Al-Ahram: A Diwan of contemporary life (637) Soft power Egypt's strong historical influence in Iraq would today have served the US well, writes Professor Yunan Labib Rizk Since Joseph S Nye Jr, a professor at Harvard University, forged the expression "soft power" in a book he published in the early 1990s, it has drawn the attention of those concerned with political affairs, a fact pointed out by Mohamed Hassanein Heikal in one of his programmes broadcast by the Al-Jazeera TV station. Nye holds that some nations, in addition to possessing hard (military) power, possess what he calls "soft power", which is found in the ability to make others adopt their culture, customs, and ideas. Perhaps the American failure in using "hard power" in Iraq, despite its overwhelming superiority, encouraged Nye to publish another book in 2004 under the same title, with the addition of the subtitle "The Means to Success in World Politics", that re- introduced the notion for discussion among Western intellectual circles. It is strange that we have not noticed in Egypt that we, in comparison with the neighbouring countries and particularly on the level of Arab circles, possess some means of "soft power" that the United States of America does not on the global level. These are means formed by a long-shared history, not the seduction of modernism and so on as employed by the strongest state in our contemporary world. In this connection, we should address what Egypt has held in terms of "soft power" in one of the Arab countries, Iraq specifically. We are led to this not only by the certainty, until this moment at least, of the failure of the greatest military power in the world to break the will of the Iraqis, but also by the geographic dimension, which for a long time prevented a connection of the scope held with closer areas such as the Levant, the Hijaz, and Sudan. It is sufficient here to recall the saying that was common among Egyptians and which Sheikh Hassan El-Jabarti repeated in his writings, that if a person had gone "to bring the antidote from Iraq, the stung person will die", indicating that he would never return, or at least not for a long time. Yet following the 1919 Revolution, which was succeeded a year later by a revolution in Iraq -- the valley of two rivers -- relations between the two Arab countries began to diversify, and stung persons found their antidote. The 1920s witnessed the creation of an Egyptian diplomatic corps abroad, and Iraq had its part in this when Mustafa Makhlouf was appointed the consul in Baghdad and Rashid Bey Al-Khoja became the Iraqi envoy in Cairo. The Al-Ahram special correspondent in the Iraqi capital dispatched various news items about the forms of welcome he was greeted with. He ended by saying, "in fact, His Grace the Egyptian consul did not only receive excessive welcome from government officials, but also from cultured youth who realise the immense import of emotional and material ties between these two Arabic-speaking peoples." Elsewhere he offered a description of an extravagant banquet put on by one of Baghdad's prominent personalities for the Egyptian consul. Top officials of the state and ministers were invited, "and it deserves mention that His Grace the Egyptian consul, since his arrival in Baghdad, has been surrounded by a throng of Iraq's men and youth who, through him, honour sister Egypt hoisting the banner of Arab culture and renewal." The same period saw visits by Egyptian artistic troupes to Iraq. The most important of these was the visit by Fatima Rushdi's troupe, which was the object of the Al-Ahram correspondent's attention in more than one report. In one he wrote, "all the plays performed by the troupe of Mrs Fatima Rushdi have been the source of Iraqis' delight and have received a splendid reception from the Iraqi public. Mrs Fatima Rushdi and Mr Aziz Eid exhibited, in the main roles of these plays, exemplary skill that is indicative of the advancement of the art of acting in Egypt." Another report stated that the troupe had received a grand welcome and that audiences were impressed with all of the plays they performed. "Their acclaim reached its furthest limits with the play Al-Watan [the homeland], which the troupe played for the emergency relief of those devastated by the flood in Iraq. Mrs Fatima Rushdi was notably noble when she forfeited her share of the profits from that play, an amount not less than 1,200 rupees. Her donation left a kind impression on people." More important than both of these examples was the role played by Egyptians under the leadership of the famed legist , who assisting in drafting the constitutional framework of the nascent Iraqi kingdom alongside the establishment of the college of law. In this he was assisted by a number of Egyptian legists, and this college produced a number of jurists who were extremely close to Egypt. The first trip made by its students outside of Baghdad was to Cairo. At that time, following the appearance in the 1930s of the EgyptAir company, its first foreign routes went to Beirut, and from there to Baghdad. The transit in the Lebanese capital was long, however, lasting an entire night. On the political level, following the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, and after the London government agreed that Egypt could join the League of Nations, as took place the following year, it was necessary for a member state to submit this as a request, and Iraq took the initiative on the basis of it being the only Arab member state in the League at that time. All of these changes foretold of a strong relationship between the pivotal Arab state, the Egyptian kingdom, and one of the most important of the states on the perimeter, the Iraqi kingdom. During the late 1930s, Al-Ahram predicted that this relationship would rapidly develop. We reproach both parties for not documenting this fact, and attempt to do so here, if modestly. AL-AHRAM INFORMS US that education continued to form the most important aspect of that relationship. After it began with legal studies, it extended to include many other aspects, forming in sum what I have called "Egyptian soft power in Iraq". Al-Ahram tells, in connection to this, of what it called a "painful incident", although it brought ramifications of its own. The incident occurred when a student in the college of law in Baghdad called Dawoud Mustafa Al-Bayati opened fire on two Egyptian professors, Mahmoud Azmi and Hassan Seif. The reason was his failing an exam. (Such cases only occur with Iraqis; elsewhere failures turn their guns onto themselves, not their teachers!) The gunfire struck professor Seif in the head, leading to his death after a short period. Professor Azmi was hastily taken to Cairo, where he was operated on by the famed surgeon Abdel-Wahab Moro Bey in a successful operation that saved him. Al-Ahram held that the killing of Seif was a major loss. He had earned his doctorate in law in Paris, with a dissertation titled "The new registration system in Egypt." Afterwards he returned to work as a lawyer in indigenous and mixed courts, until the government of Iraq selected him to the post of professor of general law in the college of law in Baghdad. "He undertook his mission there in the best manner until he met his fate with the bullet of that reckless youth." As for the incident's ramifications, it was expected that it would be followed by Egyptian teachers wanting to avoid travelling to Iraq again. Yet Al-Ahram proved that such thinking was erroneous, which indicates that such anomalous events do not halt the flow of general currents. The case was transferred to the Iraqi parliament, where the president of the finance committee in the council of representatives stated that Iraqis lauded the teachers, "the people of the beloved sister Egypt for the kind spirit they bring in their cultural and academic assistance to the college of law. We thank them for the assistance they have and continue to demonstrate towards their Iraqi brothers, side by side, for the sake of the advancement of this college." The minister of education, Youssef Ezzeddin, supported the representative's statement. He said, "I thank my colleague for his reference to this point. Sister Egypt has been, and remains, supportive of the educational institutes in Iraq for a long time. In 1920, it sent one of its experts to establish the teachers' institute. With his brothers, he helped place the foundations of that institute. In the last decade, when reform of the college of law was deemed necessary, professor Abdel-Razaq El-Senhouri came and put the current college of law system into place and helped it to advance, as the brothers know." When El-Senhouri declined to return to Iraq again, the government in Baghdad requested the Egyptian Ministry of Education to nominate another dean for the college of law and three teachers -- an assistant professor to teach law and the history of Roman law, another to teach practical criminal enquiry, and a third to teach psychology in the college of law. In response to this request, the Egyptian Ministry of Education decided to commission Abdel-Hamid Metwali to the post of supervisor of the college of law in Baghdad, along with a number of other teachers. Following his arrival in the Iraqi capital Metwali made the following statement: "Egyptian teachers are among your brethren. We have come to assist you, in service of your renaissance, for you are of us and we are of you. We are all servants of a return of the glorious past of our country and yours." When the Iraqi newspaper Al-Bilad sent a reporter to interview him, he made his mission even clearer. He did not accept supervision of the college of law in Baghdad "except in response to the calling of my academic conscious and my national duty." Metwali added, "my first goal is to maintain the good impression left by professor El-Senhouri and the service of the college's academic reputation, in cooperation with the teachers in way of their research, writings, and papers, and with the students in the way of increasing the spirit of activity among them and their love for academic research." Metwali added that it was his intention to expand the college's library and spread the university spirit among the students by striving to establish a student club in which they could carry out their cultural and administrative activities. He indicated the necessity of the Iraqi government participating in the national institute for administrative sciences whose headquarters had been decided to be Brussels. "The college will urgently take interest in raising the scientific level of the institute of financial sciences, which it established to serve as a school of higher education organised in the manner of the higher school of commerce in Egypt." It seems that the relationship between the two colleges of law in the Egyptian University and Baghdad University grew very close, to the extent that they could have been described as real "twins." This fact is made clear by a number of news items published in Al-Ahram over a lengthy period of time. A news item in the 19 January 1938 issue reported that the Egyptian cabinet had agreed to commission Mahmoud Saadeddin El-Sherif to teach in the Iraqi college of law for one year subject to renewal. Another news item in the 7 November issue of that same year told of the nomination of Hassan Mohamed Abul-Saud, the attorney-general of the indigenous courts, to the post of assistant professor in the Iraqi college of law for one academic year. A third item was repeated at the commencement of each academic year and included the names of the teachers flying to Baghdad to teach in the college of law. In 1939, they were Mustafa Kamel, Khalil Osman, Hassan Gad Suleiman, Abdel-Hamid Amr Shagi, and Hussein Abu Saud. A final news item published on 15 July of the same year reported a proposal submitted by the Iraqi minister of justice to the cabinet to communicate with the Egyptian government concerning the issue of commissioning Abdel-Razaq El-Senhouri Bey, the former dean of the Iraqi college of law, to "work for a period of time in the legal departments of the Ministry of Justice to produce the draft Iraqi civil code. The Egyptian professor previously participated in preparing a large section of this draft with the committee formed of prominent Iraqi legists for this purpose." This twinship manifested itself beyond the field of study, however. At a party to honour Egyptian professors in the college of law in Baghdad on 11 January 1939, Iraqi professors welcomed them and students gave enthusiastic speeches in which they enumerated the distinguishing features of those teachers and their service to Iraq, making reference to Egypt's influence on the Iraqi cultural renaissance. Abdel-Hamid El-Washahi, one of the Egyptian professors, rose and thanked the students and those present for their generosity and welcome. He noted that Egypt was proud to offer Iraq all forms of aid and assistance in all manners. The twinship also had other manifestations, including a trip undertaken by 40 students in the Egyptian University in early 1938 during Eid Al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) holiday. The Iraqi Ministry of Education exhibited its preparation to welcome them. Another was the idea called for by some Egyptian professors in Baghdad for cooperation with the Iraqi select elite to establish a club under the name "the IraqiEgyptian Club" in the Iraqi capital "whose goal would be to strengthen friendly relations between Iraqis and Egyptians". While the college of law won the greatest share of Egyptian-Iraqi cultural relations, it must be pointed out that these relations, as made clear by the news of Al-Ahram, transferred to other educational institutions including the college of pharmacology. This was revealed by a news item dispatched from Baghdad in July, 1938, stating that the cabinet had decided to invite three foreign instructors to the school of pharmacology. "We have learnt that these teachers will be selected from Egypt." It was a strange piece of news, for the college of pharmacology in Egypt itself used English professors. More believable was the news following it about the Iraqi Ministry of Education's need for Egyptian teachers in all its schools, in light of the expansion in the construction of schools during that period. This was made clear when Al-Ahram 's correspondent in Baghdad wrote, upon the commencement of the 1939-1940 academic year, that the Iraqi Ministry of Education had issued a statement on the number of foreign teachers it would need the following academic year, and that the ministry intended to select those teachers from among Egyptians. There is no doubt that this Iraqi interest in Egyptian teachers led the Egyptian Ministry of Education to request from the Iraqi government the methodologies and plans that education in Iraq was based on. The goal of this was to study a means of unifying education in Arab countries. From another perspective, the issue transformed from merely sending a number of teachers in accordance with the needs of the Iraqi Ministry of Education into that of a cadre that was considered large by the standards of the age. It could have been termed the Egyptian educational mission in Iraq, a point confirmed by a news item published by Al-Ahram on 31 July 1938. Its text read, "An order was issued to annul the commission of Mohamed Zaki Abdel-Salam Mubarak, Mohamed Amin Mohamed Ibrahim, Metwali Badawi Metwali, Mohamed Lutfi Ahmed Eid, Mohamed Abdel-Qader Mohamed, Imam Abdel-Meguid, Ali Rifai El-Ansari, and Mahrous Tawfiq, who taught in Iraqi schools during the previous academic year. The ministry has approved the commission of the teachers whose names follow to teach in Iraq's schools for one academic year: Mohamed Hassan Bali, Abdel-Moneim Mursi, Zakaria Mikhail Hanna, Hassan Youssef Hassan, Mohamed Wahid Mohamed, Abdel-Rahman Ahmed El-Ghazawi, Abdel-Moneim Mohamed Khalaf, Mustafa Khalil Salim, Mohamed Rashad Suleiman, Mahmoud Abdel-Hafez, Mohamed Abdel-Moneim Ismail, Abdel-Hadi Hassan, Mina Hanna Awad, Bahiya Ibrahim, Nouriya Mohamed Taher, and Bahiya Faragallah." What is noteworthy about the Egyptian educational mission in Iraq during 1938-1939 is that while in the first year it did not exceed eight instructors, the following year it doubled to 16. This means that the Iraqis were in need of additional specialisations, on the one hand, while on the other their need for female teachers to teach girls increased. This led to the presence of three young women in the new mission, while there had been none in the first. WHILE EDUCATION WAS THE FIELD most affected by "Egyptian soft power" in Iraq during the 1930s, this does not mean that other manifestations of this power were absent. That decade saw the appearance of the Egyptian government radio overshadowing local broadcasts. Some of those who visited the Levant and Iraq during that period told that the sound of the broadcasts reached those countries, particularly in the still nights. This encouraged the people of those countries to stay up late to catch some of what was being broadcast. That decade also saw, like the period prior to it, the arrival of Egyptian newspapers to the major Iraqi cities and particularly Baghdad. At an early stage, Al-Ahram sent a representative to the city to furnish it with news, and at the same time he worked to promote the paper among the Iraqi reading public. In addition, Iraq was in need of a number of experts in fields other than education and whom could only be found in Egypt, namely in the fields of religious endowments and irrigation. In 1937, the Iraqi government commissioned one of the top officials in the Egyptian Ministry of Waqf, or religious endowments, to devise a system for this in Iraq. The Iraqi prime minister made a statement related to the reform of religious endowments and the mission of the Egyptian expert in this regard. He said that his government would grant full attention to the reform of this institution in a manner that would guarantee the improvement of its resources and make it fulfil its duties in the manner required. This would take place in light of the data included in the reports of the expert and as interests demanded. The government would take a special look at the construction of houses of worship and work to regulate the affairs of religious figures and raise the level of religious culture in the country. Mohamed Mustafa El-Mahi devoted himself to studying the laws and regulations followed by the Iraqi waqf. He examined the stages it passed through, visited all corners of the country to view the Waqf 's property himself, and gained experience in all of its affairs, leading the prime minister to say, "The distinguished expert spent immense effort and took great care in undertaking his mission in the fullest manner. Duty commands that I express my thanks and appreciation to him." On 8 October 1937, the Egyptian expert completed his report, which was submitted to the prime minister with a note in which he said that he asked for no recompense other than the satisfaction of God "and success in what your Excellency wishes for in way of good and reform for this Islamic institution, so that it can perform its share of public service by spreading the teachings of the Islamic religion and its virtues among souls, distributing beneficial acts of charity among the classes of the poor and miserable." The prime minister replied to the greeting with one better for the Egyptian expert's elucidation of aspects of the sought-for reform. As for irrigation, Al-Ahram pointed out that relations between the two countries on this issue were long-established. It recalled the delegation the Turkish government had requested from Egypt in 1908 to look at Iraqi irrigation concerns, and that the delegation had been led by Sir William Wilcox and included a number of Egyptian irrigation engineers -- Mahmoud Sami Esmat Bey, Rushdi Bey, Mohamed Badi, and Ismail Naguib. It had attended itself to water projects and the budget, and completed projects it had studied including the Al-Hindiya barrages project. In the summer of 1937, the Iraqi government invited the Egyptian engineer Ahmed Raghib Bey, the director of the reservoir department. He spent two weeks in Iraq, during which the minister of finance and transport showed him the Iraqi government's approach to irrigation issues. He placed all of the documents related to his mission at his fingertips, and facilitated transport and supervision of all areas comprising irrigation projects. Raghib Bey visited the Al-Hindiya barrages, the area of the Al-Habaniya project, and the Al-Kuwait barrages. He circled the agricultural areas around the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, which Al-Ahram described as the "greatest evidence of the extent of a spirit of cooperation between the Iraqi and Egyptian governments, and clear evidence of the extent of the Arab countries' dependence on Egypt and its influence on others." In the opposite direction were the Iraqi students who came to Egypt to gain an education. With minimal exceptions, most went to Al-Azhar or the Arabic language department in the college of arts. Among those few exceptions was a civil servant the Iraqi Ministry of Education sent, Al-Sayed Karim Mejid, to study some of the cinematic arts such as sound engineering, the art of cinematic filming, scenery engineering and means of enlargement, and montage. As for Al-Azhar, its Iraqi presence was not new. The large Islamic university had long comprised at least two wings allocated for Iraq, the Kurdish wing and the Baghdad wing. The only change that took place following the establishment of nationalist governments was that Iraqis came to Al-Azhar within government delegations. Between 10 and 20 students came to the venerable Islamic university every year, and the Egyptian government provided gratuitous study to them like to others. Yet Iraqis were distinct from others in that even those who did not attend Al-Azhar enjoyed the same free-of-charge advantage. This indicates that Egyptian officials were aware at that early stage of "soft power", a term which had not yet been named.
