POLITICAL LEGACY:Under Mubarak, Egypt continued its slide as a regional power and was kept afloat by US aid, writes MICHAEL JANSEN
HOSNI MUBARAK ruled Egypt for longer than any of the country’s other monarchs and presidents since the death in 1848 of Muhammad Ali, the Turkish pasha who, during his 43-year reign, began the modernisation of this ancient land. Mubarak succeeded president-for-life Anwar Sadat a week after his assassination by Muslim militants on October 6th, 1981.
Mubarak inherited an Egypt where the economy was in crisis, nepotism and corruption were rife and external indebtedness was rising. Once an exporter of agricultural products, Egypt was importing more than half its food for a rapidly growing population as well as a variety of luxury goods for its small, extremely wealthy entrepreneurial class. The gap between rich and poor was wide and widening, with 5 per cent of Egyptians appropriating more than 20 per cent of national income and the lower 20 per cent of the populace struggling to exist on 5 per cent.
Soon after he assumed power, Mubarak appointed a committee of experts to try to find out what was wrong with the economy. But unlike Muhammad Ali, who transformed a backward province of the Ottoman empire into a Mediterranean power, Mubarak did not initiate radical measures to deal with the country’s woes. Muhammad Ali opted for centralisation and land reform, Mubarak carried on with the free market economy introduced by Sadat, concentrating production and commerce in the hands of a few oligarchs. To keep order, the Egyptian government extended the state of emergency imposed after the murder of Sadat. This restricted the freedoms of assembly, movement and residence and gave the authorities wide powers to arrest and detain thousands of members of outlawed organisations, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood.
The populist movement was, paradoxically, permitted to have a small representation in parliament, otherwise dominated by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party. Egypt continued its slide as a regional power, begun when Sadat concluded a separate peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Cairo was seen by many of its own citizens and by the Arab world, which instituted a boycott of Egypt, as a client of Israel’s ally, the US. In exchange for the peace deal with Israel, the US gave $2 billion a year in aid to Egypt to keep it afloat.
In 1993 Cairo joined Arab moderates in backing the Oslo accord concluded between Palestinians and Israelis. But as the timetable slipped for Israeli withdrawal from Occupied Territory and the emergence of a Palestinian state, the peace process and its backers lost credibility with the Arab people.
Following the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin in 1995 by an Israeli extremist, Mubarak made his first and only visit to Israel to attend Rabin’s funeral. The Egyptian leader praised the fallen Israeli and urged his successors to pursue the peace process as a “memorial”. But they did not heed his call. The collapse of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in July 2000 and the eruption of a second Palestinian uprising in September of that year precipitated the election in Israel of hardline Likud chief Ariel Sharon as premier.
At the Arab summit in Beirut in March 2002, Egypt, once the paramount Arab power, was eclipsed by Saudi Arabia which secured the approval of Arab monarchs and presidents for its peace plan calling for full Israeli evacuation of Arab land in exchange for full peace and normalisation with the Arab world.
Sharon responded to this initiative by promptly reinvading the West Bank and in 2003 attacking Gaza. This infuriated Egyptian and Arab opinion, weakening Mubarak on the domestic and regional fronts. In the run-up to the 2003 US military campaign in Iraq, US president George W Bush dismissed Mubarak’s prediction that a new conflict would generate instability in the region and exacerbate hatred of the US. Like Cassandra, Mubarak was fated to be correct but ignored.
Perhaps, with the aim of regaining Washington’s favour, Mubarak did not condemn Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon or Israel’s 2008-2009 war on Gaza. But these stands lost him the support of the Egyptian “street” and further diminished Egypt in Arab public opinion.
BORN IN 1928 into a prosperous family living in a town in the Nile Delta, Mubarak attended the prestigious Egyptian military academy where he earned a degree in military science. In 1950 he joined the airforce academy and took a second degree. He was far too junior to be a member of the Free Officers group which overthrew the monarchy in 1952. This powerful clique dominated Egypt under President Gamal Abdel Nasser but its influence waned during Sadat’s presidency when the oligarchs asserted themselves. Mubarak rose quickly through the ranks of the airforce, becoming commandant of its academy and commander of the Cairo West Air Base. He was in charge of this key installation when Israel staged a devastating raid on Egypt’s airfields early on the morning of June 5th, 1967, destroying most of the country’s warplanes on the tarmac.
Although there was sharp criticism of the failure of senior officers to predict Israel’s attack and attempt to save Egypt’s airforce, Mubarak weathered the storm. He became airforce chief and, a few years later, head of the armed forces.
The military regained the respect of the Egyptian people by joining Syria in a surprise attack on Israel in October 1973.
Mubarak was rewarded for the success of the airforce by being appointed air marshal. In 1975, he became vice-president under Sadat and was elected to the presidency on October 14th, 1981. He was repeatedly re-elected: in 1987, 1993, 1999, and 2005. He never appointed a vice-president although he groomed his son, Gamal, now 47, as his successor. Mubarak left Egypt as did Sadat, at peace with Israel but in political and economic turmoil.