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- Subject:Fwd: The Wall Street Journal Article: Squawk Like an Egyptian, dated Oct.2, 2...
- Thu, 03 Oct 2002 01:06:12 -0400
THE REAL WORLD
Squawk Like an Egyptian
Cairo intellectuals complain when an American shows them respect.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, October 2, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
The U.S. ambassador to Egypt, David Welch, has “deviated from all diplomatic norms,” complains Mustafa Bakri, editor of the Egyptian weekly Al-Usbu.
Good for Mr. Welch. His rogue act was to publish a Sept. 20 article in the Arabic-language Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram headlined “Time to Get the Facts Right,” in which he called on Egyptian pundits to practice “truth and accuracy in reporting.” (An English translation is here.)
Mr. Welch answered a spate of columns and stories in the Egyptian press pegged to the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Local journalists and scholars seized on the date to give yet another airing to conspiracy theories that circulate widely in the Middle East, which claim Israelis or Americans themselves had staged the atrocities. “Leading Egyptian newspapers and magazines in the past two weeks alone have published columns by senior columnists who suggested governments or groups other than Al Qaeda were responsible,” wrote Mr. Welch. “A leading Egyptian professor of sociology, in a public lecture on Sept. 11, spent nearly half an hour trying to cast doubt on Al Qaeda's culpability, and even went to far as to implicate the American government by asserting that America had benefited from the attacks.”
The ambassador noted that al Qaeda members themselves had claimed responsibility for the attacks, in interviews on the al-Jazeera TV network, which airs in Egypt. He concluded that “disregard for the facts in such a serious matter can tarnish the reputation of the Egyptian media in the eyes of the world,” and that “responsible media should be dedicated to telling the truth, not spreading falsehood, and knowing the difference between the two.”
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In Cairo, this produced quite a ruckus. In a signed public statement, some 40 prominent intellectuals declared Mr. Welch “persona non grata” and demanded that the U.S. recall him from Egypt “because he has harmed democracy.” The statement charged that “the ambassador spoke as if he were addressing slaves or the citizens of some banana republic, not those representing the voice and conscience of the Arab nation whose roots lie deep in history and whose culture is, as Western and American writers have acknowledged, the cradle of the conscience of the entire world.”
Fortunately, the State Department seems to have taken this in stride. Mr. Welch is still at his post, a senior diplomatic source confirms by phone from Cairo. My own suspicion is that despite the 40 Egyptian intellectuals who deem themselves keepers of the world's conscience, there are probably a fair number of Egyptians—the nonintellectuals, perhaps—who would privately agree with Mr. Welch. For one thing, he is right. Truth, if spoken audibly and often enough, has its own persistent way of buoying up an argument.
Beyond that, in talking straight, Mr. Welch was not talking down to the Egyptian people. On the contrary, in offering honesty instead of patronizing them with deferential diplomatese, or simply keeping silent, he was addressing to them as equals. He was treating them with respect.
Respect is something Egyptians seldom get from their own government—or from ours. On the homefront, the intellectuals' concern that Mr. Welch has damaged their democracy is absurd for several reasons, not the least of which is that they don't have a democracy to begin with. Egypt has the trappings of democratic government, but Egyptians do not enjoy the basic dignity of a vote that truly counts. In 1981, following the assassination of Anwar Sadat, they got Hosni Mubarak as their president. Twenty-one years later, they have him still—with no institutional way to choose anyone else. During Mr. Mubarak's reign, the country has been continuously under “emergency law” which the government wields to jail people at whim, and to restrict such vital rights as freedom of assembly and of the press.
One of the clearest signs of the repressive character of Mr. Mubarak's rule has been the imprisonment of an outspoken democrat, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who heads a liberal think tank in Cairo, and whose plea was precisely that the Egyptian government respect the basic rights of its own people. Mr. Ibrahim, a naturalized American citizen, was convicted in an Egyptian court in July of embezzling funds from the European Union (despite explicit protests from the EU that he had done no such thing) and “tarnishing” the reputation of Egypt. What's actually tarnishing Egypt's reputation in this case is that Mr. Ibrahim has now begun serving seven years at hard labor.
On the Web site Democracy-Egypt, you can read the statement he wanted to deliver in court, but was not allowed to. Titled “A Cry for Freedom,” it is an argument not so much for his own liberty as for the freedom of Egypt. He notes that one of the “modest successes” of his center “was to introduce the concept of transparency—meaning frankness and full disclosure in all public affairs that are important to the Arab world and the Arab citizen.” Mr. Ibrahim concludes: “Perhaps we are being persecuted because we have been pioneers in discussing openly and practicing what we preach about, and because we dared to say publicly what millions of Egyptians and Arabs think privately.”
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In response to Mr. Ibrahim's imprisonment, the Bush administration said there would be no increase in aid to Egypt, which already gets $2 billion of so a year. Here, again, once could hardly argue that Egyptians are being treated with respect. The problem, however, does not lie in any U.S. decision to withhold a little money at the margin—which at least conveys a message of reproach. The real problem, the sense in which America has for years been patronizing Egypt, is that whacking flow of aid, which began in the 1970s as a payoff for Egypt recognizing Israel.
Egypt withdrew its ambassador to Israel two years ago and this spring further limited official contacts. But the aid continues, totaling more than $24 billion to date through the U.S. Agency for International Development alone. By now it might as well be described as just a great big welfare program, putting a nation on the dole in hopes it will achieve something we want—namely, peace in the Middle East (and perhaps some jobs for U.S. aid bureaucrats). The U.S. in effect treats Egypt as a charity case; Egypt takes the money. The U.S. overlooks the dictatorial habits of Mr. Mubarak and the corruption for which the country is notorious (political humorist P.J. O'Rourke, who recently visited Egypt, notes in the September Atlantic Monthly that in the corruption index of Transparency International, Egypt ranks worse than Colombia). Egyptians take note that the U.S. money just keeps rolling in. All around, it's a formula unlikely to engender respect among any of the actors involved.
In the face of all this, it may be small stuff that the U.S. ambassador in Cairo chose to stray from the norms. But if one believes that Egyptians deserve the same rights and responsibilities as the citizens of any free nation, offering them the respect of honest talk seems a move in the right direction.
Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Wednesdays here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe. []