The furore over the return of Egyptian pilgrims from Saudi Arabia may be more political than meets the eye, reports Dina Ezzat While Egyptian and Saudi officials have been trying to act as if there is no problem between the two countries, tensions are unlikely to be so easily dismissed over the recent crisis faced by Egyptian pilgrims on their way back home from the Ramadan omra pilgrimage to Mecca. This week, Egyptian and Saudi officials acted to try to end the crisis facing thousands of pilgrims who had faced difficulties in returning to Egypt and whose luggage had been delayed or lost. Extra Saudi Airlines flights were ordered to carry back the pilgrims and to transfer their luggage, after delays over what officials at the national Saudi airline said had been due to confused booking and excess luggage. "It was very humiliating: we were left waiting at the airport, and we did not know what was going on, and nobody was explaining anything to us. Nobody said there was a problem with excess luggage or asked for extra fees," said Adila, a pilgrim who had had to wait at Jeddah airport for two days before she managed to fly home. Adila did not report references by Saudi officials to the Egyptian 25 January Revolution or to anger at the trial of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak. However, she said that other passengers had accounts of officials on the Saudi side making statements along the lines of "Egyptians were respected when Mubarak was their president and now they should not expect the same respect." Papers reporting on the dilemma of Egyptian pilgrims caught in Saudi Arabia carried references to links between the revolution and the ordeal of the pilgrims, as well as to Saudi discontent at the revolution that forced Mubarak to step down on 11 February and has subsequently seen him put on trial. A source at the Egyptian prime minister's office acknowledged that complaints had been forwarded by Egyptian citizens upon their return from the pilgrimage. "It is very hard to verify if someone at a luggage counter would make such a remark to a passenger," the source said. However, he added that, "it might well be true, and it is no secret that there are certain quarters in Saudi Arabia who were not at all pleased with the outcome of the revolution or for that matter with the decision to send Mubarak to court." This, the same source said, is not the sentiment only in Saudi Arabia but in other Arab Gulf states as well. And, he further added, the fact that the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces decided to ultimately decline a proposal forwarded by several Arab Gulf states, ahead of which was Saudi Arabia, "is not making things very smooth". The source at the prime minister's office still insisted that there were "clear violations of the regulations of Saudi Airlines on the part of many pilgrims who as we learned officially, failed to confirm their return tickets on time and exceeded their allowed luggage excessively". A source at the Ministry of Tourism indicated that this is not the first time for Egyptian pilgrims not to abide by the regulations of Saudi Airlines. But it was the first time, she said, that the reaction is so harsh. "And even though we know that other pilgrims from other countries also encountered problems, we believe that it was not as harsh as the dilemma of Egyptian pilgrims." "The matter was contained and we have no intention of digging further," said an Egyptian diplomat who asked that his name be withheld. He added, "we are aware of the sensitivities involved but we, like the Saudis, do not want to take our bilateral relations to a lower curve than where it already stands". Egyptian sources at the office of the prime minister and the Foreign Ministry both said that all efforts are being made to secure the return of all Egyptians who were held for interrogation in Saudi Arabia over involvement in violent incidents related to the Jeddah airport stand-off. They added that extra measures will be taken to make sure that this problem would not reoccur during the pilgrimage season to Mecca in a couple of months. Still, they did not completely exclude the occasional problem here and there. Meanwhile, a Cairo-based Saudi source said that his country is doing its best to facilitate the trip of millions of pilgrims that go to Mecca from all over the world for the holy month of Ramadan and the main pilgrimage season. And while admitting Riyadh's unease over the fate of Mubarak he insisted that the Saudi government is not planning to harm relations with Egypt. There is no official crisis and the relations between Cairo and Riyadh will continue as usual, agreed political scientists Hassan Nafaa and Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed. Both professors also agreed that the crisis of the pilgrims in Saudi Arabia should not be read independently from the initiative of some Kuwaiti lawyers to join the defence attorneys of Mubarak in Egypt. The pilgrims' dilemma and the lawyers' initiative are both an indication of wide unease in the Gulf capitals over the fate not just of Mubarak but also of Egypt. "It is clear that there is a sense of anger and concern on the side of Arab Gulf governments," said Nafaa. He added that the initiative of some Kuwaiti lawyers to join Mubarak's Egyptian defence attorneys is "a clear provocation and humiliation of the Egyptian revolution". "For the Kuwaiti lawyers to suggest that it was Mubarak who sided with Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation is a tremendous insult to the blood of Egyptian soldiers who died during the Kuwait war of liberation. It was the Egyptian people and the Egyptian army that took the side of Kuwait. Mubarak sacrificed nothing," Nafaa said. El-Sayed excluded the possibility that such Saudi and Kuwaiti positions would prompt a change of attitudes on the side of Cairo. "We don't seem at all to be moving to reformulate the parameters of our relations with these countries or for that matter with other countries," El-Sayed said.
