In Focus: The generation gap From Bandung to Baghdad, Galal Nassar charts a slippery path If one wishes to assess the achievements of various generations of Egyptians, one has to differentiate between the achievements of leaders and those of the nation. One has to assess not only the policies, but the end result. The history of contemporary Egypt, since the 1952 Revolution, can be divided into two parts. The first covers the 1950s and 1960s, a generation that saved the country's wealth. The second part covers the 1970s and 1980s, a generation that squandered the country's wealth. As for the generation of the 1990s, the signs are not encouraging. It is a generation that has been excluded from political participation, left out in the cold. No wonder it is an easy prey to the machinations of political extremists. The generation of the 1950s and 1960s had ideals. It believed in socialism and pan-Arabism and fought against colonialism and Zionism. It was traumatised by the British occupation of Egypt, the 1948 defeat in Palestine, and the corruption of the monarchy. But it didn't take any of this lying down. It nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, and foreign companies in 1957, and it embarked on a wide-ranging programme of industrialisation, the biggest since Mohamed Ali's time. It created heavy industries, including iron and steel, and pharmaceuticals and rubber. It set up the Arab Organisation for Military Industrialisation and ventured into the manufacturing of aluminium, automobiles, and chemicals. It dedicated entire neighbourhoods to industry: Shubra Al-Kheima, Al-Amiriya and Helwan. It changed the face of Aswan with the High Dam, a project that protected Egypt from hunger and thirst. It created entire working class housing projects in Imbaba, and established a public sector to provide commodities to the poorer classes. It reclaimed land and distributed property among the peasants. This generation of the 1950s and 1960s created Mudiriyet Al-Tahrir (a developmental project in the Western Desert) from scratch. It made education free for everyone through college, in a step that crowned earlier initiatives by the Wafd Party. To rebuild the army, it deducted a portion from the meagre salaries of government employees for the war effort. This generation wanted the army to become a real force, one that could protect independence and perhaps liberate Palestine. It introduced low-cost housing and rent controls. It drew up five-year development plans funded by national savings rather than foreign aid. Egypt's foreign debt was a fraction of what it was later to become. It stood by national liberation movements in the Arab world and Africa. It provided weapons to Algerians to fight French colonialists. It helped Yemen get rid of the British. It knew the bitter taste of defeat in 1948, but lived to resist the Tripartite Aggression in 1956. It mounted a war of attrition in 1968 and 1969. It waged the 1973 War, sending the army across the Suez Canal. It embraced pan-Arabism and fought for freedom, socialism, and unity. Its spirit of revolution spread to Iraq in 1958, to Yemen in 1964, and to Libya in 1969. It launched Egyptian- Sudanese cooperation in Wadi Halfa. It achieved the first merger in the modern history of the Arabs, with Egypt and Syria becoming the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1961. It helped bring about the independence of the Arab Maghreb through the efforts of the Cairo Office, which was set up in 1950. It opted for Sudan's independence through self-determination in 1954. It encouraged the independence of Gulf countries. It protected Lebanon from US intervention in 1958, and it protected Jordan from British intervention in the same year. This is the generation that turned pan-Arabism, with its socialist and progressive message, into a revolutionary ideology inspiring national liberation movements across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It gave revolutionary thinking a new meaning, one that differed from the Soviet-based ideology prevalent in East Europe. It established the first Afro-Asian political gathering in Bandung 1955. Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Tito, Nehru, Zhu Enlai, Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and Sukarno joined in Bandung to issue a call for liberation and independence that turned the Third World into a counterbalance of both East and West. The non-aligned movement (NAM), born out of the Bandung gathering, sought to reduce international tensions between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. The NAM opposed Western alliances, from the Baghdad Pact of 1953 to the Islamic Pact of 1965. The 1970s and 1980s saw another generation taking charge, and they instigated policies that led to Egypt's resources being neglected and eventually sold. These resources belonged to the whole nation, to the thousands of peasants and workers who died while digging the Suez Canal. The public sector was sold at ridiculous prices to capitalists and foreign companies in the hope of attracting investors. Public sector companies were privatised on the pretext that they were losing money. Some public sector companies were closed down, and the country started importing the products they used to produce from abroad at higher prices. Education was privatised once again, from nursery school to university. The generation of the 1970s and 1980s introduced policies that undermined national education while helping religious as well as foreign institutions. Such attitudes ultimately destroyed a nationalist culture, intellectual integrity and religious moderation, leaving institutions open to extremism, especially in the form of Wahhabism. During the 1970s and 1980s, housing became commodified, businessmen gained control over the economy, and monopoly became the name of the game. As a result the prices of iron, steel and cement have spiralled. The rich became richer and the poor poorer as business people found loopholes to subvert whatever government regulations remained. Maritime and land transport, construction and health were all compromised. The generation of the 1970s and 1980s saw national banks privatised. More capital left the country than came in, more antiquities were smuggled, and Egypt's national debt grew 40 fold. The generation of the 1970s and 1980s depended more on foreign assistance than on national savings. It did away with checks and balances. It made elected office a pathway to enrichment. Egypt drifted away from its Arab milieu to the extent that it could support the presence of occupation forces in Iraq for fear of sectarian strife. It responded to the bloodshed in Palestine and to Israeli aggression against the Palestinians by training Palestinian police. Egypt, the country that fought five wars for Palestine, did nothing to help Lebanon when it faced a full- blown Israeli offensive against civilians. Egypt accepted defeat too soon, becoming increasingly introspective and aloof. It acted as France did after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. We now have a generation that has forgotten how to fight foreign pacts. Instead, it prefers to stay on the good side of the Americans and Israelis. The result is that the Arab world has never been more vulnerable than it is today, when imperialism and Zionism threaten to shape the present of the region, and its future.
