Egypt: What You Need To Know

The Egypt drama is producing floods of very shallow analysis waters. Seumas Milne in the Guardian can always be relied upon to give us the Left Dimwit view, complete with added Dave Spart adverbs:

The manoeuvres at the top of the regime have transparently been choreographed in Washington … more profoundly, the upheaval now spreading across the Arab world is at heart a movement for self-determination: a demand by the peoples of the region to run their own affairs, free of the dead hand of largely foreign-backed tyrannies.

But what about this next point?

It’s not a coincidence, or the product of some defect in Arab culture, that the Middle East has the largest collection of autocratic states in the world.

Most survive on a western lifeline, and the result across the region has been social and economic stagnation. There is a real sense in which, despite the powerful challenge of Arab nationalism in the 50s and 60s, the Arab world has never been fully decolonised.

For Egypt, the historical pivot of the region and a global force under Nasser, the humiliation of its decaying, subaltern status under Mubarak could not be clearer…

Lucky young Seumas, spared by his middle-class progressive ideology from understanding anything about the subject.

Yesterday I talked to the UK’s greatest expert on Egypt and Islam and Egyptian Islam. And I learned a few things, which I thought I’d share with you.

Thus:

Egypt is Different in the Arab world. Bigger, better educated, confident in claiming historic traditions going back several thousand years. It was not long ago that any Arab country looking for serious academics or scientists would bring in Egyptians – where else could Arab experts in anything much be found?
Egypt faces problems of sheer scale – the soaring population of the past few decades gives the country scary demographic imbalances, and no clear way to employ everyone under current policies/attitudes
By the way, Egypt does have oil in useful quantities – it’s just that Egypt also makes other things, so we hear less about it
There is no serious Western ‘liberal’ tradition in Egypt – there was an attempt at one a few decades ago but Nasser stamped it out in favour of a warped inefficient national socialism
Which in part is why these current dramas have little in common with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of European communism – in Europe there was a suppressed but real tradition of pluralism around which reformers could mobilise
It had long been obvious that the crumbling Arab national socialist regimes of different shades were going to crash, sooner or later. "But it’s like writing a letter to your mother – when do you get round to it?"
The political faultlines in Egypt are not about ‘class’ – that idea does not matter there, in the sense we and the Guardian might understand it
Rather it’s a tension between Islam, ‘Arab’ nationalism (remember those doomed pan-Arab political unification initiatives when we were growing up?) and specifically Egyptian exceptionalism
Islam is not emphasised in the anti-Mubarak demonstrations – it doesn’t need to be, as conservative Islamic views are now so engrained
The large numbers of anti-Mubarak demonstrators look impressive but are insignificant in terms of the country’s population – no-one knows what the country as a whole makes of all this or how it might vote in free elections
One plausible result of a free election would be a sizeable showing for the Muslim Brotherhood who are an organised force (35%?). Even if they did not win, they could hold the balance of power.
The MB’s likely model for political modernisation combined with drip-drip Islamisation would be today’s Turkey – all sorts of long-lost Ottoman Empire instincts (many in rivalry with the mainstream ‘European’ ideal) were resurfacing
All in all, a new phase was opening. The days of smugly ugly Arab dictators being welcomed in Western capitals as symbols of stability were over.
Implications of all this – unfathomable, but probably bad from a ‘Western’ point of view

The point is that Seumas has it 100% wrong. The Arab world was comprehensively ‘decolonised’ – that was the trouble.

It heaved out European colonialism and attitudes more or less completely and replaced it with Cold War-style Arab fascism, allowing itself to be run by corrupt local elites who strutted against Western policies but were too ineffective to do much more than strut, at least until the oil-rich Arab states started piling up startling piles of cash.

Yes, Arabs were victims – of their own introspective inferiority complexes.

Has ‘a Western lifeline’ kept all these decadent Arab regimes in business? No.

Egypt in particular was ruined not by the USA but by brutalist Nasser and Soviet central planning (which is why all the beautiful buildings in Cairo are in such awful shape – decades of rent-control). After Nasser the regime there has had Western (mainly US) military support, but its failings have been overwhelmingly home-grown.

The ‘West’ for the past thirty years would have liked nothing more than a concerted move towards some sort of Arab-style democratic pluralism, but was held back from pushing for it by a feeble political correctness and unwillingness to confront, let alone tell the truth.

This is the best statement (in fact almost the only statement) ever made on the subject by a modern Western leader, in a class of its own for wisdom and purpose:

If the greater Middle East joins the democratic revolution that has reached much of the world, the lives of millions in that region will be bettered, and a trend of conflict and fear will be ended at its source.

The movement of history will not come about quickly. Because of our own democratic development, the fact that it was gradual and at times turbulent, we must be patient with others.

And the Middle East countries have some distance to travel. Arab scholars speak of a freedom deficit that has separated whole nations from the progress of our time. The essentials of social and material progress — limited government, equal justice under law, religious and economic liberty, political participation, free press and respect for the rights of women — have been scarce across the region. Yet that has begun to change.

In an arc of reform from Morocco to Jordan to Qatar, we are seeing elections and new protections for women and the stirrings of political pluralism.

Many governments are realizing that theocracy and dictatorship do not lead to national greatness; they end in national ruin. They’re finding, as others will find, that national progress and dignity are achieved when governments are just and people are free.

The democratic progress we’ve seen in the Middle East was not imposed from abroad, and neither will the greater progress we hope to see. Freedom, by definition, must be chosen and defended by those who choose it.

… People from the Middle East share a high civilization, a religion of personal responsibility and a need for freedom as deep as our own.

It is not realism to suppose that one-fifth of humanity is unsuited to liberty. It is pessimism and condescension, and we should have none of it.

(APPLAUSE)

We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine in the past have been willing to make a bargain to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites.

Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold…