The rumored illness of President Mubarak has surfaced again, two months following cervical surgery in Germany last June. The Egyptian authorities have reverted to the old practice of information black-out on the issue. As a result, what may very well be a minor or mild treatable ailment has been amplified through the rumor mill into a life-threatening leukemia. This has in turn triggered a ruthless jockeying for power and/or insuring a safety net in preparation for the post Mubarak era. In the process, the Egyptian ruling elite is becoming increasingly fractionalized.

To be sure, there is a reform wing clustered around young Gamal Mubarak (the President’s son), and flexing its muscles through the Policy Committee of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). The Committee managed recently to get seven of its 30 members appointed to a newly formed cabinet. Gamal Mubarak himself has been making noise about more significant changes in the political system to satisfy long standing demands by the Egyptian opposition parties. But most Egyptians are skeptical about such promises. Based on past records, the regime often concedes one inch for every mile of opposition demand, and expects every Egyptian to be expressly grateful.

Since fainting while delivering his annual inauguration speech in the new parliamentary session last November, popular demands for revamping Egypt’s socio-political order have grown louder and steadily more daring. Along with such demands, several voices expressed criticism of Mubarak’s top aides as well as members of his own family. Until a year ago, this would have been considered a lethal crossing of ’’Red Lines’’. It is widely held that crossing those lines was behind the three widely publicized Ibn Khaldun court trials (2000-2003) in which this author and 27 of his associates were implicated. It is equally rumored that the mysterious disappearance in August 2003 of the prominent Egyptian journalist Rida Hillal is attributed to crossing that invisible Red Line. A year later, all the Egyptian security agencies have continued their deafening silence, not issuing an official report to satisfy the anxious public. The 45 year old Hillal was the Deputy Chief editor of Al-Ahram, the Arab World’s oldest and largest daily newspaper. Curiously, neither his newspaper nor the Egyptian Press Syndicate actively pursued the case, when they are known to clamor over much less important issues. Again, the rumor mill has it that the orders for Hillal’s abduction and the subsequent cover up came from the presidential palace.

In August (2004) a prominent Egyptian Professor of Engineering, Mamdouh Hamza, was arrested in London by Scotland-Yard police on suspicion of conspiracy to assassinate four top ranking Egyptian public figures, including the President Mubarak’s Chief of staff (Zakariya Azmy) Speakers of the Parliament (Fathy Sorour) and two other Cabinet members (M.I. Soliman, and Kamal Shazly). The case is yet to be heard in London’s Old Bailey’s Court. However an information – starving alienated Egyptian public has already concluded its own interrogation, trial and verdict, not against the accused (Dr. Hamza), but against the would be victims of the alleged assassination plot. It is a curious case study of Egyptian collective psychic projection under conditions of mass anxiety and discontent.

A preliminary content analyses of the opposition press have it that “the four top public figures who were the alleged assassination targets, are extremely corrupt, and the outspoken Engineering Professor had been talking and documenting their practices. They are the ones who set up Hamza, as he made a highly publicized trip in which he was to be honored by Queen Elizabeth in London in late July, for his contribution in building the Alexandria Library.” Thus, before the litigation of the Dr. Hamza case has been completed in London, the Cairo opposition press was already demanding an immediate investigation of rampant corruption, especially that of the most notorious of the four ranking officials, namely, Mr. M.I. Soliman, the Minister of Housing (MH). Being builder number one in the country, the MH handles several billion dollars worth of contracts annually. The Minister is reported to have granted many of these contracts by direct orders to a consulting firm, Enviro-Civic, owned by his brother-in-law. When the Qatari-based Al-Jazeera T.V. announced on the morning of Wednesday August 18 that Minister Soliman was put under house arrest, pending a judiciary review, thousands of Cairo motorists honked and exchanged congratulations, and in the process caused an hour traffic jam. Three hours later, a government spokesman announced that “the Al-Jazeera report was baseless.” The premature euphoria is nevertheless symptomatic of the public mood in Egypt recently. Being stuck with a failed regime that refuses to give up or share power, and feeling unable to force it out of office peacefully, Egyptians have grown fatalistic?wishing that God Almighty, internal disintegration of the ruling elite, or an external factor would rid them of the Mubarak regime. Symptomatic also is the nearly total distrust of the regime version of events. The official denial of the Minister’s investigation, immediately triggered another stream of rumors alleging that the Minister had threatened to blow the whistle on his accomplices in high places unless the investigation was halted and the report was officially denied.

Adding to the moral isolation of the Mubarak regime are its dramatic failures on the international front in unexpected ways. A case in point was the bid to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup known as the Mondiale. Since this was the turn for the African Continent, Egyptians officials mobilized for the honor against two other countries – South Africa and Morocco. For months, the state media hyped the Egyptian public for an assured outcome. Movie-star, Omar Sherif and former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Ghaly (both native Egyptians) joined the Minister of Youth and Sports, A.D. Hilal, to lobby the 24 board members of the International Football Federation. However, when the vote was caste and counted in Zurich, South Africa won the honor of hosting the event with 14 votes, Morocco came second with 10 votes. Egyptians were shocked, not just because their bid failed, but because they obtained zero vote. The Minister of Youth and Sports was dumped in a Cabinet reshuffle soon after. The newspapers commentaries likened the Mondiale setback to the Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war at the hands of Israel. Nasser had also hyped not only Egyptians but the entire Arab World for victory during the month leading to the war.

But the “Mondiale Zero’’ became a rallying cry for the opposition. The regime overall performance was dubbed as a Mondiale Zero. The sharp drop of annual foreign investments from 3 billion in mid-1990’s to 300 in 2003 was likened to the Mondiale Zero contest. The regime’s promises for political reforms are equally dismissed as a “Mondiale talk.” Egypt’s foreign policy failure in advancing the cause of Peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict one inch beyond late President Sadat’s initiatives some quarter of a century ago, its inability to contain, let alone, ward off other regional crises in Sudan or Iraq are often cited as evidence to the regime’s lack of vision and boldness. More astute observer noted that the zero vote is indicative of Egypt’s diminished status regionally and internationally – i.e.g. that even in Africa Egypt is becoming a second class power.

Since the dramatic faint of Mubarak in November 2003 in the People’s Assembly in front of television cameras on the air, the regime could no longer hide the deteriorating health conditions of the President. The opposition parties and civil society organizations (CSO’s) escalated their demands for both transparency and major political reform of Egypt’s entire political system. They were joined by fellow democracy and human rights advocates all over the Arab world. Several hundreds of them met in Yemen in January 2004 and issued the ’’Sana’a Declaration’’ calling on their respective ruling regimes to respond to long standing demands for genuine democratization, respect for human rights and the rule of law. Two months later, a similar pan-Arab gathering met in the Library of Alexandria and after three intense days of deliberation issued a more detailed and more specific manifesto for reform, known as the Alexandria Declaration. Later in the same month of March, a similar gathering deliberated in Lebanon and issued their Beirut Declaration. Three other similar congresses were held respectively in Doha (Qatar), Ibn Khaldun Center (Cairo) and Ramall (Palestine). With every successive gathering the bars were raised higher. Thus monarchies are to become “Constitutional;” and the “Republics” to have term limits not exceeding two times of four years each; doing away with the “state of emergency” and the laws entailed. Worth noting is that the last three conferences, including the one in Ramall, denounced the Arab regimes’ use of the Palestinian cause as an excuse for delaying vital reform and covering up internal corruption.

In all seven pan-Arab conferences, the Egyptian caucus was the most animated, which contrasted sharply with the stagnation of their own ruling regime at home. The coincidence of the US floating a reform proposal in the spring of 2004, known as the Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI) gave the autocratic regimes of Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia a golden opportunity to dismiss all of the home grown initiatives as externally motivated; and to tarnish the image of Arab democrats as “agents” promoting an American Agenda. While most political forces have kept a healthy distance from the US and its GMEI, the Mubarak regime continues to harp on “cultural uniqueness” as a ploy to ward off pressure for genuine participatory governance. But even the religiously rooted Muslim Brotherhood (M.B.) who might have brought into such ’’cultural’’ arguments finally stunned the regime by unequivocal endorsement of democracy. Last March, their newly elected leader, known as Supreme Guid, Mohamed Mahdy Akef, held a press conference in which he underscored this strategic shift in the thought and practice of the M.B. The Mubarak regime dismissed Akef’s announcement as bogus, tactically motivated and in no way would compel the Government to legalize the M.B. Though declared ’’illegal’’ by Nasser since 1954, the M.B. has a defacto presence in Egypt and elsewhere in the Islamic world. As a matter of fact, it is considered the Mother of all contemporary Islamic movements, from Indonesia to Morocco. Despite periodic harassment and routine incarceration of its members, the M.B. has persisted and occasionally prevailed over Mubarak ruling NDP in fair electoral contests. But Egyptian elections are rarely that fair.

To be sure, Mubarak and the NDP are not the only skeptics about the M.B’s avowed commitment to democracy. Many of Egypt’s seven million Christian Copts, modern educated women, and secular intellectuals share the same skepticism. But some seem to be willing to give the M.B. the benefit of the doubt, and to engage them in serious discourse. In turn, the M.B. have not wasted time. Following the M.B. March Democracy Initiative, its leaders set out to dialogue with major opposition parties and reached out to Western interlocutors as if to show their new colors. By the summer of 2004, the M.B. has managed to establish enough common grounds with all of Egypt’s political forces except the ruling NDP.

There is now a consensus on the principles and priorities of political reforms among all opposition parties, including the M.B. and the CSO’s in Egypt. These include constitutional amendments to make the choice of the president by open competitive elections from among two or more candidates, for no more than two consecutive terms. It also called for terminating the State of Emergency, restrictions on establishing political parties and CSO’s, public monopoly ownership of the media, and insuring the total independence of the judiciary.

Though still “illegal” by the beginning of the Fall, the M.B. is no longer as politically isolated as the Mubarak regime had hoped. If anything it is now the NDP that appears isolated. Its legitimacy is steadily and swiftly eroding. But the NDP still clings to the state institutions of power: the army, police, media, public sector banks and the judiciary. Actually the ministries in charge of the five institutions are called “sovereign portfolios” whose top executives are directly appointed by and are accountable to the president himself. Holders of these portfolios are regime insiders and loyalists. Over the 23 years of Mubarak’s presidency, the cadres and ranking members of these ’’sovereign portfolios’’ have grown more inbred. Members of the same small group of families and clans pass on key positions to each other. Not only disproportionate power, but also other privileges and wealth closely follow. Inter-marriages have cemented their elite bonds.

The inbreeding of a power elite is not unique to Egypt. Most societies have such elites. What is peculiar about Egypt’s is the manner of its recruitment, socialization, merit and over all performance. The Mubarak power elite has presided over what has come to be termed as a “failed state.” Egypt’s standing regionally and internationally has steadily deteriorated. Thus on the UNDP Human Development Index, Egypt slipped from number 105 rank in 1990 to 120 rank in 2003 among some 180 countries on which comparable data is available. On the Transparency International Corruption Perspective Index (CPI), Egypt ranked 63 among the 133 countries surveyed in the year 2000, but slipped to rank 70 in 2003. The CPI is calculated on the basis of surveys of local and foreign businessmen who are engaged in transactions with top and middle decision-makers in each country. On the Freedom House Sever-point Scale of democratic governance with 1.0 as the best and 7.0 as the worst, Egypt was classified in the Partially Free Category in 1993 with the modest score of 5.6; and 10 years later it deteriorated to the Not Free Category, with a diminished score of 6.6. We have already noted the sharp decline of foreign investment in the last ten years (from $ 3 billion to mere $ 300 billion). The latter is often a sensitive indicator of trust in the overall performance of the state.

The irony is that despite all the above indicators of failure of the Egyptian state, the Mubarak elite has one single astounding success – its firm hold on power. Other than controlling all key positions in the so-called sovereign portfolios, it is its methods of temptation, intimidation, repression, coercion and scare politics. This behavioral control package may be standard in most authoritarian – totalitarian regimes. The remarkable thing is that the Mubarak regime has gotten away with it for so long (23 years) both at home and abroad. Western democracies have continued to support the regime diplomatically and with a generous annual aid package of $ 3 billions, two-thirds of which is from the US. These democracies have overlooked or intentionally ignored gross human rights violations. More prisons were built during the Mubarak years than in the previous two centuries, which is the length of Egyptian modern history. The average rate of incarceration per 10,000 quadrupled under Mubarak (1983 – 2003) compared to what it was during the Nasser years (1952 – 1970) and tripled compared to the Sadat years (1970 – 1981). Five times as many were condemned to death for political reasons under Mubarak as the combined total of Nasser and Sadat. A cursory leafing through the Amnesty International reports in the last ten years alone would show that torture in Egyptian prisons is no less than it is in Syrian or Sadam’s Iraqi prisons. More recently, the Mubarak regime joined its Arab counterparts in a new type of punishment of dissidents, “forced disappearance.” The most publicized cases in this regard is that of the Libyan dissident and human rights activist Mansour El-Kekhia (1993) and the prominent Egyptian journalist Rida Hillal (2003), both of whom were abducted in daylight from the streets of Cairo. Egyptian authorities have not been able to solve these two and many other similar mysteries. If anything there has been a concerted silence in the state-controlled media, despite the clamoring of their families as well as human rights organizations around the world. This deafening official silence has given rise to an endless streak of rumors, initially implicating foreign agents, but increasingly pointing the finger at some of the top aides and close associates of the Mubarak family.

Another measure of failure is the worsening of the sectarian situation during the Mubarak years. Muslim-Coptic relations had been amicable for centuries. Except for sporadic incidents far and in between, Egypt prided itself in being a tolerant society. There was a minor incident accompanying the assassination earlier in the 20th century of Butros Gali Senior, the grandfather of the former UN Secretary General. But for the following seven decades, sectarian strife was something that contemporary Egyptians only heard or read about in other countries. However, between 1971 and 1981 three minor episodes occurred during the Sadat regime. But Under Mubarak, sectarian strife has become rampant. Some sixty reported clashes between Muslims and Christian Copts were reported in the state-controlled media. Informed observers believe the actual number is at least twice as many clashes. But even the official figures make the average annual of such clashes 3.0 as compared to 0.3 under Sadat, and 0.0 under Nasser. Worse than the unprecedented frequency is the intensity of such sectarian clashes, the worst of which was on the night of the new year’s eve of the new millenia in the upper Egyptian village of El-Koshoh where 21 were killed and over 150 were badly injured. Despite the recurring pattern, the Mubarak regime did nothing or very little to ameliorate the sectarian situation.

The repressive behavior–control package of the Mubarak regime has made the Egyptian polity similar to what the former Iraqi dissident Kana’an Makiya calls “The Republic of Fear”. The question is how the Mubarak regime has managed to get away with its repressive policies in the eyes of Western democracies, whose governments have continued their economic and diplomatic support? If that was understandable during the Cold War, as Egypt was percieved as a pivotal state in a contested region, why has this benign undersight continued?

As soon as the Cold War ended (1989-1990) a serious crisis broke out, with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait (August 1990). The search for regional partners in the International Coalition to expel Saddam and liberate Kuwait made the Egyptian role quite vital. Western powers needed a regional interlocutor to ward-off the appearance of a polarized clash of civilizations. None other than Egypt could give a legitimacy for joining non-Arab, non-Muslim in a military action against an Arab-Muslin country. As soon as Egypt joined that U.S. led coalition, several Arab and Muslim countries followed suit; and the mission was successfully accomplished by February 1991. The Egyptian regime collected the dividends for the following decade. Other than the annual aid package of nearly $3.0 billions, some $40 billion of Egypt’s $50 billions in foreign debts were pardoned or rescheduled. The Bush, then the Clinton Administrations valued Egypt’s role in that Gulf Crisis, and expressed gratitude in a variety of ways.

Soon after, there was another challenge at home and at the other end of the Arab World, Algeria. In both countries Islamic militancy was on the rise with the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, thousands of Arab fighters who had volunteered on the side of the Afghani Mujahideen, returned to their respective countries of origins. With advanced military experience and hightened politicization, these returnee, known at the time as the Afghani-Arabs, joined their Muslim activists counterpart at home, and mounted a challenge to the ruling elites in both Algeria and Egypt during the remainder of the decade (1991-2000). The Mubarak regime was truly embattled, and several assassination attempts were made on his life, by Islamic militants, including a close call in Addis Abbaba as he was to attend an African Summit in 1995. A genuine war on domestic Islamic terrorism won the regime sympathy and support at home and abroad. Mubarak easily got his rubber-stamp parliament to renew the State of Emergency Law (SEL) every year since the assassination of his predecessor in October 1981. Though these violent confrontations tapered off and came to an end by the end of 1997, the regime has continued to renew the SEL, using the same pretext to resist political reform. Using the Islamic-scare argument to frighten the West, the Egyptian Christian Copts, modern educated women and secular intellectuals has proven its potency for years. As the Mubarak’s argument was getting worn-out, the 9/11 tragedy happened, and a global war on terrorism was declared by U.S. President George W. Bush. The Egyptian regime readily welcomed to join that war; and even offered to lend its own valuable experience to the U.S. With the passage in the U.S Congress of the Patriot Act, and other related draconian measure in the aftermath of 9/11, the Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Ebeid was quoted as saying “now the U.S must learn the hard way and stop admonishing other governments about human rights.” Instead of the usual one year at a time request for renewal of SEL, the Mubarak regime took advantage of 9/11 to ask for a four-year renewal at once. Now the regime can dismiss with impunity any talk about free and fair elections on the ground that, in Mubarak’s words, “the extremists will come in droves.”

Mubarak’s ruling NDP is having its annual convention in late September. Should it fail to seriously address the reform agenda that major opposition parties have been pressing, large scale protests are likely to follow. Should Mubarak decide to defy popular sentiments and run for a fifth term; or worse maneuver to install his son as a successor, such protestation may very well escalate into civil disobedience. In these times of regional instability, the world could not afford mass unrest in Egypt.