Egypt, stressing out, wants a Deus ex machina to make Islamism go away

ARTICLE: "Egypt, Under Stress, Sees U.S. as Pain and Remedy: A plea to promote Palestinian statehood," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 22 October 2006, p. A3.

Egypt's feeling the weak man of the Middle East, which isn't particularly new. A "rising Islamic movement at home and diminished influence throughout the region" are cited as sources of official angst. So the dream of the effective Palestinian state is pushed as the answer.

And we're told that experts on Egypt see no serious future risk of regime collapse?

Sounds pretty pathetic and illusory to me. Meanwhile the vast majority of the 70 million population live in "deep poverty" and a local poli sci prof says "there is a feeling the ruling team does not have a good vision for dealing with the problems of the country." And we're told the military may or may not go along with Gamal as Hosni's genetic replacement, and that the government is upping its domestic repression as a means to "blunt the rising popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood."

Gamal's big vision breakthroughs? He wants nukes. He wants to be like the Chinese. Oh, and he may change the constitution so that it's okay for only one candidate to appear on the presidential banner, lest some MB candidate emerge.

And somehow a better Palestinian state would fix all this?

This is why planners in the Pentagon worry about Egypt, and that's why I wrote the "Country to Watch" piece in Esquire a bit back.

Comments

[Mark in Texas]

Egypt needs a safety valve and a way for bright young men with skills and brains but without connections to get ahead. Egypt needs a Hong Kong.

As it happens, Egypt has already built the perfect places for their free market enclaves. For decades, Egyptian authorities have been trying to move some of their population away from the Nile Valley into the sparsely populated desert to the west. To this end, the Egyptian government has built several cities, the Egyptian version of Brasilia in the western desert. Since nobody wants to live there, the government forces some government workers to live there for a few years, but they always move back as soon as they can.

Egypt can make these cities into social laboratories. The main thing that could cause them to become economically dynamic magnets that would draw people hoping to build a future would be to get them out from under the smothering control of people who are connected to the Mubarak government. I don't know if it is possible in Egypt to refrain from killing the goose who lays the golden eggs. If these cities can become successful incubators of prosperity, the politically connected vampires have to be restrained from swooping in to suck them dry.

Perhaps each city can be handed over to a powerful individual with the caveat that he can take 3% off the top but that if he allows anybody else in to prey on his subjects, he can lose his franchise.