the fact that the officially declared position of the government was that freedom of the press was not to be restricted after the reorganisation of 1960. The National Charter of 1962 stated that the revolution sought only to liberate the press from the domination of capital, advertising and bureaucracy. Article 35 of the 1964 Constitution reads: ‘Freedom of opinion and scientific research is guaranteed. Every individual has the right to express his opinion and publicise it verbally or in writing or by photography or by means within the limits of the law.’25 At a press conference held by President Nasser for the members of the Third International Conference of Journalists in Cairo on 1 October 1963, he was confronted by a direct question from the Sinhalese delegation regarding press freedom. The question was: ‘You are welcoming us here as journalists. Why then do you prevent freedom of expression in your country?’26 Nasser’s answer was that freedom of expression in Egypt was a complicated subject. He described the press before the revolution as a trade. The cost of getting established, according to Nasser’s estimate, was not less than £E1 million. The only people who could pay that were the capitalists, the feudalists and the political parties, he claimed. This allowed foreigners to influence the press through their interference, under the guise of advertisements.27 The new owner of the press, the National Union, later to become the Arab Socialist Union, designated boards of directors to manage the publishing houses. At a meeting held by the parliamentary leaders in March 1965, Nasser described the reasons behind the

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establishment of boards of directors for the administration of newspapers. He said: The press, for a certain period, was subjected to censorship. Then, we lifted censorship…. We saw Cairo as a leading capital for the Arabic book and the Arabic newspaper. Many efforts were exerted to dim Cairo’s influence. We established boards of directors for the press, gave them authority and left them. We wanted to see varied views. We do not want to wake up to find the three newspapers identical copies of each, with what is written in one, written in the other. This would kill the press. And we cannot leave the press to die. We must get used to hearing everybody speak his mind. We will respond and say whether this view is right or wrong within the framework of the Charter and the Arab Socialist Union line…. Our guidance is general. We do not tell papers to say such and such about such and such. We do not extend the area of guidance to include details and the details of details. We leave room for every individual criticism. We have every means of control. The National Assembly has its means of checking facts. In every branch of the public sector, the workers are represented. The public sector is facing tremendous responsibilities. It is directing the industries and the newly-formed organisations, plus the nationalised organisations. We therefore care about who manages the public sector.28 Each newspaper had a board of directors, constituted half by election and half by appointment. Half of those elected were to represent the workers, including the editors. In 1965, the newspapers’ boards of directors were abolished, and their responsibilities were assumed by the chairmen of the boards. It was observed by the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) that while most of the elected workers on the boards submitted to the direction of their superiors on the boards, they felt themselves superior to their fellow workers. Meanwhile, the government was searching for a way to remedy this situation and benefit from the previous five years’ experience. The new boards were not responsible to the government, but to the ASU which was said to embody ‘the will and the authority of the people’. It was claimed that the ASU’s objectives were the realisation of ‘sound democracy’ and ‘socialist revolution’, as well as the ‘safeguarding of the people’s rights’. Its duties, which were now also those of the press, were to become a

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‘positive force behind the revolution’, to eliminate the vestiges of capitalism and feudalism, to prevent corruption, to block the infiltration of foreign influence, and to repeat such themes as ‘Arab socialism’, ‘Arab unity’, ‘revolutionary spirit’, ‘imperialism’ and ‘reactionary elements’.29 The result of the repetition of these themes was a press which seemed to its readers rather dull. Evidence for this conclusion may be found in a readership survey conducted in 1965, five years after the nationalisation of the press, by the Arab Research and Administration Centre (ARAC).30 This survey showed, firstly, that those with least education and income read newspapers the most. In other words, the more educated were seeking sources other than the press for their information.31 Secondly, the survey showed that the most popular items in the press were generally not those to do with government affairs. For example, the most popular item in Al-Ahram was ‘Tarzan’, read by 88.8 per cent. In Al-Akhbar, ‘People’s News’ (a gossip column) was the most popular item, read by 84.3 per cent. In Al-Gumhuriyya the most popular item was sports news, read by 83.4 per cent. Thirdly, the survey showed Haikal’s great importance as a spokesman for Nasser. Not only was Al-Ahram the most popular paper–41.8 per cent of the sample read that alone—but Haikal’s weekly column on Friday, ‘Bi-Saraha’, an interpretation of current events, attracted 99 per cent of the paper’s regular readers and two-thirds of those who did not buy the paper on the other days of the week. Haikal’s contacts with the ruling elite and his close friendship with Nasser were not new, for Haikal had known Nasser in 1948. Nasser had seen in him the sincerity and devotion he sought in his supporters. After the success of the revolution, Haikal became very close to the Free Officers and acquired a favoured position with the new political leadership.32 Even before nationalisation of the press in 1960, Takla (Al-Ahram’s owner) appointed Muhammad Hasanain Haikal as editor-in-chief of the paper on 1 August 1957. Haikal at that time was editor-in-chief of the magazine Akhir Sa’a. Subsequently, he managed Al-Ahram’s policy singlehanded, although its owner and the old board of directors were still in existence. This situation continued until Nasser’s death in 1970. When the Arab Socialist Union took over the political functions of the defunct National Union in 1963, it took titular control of the press, and Dr Abd al-Qadir Hatim, Deputy Prime Minister for Culture and National Guidance in 1964, was named as Press

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Director. In 1965, the Arab Socialist Union established fifteen secretariats. Among them was the Secretariat of Propaganda and Socialist Thought (Amana al-Da’wa w’al-Fikr al-Ishtiraki), which was established on 23 October 1965. The purpose of this office was to mould and mobilise public opinion so that the socialist transformation would be smoothly accomplished. The people had to be associated with the long- and short-term goals which the Arab Socialist Union leadership had defined for the nation. They had to be informed in order to be able to accept the socialist transformation. The Arab Socialist Union thus sought to ‘inform and enlighten’.33 The secretariat was to unify and give direction to the vast and varied activities aimed at influencing public opinion. As its name implies, its activities took two principal forms: theorising or crystallising socialist ideology in Egypt, and inviting newspaper editors and reporters to ‘resocialise’ themselves, as well as suggesting specific courses of action. Al-Gumhuriyya became the specific mouthpiece of the Arab Socialist Union. However, AlGumhuriyya’s success was unstable and its circulation fluctuated. Those who read Al-Gumhuriyya in most cases chose to purchase one of the other two leading morning papers at the same time. The survey conducted by ARAC in 196534 showed that while 41.8 per cent regularly purchased Al-Ahram and 31.3 per cent Al-Akhbar, only 9.2 per cent purchased Al-Gumhuriyya. In September 1966, the officials responsible for the press reached the conclusion that in order to save Al-Gumhuriyya, it should adopt a new policy which would distinguish it from the other two leading papers. Hence Al-Gumhuriyya became the mouthpiece of the Arab Socialist Union. Fathi Ghanim became editor-in-chief in October 1966. In order to emphasise the transformation, it was decided that only Ali Sabri, the Secretary-General of the Arab Socialist Union, would write its editorials. Most of its former editors were temporarily suspended. The major concerns of the Secretariat of Propaganda and Socialist Thought were to strengthen the machinery of the Arab Socialist Union on all levels, to overcome public apathy, to bind the Arab Socialist Union organisations to each other, and to win public confidence and understanding of the values of the new ideology.35 Each of the territorial organisations of the Arab Socialist Union hierarchy, from the level of the republic as a whole, down to the governorate, city, district and village level committees, had its own

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department of propaganda and socialist thought, corresponding to the secretariat on the national level. The secretariat maintained direct and quick communication with these lower committees. The secretariat also issued the bi-monthly newspaper Al-Ishtiraki (The Socialist) to relay its message to the lower levels. It also selected and trained ‘agitators’ (al-Du’a) to conduct propaganda and agitation activities at all levels. Al-Ishtiraki transmitted the views of the leadership to the Arab Socialist Union members and provided feedback to the leadership. It began publication in February 1965. According to the Arab Socialist Union’s Third Yearbook, Al-Ishtiraki had to carry in every issue, material on internal or external issues of importance,36 particularly those related to socialism and its application in Egypt. It was mailed to all of the Arab Socialist Union organisations. The newspaper carried no advertisements and was not sold in the streets or in public places. The secretary of each branch received a copy, and ‘group readings’ took place in every unit, followed by discussions. Special institutes were also established in different governorates, under the supervision of the Secretariat of Propaganda and Socialist Thought. After 1965, the government felt more confident, since it had nearly completed its political, social and economic ‘socialist transformation’. Initially, press nationalisation had brought little change in the editing and management of the Egyptian press. The committee which had then been formed to run newspapers in the National Union’s name consisted largely of former editors and owners of nationalised papers.37 In 1964 a number of Marxists and socialists, among them Khalid Muhieddin and Ahmad Fuad, were given important editorial posts. Khalid Muhieddin returned to public life in 1964 as chairman of the board of Akhbar al-Yawm (from October 1964 until 1965). A group of leftists also founded Al-Tali’a (The Vanguard), which Al-Ahram began publishing in January 1965, in order to develop a synthesis of Marxism and the ideas of the National Charter and Arab Socialism. Al-Ahram issued Al-Tali’a to guarantee a voice for the new progressive attitude. The magazine was edited by a group of leftist writers. The choice of Al-Tali’a as a title was significant, because until 1965 the intellectuals were far from forming the vanguard of the revolutionary movement in Egypt. In fact, they had taken little or no part in it.38 This policy of allowing dissident groups more freedom was set out in an article which Haikal wrote in Al-Ahram on 29 January 1965. In it he said:

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The time has come for Egyptian society to view communism and communists without fear; listen to them if it so wishes, as it listens to any thought without pessimism or fear. The time has passed when Egyptian society dealt with communism and communists simply by police methods. Egyptian society is now politically mature and able to discuss all kinds of thought; to accept what it likes through argument and conviction and to refuse and reject what it does not like. It is thus able to understand different ideologies. Modern capitalist society does not deal violently with the communists, it leaves them to express their ideas amid a flood of other ideas. In the USA and Britain, for example, the law allows communist parties to exist. Society lets them play a role with no fear and with no police interference. This is one of the signs of maturity and of democracy. Now, Egyptian society had abandoned any sensitivity that it had previously had about communism and communists. However, although Haikal saw no future for communism or the communists in Egypt or in the Arab world, he did not advocate the establishment of a communist party in Egypt such as those which existed in the USA or Great Britain: ‘What I specifically mean is that there is no need, no value, and no logic for police action towards communism and communists. If the communists act in violation of the basic principles of the Egyptian Charter, the law and the police will take care of them.’39 Haikal also explained, in the same article, that the people should not think that what they read or hear from the media reflects the official attitude that is already established, or about to be established. He claimed that that which is written in the press or expressed through other media does not reflect official policy: This logic prevailed during certain phases. This logic came to an end with the initiation of the democratic phase. Therefore, any opinion reflects nothing but its originators. It will prevail on its merits, after the public accepts it. In other words, I wish frankly to say that the phase of sudden and surprising decisions on the part of the revolution is over. This was acceptable…even necessary…during the revolutionary period which sought the destruction of the alliance of reactionary imperialists. Under the alliance of people’s working forces and democracy, this is neither acceptable nor is it possible, especially with the existence of the

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popular organisations of the Arab Socialist Union and the National Assembly.40 The views of Haikal and of other moderate journalists balanced the views of the leftists who, by 1966, threw their full support behind Nasser. The leftists’ installation in the press was also prompted by Nasser’s proclamation of Egypt as a socialist, democratic and co-operative country. Thus the concept of ‘Arab Socialism’ came to the fore and, it was argued, there were none better qualified than the leftists themselves to sell this concept to the masses. These writers, therefore, indeed even the non-leftists, went to great lengths to explain to Egyptians the principles of socialism and the importance of Arab Socialism. Socialism was depicted, not only in the press but also in books and periodicals, as ‘the revival of the great Islamic past…and the Prophet Muhammad was the first Socialist’. There was a continued repetition of the themes or slogans of socialism, anti-imperialism, Arab socialist union, the Charter, reactionary elements, the revolutionary gains—and it was all accompanied by a marked absence of any criticism of Nasser or of his regime.41 Even after Egypt’s disastrous defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, the press lacked the moral courage to sustain any criticism. On the contrary, it played a misleading role before, during and after the war. A few days before the war, on 16 May 1967, Al-Ahram, Nasser’s privileged newspaper, announced in large print: ‘Emergency measures in our military forces: as from 6 a.m. today our military forces will be on the alert’. The paper also announced that continuous meetings were taking place among army leaders and with the armed forces of Syria and Egypt. An Egyptian official was then quoted as saying that ‘any attack on Syria is also an attack on us’. However, the newspaper never mentioned why all this was happening.42 Events then unfolded rapidly. Egypt officially demanded the withdrawal of the United Nations peacekeeping forces from its territory, to be replaced by Egyptian forces. On 23 May 1967, AlAhram’s headlines read: ‘Nasser closes the Gulf of Aqaba’. Nasser announced this decision during his visit to the front-line military headquarters. He also announced that no Israeli ship would be allowed passage through the Gulf of Aqaba. Again, the Egyptian press praised Nasser for his initiative, but the public were never told why these measures were taken. Indeed, the surprise for most Egyptians was the fact that Israeli ships had been passing through

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the Gulf of Aqaba since the war of 1956. The next day, on 24 May, Al-Ahram announced that war could break out at any moment. The paper never gave an explanation for this, nor did it say whether Egypt was ready for such a war. It would be an understatement to say that the June 1967 defeat shook the very roots of the Egyptian political system. While the system was strong enough to withstand the shock, the need for basic social and political changes became obvious in the post-war period. The outcome was the ‘March 30th Programme’, 43 promulgated by Nasser amid continuing public debate concerning virtually all aspects of Egyptian life. Indeed, the period following the June war was one of genuine self-criticism and introspection among Egyptians, during which the most sacrosanct institutions and practices were questioned and dissent was openly expressed.44 In his writings, Muhammad Hasanain Haikal began urging his colleagues to abandon their ingrained habits of self-censorship and to speak out. His advice, however, fell on deaf ears, since in a country where all publications were government-controlled, a journalist might be risking his only means of livelihood by voicing criticism which could then be interpreted as anti-revolutionary. Consequently, the only licensed critic remained Haikal himself. Precisely because of his closeness to Nasser, he was able to write more openly than anyone else on such matters as the mediocrity of some of the United Arab Republic’s air force and army generals, its secret police and its diplomats. In spite of Haikal’s denials, it was well known that President Nasser used Haikal’s weekly column in Al-Ahram for trial balloons in order to gauge public reaction to new ideas and programmes.45 In a given editorial, however, it was impossible to distinguish Nasser’s ideas from those of Haikal. For example, in one such instance, Haikal called for a situation of ‘controlled and stable equilibrium’ among the popular forces represented by various ‘institutions’, which would perpetually check and balance one another. Simultaneously, these institutions would be in a condition to check and balance various government agencies, which in turn would check and balance one another. Haikal specified concrete examples as follows: ‘Universities and scientific research institutions are to check all governmental planning organizations and operations. Judicial branches are to check all security organizations—local popular councils are to check local government agencies—legislative branches (National Assembly)

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are to check ministerial power—the free press is to check all aspects of government policy-making and execution.’46 What emerges from this prescription is a pluralist scheme within a single-party organisation. Perhaps not surprisingly, there was opposition to Haikal and his views within the Arab Socialist Union. It was revealed dramatically during November 1968, especially in Al-Akhbar newspaper. This debate was initiated by a further wave of student demonstrations in November 1968. The result was that the government began to feel the need for long-range solutions. The Arab Socialist Union’s youth sector was reorganised, and renewed emphasis was placed on the political education of youth. In addition, the regime seemed to encourage student involvement in the political process, and introduced a new system of student participation in university administration. The critical evaluation of Egypt’s policy continued in the years following the 1967 defeat. One aspect to these criticisms was the appearance of the call for a shift of emphasis from pan-Arabism to Egyptian nationalism. This re-identification with Egypt soon reopened the debate on the ‘Egyptian personality’ which had lain dormant since the mid-1950s. The writings of Taha Husain and Tawfiq al-Hakim—the patron saints of Egyptian nationalism—once again assumed some of their former credibility. In the armed forces, greater control was exercised through a new law requiring presidential approval of promotions to the rank of colonel or above. Furthermore, there were three instances of explicit challenges to the leadership after July 1967. These were Field Marshal Amer’s quasi-coup of September 1967 and the student-worker demonstrations of February and November 1968, respectively. The argument for the fundamental utility of open debate centred on the need to identify the basic problems affecting the Egyptian body politic, in order to avoid defeat in the future. There was also criticism which centred on the military leadership’s reluctance to permit the Arab Socialist Union’s political vanguard horizontal access to the armed forces. This debate provided official confirmation of a development which certain observers had long suspected existed. The precise relationship of the Arab Socialist Union to the military organisation had never been clarified; it had simply been ‘left to the Supreme Executive Committee’ during the mid-1960s. Field Marshal Amer had successfully kept the armed forces isolated from the Arab Socialist Union organisationally, as well as from the rest of Egyptian society ideologically. The strained

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relationship between Nasser and Amer, and the latter’s role in diluting presidential authority over the military, incensed not only the left but the entire political spectrum. Regardless of ideological coloration, the Egyptian press agreed on the need to prevent at all costs the rise of ‘centres of power’ in the future. As far as the definition of a ‘centre of power’ was concerned, the press, represented by editors such as Haikal, Baha al-Din, and Hamrush, provided the answer without hesitation. A centre of power constituted the accumulation of illegal, illegitimate power in the absence of popular control. Significantly, the two main examples cited were the military and the police. The question which then arose concerned the reasons why these centres had been permitted to exist prior to June 1967. While some maintained that it was the 1967 defeat which had ‘revealed’ their existence, Haikal flatly asserted: ‘We could not talk about errors before 1967 because of political pressures.’ There was also general argument that these centres were the result of the political-organisational vacuum left unfilled by the Arab Socialist Union. The March 30th Programme may well have been Nasser’s most important contribution to Egypt after the revolution itself. The President was concerned with implementing his new programme, without interference from the military, the police apparatus or the bureaucracy. As for the programme itself, it sought to retain and consolidate the lessons and gains achieved by the liberalising period after the June defeat. It also provided a comprehensive and longrange plan for political and social reform. In the more immediate sense, Nasser’s programme aimed at absorbing and rechannelling the unrest and frustration manifested in the widespread workerstudent demonstrations of February 1968. Almost immediately after the restoration of order, the President intervened personally by proposing a series of steps designed to meet certain of the demonstrators’ demands. On 3 March 1968, the President addressed a workers’ rally of thousands at Hilwan, where the first demonstrations had originated. He skilfully placed himself on the side of the demonstrators by castigating the police for initially resorting to force, and proceeded to blame a handful of ‘reactionary agitators’ for the disturbances. On 20 March, came the second instalment of short-range reforms, with the formation of a new 33member cabinet, presided over by Nasser himself as Prime Minister. More than any of its predecessors since 1953, the March cabinet represented the infusion of new blood, with the appointment of

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fourteen new ministers, all civilians. On the Muslim New Year’s Day came the March 30th Programme, the third instalment of reform. Specifically, it provided for the rebuilding of the Arab Socialist Union through a system of successive, multi-level elections. Nasser stressed the necessity of bringing ‘new blood’ into the Arab Socialist Union, as well as ‘at all levels’ of the government. In addition, the President proposed ten guidelines for the drafting of a permanent constitution. The questions remained as to when and to what extent would the new reform provisions become operational. In the period following 30 March 1968, these questions were only partly answered. The press, led by Haikal in Al-Ahram, continued to maintain a consistently critical approach towards public affairs. Haikal took pains to explain that ‘while the counterrevolution does exist, crushing it by force is not the way to save the revolution’. It was generally recognised by the press and affirmed by Nasser that the young and the masses had good reason to protest, in view of the defeat and the exposés which had followed in its wake. Haikal’s prescription for Egyptian society was ‘political work’ by the Arab Socialist Union, in an atmosphere of free discussion. The acid test of the ‘open society’ came on 13 October 1968, with Haikal’s attack on the military security and state security organisations (Jihaz Mukhabarat). The subsequent dramatic confrontation between Haikal and the security organs finally convinced many university students that genuine change was taking place. The incident centred on the arbitrary arrest by the security forces of a statistician and his two-week detention, without charges. Acting under legal procedures, the man had released statistical information on nutrition for use by a Japanese firm. However, this had gone against the wishes of Lt.-Gen. Gamal Askar, the Chairman of the Statistics and General Mobilisation Organisation, who had had him arrested. The subsequent release of the scientist did not satisfy Haikal, who reaffirmed the nation’s commitment to freedom of thought and scientific research, as well as the supremacy of the law—two principles mentioned explicitly in the March 30th Programme. The lengthy defence which the Minister of State for Security, Amin Huwaidi, included in a letter to Al-Ahram did not deter Haikal, who declared that ‘a man is innocent until proven guilty’. Similar incidents concerning the unlawful detention of citizens were revealed in August 1969,

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leading to the resignation of the Minister of Justice, Abu Nusair. A major judicial reorganisation followed, involving eight hundred new appointments and promotions. Although Haikal stressed once again the need to keep centres of power liquidated, it was clear that these still persisted in Egyptian society. Nevertheless, Haikal had demonstrated that they could now be challenged and tried to address the question of how to prevent the re-emergence of these centres, leading to the call for a system of ‘controlled equilibrium’.47 However, this did not, in itself, solve the problem of establishing the institutional controls, the checks and balances which would give political weight to the concern and anger of many Egyptians at the way in which they had been ruled. It was perhaps inevitable that the regime which came to power in July 1952 should have found it difficult to establish a stable relationship with the press. In the early years of the new regime, there was the understandable fear of the vested—and hostile— interests of the old political parties which had hitherto sponsored most of the press in Egypt. There was also a certain amount of incomprehension, and eventually anger, on the part of the young officers of the RCC when faced by the lively and irreverent nature of much the Egyptian press. Habits of investigation and standards of professionalism acquired in the competitive and relatively pluralist world of pre-1952 politics, sat ill with the increasing demands by the government for subservient, or drearily pedagogical mouthpieces. In the world of narrowing political options under Nasser, there was little room for newspapers which were independent of the ideological and security apparatus of ‘Nasserism’, let alone for those which dared to criticise aspects of its practice. Consequently, the nationalisation measures, the censorship regulations and the imprisonment or intimidation of journalists which became characteristic of the Egyptian government’s relationship with the press in the 1960s. It was only when the claimed omnicompetence of the Nasserist state was so dramatically and violently shown up as a pretence in 1967 that the government realised the utility of encouraging some form of press criticism. The results, as well as some of the motives, were mixed. Nevertheless, the perceived failings of the government and the internal recriminations within the hierarchies of the regime itself allowed a small area to open up in which it became possible once again for Egyptians to write publicly and critically of those who ruled them. The boundaries of

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this area were still highly restrictive. However, as the following decades were to show, the first, tentative openings of the authoritarian political system had been signalled by Nasser’s painful discovery that the price for allowing a critical press might indeed be worth paying. NOTES 1 International Press Institute Survey, The Press in Authoritarian Countries (Zurich, 1959), p. 177. 2 ibid. 3 Robert St John, The Boss: The Story of Gamal Abdul Nasser (New York, 1960), p. 132. 4 Personal interview with Mustafa Amin, Cairo, July 1977. 5 St John, op. cit., p. 133. 6 Personal interview with Mustafa Amin, Cairo, July 1977. 7 Mohamed Naguib, Egypt’s Destiny (London, 1955), pp. 226–7. 8 The RCC promised that martial law would be abolished one month before elections, and press censorship lifted, effective from 6 March 1954. 9 Personal interview with Ihsan Abd al-Qudus, Cairo, July 1977. 10 Rose al-Yusuf, 22 March 1954. 11 The Agrarian Reform Law was decreed on 9 September 1952, permitting landowners to retain 200 feddans only. 12 Akhbar al-Yawm, 14 April 1954. 13 Don Peretz, ‘Democracy and the Revolution in Egypt’, Middle East Journal 13, Winter 1959, p. 37. 14 New York Times, 15 May 1954, p. 15. 15 International Press Institute Survey, op. cit., p. 176. 16 Keith Wheelock, Nasser’s New Egypt (London, 1960), pp. 54–5. 17 ibid., pp. 55–6. 18 Mustafa Amin, Li-kul Maqal Azma (Beirut, 1979), p. 30. 19 International Press Institute Press Survey, op. cit., p. 182. 20 Al-Masa’, 16 April 1959. 21 qmin, op. cit., p. 30. 22 Middle East Journal, Summer 1960, XIV, No. 3, p. 318. 23 The measure was taken in order for the government to use the press more effectively in addressing the masses. With the press in private hands, it could not be as effectively used as part of this mobilisation strategy. The answer seemed to lie, therefore, in press nationalisation. 24 Personal interview with Mustafa Amin, Cairo, July 1977. 25 Article 35 of the 1964 Constitution. 26 Press conference held by President Gamal Abd al-Nasir for the Third International Journalists’ Conference, Cairo, 1 October 1963, p. 24. 27 ibid., p. 25. 28 Nasser’s Speeches (Cairo, Ministry of Information, March 1965). 29 Don Peretz, The Middle East Today (New York, 1963), p. 226.

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30 The first comprehensive survey on the reading patterns of all adult Egyptians was carried out in 1966 by the Arab Research and Administration Centre (ARAC). This was commissioned and financed by Al-Ahram. The fieldwork lasted from 15 June to 15 August 1965. The number of those interviewed was 3,000. A random sample was chosen from six provinces, according to the circulation of the newspaper. The distribution of the sample was as follows: Cairo, 13,524; Alexandria, 5,065; Tanta, 2,045; Zagazig, 663; Assiut, 2,076; and Aswan, 558. The standard categories of breakdown used by ARAC were sex, age, educational background, marital status, occupation and income. 31 The distribution of sex and income in the sample chosen shows that most of the newspaper consumers were those whose incomes ranged between £E10–30 per month. The smallest number were among those whose incomes were above £E100 per month. 32 For the Nasser-Haikal relationship see Nasser Munir Khalil, ‘Press, Politics and Power: The Story of Egypt’s Mohamed Hassanein Heikal’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Missouri, Columbia, 1977. 33 For details of ‘Socialist transformation’ see Nasim Rajwan, Nasserist Ideology, Its Exponents and Critics (Jerusalem, 1974). 34 The results of the survey conducted by ARAC were not officially published. 35 For details see Gihan Rachty, ‘Mass Media and the Process of Modernization in Egypt after the 1952 Revolution’, unpublished PhD thesis, Syracuse University, 1968. 36 ibid., p. 104. 37 Nasser Munir Khalil, ‘Press Politics and Power…’, op. cit., p. 16. 38 Nasim Rajwan, op. cit., pp. 152–3. 39 Al-Ahram, 29 January 1965. 40 ibid. 41 For details see Hrair Dekmejian, Egypt under Nasser: A Study in Political Dynamics (Albany, N.Y., 1971). 42 Al-Ahram, 16 May 1967. 43 The Third Instalment of reform. Specifically, it provided for the rebuilding of the Arab Socialist Union through a system of successive multi-level elections. 44 Dekmejian, op. cit., pp. 257–9. 45 ibid., p. 43. 46 ibid., p. 263. 47 Al-Ahram, 23 October 1968.

Chapter 7

Egypt in the balance Walid Kazziha

One of the acceptable definitions of pluralism is that it is a phenomenon which is closely associated with the process of modernisation. This is even more the case when that process is carried out under the supervision of a central authority. However, even modernisation without centralisation may eventually lead to the evolution of a democratic system of government. Generally speaking, a society undergoing modernisation often experiences a high level of social and economic differentiation, accompanied by a strong drive towards increasing proliferation in the areas of specialisation, and more clarity in the social and economic division of functions. Thus, specific and well-defined interests gradually emerge, and although interrelated, these interests may enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Ultimately, autonomous groups make their way into the political system and begin to exert their pressure and exercise their influence through the formation of political parties and structures. Consequently, ideologies are formed and political institutions are established within the existing framework of society. In the long run, such a situation may lead to democracy, where the rights of the individuals and their basic freedoms are preserved and enhanced. Up to this point pluralism is simply perceived as a concept, and in the attempt to outline its major characteristics, it is portrayed in a rather abstract form. However, on the practical level all of the countries of the advanced, industrialised world, whether in the East or West, have chosen their own paths to the implementation of this abstract notion. The modest aim of this essay is to examine whether the political developments in Egypt since the mid-1970s have drawn that particular society closer to pluralism. Alternatively, one must ask whether it can be plausibly argued 122

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that Egypt has been moving in a different, perhaps opposite direction. Arab intellectuals and pluralism Undoubtedly the discussion about pluralism in Egypt and in other Arab countries has become the major concern of a large number of Arab intellectuals and thinkers in recent times. Indeed, the ongoing discussion in Egypt regarding multiplicity of representation has become an integral part of the daily political discourse of the Egyptian intelligentsia in Egypt itself. Furthermore, Egyptian intellectuals and scholars made major contributions to several conferences held on the subject in Amman, Baghdad and Cairo during the late 1980s. It would seem that there are two reasons for such a concern—one is objective and the other is of a more subjective nature. It has become increasingly obvious to any observer of the Egyptian political scene that during the 1970s and 1980s new political and economic formations gradually appeared. Each of these formations have organised their own activities with relative freedom and have pursued their own specific interests. A number of factors have accompanied this increasingly widespread phenomenon and the following seem to be the most important of such factors. Firstly, there has been the emergence of political parties, some officially recognised, whilst others, of equal importance, have been denied government recognition. As a result, a growing number of politicised elements in Egypt have been taking part in the daily political life of the country after a long period of time during which the one-party system was the only channel of political participation. Secondly, this has been accompanied by the flowering of partisan and non-partisan newspapers in ways which allow for the expression of a variety of political opinions by a great number of intellectuals, scholars and political activists. Thirdly, on the economic front, the revived and expanded private sector has been playing an increasingly important and effective role in the Egyptian economy. This has come, of course, after a considerable period during which the public sector had a near monopoly over the economy. Lastly, in the constitutional field, Egypt has witnessed the establishment of representative institutions and councils which have relied on an electoral process to choose their members. This did not, however, eliminate

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altogether the appointment of some of their members by the executive. Among these institutions have been the People’s Assembly (Majlis al-Sha’b) and the Consultative Council (Majlis al-Shura) in which the opposition parties were able to secure some representation. In the past, however, membership in similar, socalled ‘representative’ bodies has been limited almost exclusively to known supporters of the government. The above-mentioned developments created a strong, but possibly mistaken impression, among many in Egypt and beyond, that the whole society was undergoing a process of political and economic transformation. In this process, the monopoly of the central authorities over the political and economic activities of society appeared to be gradually giving way to a condition of societal pluralism in which the different segments and formations within society were expressing their interests and views freely. As for the subjective factor, it was apparent that the majority of intellectuals and political thinkers had suffered in the past from a lack of freedom of expression. Consequently, they developed a keen interest in playing a leading role in liberating themselves and securing their own freedoms in the future by emphasising the principles of democracy. Since the early 1970s, intellectuals in Egypt have stressed the need for the establishment of a democratic system of government, claiming that it was both a necessary and a sufficient condition for economic development, for meeting the challenges of outside powers, and for building a promising Arab future. However, they were soon faced with the objective realities of the situation, since few among the masses of the Egyptians shared their concern for democracy. Realising the bitter truth that democracy was in crisis, the Egyptian intellectuals took refuge in the catchword ‘pluralism’. It was a convenient term which provided them with a promising formula to describe the situation in Egypt, whilst at the same time it supplied the substitute for an ideal which they had always entertained, but which was obviously beyond their reach. The Nasserist regime One of the crucial questions regarding the Egyptian political experience remains unanswered. To what extent have the Arab and Egyptian intellectuals been accurate in describing the regime in Egypt as pluralistic? Is it indeed pluralistic or is it a completely

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different phenomenon? To answer this question it is perhaps useful to go back in time to the Nasserist epoch. A brief examination of some of its aspects may shed some light on the origins of the phenomenon and the stages of its evolution and development. There is no doubt that the Nasserist era represented a distinct and controversial epoch in Egypt’s modern history. Some scholars portrayed the Nasserist political system as one dominated by the personality of its charismatic leader. Others have described it as an autocratic or military regime which sought to achieve a degree of social justice. Still others have called it a typical case of state capitalism in which the apparatus of the state took full control of the economy. Whatever analytical framework has been used to understand the Nasserist system, in the final analysis, most of these approaches have had one thing in common: a recognition that under Nasser the state took over all the power of the society. It is not important for the purposes of this essay to examine whether the intervention of the state was motivated by the self-interest of those in power, or by their concern for the well-being of society as a whole. It is sufficient here to observe that the Nasserist system, which emerged as a military coup in 1952, had become, by the end of the 1960s, a monopolistic regime, in which the state was allowed to take full control of the basic activities of the Egyptian society. In the first instance, the Free Officers monopolised political power soon after they had consolidated their hold over the army. One of their earliest steps was to dissolve all the political parties, leaving the state in charge of the sole political movement—the Liberation Rally—organised by the state apparatus. Later, in view of developments in the region and internationally, the leadership extended the hegemony of the state to the economy through such measures as nationalisation, confiscation and sequestration. At the same time the central authorities established their control over all forms of political, social, cultural and artistic expression. Similarly, the religious institutions and religio-political trends, were placed under the direction of the state. By the mid-1960s the Egyptian state had developed an apparatus capable of placing all the major functions and activities of society under its direct supervision and control. The Nasserist system, far from being purely political, gradually became a system which incorporated all forms of authority. Thus the state became the centre of gravity in society, in a sense almost substituting for it. The role and significance of the

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individual became closely linked to his position relative to the state: if he was close enough to it, he had some power and influence, depending on his rank and status in its hierarchy; if he drifted away from it, he lost much of his political significance, as well as his social and economic standing. Nevertheless, some enclaves remained outside the direct control of the state, such as the remnants of the besieged private sector and a few intellectuals. On the whole, however, their influence was limited, even non-existent, especially as most of them sought seclusion and kept a low profile. The ability of the monopolistic regime in Egypt to sustain itself depended largely on its efforts to satisfy the needs of the social strata which supported it. Its main strategy was directed towards consolidating its monopolistic tendencies domestically without infringing, in the process, on the interests of its supporters. It was also intent on forging links with the outside world and came to rely increasingly on external assistance. The limits of the regime were closely related to its sources of survival—namely, domestic monopoly and foreign assistance. With this in mind, it would have been quite possible for the Nasserist system to have reached its limits and to have faced a particular kind of crisis. On the one hand, it is conceivable that the regime could have reached a point at which it could go no further in the process of appropriating domestic private wealth, for fear of eroding the position of the social strata which formed its own power base. On the other hand, it is also conceivable that the Soviet Union could, at any point, have decided to withhold its support for Egypt. However, the limits of the Nasserist system were not put to the test on its own terms or through the working out of its own logic. Instead, political and military events in the region developed in such a way as to bring about some drastic changes in its structure. The retreat of state hegemony The defeat of the Arab states in 1967 had a tremendous impact on the internal development of the Nasserist regime. It led to an internal split within the top ranks of the system. Nasser quickly managed to restore the equilibrium of the state, but not for long. After his death in 1970, the regime could not sustain its total control over society. In the end, it was obliged to retreat in the face of a

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combination of internal and external pressures. The first indications of this retreat came about in 1968, when students held huge rallies and organised demonstrations in Cairo, Alexandria and other major Egyptian cities. Ostensibly they were objecting strongly to the lenient sentences meted out to the army officers responsible for the defeat. Nasser took a step backward and ordered a retrial. Secondly, the defeat in 1967 led to the creation of an imbalance in the region as a whole. Saudi Arabia took advantage of the situation and began to exercise a greater role in Arab politics. Its influence gave impetus to the rise of Muslim political movements inside Egypt. Pressure was exerted by the Saudis on the Egyptian leadership to allow members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had earlier taken refuge in Saudi Arabia, to return to Egypt. The sudden death of Nasser in 1970 and Sadat’s accession to power encouraged the growing number of Muslim militants to intensify their activities. Thirdly, when Sadat came to power in late 1970, the regime faced a serious rift between two competing internal factions. A struggle for power ensued in which Sadat gained the upper hand. However, the regime as a whole suffered a setback. Some of its leading figures who had been in control of the state apparatus and the one-party system were removed or forced to resign. Despite the fact that Sadat emerged victorious from the struggle, the event, nevertheless, shook the roots of the system. The state was weakened, and the efficiency and the loyalty of its cadres towards the new leadership were seriously undermined. Fourthly, the October war of 1973 was a turning-point in Egypt’s international alliances. In its aftermath Sadat completed the rupture between Egypt and its main ally, the Soviet Union. He turned rapidly towards the United States of America. In forging close and cordial relationships with the West, Egypt became more and more amenable to Western political and economic pressure. Its doors were rapidly opened to the influx of Western goods and investments. A web of relationships was gradually woven around it. Bridges were built between the newlyemerging business community in Egypt and its Western counterparts; between Egypt’s scholars and intellectuals and its academic and research institutions and those of the West; between Egypt’s professional classes and their colleagues in the West. The West penetrated Egypt on all levels, governmental and private,

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but its main thrust was in the areas which encouraged the rise of those sectors which were independent of the state. Thus, during the 1970s, the encirclement of the monopolistic regime was finally completed. Suffering from internal ruptures and weaknesses, retreating in the face of Arab, and especially Saudi pressure, and now penetrated by the multifaceted offensive of the West, the state began to make substantial concessions, but without abandoning its position altogether. It reluctantly released some of its earlier responsibilities to the advantage of the newly-emerging private initiatives in society. On some occasions, the state appeared to be wholly in favour of the new trend, since it seemed readily to abandon some of its functions before being forced to concede them. In reality, the state tried to absorb the rapid pace of transformation instead of breaking under its devastating impact. Eventually, in 1974, Sadat launched the ‘open-door’ (al-Infitah) economic policy. Two years later he cautiously allowed the organisation of the ‘political platforms’ which were in time transformed into political parties. Furthermore, in an effort to undermine his liberal and leftist opponents, he encouraged the activities of the Muslim groups. At one point he reorganised the government’s party and changed its name (from the Arab Socialist Union to the National Democratic Party) in order to ensure that state control over the Egyptian political street did not fall into the wrong hands. He responded to the demands of his new superpower ally by allowing private interests to flourish, and accepted a more representative national assembly. However, the new steps introduced by Sadat were all taken reluctantly and with a great deal of caution. The open-door economic policy was subjected to a high dose of government routine and bureaucratic procedures which inhibited any serious shift from a public-sector-controlled economy. Similarly, the rise of political parties was circumscribed by a restrictive law which prohibited the formation of new parties. Despite the fact that a greater measure of freedom of expression was granted, due to the publication of party newspapers, on the whole the political activities of these parties were often obstructed whenever the government chose to invoke the emergency measures at its disposal. As for the establishment of elected representative bodies, the electoral law was designed in such a way as to allow the state an overwhelming influence over these institutions.

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Egypt in the balance The retreat of the central authorities in Egypt a few steps back, in the face of the growing influence of autonomous political and economic interests, has practically destroyed the monopolistic characteristics of the state. However, the state in Egypt has not been transformed into a mere reflection of the autonomous interests in civil society. On balance, it would seem that the state has become a party, perhaps still the most powerful party in the internal configuration of political and economic forces in the country. The ‘democratisation’ process, which Egypt has been witnessing since 1976, came about despite the will of the state. It was not due to the liberal nature of the regime. Nor was it a consequence of the liberal inclinations of the individuals in charge of the regime, since neither the background of those in power nor their political experience had prepared them for such ideas, let alone equipped them to play the roles which would ensure that such ideas would be put into practice. In the 1990s, democracy in Egypt is democracy by default, since it represents a phase in the decline of the powers of the state. Unlike the Nasserist era, the eras of Presidents Sadat and Mubarak have been characterised by the inability of the state to establish its total hegemony over society. One of the last acts of President Sadat, before his tragic death, was to try to regain for the state its political monopoly. He ordered the arrest of 1,500 men and women who represented the leadership of the political opposition to his regime. His attempt proved to be a complete failure. The epoch of state monopoly had already slipped away. The change in the status of the state has gone one step further. It has been observed that the tension between the state and the various actors on the Egyptian political and economic scenes has often precipitated a conflict within the state itself. On occasions some of the leading members of the government and of the ruling party have expressed themselves in terms which strongly support the enhancement of state powers. Others meanwhile have sympathised with private interests. Consequently, the state sometimes appears to be speaking in two different languages: one which emphasises the maintenance of total state control; the other which advocates a greater freedom for private economic and political interests. Nevertheless, by and large, the Egyptian state has continued to maintain its internal cohesion and solidarity against the challenges of civil society.

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In the 1990s, Egypt is living through a period of internal tension between a state which has lost its monopolistic character, but continues to wield a great deal of power, and a set of autonomous political and economic interests which seek to undermine the status of the state. Two competing structures seem to coexist in a state of apparent equilibrium. However, it may not be long before the balance may tip in favour of one party or the other. Such a situation, during the 1970s and 1980s, has exposed Egypt to a number of crises, some quite threatening to the political and economic fabric of the society, whilst others have been of no particular significance. It would seem that in the absence of co-ordination, or a definition of functions between the two poles of Egyptian society, the country has become more vulnerable to recurring shocks. These shocks have often been generated by those who are situated on the lowest rungs of the social hierarchy and who are waiting their turn to make their presence felt. In fact, since the mid-1970s, Egypt has passed through three major crises, none of which altered in any significant way the structure of power in the country, but each of which has revealed some basic weaknesses in the system. In one instance, in midJanuary 1977, Sadat took the unusual step of withdrawing subsidies on some essential commodities. The Egyptian street exploded in rage against those measures. After three days of near anarchy, the government managed to regain control, but not before it had cancelled its earlier decisions, and had, as a consequence, lost face. In a second instance, Sadat’s assassination in October 1981, was preceded by an attempt on his part to restore for the state its total control over politics. However, by then it was too late, the new autonomous political and economic forces had already consolidated their position. Consequently a gap was created between the state and a wide range of political opposition which resulted in generating a climate of opinion strongly antagonistic to Sadat. In that atmosphere, elements of a militant Islamic group (Al-Jihad) were able to plan and carry out his assassination. On coming to power, his successor President Mubarak realised the mistake of his predecessor. He immediately ordered the release of the detainees, and held occasional political dialogues with some of the leaders of the opposition parties. A third crisis occurred in 1988, when the government of Egypt froze the assets and economic activities of a large number of Islamic investment companies, accusing them of mismanagement and

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squandering depositors’ money. At the basis of such a decision was the growing fear that these companies had become too powerful economically, and therefore seemed to represent a threat to some areas of the economy in which the state had a preponderant influence. Furthermore, the Islamic companies were competing with the state, since a growing number of Egyptians working in the Gulf were depositing their savings in these companies rather than in government banks. Although the state succeeded in terminating the economic activities of the Islamic companies without provoking the enmity of the private sector, it did not solve the problem of those Egyptians who had invested their money in these companies. This left a significant legacy of anger amongst those who felt that the actions of the state had been ill-considered and who blamed it, therefore, for their losses. It would seem that at the basis of the tension between the state, on the one hand, and the autonomous private interests and elites on the other, is the inability of either party to establish any organic relationship with the bulk of the Egyptian population. If pluralism means, among other things, the existence of a clear distinction between the different sectors of society within a framework of harmony and integration, Egyptian society and its two principal political, social and economic actors do not seem to benefit from such a framework. In essence, the state and its competitors represent a thin layer of Egyptian society. The majority of Egyptians are neither included nor integrated in the structure of economic, political or social power. With the exception of the Islamicist movements, neither the government party nor the legitimate opposition groups have any significant roots among the people. In the midst of this ongoing tension between the two parties at the top, lies the real danger of a sudden eruption from below. Pluralism or democracy in Egypt is perhaps an aberration. It only indicates one thing: that the old monopoly of the state has retreated, while the autonomous private interests and elites have advanced. As yet, neither of the two has been able to capture the attention and active loyalty of the populace at large. Instead, the game of power and wealth remains confined to the two competing factions at the top, while resentment and dismay continue to build up at the base of society.

Chapter 8

Interpretations and misinterpretations of the Egyptian economy Adel Beshai

In seeking to assess the condition of the Egyptian economy, it is worth considering the possible reactions of someone reading the standard accounts of the economic condition of Egypt. An economist, or someone from another discipline in the social sciences, or, for that matter, the average reader, might look at the given lists and tables of figures—the ‘economic indicators’—and would probably come away with a dismal picture of Egypt. On the question of population, we are told that there is a population explosion in Egypt, with an average annual growth rate ranging from 2.7 to 3 per cent. Furthermore, rural-urban migration is said to be on the increase. For instance, it is claimed that in Cairo alone one person is born every minute, and two arrive by train. Next, there is the question of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Economists are usually fascinated by GDP figures. The latest data supplied by the government are for the fiscal year 1987–8, and they show GDP at current prices to be £E46.8bn. This represents a 6 per cent increase from the previous year, implying a negative increase in real terms, once the inflation rate is taken into account. There are two other macro variables which are usually cited in this connection: consumption and investment. The World Development Report of 1989 tells us that consumption grew at 5.5 per cent per year in 1965–80 and at 5.00 per cent per year for 1980–7. The respective growth rates for investment are 11.3 per cent for 1965– 80 and 2.7 per cent for 1980–7—a major drop in the investment growth rate for the latter period. Lastly, there is the matter of inflation. The inflation rate is a tricky concept in an economy where the consumer’s shopping basket includes subsidised commodities. Nevertheless, we are told that the official consumer price index

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rose by 14 per cent in 1984–5, 19 per cent in 1987–8 and 28.5 per cent in the calendar year 1989. However, no economy is a closed economy. Therefore foreign trade (exports and imports) must come into the picture. Exports fell from $3.9bn in 1984–5 to $2.3bn in 1986–7 and rose slightly to $2.5bn in 1988–9. The respective figures for imports for the same years were $10.5bn, $7.9bn and $10.0bn. In other words, there exists a clearly unfavourable balance of trade, to use mercantilist terminology. These figures represent the ‘trade account’ component of the balance of payments. The ‘services component’ presents another kind of picture. Receipts for the same years (1984–5, 1986– 7 and 1988–9) were $3.5bn, $4bn and $5bn, respectively. Payments were $3bn, $3.2bn and $3.2bn. Finally, there are the transfers of foreign currency, which are usually broken into (a) governmental and (b) workers’ remittances. Governmental transfers for these years are estimated at $1.1bn, $1bn and $0.7bn, whilst estimates for workers’ remittances are $3.5bn, $3bn and $3.5bn. The inferences deducible from these figures are, firstly, that the trade balance is very unfavourable, and, secondly, that the ‘services’ and ‘transfers’ components to a large extent mitigate the unfavourableness of the trade balance. Nevertheless, the total external debt has been increasing: $36.4bn in 1984–5, rising to $39.8bn in 1986–7 and $45.7bn in 1988–9. If we look at the government’s position, again we find deficits. Government revenue rose from £E11.3bn in 1984–5 to £E16bn in 1987–8 to £E20.5bn in 1989–90. Nevertheless, expenditures for these years were £E18.5bn, £E29.3bn, and £E36.2bn. This means that the deficits were £E7.2bn, £E13.3bn and £E5.8bn respectively.1 It is clear that the picture which emerges from the figures is a gloomy one. If we want to have a condensed view of the Egyptian economy during the last thirty years or so, we can distill some salient features. Egypt experienced a shift from a centralised approach during the 1960s, to a programme of liberalisation during the 1970s. The centralised approach of the 1960s was founded on central planning, trade controls and public ownership. Beginning in 1974, however, the country’s economy underwent a package of liberalisation measures on the trade front and on the investment front. The period 1974–84 witnessed rapid growth. GDP grew at 8 or 9 per cent per annum and real per capita income almost doubled. Gross investment increased at 10 per cent per annum. This period

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also witnessed tremendous increases in foreign exchange receipts from oil, tourism, Suez Canal dues, and remittances from Egyptians working abroad. In addition, large sums of foreign aid were made available to Egypt on non-concessionary terms. The irony in all this is that, despite all these increases in foreign exchange earnings, the current account balance was a negative $1.6bn by 1984. From 1984 to the present, there has been stagnation or only marginal growth in the GDP. The volatility of the four exchange earners left its mark. The dramatic fall in the price of oil, along with the fluctuation in workers’ remittances and tourism were clearly felt. The figures mentioned earlier showed that the balance of payments problem was exacerbated and, understandably, Egypt’s external debts continued to rise. Public finances have deteriorated and Egypt has witnessed increasing budget deficits, save for the last two years (1988–90). On the revenue side, performance has been poor, owing to defective tax collection procedures and the low elasticity of the tax system relative to domestic income. The previous analysis also showed that the inflation rate has been high and on the increase. A major reason for this lies in the policy of financing government spending largely via increased borrowing from domestic banks. Borrowing has been ‘cheap’ because the interest rates on Egyptian pound deposits have been negative in real terms. To augment all of these ills, some analysts would add the ‘fundamental’ problems of Egypt, starting with the population explosion, moving on to limping agricultural and industrial production, and to an aching and over-centralised public sector. Having given some indication of the standard, statistical accounts of the Egyptian economy, I would like to argue in this section that an understanding of the modus operandi of the Egyptian economy requires a search for the root causes of the problems. This means that one must go behind the figures and tables of economic aggregates and variables. If one embarks upon such a course of analysis, it becomes increasingly clear that defective economic policies constitute the main problem. In the 1960s Egypt embarked on import substitution policies with a view to reducing imports. In fact, these policies had the opposite effect. Rather than reducing the value and volume of imports, they resulted in increased imports of raw materials and intermediary goods. In the 1970s, despite the fact that the

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government proclaimed that the country was now marching boldly along the road to liberalisation, there was evidence of considerable timidity and hesitancy, some of which was borne out in the pursuit of conflicting policies. A successful economic policy must be based on a large degree of harmony, or at least of compatibility among the essential components of that policy. Furthermore, policies that are compatible in the long run may not be so in the short run, and vice versa. With one foot on the path of liberalisation, and the other on the established path of state control, Egypt was neither here nor there, and was forced to witness its economy tottering along an ill-defined road. Attempts at liberalisation have often been halfhearted, and at times have simply stalled. A cursory look at the figures since 1974 might lead one to think that something went wrong from roughly the mid-1980s on, implying, therefore, that all had gone well before that. Such an interpretation would be misleading. In fact, the relative stagnation in the last few years does not represent a change in structural factors. On the contrary, it seems to have been due to the exacerbation of the two sets of developments which have been cited here. On the one hand, confused, hesitant and sometimes contradictory economic policies bear a large part of the responsibility for the deterioration of the Egyptian economy and should constitute a major factor in any analysis of its decline. On the other hand, the Egyptian economy has clearly been affected in a critical way by the caprice of the four exogenous variables already referred to. That is, Egypt’s principal sources of foreign exchange— oil revenues, Suez Canal dues, tourism and remittances—all underwent a decline in the latter part of the 1980s, with a consequently grave impact on the Egyptian economy. No one could or should have expected that these receipts would continue to rise or even to move in an easily predictable direction, given their volatility. Yet their movement has obviously been fundamental to the well-being of the Egyptian economy. It should be clear by now that, despite the apparent gravity of the state of the Egyptian economy, as represented in the bare figures and statistics, it may be possible to discern some underlying positive factors which could lead on to take a more sanguine view of the prospects for the Egyptian economy. The following are some of the areas or issues which, on closer examination, may give grounds for optimism.

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The Dutch Disease Controversially, perhaps, the cessation of the overheating of the economy, experienced during the period 1974– 84, can be regarded as a blessing. Indeed, that period represents a version of the ‘Dutch Disease’ which Egypt experienced. The ‘Dutch Disease’ was identified following the problems faced by the Netherlands as a result of the development of new natural-gas fields under the North Sea. The more the Netherlands developed its natural gas production, the more depressed its manufactures of traded goods became.2 The windfall increases in Egypt’s foreign exchange receipts made the country pay less attention to its productive sectors. Thus, one might argue that the realisation that it is not possible to depend upon these receipts (through actually experiencing a fall in them) is a positive development. It may have given an impetus to the belief that the time had come to seek to generate income from the real, productive parts of the economy where Egypt has a long-term comparative advantage. The Population Issue To look only at the figure of Egypt’s population (approximately 55 million) and to argue that the country suffers from a population explosion is misleading. It is important to recall that in the past the case of Japan was cited as one of a country faced with the burden of overpopulation. Similarly, the industrially and economically successful countries of South Korea and Taiwan are the second and third most densely populated countries after Bangladesh. Consequently, against the argument that population growth in Egypt is a constraint on development, there is a counter argument: namely, that the sheer size of Egypt’s population can be viewed as an asset in the longer term. After all, a large population provides industry with a viable domestic market. It also provides a source of cheap labour for agriculture and industry. Each person is born with one mouth and two hands. Of course, if economic policies result in the idleness of the two hands, then a Malthusian apocalypse can indeed be envisaged. Fascination with Numbers Mahbub ul Haq, in his book The Poverty Curtain,3 warned against the five sins of development planners. One of them is a fascination with numbers. Fascination with numbers may also lead to hasty interpretations of these numbers. Firstly, it should always be realised that numbers, however clearcut and concrete they appear, may be inaccurate representations of reality and may be inexact in themselves. Secondly, one cannot really interpret numbers without knowing what is actually going

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on. Thirdly, there may be important economic activities taking place for which numbers simply do not exist. As an example of the first qualification, it should be noted that the Egyptian data on tourist receipts are given as reported by banks on remittances by tourist companies, plus the tourist component of foreign exchange sales to banks (as estimated by the government). It is generally believed that this understates actual flows. Extrapolations on the number of tourist nights in hotels suggest actual flows at least double the recorded figures.4 As an example of the second qualification, it is important to bear in mind the fact that figures alone fail to show interrelationships and linkages in the economy, especially those of a dynamic nature. To give one example: it was generally felt that the large import bill of Egypt during that spell of prosperity which the country enjoyed, was due in no small measure to imports of ‘luxury’ goods. However, as Galal Amin noticed when he disaggregated the data, ‘luxury’ goods imports accounted for a small percentage of the total import bill.5 If this finding were to be ignored by the policy-makers, it is easy to see how the policies devised to check the apparent flow of luxury goods might miss the point entirely. Agriculture The literature on development economics is replete with discussions on agricultural versus industrial development. Likewise, the economic history of Egypt is rich in varying experiences. Under Muhammad Ali and until the First World War, a development trend was noticeable wherein the agricultural sector was to act as the basis for industrial development. After the First World War there was another trend which saw opposition between agricultural and industrial development. One of the consequences of the crises in the prices of cotton, for example, was the greater emphasis laid on industrial development. Under Nasser the approach was different, and could be characterised by a certain moderation. The first development plan comprised an Agricultural Plan and an Industrial Plan. Later in the Nasserist period, agriculture was again subordinated to industry. Industrial development was based not only, as with Muhammad Ali, on the processing of agricultural goods, but also on the transfer of resource-manpower and funds from agriculture to industry, and later to the state. During the implementation of the ‘Open-door’ policies, joint ventures were established, and the government tried to introduce new technology into agriculture, as well as to increase the size of

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loans available in the agricultural sector. The last four years or so (roughly 1985–90) are important in the context of the present argument, since it is possible to discern some liberalisation in the agricultural sector, as well as renewed interest by the private sector in agricultural investment. Nine out of twelve commodities were left to the free-market forces, greatly reducing, therefore, forced crop deliveries to the government at fixed prices. One vivid outcome of this development was that in 1989 Egypt’s output of wheat stood at 31 per cent of its consumption, whereas it had previously been 24 per cent of consumption. This may seem to be a modest increase, but it becomes impressive as soon as it is realised that the country consumes 10.5 million tons of wheat annually. Nevertheless, the role of the government in agriculture is a large one. With further liberalisation in this sector, one might expect the recent growth in agricultural output to continue, if not accelerate. This fact is one of the major reasons for believing that the Egyptian economy has the potential for a brighter future than current figures suggest. If it is realised that the value of the product of the agricultural sector forms a substantial component of the GDP, employs a sizeable work-force, and affects a preponderant section of the population, then its overall weight in the total GDP is significant. Finally, there is a further important point to be made. In the last three or four years (1986–90), the private sector has been investing in agro-business for the export of non-traditional goods or else in raw materials to feed the industrial sector, as in the canning industry, for example. There would appear to be, therefore, a return to a joint relationship betweeen industry and agriculture. This is a healthy and balanced development. The private sector is now doing what the state did in the 1960s, but it does not take the resources away from agriculture. On the contrary, it uses agriculture as a basis. In this way, agricultural development can take place at the same time as industrial development, without one being partially sacrificed for the other. Moreover, there is a positive impact on the external position of the country as exports increase. Since January 1990 there has been an 80 per cent increase in current export proceeds of non-traditional goods. Furthermore, the government has for the first time allowed barter trade to the private sector. Small-scale Industries Behind the gloomy picture of a stagnant GDP, unemployment, inflation, debts, deficits and so forth, a silent revolution has been occurring in Egypt: this has been the continued

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growth of small-scale industrial ventures. Because these are not enterprises on the scale of General Motors or of Johnson and Johnson, their activities are visible neither in the economic figures nor on television. However, a strong argument can be made for the salutary impact which they can have on the economy. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that their contribution is massive. The ILO (International Labour Organisation) has identified seven characteristics of such ventures:6 • • • • • • •

Ease of entry Reliance on indigenous resources Family ownership of enterprises Small-scale operation Labour-intensive and adapted technology Skills acquired outside formal school Unregulated and competitive markets.

The characteristics of the formal sector, made up of the larger enterprises, are the exact opposite of the above. In the Egyptian context, such small-scale industries would seem to have a number of advantages, as far as the position of the overall economy is concerned. These industries are labour-intensive and are not dependent on foreign capital. Hence, they contribute to employment creation and are not a burden on the balance of payments. They carry out their own training activities via the apprenticeship system. They also cater for low-income basic goods. Some of them produce for export to some of the quality markets with the highest standards, such as Switzerland. Furthermore, they have been experiencing very rapid growth. Their expansion, especially if it occurs in rural areas, would not only enhance the development of these areas, but would also contribute to a deceleration of rural-urban migration. Economists argue about several scenarios for growth. One of these is ‘redistribution with growth’.7 Small-scale enterprises specifically achieve such objectives simultaneously. Heba Handoussa8 warns that these enterprises are not to be confused with cottage or handicraft industries. She adds that they enjoy a significant degree of specialisation and interdependence. In addition, she gives examples of such industries: ‘furniture, carpets, klims, metal products including ornaments, leather products, shoes and certain types of clothing’.9 Handoussa concludes her discussion by saying that these enterprises ‘have proved resilient throughout

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the past few decades and could, with the help of the government, become the source of substantial new employment, incomes and exports.’10 Hitherto, government help has been non-existent, either in making credit available, or in demonstrations of new technology, or in making available industrial sites and infrastructure. Nevertheless, these industries continue to grow, and they accounted for 40 per cent of the industrial labour force by 1990. Government statistics show that during the period 1987–90, GDP grew at 1.8 per cent per annum. If the labour force is growing at 2.7 per cent or 2.8 per cent per annum, then there should have been a high unemployment figure, especially as in the last few years the government has not been providing jobs for all new graduates, as it did in the past. The truth of the matter is that the small-scale enterprises in both the formal and informal sectors have been absorbing labour. Otherwise, Egypt would have experienced very high open unemployment rates, similar perhaps to those in Algeria. This point indirectly proves that GDP must, in reality, be growing at a greater rate than that indicated by the official figures. The informal economy in Egypt seems to be absorbing a massive number of new entrants into the labour markets. This chapter has sought to point to some of the factors which have kept the Egyptian economy going. It is not just during the 1980s that people have been ‘worried’ about the economy. Indeed, I recall that, as far back as 1969, the late Sir John Hicks said: ‘The Egyptian balance of payments is a curiosum’. It is nevertheless necessary to warn the reader that although the positive aspects which have been depicted here may have supported the economy through many crises and periods of stress, what is needed is a solid foundation for future growth. Egypt needs a strategy which builds on the strengths of the economy—a strategy with vision and foresight which looks into the future and does not become preoccupied by day-to-day administration. In the absence of such a strategy, any possible long-term gains will be mortgaged for the sake of shortterm expediency. For instance, the small-scale enterprises have shouldered a heavy burden. They play an invaluable role in the development of the economy and will need support in the future. One can only hope that this will be forthcoming. At the same time, if our earlier faith in development through the accumulation of material capital is waning, it should now be replaced by the new creed of investment in human capital. Therein

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lies Egypt’s greatest strength. In this respect, the Egyptian economy has basic strengths in its productive sectors, unlike several ‘oil economies’, where one can venture to talk of ‘underdevelopment with unlimited supplies of capital’. In this respect, it is worth mentioning that there has always been a shortage of proper institution-building in the fields of management, vocational training, and in research specifically oriented to industrial productivity and product-quality. Whatever research there has been, has generally been concentrated in the basic sciences. It is to be hoped that the ultimate message of this chapter will be seen clearly for what it is: a plea to policy-makers to perceive the latent forces of the Egyptian economy and to undertake strategies which will help them to gain momentum. The English adage, ‘You cannot see the wood for the trees’, is a fitting one in this context. For that very reason, I have concentrated on the trees. NOTES 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Data from: American Embassy in Cairo, Egyptian Economic Trends (1990). The ‘Dutch Disease’ is analogous to the Rybczynski Theorem in international economics. This explains how the development of a natural resource, such as oil or gas, can hinder the development of other lines of production. Mahbub ul Haq, The Poverty Curtain: Choices for the Third World (New York, 1976). See: American Embassy in Cairo, Egyptian Economic Trends (1990), p. 20. Galal Amin, ‘Adjustment and Development: the Case of Egypt’, in Said al-Naggar (ed.), Adjustment Policies and Development Strategies in the Arab World (IMF, 1987), pp. 107–8. ILO Mission, Employment, Incomes and Equality (Geneva, 1972). See H.Chenery et al., Redistribution with Growth (London, 1974). H.Handoussa, ‘Small and Medium Scale Industries and Economic Development in Egypt’, unpublished manuscript, 14 March 1989, p. 4. ibid. ibid., p. 10.

Chapter 9

Egyptian diplomacy: East-West detente and North-South dialogue Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The 1980s, in general, witnessed a delicate and important phase in the development of international politics. However, 1989, more than any other year, was significant for the basic changes which occurred then, the consequences of which have affected much of the contemporary world—both East and West. In many respects, a new world emerged, with new anxieties, faced with unknown problems and therefore governed by new international formulae. Perhaps foremost amongst these new phenomena has been the unprecedented rapprochement between East and West, heralding a new era and representing an important development in world history. During the year 1989, tangible advances in international rapprochement could be seen, not only in the areas of diplomacy and disarmament, but also in the fields of economic and technological co-operation. These changes extended to the field of political, expression making democratic rights, with the advocacy of multi-party systems and of economic liberalism ingredients as much in the speeches of the leaders of the East as in those of the Western leaders. The political rapprochement reached between the hitherto opposed sides has been a practical manifestation of the move from confrontation to co-operation between the capitalist and socialist blocs. It also signifies the removal of the iron curtain that has separated the two worlds since 1945, and would seem thus to be paving the way for the creation of new relations based on mutual dependence, involvement and integration, not confrontation and contradiction. With the retreat of ideological confrontation and the dissipation of the heat of ideological conflict, the technological revolution has been able to make great progress and this has placed the world on 142

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the threshold of an advance previously unknown to our planet. The mastery and development of advanced technology have become the belief, the religion and the goal all are striving to attain. With the pursuit of technological achievement replacing the struggle for ideological mastery, bi-polarity disappears. This opens the way for a new multi-polarity, based on the capacity of states to own and to develop part of the new giant, represented by science and specifically by the application of science to the promotion and facilitation of material advance. Besides the civilisation of the new world, represented by the American economic and technological giant, there is the unknown potential of the societies and peoples of the former USSR. In addition, there is the question of the future capacity of the increasingly united European entity and, in the Far East, a powerful new force is evident in Japan and a number of other Asian industrial nations. Egypt, like all Third World countries, has welcomed this positive development, since it seems to promise a rebirth of international relations and the prevalence of world peace. This is, after all, the main guarantee for the advancement and development hoped for by our peoples. Nevertheless, a great deal of anxiety and doubt remains in our minds. These doubts are based on the fact that this lessening of tension is concentrated mainly in the area of relations between the major powers. Its positive effects have not yet reached all parts of the international system. In particular, these effects have not yet had much effect on the condition of most Third World states, especially in the economic sphere and the dangerous social, environmental and political problems linked to it. The present international rapprochement among the great powers points toward an increase in the scope of communication and dialogue between East and West. Unfortunately, this has not been met by a comparable move in relations between the North and the South. On the contrary, events have shown the possibility of a widening of the gap between both sides, which might lead to the realisation of greater rapprochement between East and West at the expense of the South. Egypt has identified this danger which its government believes may threaten the Third World and which affects world peace at its very core. Having identified the danger, Egypt has been anxious to encourage a rebirth of dialogue between various societies. This has been aimed at enhancing co-operation in the face of the common dangers which place our destinies and our future in jeopardy. This was the reason for the presentation by

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President Husni Mubarak, together with the leaders of three friendly developing countries—Senegal, Venezuela and India—of an initiative in Paris in July 1989, aimed at creating a dialogue between the North and the South. The states of the Third World should realise that the problems faced by their peoples, especially in the economic sphere, require that they should work together in order to achieve two principal initial aims. Firstly, they should deepen their knowledge of the world in this new era, through co-operative research. Secondly, they should clearly specify the roles to be assumed by each party in meeting the challenges and contingencies thus discovered. In Addis Ababa, where the twenty-fifth summit of the Organisation of African Unity convened, comprising fifty countries, all part of the South, a unanimous declaration of support was made for the initiative of the four in July 1989. President Mubarak, as head of the OAU, was given the responsibility of working towards its success. A parallel conference was convened which launched a new era of dialogue between the North and the South and guaranteeing Africa’s active participation in revitalising this dialogue. In Belgrade the nations of the non-aligned movement, convening their ninth summit in September 1989, welcomed the initiative of the four. They supported the idea of encouraging North-South dialogue in order to achieve a broader decision-making base in the fora of international economics through the participation of the developing countries. At the same time, the four initiating countries decided to welcome Yugoslavia, as head of the nonaligned movement, to the group of four. During the second half of 1989, the Egyptian diplomatic service prepared studies and gathered information and opinions in order to make this dialogue possible. Contacts were maintained between the four initiating countries, as well as with the seven major industrialised countries, in the hope of keeping up the momentum of the initiative and bringing closer the possibility of its implementation. To this end, meetings were held in Belgrade, New York and Paris. The countries of the South have come to realise the importance of strengthening and deepening co-operation among themselves as a pre-condition for any attempt to enter into a constructive and fruitful dialogue with the states of the North. As a result, a start was made in preparing the ground for successful North-South dialogue, when it was agreed, during the last non-aligned summit, to create a new grouping of the South. This grouping was heralded

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by the President of Peru and consists of fifteen heads of state. Besides the heads of state of the five countries calling for a NorthSouth dialogue (Egypt, India, Senegal, Venezuela and Yugoslavia), it includes the heads of state of Peru, Algeria, the Argentine, Indonesia, Jamaica, Malaysia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Mexico and Brazil were also included in order not to limit the membership to non-aligned countries. This grouping, advocated and encouraged by Egyptian diplomacy, took a significant step in November 1989 when a meeting of the personal representatives of the fifteen heads of state was held in Geneva to co-ordinate plans for a summit meeting. The intention of the latter was to study the preparation of a strategy which would promote co-operation between the countries of the South. The South, now realising the importance of increasing dialogue among the states which comprise it, is preparing an overall strategy to realise its ambitions and to formulate its role in the modern world. It is also obvious that the unity of the South, represented in the conference of the fifteen, is in itself a considerable support for the initiative of the five, rather than an alternative to it, since it is also seeking to create the conditions for an effective dialogue between the North and the South. The South’s concern about its future should not prevent it from facing up to its current problems, through exploiting its very considerable strengths, capabilities and energies. Despite the difficulties and problems of present conditions, such initiatives promise a great deal of hope for the future. A further important phenomenon characterising the present age is the ending of colonialism, following the liberation of all or most of the colonies. Even where colonies remain, they are either clearly on their way to independence or enjoy a form of self-rule. The gaining of independence by Namibia on 21 March 1990, represents the beginning of the end of the process of liberation of our brothers in Southern Africa from the yoke of racism and discrimination. It is their first step along the path of democracy, equality and justice. After the ending of colonial control and the winning of freedom by the peoples of the Third World, our efforts are now concentrated on preventing the return of colonialism in a new and stronger form of control. This is a form of control based on our disabilities and our needs. The main problems facing Third World states are the result of a tragic interaction between abject poverty and extremely low levels

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of productivity. A number of additional factors assist in the growth of this complex and fearful crisis, namely the pressure of inflation, the instability of export revenues, the deficit in the balance of payments, the ever-increasing burden of foreign debt, and a number of other external political and economic, as well as natural factors. It was natural, following the ending of the colonial presence and the independence of a large number of Third World countries, that they should seek to increase their efforts in tackling their economic problems and should consequently attempt to channel all national energies towards the project of development. This was the strategy which, it was hoped, would allow them to escape from the grip of poverty and the condition of under-development. Unfortunately, the results hitherto would seem to indicate that most Third World countries are still sunk in conditions which threaten the lives of their people and their existence as states. Egypt believes that the peoples of the Third World, especially the Africans who represent the majority, are still suffering from the effects of under-development, thus creating a vast gap in the standards of living between these peoples and those of the developed world. This problem not only affects the dignity of the peoples of the Third World, but can have a serious impact on world peace. It is scarcely conceivable that in a world where great affluence and abject poverty exist side by side, there can be any stable foundation for peace. It is no exaggeration to say that Egypt’s main concern during the end of the 1980s has been the economic plight of the Third World and the ever-increasing burden of interest on debts. This has risen to a level which threatens the process of development and has caused a significant deterioration in the state of Third World countries at the very time when their peoples are seeking desperately to escape from the poverty trap. Egypt has welcomed the positive steps taken by some of the advanced countries to lessen this burden of debt and to achieve a higher degree of justice in the international economic system. It is by this means that the interests of all parties are maintained and secured. However, Egypt has also been aware at the same time that these welcome initiatives have been insufficient to meet the challenges and to deal with all the dimensions of this problem. Consequently, Egypt has continued to call for an international conference on African foreign debt, as well as for a summit between North and South in order to start a practical dialogue. Once such a dialogue and the associated process of consultation have got under

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way, both parties will be in a position to propose and implement definite plans of co-operation which would be in their mutual interest. In putting forward such a request, Egypt is not seeking confrontation with any party, but is aiming rather at the opening of a channel of communication, in order to facilitate negotiation and exchange to points of view. It is indeed important that this should take place in a climate of unity, since both North and South are confronting common challenges facing all of mankind. It has been clear to Egypt that many of the economic problems faced by the Third World are due to the acute weakness of our economies. This, in turn, is primarily caused by the divisions and disunity which currently prevail amongst most of our countries. We are rich in resources, but poor because of the barricades and fences erected between our countries. These have all worked towards the obstruction of our development and have impeded any effective co-operation. This negative situation cannot be cured except by creating common markets which would unite our countries. This goal would allow our countries to preserve their individual identities, would accord them complete dignity and build on their historical strengths. In order to achieve these worthwhile aims, Egypt is actively inviting an increase in cooperation between the states of the South, by urging the creation of regional economic units which would have financial and commercial advantages. Egypt is also requesting that the advanced industrialised countries, the various international organisations and agencies specialising in economic co-operation, and all institutions working in the field of economic development, should offer assistance to the developing countries on a regional basis. This would go some way towards helping to overcome the isolation and structural weakness from which the Third World presently suffers. As far as practical application of the measures called for by Egypt is concerned, 1989 witnessed an increased interest on the part of Egypt in co-operation with the countries of the Nile basin. This stems from the importance of the river and its serious political, economic and security effects on the present and future of the Egyptian people. Egypt also actively participated in OAU efforts to revitalise the idea of creating an African Common Market. The year also saw an increase in the activity of the Egyptian Technical Co-operation Fund for Africa, Egypt’s main technical instrument, on the practical level, of co-operation with this region.

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The limitation and the retreat of colonialism was the realisation of one of the dreams of the peoples of the colonised world, and was achieved only by the constant series of sacrifices made by past generations. However, this historic achievement will only be truly fulfilled and those sacrifices vindicated, to the extent that they will have helped to establish the peace and stability sought by our countries. If this does not happen, the liberation movement will suffer a serious setback and the ideal placed before the struggling peoples of the Third World will remain as elusive as ever. In the present era, therefore, regional conflicts have been and still are the most devastating development. They are clouding the neighbourly relations which should prevail among the countries of the Third World, and they challenge the validity of the principles and morals upon which the solidarity we seek rests. Egypt expects our countries, heavily burdened with inherited problems, to close the doors to the winds that will uproot stability and peace. In such an atmosphere there is always the danger of reopening wounds which will never heal. Egypt also believes that it is the responsibility of Third World leaders to confront the challenges of the present age with the ultimate goal of building a better future for their peoples, mobilising all energies to this end. They should not lament the past and surrender to the limitations associated with such an outlook. In the field of practical application in the African region, Egyptian diplomacy has called for dynamic and effective action against this negative outlook. Egypt has been forthright in urging that the peoples of Africa do not surrender to the idea of partitioning the continent on geographical, cultural or language bases, or according to tribal patterns. These concepts are inappropriate, since they will tend to direct the African movement away from its goal. Egypt and her President, who was chosen by the twenty-fifth African summit in July 1989 to assume the responsibility of leading the OAU, have devoted the major part of their efforts to combating these concepts. They have sought to portray them in their true proportions and to make clear the possible consequences of pursuing them. Another phenomenon which is striking in the theatre of contemporary international politics is the increasing importance given to international organisations as effective actors on the international level. This new development is perhaps the first positive result of the decline of the cold war and the end of the age of international polarisation from which mankind has suffered

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during the last forty-five years. An indication of the significance of this new phenomenon is the importance assigned to international organisations by both Washington and Moscow in 1989 when they presented a joint recommendation to the forty-fourth session of the United Nations General Assembly. In it, they invited the countries of the world to support the efforts made by the two capitals to achieve international peace, security and co-operation. With this recommendation, both powers declared from the podium of the UN their final reconciliation and the end of the years of animosity, conflict and the arms race. They decided to turn to the problems of the world as a whole and to seek to solve them from within the institution created for that very purpose. This declaration had been preceded during the course of 1989 by tangible proof of the two great powers’ declarations, whether in the new American stance on Nicaragua or Cambodia, or the Soviet Union’s nonintervention in the unfolding drama of Eastern Europe. Regardless of the reasons and factors which led to this new situation, it can be concluded that the interests of the major powers have recently coincided for the first time in giving vitality to the role of the United Nations and in returning to it the esteem and value which had been lost in the years of the cold war. The negative results of the shifting of the Soviet-American conflict in the past into the corridors of the UN cannot easily be forgotten. During those years, Security Council resolutions were little more than suspended judgments, and sessions of the General Assembly were reduced to arenas for verbal fencing. Naturally enough, this partisanship extended to all related organisations. Regional and international organisations created specifically to confront international polarisation, such as the Organisation of African Unity, the Islamic Conference, and the Arab League, were equally unable to escape the conflict. Freed from the demands and tensions of polarisation, Third World countries can achieve strength and effectiveness. They should also obtain power relative to their numerical strength within the international organisations, and will, therefore, be able to defend their interests and play an effective role in the international arena. With this phenomenon, the international organisations appear to be on a new path where there is a chance at last that all their potential for dynamic action can be achieved. In fact, a number of new issues and problems have forced themselves on the world scene which place our very existence at risk. These problems do

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not affect one group of countries only, nor are they limited to one side of the international community. On the contrary, their scale supersedes particular divisions or blocs of states and they can only be confronted by joint action, guided by a spirit of general, global solidarity. An international organisation which has escaped from disabling polarisation between two blocs will certainly be better equipped to deal with the grave challenges which threaten human existence. Phenomena such as the problems of the natural environment and of pollution, the drug problem, the problem of foreign debt, as well as that of international terrorism have become elements in the world’s nightmare. The international organisation which is not split by opposing ideologies and inimical cultures will have a vastly greater potential to develop a strategy aimed at common salvation, such as that manifested in the transfer of technology and its devotion to the service of peace and not that of war, destruction and ruin. In view of this development, with which Egypt is in complete agreement, Egypt is convinced that the UN was and remains the embodiment of one of mankind’s dreams. That is, it represents a step towards the creation of an international government, based on a charter and capable of preventing mankind’s annihilation or disappearance. Egypt has, consequently, called on all the countries of the world to strive together to deepen our understanding of the contemporary world and to define the roles which each state should play in the forging of its features and the setting of its rules. Without such joint participation, the age of rapprochement will remain obscure and unstable, subject to certain conflicts and developments which can negatively affect our vision of the future.

Index

Abbas Hilmi II, Khedive of Egypt 7–8, 10, 16 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din 3, 15 Afifi, Hafiz 37 African Common Market 147 Agrarian Reform Law (1954) 103 agriculture 137–8 Al-Ahram 11, 18; and Nasser’s regime 106, 110–12, 118; and 1967 war 114–15; and Press Law (1881) 4–7 Al-Akhbar 106, 110–11, 116 Akhbar al-Yawm 101 Al’-Alam 5, 18 Alam, Sabri Abu 75 Algeria 145 Ali Yusuf, Shaykh 6–8, 15, 17 Amer, Field Marshall Abd alHakim 116–17 Amin, Galal 137 Amin, Mustafa 101, 107 Anderson, Robert 93 Anglo-Egyptian relations; and Ebeid 34–40; and the press 4 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty (1936) 45; abrogation of 76; and Wafd Party 75, 81 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty (1954) 91 al-Aqqad, Abbas 34, 41 Arab intellectualism and pluralism 123–4 Arab League 31, 149 Arab Research and Administrative Centre (ARAC) 110

Arab Socialist Union 110–12, 116–18, 128; and press nationalisation 107–9 Arabism; and Ebeid 31 Argentina 145 army; and independence 47–50; and patronage 50–4; and secret officers’ organisation 55–67 Army Law (1937) 48 Army Oath 48 Askar, Lt-. Gen. Gamal 118 Aswan High Dam 94 ’Awad, Hafiz, Bey 25 Azzam, Abd al-Rahman 24, 31 Badawi, Dr. Abdel Hamid 39 al-Bagdadi, Abd al-Latif 107 Baghdad Pact 92–3, 95 Bandung Conference (1955) 92 al-Banna, Hasan 87 Barakat, Fathallah (Pasha) 22; and al-Nahhas 74 Bashai, Adel 132–41 Belgrade Summit (1989) 144 al-Bishri, Abd al-Wahhab Salim 66 al-Bishri, Tariq 85 La Bourse Egyptienne 104 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros 142–50 Brazil 145 Bunche, Ralph 91 Al-Burhan 4 Caffery, J. (US ambassador) 91

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Index

Cambodia 149 Capitulations Conference (1937) 38–9 censorship; relaxation of 105; and revolution 100–2 Chamberlain, J. 14 colonialism, decline of 145, 147–8 Commerce and Agriculture Journal 2 communism and the press 113–14 Conorthy, J. 25 Constitutional Reform Party (Hizb al-Islah’ala al-Mabadi alDusturiyya); 17 Consultative Council 124 consumer price index 132 consumption 132 Coptic community; and Ebeid 22–3, 26, 30; and press 12 Cromer, Lord 1, 7, 16; and press freedom 8–10 Dabous, Sonia 100–21 Dalton, Hugh 37 debt, external 133–4; of Third World countries 146 democracy 124, 129 Denshway Incident (1906) 10 development see economic development al-Din, Baha 117 al-Din, Fuad Siraj and al-Nahhus 76, 78–9, 84, 86 diplomacy 142–50 Dulles, Allen 92 Dulles, John Foster 89–97 Dutch Disease 135–6 Ebeid, Makram 22–44; and AngloEgyptian relations 34–40; attacks on 26–7; charisma of 40–1; on economics 32–3; as lawyer 33–4; London trip (1928–29) 23–5; Middle East visits 30–2; as Minister of Finance 27–9, 37; and alNahhas 74–6, 78–9, 83, 86; as Secretary-General of Wafd party 22

economic development 136–37; of Third World countries 147 economics; Ebeid on 32–3; growth 139–40; policies of 132–41 education reform 75 Egypt; economy of 132–41; pluralism in 122–31; press, and Anglo-French control 4; recent crises in 130–1; and Suez crisis 94–5; and United States, relations with 89–99; US economic measures against 93–4 Egyptian Gazette 6, 104 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 90, 93–4, 96 Entente Cordiale (1904) 10 exports 133, 146 Faruq, King of Egypt 45, 51–2; abdication of 100 al-Fath, Husain Abu 104 al-Fath, Mahmud Abu 104 Fawzi, Muhammad 91 El-Feki, Mustafa 22–44 France; control of Egypt 4; and Egyptian press (1882–1914) 2, 10; and Suez crisis 94 Free Officers movement 64, 66; censorship by 100–1; and pluralism 125 Fuad, Ahmad 112 Fuad, King of Egypt 23, 48 Gaza raid (Israel, 1955) 91–2 General Staff 48 Ghali, Wasif Boutros 12–13, 23, 27, 37 Ghalib, Mahmud 40 Ghanim, Fathi 111 Gorst, Lord Eldon 11, 13 government transfers 133 Great Britain and Ali Mahir Pasha 45–6; and army patronage 53–4; control of Egypt 4; coup d’état (1942) 64–5; Ebeid on 34–6; and Egypt-US relations 91, 94; Egyptian hostility to 58–61; and Egyptian press (1882–1914) 2, 6;

Index and al-Nahhas 75; and Suez crisis 94 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 132–3, 140 Al-Gumhuriyya 106, 110–11 Al-Hadidy, Alaa al-Din 72–88 Hag, Mahbubul 136 Haikal, Muhammad Hassanain 117–18; as editor of Al-Ahram 110; as editor of Al-Akhbar 106– 8; and freedom of the press 112–16 al-Hakim, Tawfig 116 Hamdi, Ahmad 37 Hamid, Abdul 11 Al-Hammara 9 Hamrush, Ahmad 117 Handoussa, Heba 139 Harb, Salih 52–3, 60 Hatim, Dr. Abd al-Qadir 110 Higher Defence Council (HDC) 48 Al-Hilal 8 Hizb al-Islah’ala al-Mabadi alDusturiyya (Constitutional Reform Party) 17 Hizb al-Umma (People’s Party) 17 al-Hizb al-Watani (National Party) 17 Husain, Taha 116 Hussain, Ahmad 38 Huwaidi, Amin 118 imports 133; substitution policies 134–5 independence; and army 47–50; and officer corps 47–8 India 144–5 Indonesia 145 industries, small scale 138–40 inflation 132, 146 International Labour Organisation (ILO) 139 international politics; organisations in 148–50; rapprochement in 142–3 investment 132; Islamic, frozen 131 Al-Ishtiraki 112

153

Islam; reform, and the press 15 Islamic Conference 149 Islamic investment, frozen 131 Ismail, Khedive of Egypt 1, 4; and press, support for 2–3 Israel and Egypt-US relations 91, 94; Gaza raid (1955) 91–2; and 1967 war 114–15 Issa, Hilmi 37 Jamaica 145 Al-Jarida 6, 10, 14, 16–18 Jaridat Misr 4 al-Jawish, Shaikh Abd al-Aziz 11–12, 17–18 Jordanian crisis 95–6 Le Journal d’Egypte 104 journalism; 1882–1914 2; and revolution 100–2 journalists and press syndicate 105; and rise of press 14 Kamil, Mustafa 7–8, 10, 14, 17; and al-Nahhus 87 al-Kawakibi, Abd al-Rahman 3 Kazziha, Walid 122–31 Kelidar, Abbas 1–21 al-Khashab, Ismail 2 Kitchener, Lord 13 Kleber, General 2 labour force, growth of 140 labour union legislation 75 Lacouture, Jean 83 Lampson, Sir Miles 36, 39, 54 landowners; and al-Nahhus 74 Liberal Constitutional Party 72–4, 76–7, 80 liberalisation of Egyptian life 133, 135 Liberation Rally 125 Al-Liwa 5–7, 10, 15, 17–18 Mahanna, Muhammad Rashad 66 Mahfuz, Najib 85 Mahir, Ahmad 27, 37–40; and al-Nahhas 74–6, 78–9, 83, 86

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Mahir, Ali (Pasha) 45–50; and independence 47–50; and patronage 50–4; and revolution 101; and secret officers’ organisation 55–67 Mahmud, Dr. Hamid 24 Mahmud, Hifni, Bey 33 Mahmud, Muhammad 25, 37, 56; and the army 50; government of 27; and al-Nahhas 74; and patronage 51; as Prime Minister 23–4, 26 al-Mahrusa 4 Majid, Shaikh Abdel 28 Makariyus, Shahin 6 Malaysia 145 March 30th Programme (of Nasser) 117–18 Marshall, J.E. 14 Marxism; and the press 112–13 Al-Masa’ 106 al-Masri, Aziz Ali; and patronage 51–4; and secret officers’ organisation 55–6, 60 McBride, Barrie St Clair 83–4 Menou, General 2 Mexico 145 middle class and al-Nahhus 74, 76, 82 Middle East and Egypt-US relations 90 Middle East Defence Organisation (MEDO) 90–1 Military Gazette 2 Misbah al-Sharq 7, 9 Misr al-Fatat 4, 12 Al-Misri 104 Moharram, Othman 27 Al-Mu’ayyad 5–8, 10, 15, 17 Mubarak, Muhammad Husni 129–30 Al-Mufid 4 Muhammad Abduh (Mufti of Egypt) 4, 9, 15 Muhammad Ali 2, 14, 137 Muhammad Ali (Prince Regent) 48 Muharram, Osman 37 Muhieddin, Khalid 112

Al-Munir 7 Al-Muqattam 5–8, 11, 13–14, 18 Al-Muqtataf 6 Muslim Brotherhood 76, 127 al-Muwaylihi 9 al-Nadim, Abdullah 4, 7–8 Nagib, Ali 66 Nagib, General Muhammad 66; and revolution 101–3 al-Nahhas, Mustafa 22, 27, 37–40; and army 48–50, 65; charisma of 83–4, 87; government of 23, 79–80; as leader of Wafd 77–9; political leadership of 72–88; and Wafd Party 85–7 Namibia 145 al-Nasr, Saif 37 Nasser, Gamal Abd al-; and arms purchases 92–3; death of 127; and Egypt-US relations 89–99; and Gaza raid 91–2; March 30th Programme 117–18; and 1967 war 114–15; and pluralism 124–6; as president 105–6; and the press 100–21; press criticism of 116–19 National Democratic Party 128 National Guidance, Ministry of 100, 105 National Party (al-Hizb al-Watani) 17 National Union 107–8 nationalism; and Officers’ Organisation 63; and the press 4–5, 10; press campaign for 10–12, 15–16; rise of, and press 4–5, 10 Nessim, Tawfiq (Pasha) 33 Nicaragua 149 Nigeria 145 Nimr, Faris 6 1967 Egypt-Israeli war 114–15; and pluralism 126–7 non-aligned countries 144–5 North-South dialogue 144–5, 146 al-Nukrashi, Mahmud Fahmi 37, 39–40; and al-Nahhas 74–6, 78–9, 83, 86

Index Nusair, Abu 119 October War (1973) 127–8 officer corps; and independence 47–9; and patronage 53–4; secret organisation within 57–67 Officers’ Organisation 57–67; British coup d’état (1942) 64–5; cell structure of 57–8; hostility to Great Britain 58–61; see also Free Officers oil & gas industry 134–6 ‘open-door’ economy policy (1974) 128; and agriculture 137–8 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) 144,; 147–9 Osman, Amin, Bey 39; and alNahhas 78–9, 86 Ottoman Empire; and Egyptian press (1882–1914) 2–3 patronage; and the army 50–4 People’s Assembly 124 People’s Party (Hizb al-Umma) 17 Peru 145 Phipps, Sir Eric 39 pluralism 122–31; and Arab intellectualism 123–4; and democracy 124; andmodernisation 122–3; and Nasser 124–6; and 1967 war 126–7; and October War (1973) 127–8; and political parties 123–4; and private sector 123–4; and state hegemony 126–8, 130–1 political parties; and pluralism 123–4, 128; and the press (1882– 1914) 2–3, 14–17; see also Wafd party population 132; economic impact of 136 press and Anglo-French control 4; criticism of Nasser’sgovernment 116–19; freedom of expression in 8–9, 105–8; growth of (1870s) 3; and

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March 30th Programme 117–18; and Nasser 100–21; nationalisation of 107–16; and nationalism, rise of 4–5, 10; political (1882–1914) 1–21; and political parties (1882–1914) 2–3, 14–17; and revolution 100–2; and Revolutionary Command Council 102–5; see also journalism; journalists Press Law (1881) 1, 5, 7, 12–13 Press Organisation Law (1960) 107 Press Union 105 private sector and agriculture 138; and pluralism 123–4 al-Qudus, Ihsan Abd 102–3 Radford, Admiral E. 95 Rafat, Dr. Wahid 104 al-Rafi’i, Amin 18 Rashid Ali 61 religion; and the press 12 revolution; 1919 22; 1952–54 100–2 Revolutionary Command Council 89; and censorship 101–3; dissolution of 105; and the press 104, 119 Rida, Rashid 15 Rose al-Yusuf 102–3 Saadist Party 39–40 Sabri, Ali 111 Sabri, Hassan (Pasha) 52 al-Sadat, Anwar 66; assassination of 130; and pluralism 127–8; and the revolution 103 Sadiq, Yusuf Mansur 66 al-Said, Nuri (of Iraq) 96 Salim, Salah 100, 103–4 Sanu’a, Ya’qub 4 Sarruf, Ya’qub 6 Saud, King of Saudi Arabia 96 Saudi Arabia 93, 96, 128; and 1967 war 127 Sayed-Ahmed, Muhammad Abd al-Wahab 89–99 al-Sayyid, Dr. Afaf Lutfi 84

156

Index

al-Sayyid, Lutfi 8, 11, 14, 16; and al-Nahhas 72 Secretariat of Propaganda and Socialist Thought 111–12 Senegal 144–5 Al-Sha’ab 18 Al-Sha’b 106 Shadi, Abu 9 al-Shahid, Salah 85 al-Shamsi, Ali 37 Shukri, Mahmud (Pasha) 51 Sidqi, Ismail (Pasha) 28–9, 37, 86 Sirri, Hussain 52 Al-Siyasa 26 Soviet Union 143; and Egypt-US relations 90–1, 93; and October War (1973) 127; relations with Egypt 95 state; hegemony, retreat of 126–8; and ‘open-door’ economy policy (1974) 128; and pluralism 129–31 Suez Canal; earnings from 134; and Egypt-US relations 90; nationalisation of 94; and the press 12 Suez crisis 94–5 Syrian crisis 95–6 Al-Ta’if 4 Takla, Bishra Gabrael (Taqla) 110 Al-Tali’a 112 Taqla, Salim and Bishara 4, 6 Tawfiq, Khedive of Egypt 4, 63 technological revolution 142–3, 144 Thabit, Mahgub 42 Third World 145–6 tourism 134, 137 trade balance 133, 146 Tripp, Charles 45–71 Umma Party 72–3, 83 United Nations 149–50 United States; economic measures against Egypt 93–4; and October War (1973) 127; and relations with Egypt 89–99; and Suez crisis 94–5

United States National Security Council; 89–90, 96 Urabi, Ahmad 4 Urabi revolt 1, 4–5 Al-Ustadh 7 Venezuela 144–5 Wafd Party and al-Nahhas, Mustafa 72–88 Wafd party 22–44; and AngloEgyptian relations 34–40; and the army 45, 47–50; attacks on 26–7; Ebeid as SecretaryGeneral 22; and secret officers’ organisation 55, 57, 63–5 al-Wakil, Zainab 77–8, 86 Al-Waqa’i al-Misriyya 2 Al-Waqt 7 Wasif, Wisa (Pasha) 22–3 Al-Watan 12 Watani Party 72–3, 77 workers’ remittances 133–4 World Bank 94 World Development Report 132 World War I; and Egyptian press 17–18 World War II; British coup d’état (1942) 64–5; and British withdrawl from Egypt 46–7; and Italian invasion 62; and secret officers’ organisation 58–9, 62 Yahia, Abd al-Fatah 37 Yeken, Adli 73, 80 Yeken, Adly (Pasha) 23 Young Turk Revolution (1908) 11 Yugoslavia (former) 144–5 Zaghlul, Abbas 62 Zaghlul, Madame 22, 39 Zaghlul, Saad 22–3, 26–7; and al-Nahhas 73–5, 80, 84–5, 87 Al-Zahir 9 Zaidi, Ahmad (Pasha) 59 Al-Zaman 5 Zimbabwe 145 Zulfikar, Samir 62