May  06 Newsletter

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The Mubaraks’ Four Domestic Wars
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim

On May 12, the Center of the Egyptian Capital was virtually a war-zone, as two senior judges were ordered to stand for a disciplinary trial for having blown the whistle on several incidents of fraud in last autumn’s parliamentary elections.  Obviously the Mubarak regime had not expected such embarrassing public exposure of vote rigging.  After all, Egyptian judges have a long-standing tradition of discretion and propriety.  But an increasing number of these judges have lost patience with the Executive branch encroaching on their jurisdiction.  They felt used by the government to sugarcoat the rigging of election after election through the public claim that the voting is supervised by judges.  An outpouring of popular support for them seems to have stunned the Mubaraks.  Nearly a quarter of million people attempted to congregate the week before (May 5) around the High Court building.  The building was quickly shut down and the hearing postponed for one week, possibly to give security forces and riot police time to better prepare for the crowds.  Thus the night before the second the scheduled hearing, around 20,000 riot police laid out four concentric cordons around an eight-block area near the High Court.  Shops, companies and government employees were given the day off, and several radio announcements advised the public to stay away from the area that day.  Despite all of this, several thousand determined young men and women made it to the High Court.  When turned back, they clashed with the riot police. Nadia Abul-Magd of the Associated Press and Hussain Abdul Ghani of Al Jazeera were among the hundreds who were beaten or knocked down by the riot police in a stampede that morning.  A similar confrontation is expected on May 18, this Thursday, as judges Hisham Bastawisy and Mahmoud Mekki stand for the third session of their disciplinary hearing. 

            What makes the two judges’ trial loom so large for a normally quiescent public?  A critical factor is that nearly all of Egypt’s 9,000 judges are standing fast in solidarity.  Their representative body, the Judges’ Club, has long been pushing for a new law to restore judicial independence. 

            The Mubarak regime is equally adamant in denying the judges their autonomy, by resorting to extra-judicial means such as emergency courts and national security and military courts that are absolved from observing international standards.  Contrary to his campaign promises, surviving his re-election for a fifth-year term, the Mubaraks requested (and his rubber-stamp parliament granted) a two-year extension of the Emergency Law.  It is this, above all, to which judges and Egypt’s civil society object.  The law has been in effect since the assassination of President Sadat back in October 1981.  After 25 years, the Mubaraks claim they need more extensions in order to combat terrorism.  But how valid is their claim?

            According to a recent human rights report, quoted in the Egyptian weekly Al-Dostour (May 10), despite the Emergency law in the last 12 months alone Egypt witnessed 89 killed and 236 wounded in terrorist attacks.  These figures compare unfavorably to those of neighboring Israel, still in a struggle with the Palestinians, of only 18 killed and 25 wounded in similar attacks.  Israel does not have emergency laws in effect.  And in another relevant comparison, in the height of the Arab-Israeli conflict Egypt’s armed forces reached one million troops (1973).  Now they are down to one-third (350,000).  In contrast, the internal security policy force has steadily grown under the Mubaraks to hit the one-million mark.

            His first internal war was with Islamic militants during his early years in power, but as the summer heats up the Mubaraks now find themselves embroiled in three more domestic wars.  The battle with the judges has incited enough popular unrest to warrant the Mubaraks to deploy thousands of their black-uniformed central security forces in the heart of Cairo.  Lasting three weeks in a row so far, it is already longer than the last two wars with Israel. 

            Another domestic war broke out two years ago with the Egyptian Bedouins of Sinai.  Taking their clues from Palestinian neighbors, if not from distant al-Qa’eda, young alienated Bedouins apparently decided to put an end to being treated as third-class citizens in their own ancestral land. All around them, but especially in the ebullient resorts of southern Sinai, billions are spent on roads, airports, and beaches; sizeable parcels of land are allocated generously to rich Egyptians from the Nile Valley and to foreigners from all corners of the world but not to the natives of Sinai.  Why?  A lethargic, occasionally corrupt bureaucracy still considers Sinai a military zone and the natives as not quite “loyal Egyptians”.  Therefore they can have the right of use but not ownership of land.  Two years ago, and on the anniversary of the October war, young Sinai militants bombed the Taba Hilton, and last July, on another national holiday, they hit three tourist spots not far from the Mubarak family compound in Sharm el-Sheikh.  These were symbolic as well as lethal warnings to a family that has grown Pharaonic in scale, style, and power.  Like many before, the Sinai warning went unheeded.

            Finally, a fourth war has been brewing for years over a Christian Coptic citizenship rights.  Copts are the original Egyptians; and were the majority till the tenth century.  However, as Egypt has become Arabized and Islamized, the Copts have become a numerical minority in their original homeland.  That has happened elsewhere in other times and places.  But at minimum equal citizen rights have and should always be stipulated and respected, as was the case in liberal Egypt, i.e. the mid 19th to mid twentieth centuries.  In the Mubaraks’ Egypt, however, equal rights to all citizens are stipulated in the constitution but not respected or observed, especially with regard to the building and protection of Coptic churches.  Last November, when a Coptic church in Alexandria was attacked by Muslim zealots, several Copts were injured but not one was killed.  Six months later, three churches were targeted in succession by a fanatic who attacked worshippers during Sunday services, killing a few and injuring many.  The following three days Copts marched in the streets of Alexandria protesting what they considered either State Security leniency, the scapegoating of their community, or worse: engineering the attacks to justify an extension of the Law.

             The Mubaraks’ four domestic wars reflect in essence the outcry of the excluded Egyptian against a regime that has long outlived its legitimate mandate.  This latest war with Egyptian judges may well prove to be their Achilles’ heel.  Justice is a central value for Egyptians.  Its absence is at the core of all protests.  That explains why unprecedented numbers have rallied peacefully in solidarity with the embodiment of this value, the judges. On Thursday, the world will be watching.