Does anyone really know, asks Amira Howeidy, how a war on Iraq will resonate in Egypt? Arab nationalist tradition perceives the Arab world as comprising an eastern wing (the North African countries), a western wing (the Levant, whose strategic borders end in Iraq) and the heart: Egypt. And it is usually in times of crisis that this vision is revived -- not only because of its romantic tinge, but because it is a reminder of the actual geographic, political and strategic bonds linking the Arabs. The danger facing "the eastern wing" from an expected US-UK-led war on its strategic borders, namely, Iraq, is causing quite a reaction in the rest of the pan- Arab corpus. Indeed, the entire Arab world is, to put it mildly, deeply concerned about the prospect of a war. Recent intense Arab diplomatic efforts -- that reportedly include audacious solutions to avert a military scenario -- testify to the extent of the alarm felt by Arab leaders. A war on Iraq will be a terrible thing. Any war is a terrible thing. But this one, government spokesmen keep reminding us on a daily basis, will bring disaster and chaos to the region. Observers and political pundits are less shy about speculating on other outcomes, including a redrawing of the map of the region, US-imposed regime change under the pretext of encouraging democracy for a more 'prosperous' Middle East, and interfering in and manipulating the nation's cultural and religious specificity. But more importantly, perhaps, is how this could backfire, because, many insist, it will. "Much of the speculation about how a war on Iraq will affect us," Gamil Mattar, a former diplomat and director of the Arab Centre for Futuristic Studies told Al-Ahram Weekly, "is based on [US] plans for us. Do we know what they are?" More importantly, he asked, "does the US, for that matter, know what they are?" What we do know are figures. Egypt, business experts say, will sustain a serious blow to its tourism sector, the country's main source of revenue, which came to approximately $4.5 billion in 2001. A war will definitely cripple this sector, which, according to official statistics, employs 2.2 million people -- directly and indirectly. Moreover, some 70 services and industries are closely related to tourism. But even independent estimates say these figures are low and that no less than 10 million citizens currently work in tourism. Tourism is the primary source of foreign exchange revenue in Egypt, followed by revenue from the Suez Canal ($1.8 billion), remittances from Egyptian expatriates and oil revenue. Then there are Egypt's exports to Iraq under the Iraq-UN oil-for-food deal, which were worth approximately $1.5 billion last year. That revenue, too, will be lost if the military option is pursued. "This is almost as much as the revenue from the Suez Canal -- quite a severe blow to an obvious source of income," said Essam El-Eryan, secretary- general of the Doctors' Syndicate and a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood's shura council. El-Eryan, a former MP in the 1987 parliament, was arrested in 1995 prior to the parliamentary elections and was sentenced to five years with hard labour for belonging to the Brotherhood. He was released two years ago. Despite systematic police clampdowns, arrests and harsh military sentences on its members, the 73-year-old group is widely believed to be the most powerful opposition political organisation in Egypt, and it currently holds 16 seats in parliament. However, the US is reportedly ready to "compensate" Egypt financially if "needed", according to Senator Arlen Specter who met with President Mubarak in early January. The domestic sphere is not the only one where Egyptians are expected to face rough times. "With the expected regional chaos", El-Eryan told the Weekly, the four million to six million Egyptians working in the Gulf, "won't enjoy stable working conditions if a war starts". "Egypt's strategic position will be undermined if a strike happens with the approval of Iran and Turkey -- who will be dividing the cake. Egypt will be marginalised and this is [also] what the president is concerned about," El-Eryan said. Eventually, "all this will lead to an explosive situation," El-Eryan suggested. In a widely read article published in October 2002 by the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, Mattar ruminated at length on the "silence" of the Arab people. He contended that this silence masks a simmering anger which is a "reason to worry". "The gap between the Arab people and their regimes has widened to such an unprecedented extent that one can't imagine a worse scenario than reality today," Mattar told the Weekly. "I'm quite pessimistic, and I'm afraid we've reached a point when we can't take this gap as a criterion for measuring anything. We can't say 'this gap will result in this or that', because in fact, it's not resulting in anything. The gap has swallowed everything." The "street" may have broken its silence this past week. Four demonstrations and several public rallies held in Cairo denounced the expected US-UK war on Iraq, the "defeatist" Arab regimes and Israel, and expressed solidarity with the Iraqi and Palestinian people. Two more demonstrations are scheduled next week for 31 January and 24 February at the Cairo Book Fair in Nasr City and in front of Cairo University. Although the number of protesters at each demonstration did not exceed a few hundred versus thousands of anti-riot police, who, by blocking the protest venues, virtually controlled the size of the demonstrations, activists and observers alike argue that the modest number of participants do not indicate the actual magnitude of opposition to the war. Standing among the demonstrators encircled by security at a protest in Al-Sayeda Zeinab Square last Saturday, Wael Khalil, an activist on the Egyptian Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada (ECSPI), said, "We're not worried that only a few hundred turned up, because we know why." The Emergency Law, in force since 1981, is strict in prohibiting street demonstrations. Recent arrests of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, some have argued, have been the government's way of preventing and intimidating would-be mass protests against the war organised by the group. Last May, the group's Alexandria branch called for a one-million-man march to mark the 54th anniversary of Al-Nakbah, the Palestinian catastrophe. Tens of thousands of people reportedly turned up despite the arrest of the group's leaders. They remain imprisoned till this day. During this week's Al-Sayeda Zeinab demonstration, Ahmed, a 26-year-old university graduate who's been "unemployed for three years" because "[Prime Minister] Atef Ebeid does not want or care for us to be employed," said that the danger facing Egypt "is more than a war" on Iraq. "We're surrounded by danger everywhere, from pesticide- tainted food, to state corruption. We pay the price anyway. A government that does this to its own people cannot stop a military attack on Iraq. Why do you think I'm unemployed and Iraq will be hit?" he asked. A "link" between the situation in Iraq, Palestine and Egypt, was expressed in the fiery slogans chanted in the historic quarter of Cairo. "Baghdad is Cairo, Jerusalem is Cairo" and "We want Egypt to be free, life has become bitter," a young woman who was carried on the shoulders of another protester shouted. Once again, the 30-year-old slogan, which was popular during the 1970s student movement and even more prominent during the 1977 bread riots, drove the point home. "Who ever said that Egypt's national security or internal stability is separate from that of the region?" Tarek El-Bishri, former vice-president of the State Council and a renowned historian said. Iraq, he noted, has been subject to military strikes over the past 10 years, "and till this moment, the air strikes haven't stopped". The US objective, according to El-Bishri, is to control the region with conventional imperialist tools, namely, direct military occupation, similar to that established by the British and the French in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. "In my view, they want a war to achieve this goal, and this aim is being achieved right now," El-Bishri told the Weekly. "A full-fledged hi-tech and sophisticated US military presence -- approximately 120,000 troops with all the hardware -- is here, to occupy not only Iraq, but the region. The Gulf is under full military occupation." As El- Bishri put it, "We are not waiting for a war, because it has started already." But this is not the only danger facing Egypt, El- Bishri explained. "What is happening in Palestine is a direct threat to Egypt's independence and national security and this is not just a civilian's theory, but what we learned from the military people and their sciences." Egypt's security "is in Palestine, it is outside its regional borders. It is also in the Nile and current attempts to divide Sudan are also a threat to us," he said. Direct threats to Egypt, he argued, always came from its north-eastern borders. "Iraq is the strategic frontier of the Arab region and the Levant. So generally, it is the gateway to the Arab world." Because Iraq's strategic security is crucial to Egypt's, Cairo, under President Gamal Abdel- Nasser, openly opposed the 1955 Baghdad Pact -- a treaty initiated by the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as part of an anti- Soviet alliance. The pact provided for US and British military presence through military bases in Iraq. By campaigning against the pact and mobilising the Arab masses, Egypt contributed significantly to the pact's collapse. "What's happening today is much worse than the Baghdad Pact," said El-Bishri, "I really don't know what the calculations are behind Egypt's policies, but those who understand the realities of national security must realise the danger today's situation poses to Egypt's security." El-Bishri does not see feeble anti-war demonstrations as indicative of popular reaction to US military hegemony and military occupation of the region. "Demonstrations are uprisings that express emotional furor. But what accumulates in the hearts and minds is what really matters." And what is that is accumulating? "The illusion that we're independent will be fully exposed and this will take us to the stages that we have seen before: moving towards liberation." But does the proverbial heart of the Arab nation have the ability to heal its "wings"? "Egyptians are much more conscious of their Arabism and more concerned about Arab events than they were at the time of the 1948 war in Palestine and the 1952 Revolution that followed shortly on its heals," said El-Bishri. Cairo in action After a four-month lull, demonstrations in Cairo against war on Iraq are finally coming to life The black helmets of anti-riot police could easily be seen in Al-Sayeda Zeinab Square from at least a kilometre's distance. Dozens of khaki armoured vehicles and armed personnel carriers (APCs) surrounded the square and its neighbouring quarters. The streets leading up to the square were blocked, ultimately halting all movement for three hours. By 1.00pm Saturday, this historic and popular area of old Cairo looked like a military zone. What started out as an anti-war on Iraq march in the square soon turned chaotic when demonstrators began moving to the other side of the street. Impatient police and top-level officers, who were there to "supervise" the demonstration, quickly issued orders to limit the protest to a small circle right in front of the Al-Sayeda Zeinab (who is the granddaughter of Prophet Mohammed) shrine. As a result, only a few hundred marchers were allowed to hold what was the first coordinated protest with the global anti-war movement. Tens of thousands said no to war in the US, Europe and some Arab capitals on that same day. "Baghdad is Cairo!Jerusalem is Cairo", "America is the origin of terrorism", the crowd chanted. Then there would be anti-capitalist shouts of "We won't be ruled by the World Bank! We wont be ruled by imperialism!" Participants held posters which read: "Cry, Baheyya, Iraq will be hit by the Arab countries", "Iraq is a war for oil and American development", "Stop US terrorism", and Nasser's famous "What was taken by force shall return by force" and, of course, Nasser's picture. Like the Palestine solidarity rallies that started last spring, this week's demonstrations were attended by representatives from the various political forces -- Nasserists, Islamists, Leftists -- in addition to independent figures. Last month, the region's first anti-war conference was held in Cairo. The venue of Al-Sayeda Zeinab, some of the activists who helped organise the march said, was chosen to send a strong message from a popular part of the capital that has never witnessed any political demonstrations. "We want people here to see this, to protest, to say no. They won't unless we go to them and encourage them," one activist told Al-AhramWeekly. It did the trick for Saneya, Umm Fathi and Ne'mat, three women in their late 50s and 60s who were seated on the floor next to the shrine's door watching the demonstration with interest. One of them said they had come to visit the shrine the night before and decided to spend the night there when they found out there was to be a protest. "What they're doing is a good thing and God will bless them. But all the mosques in Cairo were closed by the police; maybe to stop people from telling the truth," Saneya said. The demonstration was peaceful, except for a few times when the participants attempted to break out of the security enclave. Hundreds of police batons were immediately lifted in the air and occasionally used, which led to a number of violent clashes. "There's one good thing about this demonstration," Adel El-Bendari, an IT expert who participated in the rally, told the Weekly. "At one point, I noticed a police officer nearby who was clearly miming the slogans. When he saw me looking at him, he winked because he knew that I knew." This week's protests began after the Friday prayers in Al-Azhar Mosque, where approximately 1,000 worshipers held an unplanned anti-US and anti-Israel demonstration. In a nearby section of town, in Garden City, some 100 women dressed in black gathered as close to the US Embassy as anti- riot police would permit them in another anti-war picket. The crowd, which consisted mostly of upper middle class women and expatriates, was cordoned off by anti-riot police. They signed a petition objecting to the expected joint US-UK war on Iraq, which they will present to the American and British embassies in Cairo. On Monday, a fourth march was scheduled to proceed from the downtown Omar Makram Mosque to the US Embassy, but predictably, was prevented by anti-riot police, who cordoned off the protesters in the area around the mosque. This resulted in a dreadful gridlock that lasted for several hours in all of central Cairo and its neighbouring areas. Egypt's emergency law, in force since 1981, prohibits street demonstrations. Two demonstrations are scheduled for 31 January at the Cairo Book Fair and 24 February in front of Cairo University. The latter "promises to be quite an event", an activist said.
