Egypt and Mubarak

Mubarak is a military officer from modest origins. He showed no interest in political activity while serving as a young officer.

Nevertheless, he demonstrated a remarkable capacity to remain in power!!! in 2005 he was elected to a fifth six-year term as president.

Mubarak has introduced a minimum of structural adjustments while appearing to liberalize political and economic practices.


He did not support significant reforms and he is not able to present a compelling vision of Egypt's future!!! Egyptians' future is stagnating! In 1984, Mubarak permitted the Wafd Party to enter candidates in the election after 32 years of banishment!

Mubarak has introduced tighter controls over the oppositional political activity. Mubarak also continued Sadat's comitment to a mixed public sector/private sector economy and refused to listen to the International Monetary Fund when they asked him to accelerate economic privatization.

The most persistent opposition to the regime of Mubarak comes from the diverse Islamic organizations within the country. He deployed force to crush the militant Islamic groups.

The state is the main employer. 4.8 million Egyptians were on the public payroll! 35% of the labor force. Corruption is widespread because employees wages shrink and the working conditions are awful. State officials try to augment their incomes by making arrangements with private companies.

Mubarak needs to guide Egypt to a more Democratic political system!

Several thousand demonstrators have taken to the streets of the Egyptian city of Alexandria to protest against alleged police brutality. They were led by the former UN nuclear chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, now a campaigner for reform in his homeland.

Mohamed ElBaradei, an opposition leader in Egypt, was briefly detained by police after he prayed at a mosque in the Giza area but he later took part in a march with supporters.

"The popular outcry is loud and clear, but whether it can translate into a political force is questionable" said Aran, a Middle East expert at London's City University.

Egypt and Anwar Sadat

Egyptian president Nasser died in 1970, and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat, another of the original Free Officers who had overthrown the monarch after WWII.

Sadat moved quickly and decisively to consolidate his power, imprisoning, exiling, or otherwise neutralizing possible rivals.

Sadat began a two-pronged offensive in order to achieve this goal. The first prong was a diplomatic one: In a major realignment of his nation's Cold War status, Sadat expelled the 20,000 members of the Soviet Union's military mission to Egypt. The second prong was also a diplomatic one, but also one with a military aspect: On October 3, 1973, Egypt attacked Israeli forces across the Suez Canal.

On November 20, 1977, Sadat went to Jerusalem and proclaimed in the parliament of Israel that Egypt desired peace with its Jewish neighbor. Less than a year later, Sadat met with the Israeli prime minister in a meeting chaired by President Jimmy Carter at Camp David.

The Camp David Accords were followed by a formal treaty between Egypt and Israel in March of 1979. The treaty shocked the Arab world, which began to treat Egypt as an outcast, and eventually resulted in Sadat's assassination in 1981.

Sadat was replaced by his vice president, Hosni Mubarak, who continued to rule Egypt well into the 21^st century.

Mubarak continues to move his nation in a direction of greater political reintegration with its fellow Arab states and peaceful cooperation with the United States.

Egypt at the end of WWII

The end of World War II saw Egypt still governed by the Treaty of 1936 ruled by King Faruq who enjoyed little popularity or credibility, which left much of Egyptian foreign policy and economics in the hands of the British.

Faruq's government was overthrown by a military coup d' état at in 1952 by a group called the Free Officers. One of their leaders was Gamal Abd al-Nasser, who quickly rose to lead the coup's ruling council.

Nasser embarked on a campaign of land and economic reform, judicial reform, and societal reform, which entrenched him as a popular leader with the Egyptian people. Nasser's was a secular dictatorial government, but he allowed greater individual opportunity, expression, and freedom than Egyptians had ever enjoyed before. His anti-foreign influence stance and his oft-cited Arab background added to his strong popularity. Not only did Nasser succeed in removing Egypt from the western sphere of influence; he brought Syria and Jordan out of it as well. Espousing a theme of pan-Arabism, Nasser was the most influential figure in the Arab world by the late 1950s.

Egyptian president Nasser died in 1970, and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat, another of the original Free Officers who had overthrown the monarch after WWII.

Egypt

The Ottomans began as an Islamic sultanate, and became a dominate force by the middle of the 14^th century A.D. and one of the largest empires of its time by the 16^th century A.D.

In 1798 A.D., French Napoleon invaded Egypt and defeated the Ottoman's Mamluk army at the Battle of the Pyramids.

England responded quickly to the French endangerment of its communication and trade routes with India, and in the same year defeated a French fleet in Aboukir Bay near Alexandria.

With logistical ties to Europe cut, Napoleon himself returned to the European continent, but with no available fleet the French army in remained in a difficult and non-supported Egyptian occupation. In 1801 A.D., a joint Ottoman and British force arrived in Egypt and defeated the French there.

Ottoman officers battled among themselves for the governorship of Egypt in the absence of any adequate control by the Ottoman central government. Muhammad Ali, an Ottoman officer of Albanian birth who was raised Greek, emerged as the ultimate victor, and in 1805 A.D. was recognized by the central Ottoman government in Istanbul as the Ottoman Empire's governor in Egypt.

Though governor in title, Muhammad Ali exercised the full powers of a monarch in his own right, and established a dynasty that would rule Egypt through the later disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and beyond, until a military coup in the 1950s would establish the modern Arab nation of Egypt.