It's official. Egypt now has its very own anti-globalisation movement -- or does it, wonders Fatemah Farag On 1 October the President of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, arrived in Cairo. On 2 October approximately 500 anti-capitalist globalisation activists converged on the Syndicate of Commerce Graduates' in downtown Cairo. At their lead were renowned Dakar-based economist Samir Amin, UK writer and anti- capitalist activist Jonathan Neale and leftist economist Gouda Abdel Khalek, to protest Wolfensohn's visit. The event marked the formal birth of Egypt's organised anti-globalisation movement: the Anti- Globalisation Egyptian Group denoted by the awkward acronym of choice: AGEG. "A grouping of activists aimed at working against globalisation in Egypt..." explains the group's Web site. According to Yehya Fikri, one of AGEG's founding members "It all started after people came back from the anti-globalisation event in Beirut in November 2001. We started discussions and called for a meeting to establish an Egyptian anti-globalisation committee on 9 May. These efforts culminated in the announcement of the founding of the group on 27-28 June." Under banners including, "Socialist Students of Ain Shams University" and "Another world is possible", sat the same 500 (that round number that seems to figure at most left-oriented event), many of them the same people who have been showing up at similar events for the past decade and more, their ranks always complimented by a smattering of young student activists full of zeal and enthusiasm. And so it has come to pass that the membership of the anti- globalisation group is in fact very similar to that of the Egyptian Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada. At the podium, Sherif Qassem, who represented the syndicate, told participants, "Globalisation has been imposed on us and we must actively resist its dire ramifications; we must also resist economic, political and military hegemony." The "dire ramifications" for Egyptians of a world capitalist system based on unregulated market forces and is characterised by an increasing disparity between rich and poor are all too obvious. Poverty (a standard definition is living on less than $2 a day) is officially estimated to afflict more than 50 per cent of the population; unemployment is around 17 per cent of the potential work force; and within the framework of structural adjustment basic services such as health and education are becoming too expensive for the average person. With the full implementation of GATT and TRIPS, these trends are only expected to worsen. At the same time, Israeli violence in the occupied territories and a possible war on Iraq have sensitised people to the belligerent and militaristic nature of world domination. These issues were reflected in the slogans activists chanted during the event: "We will not be ruled by the World Bank", "They are the masters and we have become slaves" and "Down with Camp David". The future of over half of the world's population -- those who work in agriculture -- was brought into focus at the event by Amin. "We cannot imagine an alternative to the current globalisation and ignore this domain. The prevalent ideas on agronomics have no relation to history and the commodification of the agricultural product, which is linked to land ownership, [and these ideas] continue to ignore peasants' basic human right to use the land. These people will made useless under the current system," argued Amin. Ever since Seattle, when anti-globslisation activists targeted the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meetings in December 1999 and brought them to a halt for a day, anti-capitalism, anti-globalisation and anti-war movements have sprung into existence with increasing vitality and insistence everywhere. Neale brought the mood to Cairo as he described marches that saw the participation of hundreds and thousands in Washington DC, Genoa, Brussels and India, among many others. "This is a movement sweeping the globe, and every country I go to people are asking the same questions and making the same arguments. That is because we are all subjected to the same process." And so, by any standard, Egypt is a latecomer to the scene. AGEG's Fikri, however, sees things differently. "We believe that the popular mood is ripe for people to get involved in issues such as those we are presenting." But what is AGEG presenting? Unemployment and the draft Unified Labour Law are said to be at the top of the list. "Originally we had planned for our October launch a seminar on the draft Unified Labour Law. We feel this is an issue that concerns a large number of people and will create a grass-roots momentum," Fikri explained. Currently, the group is planning a petition calling on the government not to pass the offending law which was drafted in the early 1990s and whose final version and status have been a source of conflicting rumours over the years. But as one activist who preferred anonymity pointed out, "This is too vague and most of the working class in Egypt today enjoy no protection from the current laws nor do members of the working class know anything about the draft law. A more effective form of organisation is to choose a very specific and attainable goal. For example, many workers are forced to sign their resignation papers [the notorious Form No. 6]. Why not collect signatures calling on the government to criminalise this practice." Circulating at the event was a petition that called on the government of Egypt to "renounce all its commitments related to the policies that lead to poverty..." and on the World Bank and the international donor community to "relieve the Third World of its entire debt..." The same criticism levelled at the labour law petition would of course apply. "These are demands that cannot be met. They cannot be followed up on, therefore they cannot create momentum," added a young activist at the event who sat at the back and smoked profusely. Further, the Egyptian group seems a far cry from the inclusive grass-roots movement that anti-capitalist globalisation has come to denote internationally. As Neale pointed out, "Where the movement is big and at its strongest is where it has a large number of workers... [Also] this is a movement that unifies an enormous range of people. Only two weeks ago in London, the march against a war in Iraq brought together Catholic priests, Protestant bishops, the imams from every mosque, as well as socialists, environmentalists, anarchists and trade union activists." Fikri concedes that "So far, the leftist trend is the dominant one in the group. But what is important to note is that the people here represent the whole spectrum of leftists in Egypt. We want to expand our ranks and we believe this representation is a step in that direction." On the difficulties of unity and inclusiveness Neale pointed out that "[After all the arguments] we all understand that we are up against the great powers of this world and all we have is the unity of ordinary people. And the most important slogan that unites us all is 'Another world is possible'."
