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Egypt seems to be getting bad news from every direction these days. Take
the Nov/Dec parliamentary elections for example. Instead of enhancing
the legitimacy of the regime, the sweeping victory for government
candidates resulted in the perception that the Egyptian government is
hell-bent on further reducing the small margin in which the opposition
operated. Moreover, the opposition’s accusations of government
vote-buying, voter intimidation and other forms of fraud were credible
enough to spur the United States’ government to issue a statement in
which it said it had “cause for concern” about the elections.
In early December, Egypt’s tourist industry received a blow when sharks
attacked tourists at Sharm al-Sheikh. Some might say such attacks can
happen anywhere and the government cannot be blamed for it. This is only
half true. Yes shark attacks can happen anywhere but if we look at the
two factors that have been proposed as possible causes for the attacks,
we will see government negligence in both of them. The first possible
cause was the dumping of dead sheep by an Australian ship. The second
possible cause is overfishing. Both of these possible causes needed
government action. In the case of the Australian ship, the government
should have brought legal charges against the company that owned the
ship as well as taken steps to prevent or minimize negative consequence
that could flow from the actions of the Australian ship. The government
also needed to take steps to prevent overfishing in the Red Sea by its
own fishermen, especially the Bedouins, and also should have come up
with a strategy to deal with overfishing by trawlers from Asia and
Europe. The Egyptian government and the Egyptian tourist industry did
not take any of these steps. Instead, they ignored the signs of trouble
and kept on collecting the huge profits they reap from tourism and scuba
diving at Sharm al-Sheikh without putting back much money in protecting
that cash cow. The Egyptian attitude in this regard is no different from
their attitude towards the problem of piracy and many other pressing
crises: make some noise, do nothing, and expect others, especially the
US and Europe to solve them, an attitude which was best expressed by
Egypt's Tourism Minister Zuhair Garana who when asked what his
government is going to do about the shark attacks, answered, “We are
getting marine biologists from abroad to assess the situation and why
there was this change in biological nature.”
In late November, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi rubbed it in
to the Egyptians when he told them they can neither win a direct war nor
an indirect war (by supporting Ethiopian rebels) with Ethiopia. Some
observers might have been surprised by the Ethiopian Prime Ministers’
statements. But a close look at what is happening in East Africa and the
Horn of Africa makes it clear that the Ethiopian Prime Minister was
serving the Egyptian government notice about the new realities in East
Africa. What are these new realities? One, Egypt’s Nile politics has
suffered a major defeat in May when Ethiopia and four other countries
(Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya) signed an agreement regulating the
shares of Nile waters. Two, Egypt’s policy toward Sudan has failed
abysmally and the coming referendum will most likely result in a
government in Southern Sudan which is aligned with the signatories of
the May agreement rather than with Egypt. Three, Egypt’s influence in
Somali politics has diminished to the point that there is no major
Somali political group or territory that identifies with it (even the
TFG, the one group which the Egyptian government says it supports, is
closer to Ethiopia than Egypt).
It is not only in Africa that Egypt is suffering one defeat after
another. In the Middle East too, a similar phenomenon is happening to
the point where Iran is able to challenge Egypt in its door-steps in
Gaza. Similarly, Egypt has lost much of its leadership in the Arab media
and no longer sets the agenda of the Arab world. Cairo is no longer the
‘must see’Arab capital, Dubai is. Even in the movie industry where Egypt
is still dominant in the Arab world, it is losing ground to Syrian
productions in the TV series category. Many Arabs also resent Egypt’s
domination of the Arab League, an organization that Egypt insists must
be based in Cairo, must have an Egyptian General Secretary, and that is
largely staffed by Egyptians who got their appointments through nepotism
and favoritism rather than merit.
Oddly enough, there is no better indication of the Egyptian government’s
failure and inability to provide leadership than one of its own critics,
the former editor of al-Ahram Newspaper and confidant of former
President Gamal Abd al-Naisr. Haykal’s weekly hasty and stream of
consciousness style outpourings in al-Jazira which he attempts to pass
off as political analysis shows how deeply ingrained are the attitudes
of entitlement and humbug in Egypt’s current and former ruling class.
Haykal, like Egypt’s current rulers, thinks that this is still the
sixties when his weekly al-Ahram column bi-Sarahah and the Egyptian
government’s broadcasts in Sawt al-Arabi were the predominant political
analysis and news outlets in the Arab world.
All of this is not to say that Egypt is not important, or that it has no
role to play in Arab and African politics. What it does say is that
Egypt no longer has the status or the clout that it once had, and that
this is the direct result of its failed and exploitative policy as well
as the rise of a new generation of Arabs and Africans who are charting
their own course and are not impressed with Egypt and its archaic ways.
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