Fayza Hassan reviews two recently published books on change in Egypt A complex reality Egypte, L'Envers du décor (The other side of the coin), Sophie Pommier, Paris: La d�couverte, 2008. pp297 Sophie Pommier has long been an attachée to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is now a consultant on Middle Eastern Affairs. She currently teaches at the IEP in Paris. A researcher first and foremost, Pommier did not set out to write a blockbuster in which mudslinging on a developing country and its corrupt government is gleefully received by a small francophone elite. Her endeavour is a serious one backed by a thorough knowledge of the facts and the fictions. Her book should interest anyone who wishes to have a panoramic view of Egypt's problems as it painfully attempts to rise to the exigencies of the twenty-first century. The other side of the coin does not however provide the reader with the kind of easy regime's criticism that is always a cause of great excitement and controversy and a foolproof recipe for success. Pommier's Egypte covers 200 years of history and examines the complex and painful process which the country is undergoing in its effort to establish an acceptable balance between modernity and tradition. Brutally pulled in opposite directions Egypt's reality has evolved chaotically since the 1952 Revolution. Pommier attempts to put some order in the chaos by presenting a well- informed, dispassionate, study which acquaints the reader with the good and the bad, examined objectively. Backed by a succinct but relevant recapitulation of historical events spanning the period from Muhammad Ali to the Free Officers movement, Pommier draws on the research of the CEDEJ (Centre d'etudes economique et Juridique) established in Egypt which offers the most up to date information, collated and examined by renowned French scholars such as Ghilaine Allaume, the late Alain Roussillon, Eric Denis, as well as works by prominent scholars such as Anouar Abdel-Malek, Henri Laurens and Edward Said among others. The writer contends that apart from the Pyramids and the most popular Pharaonic and Islamic sites little is known about the country's today's challenges, an ignorance she says that serves well the strategy of the status quo: seen from the outside, she adds, a number of reforms may seem to promote liberalisation, but on closer examination one discovers that they result on the contrary in covert ways to a tighten the government's already heavy hand. This, she says, does not disturb the population who generally receive with indifference and a sense of fatalism whatever new measure curtails some more of their freedom. The scant disturbances caused by the imprisonment of journalists, the periodical rumour of torture in the prisons and the demonstrations in the provinces for better living conditions (lack of clean drinking water, encroachment of the government on their land are the main complaints), or in the capital where protests infrequently erupt denouncing the shoddy way in which victims of natural disasters are treated by the officials are short lived and quickly cut down by police intervention. According to Pommier, Egypt has no greater project or long term policy. The government's main objective at present is a cosmetic job, aiming at trying to enact reforms to please the American patron while perpetuating the authoritarian mode by which the country has been ruled since 1952. Sooner however rather than later it will find itself at crossroads when the question of succession arises. The author examines three future scenarios for succession, presenting the advantages and dangers of each one: Gamal Mubarak, an Islamic state or more of a military dictatorship are the alternatives that Egyptians will be faced with... She hints however at the fact that the president has put a mechanism in place and that if his vision for the future of the country he ruled for so long is kept under wrap, this does not mean that such mechanism has not been devised. Furthermore Pommier acknowledges that some progress has been made despite the numerous problems and the increasing social imbalance that plagues the country at present: in 1960 she writes, life expectancy was 47.5 years when at the present it has reached 70 years; infantile mortality has dropped from 204 per cent in 1961 to 33 per cent in 2005. There are more children going to school even though the education system leaves a lot to be desired (66.2 per cent in 1994 and 76.9 in 2005). The number of literate adults has increased from 52.3 per cent to 71.4 for the same period. Women have also benefited from a decreased mortality at the time of delivery and an increase in education opportunities: in 1959- 1961, there were 57.4 per cent female primary students, a percentage that rose to 95.9 per cent in 2003-2004. But, she warns, these encouraging results should not put out of sight the long road ahead: there are still 16.8 million illiterates and 20 millions who are deprived of minimum health care while women sorely lag behind men in respect of their social and professional status. Obviously the government has difficulties in coping with the demographic growth, she comments. She also notes that while there is an attempt at creating new industries and installations, the old equipment is out of order and maintenance is almost inexistent due to a lack of funds as well as a dire lack of skilled workers who tend to leave the country for better conditions in the Gulf. Unemployment (which includes university graduates as well as unskilled workers) and inflation are largely surpassing any measures to thwart them while corruption which has flourished with the economic liberalisation of the regime represents a constant frustration to the poor who are well informed by a moderately liberated press that the "fat cats" aka the successful businessmen are robbing the country blind. Pommier concludes her thorough study of the living conditions in Egypt in 2008, by indicating the three above mentioned directions in which the country may be launched in the future. The three have their pros and cons but whichever will end up occurring, she predicts a curtailment of the people's liberty.
