Al-Ahram Weekly recaps the significant trends and events on the local scene in 2002 2002 was a busy year. As Cairo sought to use diplomacy in pursuit of a seemingly impossible mission -- getting the peace process back on track, building a united Arab front, and preventing a war on Iraq -- many Egyptians showed their impatience for diplomacy -- by flooding the streets in some of the largest demonstrations to have taken place in nearly a quarter of a century, both in solidarity with the Palestinians and against Israel and its primary sponsor, the United States. Arab regimes also caught a share of the public's blame -- for having no clear response to the Israeli brutalities and American hegemony that seemed to cast a constant pall over all of the region's politics. On the domestic political scene, the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) experienced a major shift in its power structure, while several of the country's other prominent parties suffered from breaks in the ranks that revealed the opposition's frailty. Egyptians were caught by surprise, meanwhile, when several high-ranking members of the NDP, as well as some of the country's top businessmen and officials, were charged and convicted with corruption-related crimes. At the same time, when it came to the worst train disaster in Egypt's history, which claimed hundreds of lives and was clearly the result of negligence, the culprits were neither found nor convicted. The courts were busy with a number of high profile cases, some of which will linger into 2003. The most significant of these was the extremely high-profile trial of sociologist Saadeddin Ibrahim -- a case that continues to strain relations between Egypt and the US. But it was not all bad news -- Egypt recovered some of its precious stolen artefacts from around the globe and the tourism industry gradually bounced back from the effects of 11 September. And in Alexandria, the curtain was finally raised on the city's tremendous new Bibliotheca -- an institution meant to reawaken the spirit of one of the world's first and most celebrated centres of learning. DIPLOMACY'S ROCKY ROAD: Egyptian diplomacy worked on many fronts this year, rationalising with Americans, Europeans, Iraqis, Palestinians and Israelis in an attempt to bring stability to the region. Despite all these efforts, and in light of Ariel Sharon's hard-line government, the peace process only deteriorated further. As Sharon tried his best to undermine Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's leadership, Cairo remained adamant about Arafat being the most appropriate person to lead and unite the Palestinian masses. The violence in the Palestinian territories, meanwhile, continued to escalate, rendering it nearly impossible to convince Tel Aviv to stop its aggression against the Palestinian people and return to the negotiating table. By summer, Cairo had stepped up its contacts and meetings with prominent members of Israel's Labour Party, who were still Sharon's partners in government at that point, in an attempt to keep channels open with the country's influential players. After Labour withdrew from the coalition government in November, Cairo's attention also shifted to the Israeli people. In several addresses and media statements, President Hosni Mubarak urged Israelis to choose a government that would bring them peace and security -- the basic message being that Sharon cannot achieve either. Towards the end of the year, Egypt was also voicing its discontent with the overall performance of joint Arab work, calling on its Arab brethren to close ranks and stop seeking solutions for their interests from outside the region. Although Mubarak, Arafat, and a dozen other Arab leaders chose not to attend April's Arab summit in Beirut, the gathering adopted the Saudi Arabian peace proposal. This Saudi-Arab initiative called for full Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories in return for normal Arab relations with Israel -- a plan that was eventually shot down by Israel then replaced by a stunted US-proposed roadmap for peace. Egypt's concerns about regional stability were intensified in the spring when the US turned its attention to Iraq's alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. The subsequent standoff between Washington and Baghdad, with its implicit threat of military strikes against Saddam Hussein's regime, led Egypt to caution both sides about observing UN resolutions. Washington, Cairo said, should restrain itself until strikes are sanctioned by the UN. Baghdad, meanwhile, was asked by Egypt to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1441 by allowing weapons inspectors back into Iraq after a four-year hiatus. When Iraq allowed the inspectors back in November, Cairo breathed a sigh of relief, but remained wary of the regional implications of a war. In July, Egypt also viewed with concern the peace talks that had begun in Machakos between the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). The Machakos process -- mediated by the Americans as well as the Inter- Governmental Agency for Development (IGAD) -- basically pulled the rug from underneath an Egyptian-Libyan initiative which had also aimed to bring peace to Sudan. Cairo remains concerned that after the six-year interim period stipulated by Machakos, the southern factions will vote for cessation from the government in the North. SHOWING SOLIDARITY: Thousands of angry Egyptians of all ages continued to turn out for the massive demonstrations -- on university campuses, in mosques, schools, and professional syndicates, and in the streets -- meant to send a message of solidarity to the Palestinians, and show the Egyptian public's increasingly anti-Israeli and anti- American feelings. Despite most of the demonstrations emerging spontaneously, the presence of groups like the Egyptian Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada certainly also had an impact. The fiery demonstrations -- which intensified between March and May -- demanded that the Israeli embassy be shut down, and the ambassador expelled. The demonstrators also criticised what they saw as the inaction of Arab regimes, and asked for Egypt's ambassador to Washington to be brought back home. They called for the doors of jihad to be opened, and a boost in the popular boycott of Israeli and American products. Although the government has -- for the most part -- tolerated these wide- scale demonstrations of solidarity which have been taking place across the country, people have been arrested and anti- riot police are always there to make sure matters are under control. Under the Egyptian emergency law -- which has been in place since 1981 -- activities such as demonstrations, picketing, leafleting, the plastering of posters and Palestinians flags on walls, as well as unregulated collection of donations, are all strictly prohibited. The situation was often tense. A student named Mohamed El-Saqqa was killed when anti-riot police fired shot gun pellets into a massive demonstration at Alexandria University in April, while six other students suffered serious eye injuries. Meanwhile, several Egyptians tried to cross the Egyptian-Israeli border to join the Palestinian resistance -- and while a few succeeded, most never made it. In late April, 24-year-old Milad Hemeida was shot dead by Israeli snipers as he tried to cross over. Over the course of the year, many others like him were arrested. A REFORMED NDP? 2002 was a milestone year in the 24-year history of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). In mid-September the NDP's eighth congress convened under the slogan "A New Way of Thinking". The three-day event witnessed a historical shift in the balance of power away from the NDP's old guard, with Gamal Mubarak, President Hosni Mubarak's 38- year-old son, emerging as the NDP's central figure. He was promoted to head the party's newly formed Policy Secretariat and its affiliated 200-member Higher Council for Policies. Mubarak also became a member of the Secretariat- General's six-member steering office, the NDP's most influential body, responsible for monitoring the party's performance. Newly-appointed NDP Secretary-General Safwat El-Sherif described Mubarak's position as policy secretary as "the party's beating heart and mind". The most dramatic change introduced by Gamal Mubarak thus far is thought to be in the realm of reorganising the NDP's relationship with the government. Mubarak said this relationship must be governed by the fact that "the government is the party's government and not vice-versa." As a result, the government is now closely coordinating with Mubarak's Higher Council for Policies, both on the new legislative agenda to be submitted to parliament, as well as this month's policy statement being delivered by Prime Minister Atef Ebeid. To opposition parties and political experts, however, change at the NDP has added little to Egypt's drive towards democratisation. Opposition figures insist that the NDP congress was aimed primarily at tightening the party's grip on political life and monopolising power. This, they argued, was clear in the way the NDP cooperated with government authorities to manipulate last April's municipal elections in its favor. They complained that the NDP's 99.9 per cent victory was democracy's 100 per cent loss. PARTY POWER POLITICS: For major opposition parties, it was a year plagued by power struggles and distention. By the end of 2002, the leftist Tagammu Party was divided into two camps -- one in favour of, and the other against, Secretary-General Rifa'at El- Said replacing veteran chairman Khaled Mohieddin. The opening arose after Mohieddin's 19 December announcement that he would not nominate himself for a leading post during the fifth general congress -- scheduled for July 2003 -- when elections will be held for the party's chairman and other leading positions. Mohieddin made the announcement during a preparatory conference in which participants voted to enforce an article introduced into the party's bylaws in 1995 banning any party member from occupying a leading post for more than eight years. In the Nasserist Party, minor differences emerged -- in November -- between chairman Diaeddin Dawoud and Secretary-General Ahmed Hassan. The clash was a result of Dawoud's decision to widen the responsibilities of his four deputies, a step viewed by a majority of party members as aiming to marginalise Hassan's role. The power struggle at the opposition Liberal Party, meanwhile, which began back in 1998 after party leader Mustafa Kamel Murad's death, reached a climax in 2002. A July decision by the Political Parties Committee (PPC) mandated that elections for a new chairman take place within three months, but by the October deadline nothing had been resolved. Eleven party members were still competing for the party's chairmanship, and instead of holding one general conference, four congresses were staged, resulting in four winners. These "results" were submitted to the PPC, which failed to legitimise any of the winners. Analysts fear that the PPC may now decide to dissolve the Liberal party completely. Although the government clampdown on the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood was enormous, the group did not experience a crisis of leadership as well. In fact, after the November death of supreme guide Mustafa Mashhour, the brotherhood managed to conduct an orderly transfer of power from within its ranks, with 83-year-old Ma'moun El- Hodeibi being named the group's sixth supreme guide. CORRUPTION AT THE TOP: Top officials and powerful businessmen were the focus of high-profile corruption investigations and trials during 2002. Former Minister of Finance Mohieddin El- Gharib, state governor Maher El-Guindi, former news director of Egypt's state- owned television apparatus Mohamed El-Wekil, chairman of the Social Justice Party Mohamed Abdel-Aal, a number of MPs belonging to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), managers of public sector companies slated for privatisation, and several businessmen charged with banking fraud and graft, were amongst those facing high-profile corruption cases this year. Experts and political observers cite loosely controlled privatisation deals, a poorly regulated banking sector, abuse of power, and the absence of effective oversight on local councils and ministries as some of the major causes of corruption. Four high-profile trials topped the list of cases. The first involved former Finance Minister Mohieddin El-Gharib, who was sentenced on 28 February to eight years in prison with hard labour after being convicted of profiteering, misappropriation of public funds and depriving the state treasury of LE29 million in custom duties. On 5 June, Maher El- Guindi, who had served as governor of Kafr Al-Sheikh, Gharbiya and Giza during a lengthy public service career, was sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of abusing his post by receiving more than LE1 million in cash bribes. On 31 July, at the end of a seven- year trial of so-called "loan deputies", the State Security Court sentenced 31 businessmen to harsh prison terms ranging from five to 15 years, all of which were with hard labour. And on 12 November, a state security court sentenced veteran state-TV executive Mohamed El-Wakil to an 18-year prison term with hard labour, on charges of bribery and drug possession. Hitler Tantawi, chairman of the state- affiliated Administrative Control Authority (ACA), the man who played the greatest role in exposing most of these white- collar corruption cases, told the press that official statistics reveal the size of the challenge facing the ACA, as a result of how deep corruption had burrowed into both the bureaucracy and business sectors. A study by the National Centre for Criminal and Social Studies reveals that between 1999-2002, courts handled around 178 cases of white-collar crime by public officials, including embezzlement, bribery and misappropriation of public funds. The value of bribery cases alone has exceeded LE400 million. TO BE CONTINUED: The highest profile court case this year by far was that of Egyptian-American sociologist and prominent human rights activist Saadeddin Ibrahim. Ever since Ibrahim was first convicted by a state security court in May 2001 -- on charges of defaming Egypt, receiving foreign funds without governmental permission and embezzlement -- his case has strained ties between Egypt and the United States. Ibrahim appealed and was granted a re- trial in July. Again, however, a state security court found him guilty of the same charges, and re-confirmed the seven- year-term he was given in the first trial. In response, Washington announced in August that it would withhold any extra aid to Egypt. Although the decision did not affect existing aid programmes (Egypt receives almost $2 billion a year in economic and military assistance from the US), it prevented Cairo from receiving the $130 million it had been seeking after the US Congress voted to give Israel $200 million to fight terrorism (Egypt traditionally receives aid equalling two-thirds of any new aid the US gives Israel). Human rights groups were also very critical of the Ibrahim affair, describing the trial as "politically motivated" and the verdict as "unsound". At the same time, Egyptian political parties denounced Washington's position as a "flagrant assault on Egypt's sovereignty", with some groups expressing concerns that US interference would only weaken Ibrahim's position. As Ibrahim turned 64 on 3 December, the Court of Cassation accepted his second appeal, overruling the second conviction and ordering a re-trial. It was the second time the Court of Cassation had overturned the State Security Court's ruling. The sociologist was released from prison and currently awaits a 7 January re-trial at the Cassation Court itself. Ibrahim said he had high hopes regarding this final trial since "this court always gave me my freedom". TRAGEDIES ON THE ROAD: The year 2002 began with the worst rail disaster in Egypt's history. On 20 February, hundreds of passengers boarded Aswan- bound train 832, hoping to celebrate Eid Al-Adha in their hometowns. Not long after the journey began, however, an inferno consumed many of the train's carriages, with at least 373 people burnt alive and 64 others severely injured. The train was a third-class model and the majority of its passengers low-income labourers from the impoverished villages of Upper Egypt. Social class, however, was not a factor in this year's surge of highway fatalities, which seemed to be peaking at an estimated 5000-6000 deaths per year. The worst accident, perhaps, was the one that took place on the eve of Ramadan's first day, when a horrific collision involving a truck, and a bus filled with workers from several Hurghada tourist resorts heading home to celebrate the holy month's first days with family and friends, occurred on the Suez highway, claiming 29 lives. In late December, poor weather conditions resulted in road accidents killing at least 25 people and injuring around 70 others. A 7 May crash involving an EgyptAir Boeing 735-500 with 62 passengers and eight crew members on board, seemed to indicate that the skies were not much safer. Eight of the 14 people who died, including the pilot, were Egyptian, as were 20 of the 48 injured passengers. Reports indicated that the pilot was trying to make an emergency landing in heavy rain and fog when the aircraft slammed into a hill six kilometres from the Tunis- Carthage airport. The plane broke in half, throwing bodies and luggage onto the hillside's shrub-covered rocks. ESPIONAGE DRAGNET: Although Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, relations between the two countries have lately been tense -- the low point being Egypt's November 2000 decision to recall its ambassador from Israel as a way of protesting Israel's harsh handling of the Palestinian uprising. Since 1979, Egypt has dismantled 20 spy rings working for Israel. In March, a state security court sentenced Sherif El- Filali, a 35-year-old engineer, to 15 years in prison with hard labour for spying for Israel. He was initially acquitted of the same charges, but President Hosni Mubarak threw out the ruling and ordered a retrial. Filali was accused of trying to collect military information, as well as data on the tourism situation and an agricultural development scheme, for Israel. Court documents said Filali travelled between Spain and Egypt in 1999, before realising he was collecting information for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In June, a state security court convicted Anwar Mohamed Tawfiq, a 52-year-old unemployed man, of offering to spy for Israel, sentencing him to 10 years in jail. He was accused of forging documents suggesting he was a minister plenipotentiary. The court said Tawfiq had contacted the Israeli Consulate in Alexandria with offers to provide sensitive information. Tawfiq acknowledged that he had sent a fax to the consulate, but said he was only trying to get the addresses of international agencies so he could offer testimony about an international case that had nothing to do with Egypt. State security prosecutors are also investigating nine Egyptians who were arrested in November on charges of spying for Israel. The key defendants are a former handball player, a former football player and a businessman who allegedly used a travel agency as a cover for smuggling job seekers into Israel via Egyptian borders. In May, Egypt detained 25-year- old Ghanaian national Ibrahim Boghdadi on similar charges. ISLAMISTS ON TRIAL: Two major Islamist trials took place in 2002. In one of them, 23 Egyptians and three Britons are being tried before a state security court on charges of attempting to revive the banned Hizbul Tahrir, or Liberation Party. All the defendants pleaded innocent and the trial has been described by lawyers as a way of "convicting people just for their ideologies". The arrests took place in April and the trial -- which is still going on -- began on 20 October. The suspects are also charged with establishing an outlawed group aiming to overthrow governments in various Islamic countries and revive an Islamic Caliphate. The three Britons involved did not deny that they belonged to the group in the United Kingdom, where it is not illegal; they insist, however, that they were not involved in any political activity in Egypt. On 9 September, meanwhile, 51 people were sentenced by a military court to prison terms ranging between two and 15 years for belonging to a previously unknown group dubbed Al-Wa'ad [the Promise]. The convictions came after 94 people were arrested for allegedly belonging to the group, which officials said was plotting to assassinate top government officials, and sending members to Chechnya to receive military training in preparation for terrorist attacks planned in Egypt, including blowing up the downtown Cairo television building. The majority of the defendants -- 43 of whom were acquitted -- were arrested in May 2001, originally charged with illegally raising funds to support the militant Palestinian group, Hamas, and Chechen separatists fighting against Russia. At the time, several opposition papers expressed their dismay, arguing that most political parties and many civil society organisations had also been raising funds to support the Palestinians ever since the Al-Aqsa Intifada erupted in September 2000. It was only later that the additional, more serious charges were added to the rap sheet. GLORIOUS HERITAGE REBORN: On 16 October, more than 3,000 dignitaries from all over the world descended on Alexandria to attend the inauguration of its new Bibliotheca -- a formidable attempt to re-establish a modern version of one of the world's first and most celebrated centres of learning -- the Library of Alexandria. President Hosni Mubarak, Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, French President Jacques Chirac, Spain's Queen Sofia, Jordan's Queen Rania, Greek President Costis Stephanopoulos and Italian President Carlo Ciampi, were amongst those in attendance at the lavish ceremony held in the new library's Great Reading Hall to mark the facility's formal opening. A massive accomplishment by all measures, the $225 million project took almost three decades to come to fruition, and drew on financial and logistical support from around the world. Mrs Mubarak received an award at the opening to honour her for being the driving force behind the project, charting the course for its continuing development. The 11-storey, 85,405 square-metre cultural complex is also home to a vast conference centre, museum space and a planetarium. Its architecture is remarkable, the main building shaped like a circle tilted towards the sea, representing a perpetually rising sun shedding rays of enlightenment upon the world. The space-age edifice houses libraries for children and youth, as well as a calligraphy museum and a digital archive that includes 10 billion Web pages dating back to 1996. With a capacity for four million books, the library currently holds some 240,000 volumes and is relying on developments in IT to build up a collection meant to rival the world's major libraries. The ambitions behind the project are no less than monumental. In Mrs Mubarak's words, it is to be "a beacon for science and knowledge, a centre for dialogue between peoples and nations, a centre for excellence in research and documentation and a source of pride for Egypt and the entire world". HERITAGE IN THE LIMELIGHT: Archaeological discoveries in Egypt are always making headlines, but the 16 September journey -- made by a tiny robot -- into the southern shaft of Khufu's Great Pyramid in an attempt to decipher some of the structure's secrets literally had the world on the edge of its seat. Broadcast live to a global television audience, the robot reached its destination in two hours, boring a finger-width-sized hole through a door blocking the shaft, and revealing to the world that a second stone slab was also blocking the way. Egypt's quest to retrieve some of the antiquities that have been stolen from its shores over the years proved to be no less high-profile. A number of priceless objects were recovered this year, with the most significant case involving prominent New York antiquities dealer Frederick Schultz, who was sentenced to 33 months imprisonment and fined $50,000 for conspiring to smuggle and sell looted Egyptian artefacts. This case was significant because Egyptian Antiquities Law 117 of 1983 was invoked -- the first time in US legal history for a defendant to be indicted for breaking a foreign law. The eight-year-old controversy over the uncompleted section of Cairo's ring road, meanwhile, remained unresolved. A new suggestion put forth to break the deadlock -- involving digging a tunnel four kilometres south of the Giza plateau -- has revived the debate, inspiring president Hosni Mubarak to delegate the entire project to UNESCO's World Heritage Committee. Encroachments on historic Cairo continued to pose grave threats to Egypt's Islamic monuments. Fire ravaged the Bab Al-Azab area near the Citadel and threatened to turn the Farag Ibn Barquq complex into ashes. As the year drew to a close, the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square celebrated its centenary, with a gala party featuring the inauguration of a landmark exhibition displaying 250 previously unseen treasures from the museum's basement. Soon thereafter, on the edge of Ain Al-Sira lake in Fustat, Mrs Mubarak laid down the foundation stone of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, a project being envisioned as the living memory of Egypt's diverse civilisations from prehistoric to modern times. FRAGILE RECOVERY: The 11 September attacks on the US looked set to strike a debilitating body blow to the Egyptian tourist industry, but then, to almost everyone's surprise, by the middle of 2002 the Ministry of Tourism was singing a rather optimistic tune -- that Egyptian tourism was on the road to recovery. Statistics released in July by the Interior Ministry's passport department and the Central Agency for Mobilisation and Statistics revealed that approximately 363,000 foreigners visited Egypt in June 2002, almost the same figure recorded the previous June. The figures, however, mask an unwelcome financial trend, indicating that while visitor numbers may not be very different, the spending power of the tourists who came certainly was. While tourist traffic from certain parts of Europe dropped, an increase was reported in traffic from other European markets, such as Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Hungary, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia and Spain. An additional factor was that the rates charged by tour and hotel operators were also sharply lower than those in place before 9/11. By August, the ministry was announcing that visitor numbers were exceeding those of August 2001. July saw 495,000 foreign tourists visiting Egypt, an increase of six per cent over the previous year and the highest number since 1994, Egyptian tourism's peak year. This was good news for the economy since the tourism sector represents more than 11 per cent of gross domestic product and directly and indirectly employs some 2.2 million people. By September, the figures were indicating a whopping 34 per cent increase over the previous year. The downside was that visitors were taking shorter holidays, with an increase of only 11.4 per cent reported in hotel nights compared with last year. In general, however, the cut-price rates on cruises and hotels being offered by the tourism sector are not necessarily resulting in a trickle down of the windfall to the industry's smaller players, such as restaurants and souvenir hawkers. There are also no doubts that a war in Iraq would knock the recovery sideways. Meaning: the industry may be doing well as far as statistics go, but it is not quite out of the quicksand yet. BLOODY VENDETTA: On 10 August, a ghostly silence enveloped Beit Allam, a village 400 kilometres south of Cairo in the Gerga district of the Sohag Governorate. Twenty-two members of the village's Hanashat family had been gunned down in broad daylight, in an ambush orchestrated by a rival family, the Abdel-Halims. The vendetta was the bloodiest Egypt had seen since 1995. The victims had been travelling by van and station wagon to attend the trial of two of their relatives accused of murdering a member of the Abdel-Halim family, when Abdel-Halim gunmen blocked the road and opened fire on the convoy with machine guns, killing 22 people -- including a nine-year-old boy -- in cold blood. Only three of the passengers, who took shelter under their seats, survived; the driver was spared because he did not belong to the Hanashats. The feud between the two families is said to go back to 1990, when a fight escalated into the murder of two members of the Al-Hanashat by members of the rival clan. Authorities from several Upper Egyptian governorates have intensified their efforts to organise reconciliation meetings between rival clans, in an attempt to reduce the chances of similar vendettas taking place. In this case, however, it is clear that the Hanashats are bent on keeping the vendetta going. The family refused to accept condolences for their dead, and promised to seek out their own revenge. Nineteen men from the Abdel-Halim family, meanwhile, are being tried by a criminal court in Sohag. Thirteen of them are charged with "deliberately killing 22 people and aiming to kill three others", while the remaining six are charged with "providing guns and ammunition" for the task. Compiled by the Home desk staff
