The Sadat doctrine reaches its sell-by date An Arab press review by the Daily aljazeerah.info

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The Sadat doctrine reaches its sell-by date

An Arab press review by the Daily Star, 4/5/03

Arab commentators are keeping a close watch on Egypt’s responses to the ongoing war on Iraq, as the US invasion enters its third week and the talk turns to the likely course and aftermath of the looming battle of Baghdad.
Many see Cairo’s wavering position and shifting official pronouncements both during the buildup to the blitz and since it was launched as evidence of uncertainty about how the post-war dispensation in Iraq and the region is likely to look, and indecision about how to adapt to it.
Cairo University Professor Hassan Nafaa explains the magnitude of the Egyptian authorities’ predicament in a piece for the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat in which he argues that the conflict has brought his country and the Arab world whose leadership it claims to a major crossroads.
“I’m not certain that official Egypt currently has a clear vision of the kind of role it should be aspiring to in this third Gulf crisis,” he writes. “But I do know that Egypt’s behavior on the ground appears to many to be confused and questionable worryingly and disturbingly so.”
Nafaa says that from the outset, Egypt’s approach to the Iraq crisis was largely conditioned by its desire not to undermine its “special relationship” with the US. Previously, Washington’s own commitment to preserving that relationship gave Cairo “a margin of freedom of maneuver” that enabled it to dissent from some US policies. This no longer applies under the post-Sept. 11, 2001 administration of President George W. Bush.
Yet Cairo was slow to catch on to the signs of mounting worldwide opposition to the US over Iraq. Instead of joining that opposition, it continued to wager “until the last moment” that tagging along the American lead would enable it to recoup its anticipated war losses. It thus lost twice over: getting only “crumbs” from the Americans, while giving the mistaken impression that it tried to sabotage the French-led anti-war camp.
Nafaa goes on to say that within the Arab world, Egypt was torn between the pro-American camp (fronted by Kuwait but “secretly” including other Arab states), which advocated Arab support for an unjustified war that was opposed by the Arab public, and the Syrian-led bloc advocating all-out backing for Iraq. By failing to broker a compromise between the two or formulate a consensus position, Egypt showed itself for the first time since its re-admission to the Arab League in 1989 to be incapable of playing an effective leadership role within the “Arab order.”
Nafaa also points to the domestic backdrop to the Iraq crisis: galloping inflation caused by “equally ineffective financial, economic and social policies;” rampant and “nauseating” corruption; and an Egyptian public seething with anger at US policy with regard to Iraq and Palestine.
The Egyptian masses, “gutted with sorrow and pain while watching American missiles destroy Iraq,” felt let down by the official response. Although he made sincere efforts to prevent war, President Hosni Mubarak’s TV appearance on the eve of hostilities, in which he stopped short of condemning America’s behavior and placed the blame chiefly on Iraq, called into question Egypt’s true position and fueled “unsubstantiated rumors” about it, Nafaa remarks.
He then suggests Egypt is going to have to rethink the two basic assumptions that have underlain its foreign policy since then-President Anwar Sadat aligned it with the US some 30 years ago: that Israeli society is ripe for a settlement to the Middle East conflict and the US is prepared to strong-arm Israel to agree to one; and that American aid can give a “qualitative boost” to Egypt’s development.
“Both bets appear today to have been lost for good, and this suggests that Egypt and with it the entire Arab world could be entering a state of flux that foreshadows radical changes. The more so because the key issues have not been resolved: peace hasn’t been achieved; development has been dealt painful setbacks, amid a rapacious process of plunder perpetrated by some of the people in charge of it; and the issue of democracy and political reform stands still, with no promising horizons,” Nafaa writes.
“But God alone knows whether these anticipated changes will come about violently, as occurred in 1952 and 1981, as a result of an act of God as in 1970, or in a peaceful, gradual, conscious and planned manner as has never happened since 1952. We pray to God that this will be the approach that Egypt’s political elites find most inspiring at this dangerous turning point.”
Lebanese commentator Saad Mehio portrays Egypt as being torn between actively opposing a de facto American takeover of Iraq and Washington’s wider hegemonic ambitions in the region, or becoming part of the new regional alliance the US is likely to fashion and lead in the wake of its conquest.
He draws attention to Mubarak’s recent speech to army commanders in which he spoke of the need for a “new Arab collective security order” to be established, which would be up-to-date and enable the Arab states to face external and internal challenges.
To what extent, Mubarak wondered aloud, are the Arabs prepared to allow outsiders to “control our capabilities, chart our future, change our region’s map and impose new balances of power on us?” But he went on, crucially, to stress that in these dangerous times, Egypt would put its own national security above all other considerations.
This, Mehio writes in the UAE daily Al-Khaleej, begs the question of whether Egypt can safeguard its own national security in isolation from that of the Arab world as a whole. “In other words, if Iraq collapses tomorrow and the Americans, British, Israelis and secularist Turks start restructuring the Middle East, will Egypt be able to prevent that from having disastrous consequences for its own national security?”
Some may consider the question irrelevant, on grounds that Egypt may well be admitted to the “new regional club,” thereby protecting it from the fallout. “But who can guarantee that the US will allow Egypt to join the new regional order with its current credentials? And, even if it were allowed, does anyone imagine that Egypt would be on an equal footing with Israel, or Turkey, within such an order?”
Mehio says the choices Cairo makes will be crucial in determining whether Syria will succeed in its endeavors to galvanize Arab resistance to the “American project” in Iraq and the region. “This will be extremely difficult to achieve unless Egypt becomes the mainstay” of that resistance, he writes.
“Accordingly, it will be of the utmost importance from now on to gauge the nature of Egypt’s responses to the fast-moving developments in the region. They will be the cipher through which we will be able to decode and analyze what is happening, and what will happen, in the Middle East.”
Abdelbari Atwan, publisher/editor of pan-Arab Al-Quds al-Arabi, writes that Egypt and other Arab allies of the US have been gradually sounding more critical of Washington as its invasion of Iraq progressed.
He attributes this to the effect of the impressive resistance that the Iraqis have been mounting. Three weeks into the invasion, “Basra remains steadfast, Fao is resisting, and Holy Najaf is eluding the invaders,” he writes. The Americans have meanwhile suffered mounting losses. Getting to the capital was no great military achievement given their superior firepower, “and we all know that the real battle will be inside Baghdad and the other cities.”
Atwan says the Arab popular backlash against the invasion though weaker than anticipated has already had an impact.
King Abdullah of Jordan has changed his tone, and has taken to describing the war as an “invasion” and its victims as “martyrs,” after being urged by prominent politicians to adopt a public anti-war stance.
Mubarak too has been put on the defensive, forced to break his silence and justify his permission for US warships to transit the Suez Canal which he explained he was obliged to grant under the terms of the 1888 Treaty of Constantinople.
“Praise the Lord,” quips Atwan. “Egypt is bound by a treaty that was signed two centuries ago, but it is not bound by the Joint Arab Defense Pact signed 30 years back, which has been reaffirmed at every Arab summit conference since most recently on March 1!”
Joseph Samaha, the editor in chief of the Beirut daily As-Safir, expects Arab leaders to increasingly toe the US line on Iraq, as the Arab public mood shifts from one of anger at the invasion and admiration of Iraq’s resistance, to one of “pessimism and passivity.”
He stresses that few seriously expected the Iraqis to be able to hold up the US advance on Baghdad for over two weeks, and now the Iraqi capital seems set to be besieged. While noting that, in the 1982 invasion, the Israeli Army managed to reach Beirut in a few days and laid siege to it for three months without managing to enter the city, it is not clear what will happen in Baghdad.
The invaders might resort to trying to terrorizing the city, or taking it over piecemeal. But much hinges on what happens in the rest of the country. If they face serious resistance in the provinces, the US and British troops will have a much harder time than if they succeed in turning it into “an island in a sea of coexistence with the occupation.” Either way, entering Baghdad will prove far harder than speeding up to its outskirts.
Samaha expects the US to accompany its military siege of the Iraqi capital with various political moves.
“It will try to open talks with countries that opposed the war. It will hint at a role for the UN and the Security Council. It will try to get them to follow the Turkish example. It will encourage Arab states to speak out. It will propose a deal: the surrender of the Iraqi leadership in exchange for taking Baghdad peacefully and not subjecting it to devastation.
“It is wagering that its change of tone will prevent the emergence of an Arab and international protest movement against it, and will demoralize those who opposed its strategies. And the slogan of ‘abdication’ will be brought to the fore once again, no longer shame-faced as in the past, but as the height of wisdom and courage,” he predicts.
Samaha says that France, Russia, Germany and other key opponents of the US have started to rebuild bridges with Washington. When the war was launched they did not call for it to be halted but to be completed quickly, and then started siding with the US and wishing it victory. They want to contain their quarrels and accommodate the new realities it has created, and they are likely to do that via the offer of a revived role for the UN Security Council.
The Arab states are also likely to form ranks with the US, and it is already noticeable that some have started doing so, within the limits they feel they can get away with, given the strength of Arab public opposition to the war.
“It should be noted, first of all, that voices have been raised to demand reappraisal of the Arab League and the mechanisms by which it works,” Samaha observes. “Some of these voices have ulterior motives. They want, in practice, an Arab League that is completely subservient to US policy. There is no gamble in predicting that we will see this issue wax and wane.
“Over the past two weeks, Iraqi resistance has been tempering the pronouncements of Arab officials. But we could very soon start hearing calls to join the new coalition that Washington is sponsoring, one that advocates ‘sacrificing the regime to save Baghdad.’”
“All that Bush will require in order to rally Arab backing is some general talk about involving the Security Council, and some waving of the road map for settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” Samaha concludes.

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