Egypt
Policing the Illicit Peripheries of Egypt’s Tourism Industry
Tourist destinations are never simply reducible to the sun, sand and sea they offer. The lucrative international trade associated with Third World tourism involves packaging and marketing areas of the world that are most devastated by contemporary economic conditions, essentially creating landscapes of paradise out of realities of poverty. The case of Dahab, a small coastal town in South Sinai, Egypt, offers an example of the processes and power dynamics involved in the production of tourist spaces. What are the political, economic, cultural and moral forces that shape Dahab? Who are the players involved in shaping this local site of tourism, and what are the interests at stake?
Egyptian Environmental Activists’ Uphill Battle
In 1990, citizens of Alexandria organized to fight the loss of public access to a street in a main downtown square. The city had given the street to the World Health Organization for a planned expansion of their local offices. In a landmark case against then-governor Ismail al-Gawsaqi, the citizens’ group, Friends of the Environment and Development-Alexandria (FEDA), argued that city authorities had denied the public’s right to “locational memory” and open space in overcrowded Alexandria. Elderly residents testified in court about their memories of promenades on the street. In a piece of effective political theater, group members sitting in court attached flowers to their lapels and laid flowers on the street outside, to symbolize their mourning of the passing of urban space. The group’s tactics were mocked at first. But in the end, the judge ruled that the allocation of the street for the WHO expansion violated the constitutional principle that “public resources should be used in the public interest.” The WHO announced it would move to Cairo, though the offices are still in Alexandria at present.
Mining for Fish
Around 10,000 of the estimated million people employed in Egypt’s fishing sector are based in ‘Izbat al-Burg, situated at the northernmost tip of the Nile’s Damietta Branch and bordered on the east by the vast Lake Manzala. As recently as nine years ago, Lake Manzala was a major fishing area and a collective asset for this community. Small-scale fishers used simple, cheap fishing boats and equipment, faring well alongside larger operators working in both lake and sea fishing. But at the turn of the century, the lake is no longer regarded as rizq (a source of livelihood). Increasingly, local fishers have been prevented from fishing in Manzala by state-licensed private enclosures that have virtually sealed off access to the lake’s northwestern shorelines.
Egypt Harasses Human Rights Activists
Family and friends of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, chair of Egypt's Ibn Khaldoun Center for Developmental Studies, breathed a huge sigh of relief on August 10, when Ibrahim was finally released on bail by prosecution authorities. The arrest at gunpoint of this internationally renowned pro-democracy activist and academic in his home on June 30 deeply shocked all of Egypt's civil society activists. Yet, in the context of continued government harassment of non-governmental organizations, Ibrahim's release hardly represents an unqualified victory.
Egypt: An Emerging “Market” of Double Repression
Recently, Egyptians have entertained dreams of political reform only to be crushed in October by a cosmetic ministerial reshuffle. President Hosni Mubarak ordered this reshuffle following a plebiscite approving him for a fourth presidential term; a massive wave of pre-election propaganda predictably failed to alter the electorate's persistent apathy.
Mubarak in Washington
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visits Washington this week at a time when US-Egyptian relations appear to be harmonious. Yet beneath the surface, relations may not be as cordial as they seem. Particularly discordant notes in the current US-Egyptian relationship concern free trade, regional economic integration and Egypt's human rights record. These issues will be high on the agenda during meetings between US and Egyptian officials this week.
Religious Ferment(ation)
Real saviors of the human race are rare. Although everyone remembers Noah and his ark, hardly anyone recalls that a humble beverage once saved the human race from eradication. Maybe that’s because the beer episode happened so long ago.
According to ancient Egyptian myth, the goddess Hathor decided to finish off the human race. she would have been successful, too, if not for the intervention of the god Ra, who ordered Sektet to mix beer with the mysterious dada fruit and some human blood. When Hathor arrived the next morning to wreak destruction, she found the land flooded with this tempting concoction. Unable to resist, she took one sip, and then another, eventually becoming so drunk that she no longer recognized human beings.
Egyptian Privatization
After decades of delay, privatization in Egypt is now taking off. [1] Since 1993, 119 of 314 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been fully or partially sold. [2] These have been mainly manufacturing ventures, but the government has also pledged to offer utilities, public sector banks and insurance companies, maritime and telecommunications firms and leading tourist hotels. In May 1998, the International Monetary Fund, long skeptical of the Mubarak regime’s commitment to privatization, pronounced itself satisfied with the program’s progress. Measured in terms of annual privatization receipts as a percentage of GDP, their report noted that Egypt ranks fourth internationally, trailing only Hungary, Malaysia and the Czech Republic.
Dreamland: The Neoliberalism of Your Desires
Neoliberalism is a triumph of the political imagination. Its achievement is double: While narrowing the window of political debate, it promises from this window a prospect without limits. On the one hand, it frames public discussion in the elliptic language of neoclassical economics. The collective well-being of the nation is depicted only in terms of how it is adjusted in gross to the discipline of monetary and fiscal balance sheets. On the other, neglecting the actual concerns of any concrete local or collective community, neoliberalism encourages the most exuberant dreams of private accumulation — and a chaotic reallocation of collective resources.
How Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and Even Egypt Became IMF “Success Stories” in the 1990s
Just as European missionaries were the spiritual handmaidens of nineteenth-century colonialism, so has the International Monetary Fund (IMF) assumed a modern-day mission in support of world trade, finance and investment. The mission aims to convert the benighted heathen in developing countries to the enlightened religion of the free market, whose invisible hand guides self-interest toward the best possible outcome. Once expected to join world Christendom after their conversion, penitent countries today have structural adjustment programs (SAPs) to guide them to their place in the global economy.
Behind the Ballot Box
The last decade has seen multi-party competition for elected legislatures initiated or expanded in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Executive authority in most cases remains an uncontested, if not completely unelected, post. Nevertheless, incumbent rulers invariably tout these legislative elections as evidence of domestic legitimacy, often anointing their countries as “on the road to democracy” in their wake.
Historical Road Maps for the “New World Order”
Peter Gran, Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History (Syracuse University Press, 1996).
Unlocking the Arab Celluloid Closet
Images of same-sex love and sexual dissidence from the heterosexual norm have long been portrayed in literature, theater and cinema in the Arab world. While the explicit depiction of homosexual acts in film has been the subject of strict censorship, cinematic references to gays and lesbians abound, if often in heavily coded forms.
Transgressing Patriarchy
There is a general perception in Egypt today, shared by fans and many critics, that “old” Egyptian films depicted sex more tastefully than recent films. The following passage by critic Hisham Lashin is typical:
Until approximately the middle of the 1960s, the Egyptian cinema treated the subject of sex with extreme caution, without frankly depicting it. There was an exaggerated delicacy, an excessive romanticism, in the way such films as Salah Abu Sayf’s Shabab Imra’a (A Woman’s Youth) dealt with this type of sensitive relationship. [1]
AIDS Hotline in Cairo
“AIDS is God’s punishment for all those who pollute the country with their sins,” writes the Egyptian weekly newspaper al-Liwa$rsquo; al-Islami (The Islamic Banner) under the headline: “To Follow the Path of Islam Is the Best Way Not to Get Infected.”
In the Egyptian media, attacks on people with HIV are common. Those, however, who do not want to sweep the issue of AIDS under the carpet are ready to deal with the 600 officially registered Egyptians who have been “punished by God” since the disease first appeared in Egypt more than 11 years ago. The World Health Organization puts the figure at ten times the official estimate.
Power and Sexuality in the Middle East
In early 1993, news of President Clinton’s proposal to end the US military’s ban on service by homosexuals prompted a young Egyptian man in Cairo, eager to practice his English, to ask me why the president wanted “to ruin the American army” by admitting “those who are not men or women.” When asked if “those” would include a married man who also liked to have sex with adolescent boys, he unhesitatingly answered “no.” For this Egyptian, a Western “homosexual” was not readily comprehensible as a man or a woman, while a man who had sex with both women and boys was simply doing what men do.
Modernization and Family Planning in Egypt
In the last decade, the Egyptian state in collaboration with international donor agencies has embarked on an ambitious population control program. According to this program, Egypt’s rapid population growth is the prime obstacle to the development goals set by Egyptian authorities. Between 1980 and 1992, the program increased current contraceptive use among couples, primarily in the form of IUDs and birth control pills, from 24 percent to 47 percent. At the same time, it reduced the total fertility rate from above 5 to 3.9 percent. [1]
“Nothing More to Lose”
Economic liberalization is now hitting the Egyptian countryside. After decades of Nasserist regulations favoring small land tenants, a new law will “reform” the relationship between landowners and tenants in favor of the first. It will more fully integrate the Egyptian countryside into the global market because it gives owners the right to dispose of their land as they see fit. These rights constitute a precondition for modernizing production methods in the countryside and planting more risky export crops. With agrobusinessmen able to invest and extract more income from the land, economists hope that Egypt will be able to decrease its annual agricultural deficit of $2.7 billion.
