Egypt's Military: State within a State

On Friday, Washington added its voice to Egyptians demanding that the Egyptian military give way to civilian rule. It’s instructive, however, to consider why the Egyptian brass are so reluctant.

Their resistance stems not just from a fear of an ultimate takeover by radical Muslims. There is also the fact that real civilian rule could spell an end to the system of massive military corruption and patronage that has gone on for decades in Egypt, a system that has given the military unimpeded control over a huge sector of the Egyptian economy:  “a state within a state” as a well-informed Egyptian friend of mine puts it.

That’s the state that’s now being challenged.

For years, Egypt’s top military ranks have enjoyed a pampered existence in sprawling developments such as Cairo’s Nasr City, where officers are housed in spacious, subsidized condominiums. They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, bonuses, new cars, schools and military consumer cooperatives featuring domestic and imported products at discount prices. In other areas, top officers are able to buy luxurious apartments on generous credit for 10% of what those apartments are actually worth.

But we’re not just talking about sensational official perks. Many of Egypt’s brass are notoriously corrupt. Vast swathes of military land, for instance, were sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo-with little if any accounting.

Other choice military property ran on the Nile Delta and Red Sea coast boasted idyllic beaches, and exquisite coral reefs. In return for turning the land over to private developers, military officers became key shareholders in a slew of gleaming new tourist developments. 

The reason Egypt’s military became so involved in non-military activities was because, after peace was signed with Israel in 1975, the military lost much of its raison d’etre, as did its military factories. The problem, though, was how to keep those factories going and employ the hundreds of thousands of young men who would otherwise flood the domestic market?

The answer was the military would also produce for the civilian market. Thus the generals came to preside over 16 enormous factories that turn out not just weapons, but an array of domestic products from dishwashers to heaters, clothing, doors, stationary pharmaceutical products, and microscopes. Most of these products are sold to military personnel through discount military stores, but large amount are also sold commercially.

The military also builds highways, housing developments, hotels, power lines, sewers, bridges, schools, telephone exchanges, often in murky arrangements with civilian companies. 

The military are also Egypt’s largest farmers, running a vast network of dairy farms, milk processing facilities, cattle feed lots, poultry farms, fish farms. They’ve plenty left from their huge output to sell to civilians through a sprawling distribution network.  

The justification for all this non-military activity is that the military are just naturally more efficient that civilians. Hard not to be “more efficient” when you are able to employ thousands of poorly paid military recruits for labor.

Many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia. And upon retiring, top military officers are often rewarded with plum positions running everything from factories and industries to charities.

Whatever the number, Robert Springborg, who has written extensively on Egypt, says officers in the Egyptian military are making "billions and billions and billions" of dollars.”

But there’s no way to know how efficient or inefficient the military are, nor how much money their vast enterprises make, nor how many millions or billions get skimmed off since the military’s operations are off the nation’s books. No real published accountings. No oversight. Just as there is no civilian oversight of the entire military budget, and that’s the way the current military regime have said they aim to keep things

Of course none of the above is a surprise to U.S. officials who dole out some 1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid to the Egyptian Army, and hope that sum and the neat weapons it provides will keep the army in line. [One of the most detailed studies of the military’s non-military activities was done by a U.S. military researcher at Fort Leavenworth.]

A perceptive look into all this comes via a 2008 U.S.diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. The writer in the U.S. Embassy in Cairo ticked off the various businesses the military was involved in, and considered how the military might react if Egypt's then president, Hosni Mubarak, were to lose power.

The military would almost certainly go along with a successor, the cable's author wrote, as long as that that successor didn't interfere in the military's business arrangements. But, the cable continued, "in a messier succession scenario, it becomes more difficult to predict the military's actions."

Thus, the messier scenario today.

Osama Bin Laden-Everyone's Missing the Point

A tale of two Arabs: Osama Bin Laden and Mohamed Bouaziziz

The jubilation of Americans and Western leaders at the death of Osama Bin Laden, though understandable, misses the point. In many ways, the figure gunned down in Pakistan was already irrelevant—more a symbol of past dangers than a real threat for the future.

Indeed, from the point of view of America and many of its allies, the most menacing symbol in the Arab World today is not Osama Bin Laden but another Arab who recently met a violent death--Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor who chose to set himself on fire after being harassed by corrupt local police.

His act, of course, ignited the storm that has spread across the Arab World and proven a much more serious threat to America’s allies in the region than Al Qaeda ever was. Ironically, his sacrifice probably also dealt a far more devastating blow to Al Qaeda’s fortunes than the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.  

The Arab world today bears no relationship to the situation a decade ago after 9/11. Obsessed by Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the U.S. has been sucked into a vast quagmire--a disaster for the Americans, their economy, and their standing in the Arab World.  

What particularly provoked Osama Bin Laden—a Saudi--was the decision of Saudi rulers to accept the presence of more than a hundred thousand “infidel” U.S. troops and their allies in Saudi Arabia following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. In general, |he and his followers were outraged by U.S. support for corrupt, repressive regimes from Saudi Arabia, to Egypt to Yemen, as well, of course, for America’s backing of Israel.

As Osama himself  told CNN in 1997, “the U.S. wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose agents on us to rule us and then wants us to agree to all this, If we refuse to do so, it says we are terrorists…Wherever we look, we find the U.S. as the leader of terrorism and crime in the world.”

Bin Laden’s message reverberated throughout the Muslim world. But U.S. officials remained deaf to its meaning, and continued obsessed by Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. The upshot--U.S. policy was the best recruiter Osama could have asked for. Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, CIA killer teams, mercenaries, predators and, and “diplomats” swarmed across the region from Iraq, to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia, supported by sprawling new bases and pharaonic embassies. 

The bill for all this—for an America crippling cutbacks in health, infra-structure. and education-- will be in the trillions of dollars. But despite this massive effort, none of those targeted Arab countries could by any stretch of the imagination be considered a success story. Hostility to the U.S. is high throughout the region. In polls, the majority of those Arabs queried consider the United States a greater threat than Al Qaeda.

In Pakistan, despite the U.S. lavishing tens of billions of dollars on that country’s  military, it turns out that, Osama Bin Laden, rather than groveling as an outlaw in the isolated tribal regions, has been living in a fortified villa near the country’s major military academy and a large army base, just a few miles away from the capital city.

America had also launched an ambitious civilian aid program: 7.5 billion dollar over five years, designed to win Pakistani hearts and minds and bolster the civilian government.  But, corruption is so rife throughout the Pakistani government, and its officials so incompetent, that the U.S. has been unable to disburse most of the aid. As the New York Times reports,

Instead of polishing the tarnished image of America with a suspicious, even hostile, Pakistani public and government, the plan has resulted in bitterness and a sense of broken promises…

The economy is failing. Education, health care and other services are almost nonexistent, while civilian leaders from the landed and industrialist classes pay hardly any taxes.

Pakistanis see the aid as a crude attempt to buy friendship and an effort to alleviate antipathy toward United States drone attacks against militants in the tribal areas.

The same reports come from Afghanistan. A decade after the U.S. invaded, tens of thousands of American troops are still fighting what seems to be, at best, a see–saw battle against the Taliban. There also, according to another report in the New York Times,  the U.S. is backing incompetent, corrupt, unpopular leaders. Millions of dollars of U.S. funds actually get diverted as payoffs to the Taliban and their allies—bribing them not to attack U.S. projects, such as $65 million highway that may never be completed in Eastern Afghanistan.

The vast expenses and unsavory alliances surrounding the highway have become a parable of the corruption and mismanagement that turns so many well-intended development efforts in Afghanistan into sinkholes for the money of American taxpayers, even nine years into the war.

Now back to Mohamed Bouazizi the Tunisian fruit vendor, whose death unleashed the Arab Spring that is still roiling the region,

Though Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have yet to be credited with overthrowing an Arab regime, the spark provided by Bouazizi has already led to the downfall of  American-backed tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt, and continues to threaten other despots in Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.

Ironically, most of the leaders overthrown or desperately trying to hang on to power, had declared themselves implacable enemies of Al Qaeda. Yet, again, it was not Bin Laden but Bouazizi that turned out to be a far greater menace.

Precisely for that reason, it is Mohamed Bouazizi’s Arab Spring, not sophisticated U.S. killer teams, that most threaten Al Qaeda and its allies. By demonstrating that secular uprisings can succeed in toppling the aged, crusty tyrannies, young Arabs across the region have—so far--undercut the appeal of the Islamic radicals.

So far, because despite the early successes in Tunisia and Egypt, the future of the Arab Spring is far from clear. The current process will take decades to play out. The political and economic establishments have been decapitated in Egypt and Tunisia, but not decimated. In the rest of the region, though seriously shaken, the old order still reign supreme. 

The same corrupt Saudi regime that fueled Bin Laden’s outrage is still in power, still backed by the United States. Indeed, they have been doing their utmost to tamp the spreading revolt, spending millions to bribe Yemen’s tribal leaders, dispatching their troops to Bahrain to help crush the uprising of the Shiite majority in that country.

Indeed, that brutal repression may radicalize thousands of young Shiites, generating hosts of new recruits for Al Qaeda or other extremists Islamic groups—even as the corpse of Osama Bin Laden lies somewhere at the bottom of the sea.

  

Egypt and Iran: A tale of 2 Revolutions

            Egypt in February 2011 is not Iran January 1979.  And those darkly predicting that Egypt’s revolution is fated to turn into another Islamic dictatorship are ignoring the many stark differences between the two situations.  But as Egypt enters an unknown course, I am reminded of the fate of  Sadegh Ghotzbadeh, once Iran’s Foreign Minister, ultimately destroyed by the man and movement he devoted his life to bring to power.

            I first met him in October 1976 in Paris when I was a producer at 60  Minutes, teamed up with Mike Wallace.  I was investigating the activities outside Iraq of the Shah’s feared secret police, the Savak.  The most remarkable story came from Ghotzbadeh, then a 37 year-old Iranian dissident, active with one of the many exile groups in the French capital.  A handsome, impeccably dressed Iranian, he spoke fluent English and French and had been working against the Shah since his university days in the United States. He introduced us to a stocky 67 year-old Armenian by the name of Jules Khan Pira—his would-be assassin.

            In heavily accented French, Khan Pira  recounted how, under threat of a complex blackmail scheme by the Savak, he had been ordered to assassinate several opposition leaders. At the top of the list was Zadegh Ghotbzadeh.

This led the to one of the most unlikely interviews we had ever filmed: a large suite at the George V, a dapper Ghotzbadeh, in dark blazer and tie, sitting next to him, the shabbily dressed Khan Pira, the two revolvers that Khan Pira said he had received from the Savak agent, sitting  on a table between them.

Improbable as it seemed, Khan Pira's tale checked out both in France and the U.S. But what is most revealing in retrospect is that nowhere in the 60 Minutes report did we feel the need to mention specifically what Ghotbzadeh was up to in Paris.  He was the major representative in Western Europe and America of an elderly, bearded, Iranian cleric, who was then exiled in Iraq and hardly known in the West, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the time, in fact, Khomeini seemed to be a very discardable footnote to our story.  

             Over the next few months, however Ghotzbadeh, with the fervor of the true believer, continued to provide me the latest printed petitions and protests from the Iranian opposition, condemning this or that brutal aspect of the Shah's regime and calling on a highly indifferent world to take action.  

            Most intriguing of all to me was the key role that Moslem clerics, and their leaders, such as Khomeini, were playing in all of this, even from exile. There was an underground network among the theological centers of learning and the mosques across Iran. There were clandestine newspapers and an elaborate system of circulating Khomeini's revolutionary speeches via audio cassettes throughout the country.  Very little of this had been noticed by the Western press.

Which was the major reason I was unable to convince 60 Minutes to do a report. Finally, in October 1978, with introductions arranged by Ghotzbadeh, I flew to Teheran and was plugged into the clandestine network of the Islamic movement. They were a curious mixture of professors and students or all ages, of Muslim clerics from ragged villages in the countryside to the Holy City of Qom, of wealthy shop keepers from Teheran's sprawling Bazaar, of  middle class professionals.  Many of them, like Ghotzbadeh, had been  educated in the U.S. or Western Europe.

 I was impressed by their fervor, but also by the fact that, when pressed , none seemed to be able to define precisely what an Islamic Revolution was all about.  One evening I met with a group of about ten young men and women in Tehran , many of them university students and teachers.  After a lengthy discussion of the on-going revolt, I suddenly asked what an Islamic government would actually look like.  Well, for one thing, said one young man in a dark turtleneck. “Women would have to cover their hair.” The women in the room seemed to agree.

“But what if a woman didn’t want to cover her hair?” I  asked. 

“Then her brother or her husband would take her aside and try to convince her, ” said another man, with a soft smile.

 “And what if she still didn’t want to?”
             “We would keep trying to convince her,” said the man, still smiling.          

“And, if after all that, she finally still refused?

 “That would be her right,” said one of the women.

“No, said a man, “in that case, she would not be allowed to go out.”

“And if she still insisted?”

  “We might have to put her in prison.” said the man in the turtleneck. His words seemed to surprise several in the room. 

“For now such questions are secondary,” one of the teachers said.  “The immediate work at hand is to bring down the Shah. Defining the new government will come later through democratic elections.”

               The revolution was now gaining momentum, with weekly marches and weekly martyrs.  The Shah seemed totally unable to deal with the situation Back in Paris,  Ghotzbadeh, told me he was heading to Iraq to see Khomeini. "Look," I said, "if I can get you a small film camera would you take pictures of him for us?” He was delighted with the idea, he said, since it would also give him a chance to get some film footage of Khomeini to circulate in Iran for his own purposes. Up till then, he had none.  

            But events were moving too fast. The French government, always attuned to the changing political winds, yielded to Ghozbadeh’s entreaties and allowed Khomeini to come to Paris.

             By  December 1978, it was obvious that the Shah was out. Ghotzbadeh  was exultant as we entered a fine restaurant for lunch in Paris.  He was immediately recognized by the maitre de, escorted to the best table. The 39-year-old dissident, who for years had travelled about from one Western capital to another, staying in shabby hotels, attempting to interest reporters and politicians with his apparently forlorn cause, representing an Iranian cleric none had even heard of, was now appearing on everyone's TV screen. He was one of the key spokesmen for the bearded Ayatollah, whose image was now recognized around the world. They were on the brink of power. The Shah's rapid collapse had amazed everyone, including the opposition.

   In a few days they would fly to Teheran, Ghotbzadeh told me with supreme confidence. Khomeini would be their spiritual leader, but the real source of government, he assured me, would be Western-educated reformers like himself. 

I raised the question of the world’s great revolutions and how they all seemed to follow the same dynamic--from the French to the American to the Russian-- how they all seemed to arrive at some Terror, how they devoured their young before they subsided and the political pendulum gradually swung back to centre.  How will you avoid being devoured? I asked Ghotbzbadeh , only half in jest. "Don't worry,” he said.  “We know what we're doing."

            That's, of course, not the way it worked out. The revolution became increasingly chaotic, increasingly radicalized, as competing parties and factions struggled violently for power, particularly after the American hostages were taken.    Zadegh manoeuvred desperately trying to stay on the political tightrope—head of Iranian TV, ultimately Foreign Minister.

         He helped us get an exclusive interview with Khomeini after the hostages were taken. Nine months later, in December 1980, with the hostages still being held, we returned to Iran. War had broken out with Iraq after Saddam invaded, quietly encouraged by the United States.

                We interviewed Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, an  economist turned President, and totally out of his element.  The war had even further radicalized politics in Iran and Bani-Sadr  had become a virtual prisoner in his own presidential palace.  The Imam Khomeini had thrown in his lot with the Islamic radicals. The Western educated revolutionaries like Bani-Sadr  and  Sadegh Ghotbzadeh had been thrust to the side.

In a Kafkaesque interview, Bani-Sadr talked frankly of the mounting wave of torture and repression under what in theory was his own government. He  condemned the road the revolution seemed to be taking.  Shortly afterwards he fled Iran for his life to become an exile in Paris.

    Zadegh Ghotzbadeh chose a different fate.  A few months before our visit he had been thrown in prison, charged with conspiring against the regime. It was only Khomeini's personal intervention that saved him.  Ghotzbadeh was  released, and ordered by the Imam to  go home,  stay there and stop his plotting.

Our last evening in Teheran in December 1980, Mike and I went over to Ghotbzadeh's spacious residence.  He greeted us with a wan smile. He was blunt in his criticism of Khomeini and the way in which the Revolution had been perverted from the goals that Western-educated Iranians had hoped it would take. "The Imam," said Ghotzbadeh, "had promised us before the Shah fell that, once the Revolution had won, he would go back to the Holy City of Qom and give us occasional spiritual guidance. But the real job of government would be left to us. But he misled us. Once he tasted power, he liked it. We were betrayed."

It was obvious Ghotzbadeh was ignoring Khomeini’s stern warning to stop conspiring.  Several people were there, some of them mullahs, others with the bearing of military officers. They talked softly in small groups. Occasionally one came over to speak in Farsi with Ghotzbadeh.  Yet Sadegh was still optimistic about the future, he said as we left. It was after midnight. The others remained.

Ghotzbadeh was rearrested a few months later and charged with attempting to overthrow the Islamic government in order to establish a secular republic. Though at his trial he denied the accusation, he was also charged with planning to assassinate the Imam Khomeini, the man he helped bring to power.

 On September 21, 1982, at Teheran's infamous Evin Prison, Zadegh Ghotzbadeh was placed before a wall and executed, shot through the neck.

Kissinger on Egypt: Give us a break, Henry

Always comforting to have Henry Kissinger around to advise the current U.S. administration what to do. His latest advice to Obama re Egypt: slow down, take things easier, don’t rush Egypt’s sensitive leaders.

"We should be looking at a democratic evolution," said Kissinger. But he warned the U.S. should cultivate key democratic reformists and military leaders in a low-key fashion during the process. "It should not look like an American project. The Egyptians are a proud people. They threw out the British and they threw out the Russians."

On the other hand, when thin-skinned right wing dictators in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay were disappearing  “democratic reformists” by the thousands in 1976, Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State—not having to worry about lurid accounts of torture on Twitter and Facebook and Al Jazeera-- advised South American generals to get on with their grisly task so as not to provoke censure from a U.S. Congress beginning to waken to the on-going slaughter.  Or, as Kissinger put it to Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar August Guzzetti,  in June 1976, "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you should get back quickly to normal procedures."

The things to be done were no secret: human rights organizations and State Department memorandum supplied all necessary details. In Argentina alone more than 10,000 people had been “disappeared” by the end of 1976. But, in the name of fighting the Cold War, those messy kinds of things had to be done said the Generals and their apologists—Kissinger included.

Ironically, for the past thirty years, Hosni Mubarak and his apologists have justified his brutal repression in similar terms. Some are still doing it. It’s just the name of the bogeyman that’s changed: from Communism to Radical Islam aka the Moslem Brotherhood—from Fidel Castro’s revolutionary virus to Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.  The fact that Al Qaeda’s leaders have condemned the Moslem Brotherhood for its willingness to participate in Egyptian politics is a detail.

The parallels between Egypt and the trio of South American military dictators is striking.  According to the State Department memo on the June 10 meeting between Kissinger and Admiral Guzzetti, obtained by the National Security Archives, the Argentine told Kissinger, "Our main problem in Argentina is terrorism. It is the first priority of the current government that took office on March 24. There are two aspects to the solution. The first is to ensure the internal security of the country; the second is to solve the most urgent economic problems over the coming 6 to 12 months. Argentina needs United States understanding and support…."

The NSA analysis of that memo continued, “This at a time when the international community, the U.S. media, universities, and scientific institutions, the U.S. Congress, and even the U.S. Embassy in Argentina were clamoring about the indiscriminate human rights violations against scientists, labor leaders, students, and politicians by the Argentine military, Secretary Kissinger told Guzzetti: "We are aware you are in a difficult period. It is a curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation. We understand you must establish authority."

The U.S. Ambassador had earlier protested to the Argentina government about the disappearance and torture of human rights workers, including American citizens. Kissinger, however, told Guzzetti, “In the United States we have strong domestic pressures to do something on human rights… We want you to succeed. We do not want to harrass [sic] you. I will do what I can…."

One could almost hear an American official today—sotto voce—giving similar advice to Egypt’s new Vice-President General Omar Suleiman, the man, let’s not forget, who for the past eight years headed up the feared Intelligence Directorate —infamous for systematic brutality, torture and disappearances; so skilled at their work that it was Suleiman and his uniformed thugs who were frequently used by the CIA’s rendition program.

All of a sudden though, Suleiman with his impeccable dark suit and tie and unflappable demeanor—is now not only the go-to man for torture but also, the go-to man to engineer “a transition to democracy.”

Not too fast a transition though, and certainly not too democratic.

Just as Henry the K. would advise.

The Egytian Army: The Big Unknown (Updated)

The Egyptian Army: Question Marks

In attempting to convince Mubarak to leave the scene, Washington desperately wants  to avoid further radicalization on the streets of Egypt and, above all, to ensure that the Egyptian Army remains unscathed. That interest, of course, coincides with the aim of Egypt’s top brass.  

The generals are intent on continuing to exercise power behind the scenes—as they have for decades.  

The announcement that the Army would refuse to take up arms against the people was part of that game plan. It undercut Mubarak and prevented him from attempting a bloody showdown that could have been disastrous—for the people, and the army. In fact, the Egyptian military made that same announcement in 1977 when they were called in to quell riots after President Sadat announced cuts in basic food subsidies. The Army refused to intervene unless the subsidies were reestablished. Sadat restored the subsidies.

That doesn’t mean that the Army would be willing to step aside for whatever the will of the people turns out to be. But, if they could be assured that they could remain the nation’s guardian, as in Turkey, for instance, what are the political limits the Army would accept?

Of course, the Army is not monolithic. Its ranks are filled with hundreds of thousands of conscripts, drawn from the most humble levels of society. It has traditionally been the most important means of socializing the lower classes, inculcating them with a sense of pride and patriotism. Indeed the 1971 Constitution says that the Egyptian Army shall “belong to the people This sentiment was made dramatically clear by the iconic images of soldiers shaking hands and embracing the demonstrators, even allowing them to paint slogans on their battle tanks.

How then explain the fact that on Wednesday, February 2 in Cairo, organized bands of armed thugs were reportedly allowed to pass through military checkpoints to attack the anti-Mubarak crowds, while the military stood aside, and watched.

That tactic makes eminent sense from the point of view of generals determined to keep themselves from the abyss.  Now that Mubarak has said he won’t run for another term, the generals would like the people to return obediently to their homes. The military will oversee things now, thanks. Only the people won’t go. They don’t trust Mubarak. But, since the army doesn’t want to endanger its own future by using bloody force at this point, let others do the dirty work. The military will keep its hands clean, and pretend it has no responsibility for the bloodshed.

So far, the tactic didn’t work: the people refused to back down.

The top military ranks have concerns other than just protecting their own  institution. They’re also worried about their own skins. They can never forget the lurid spectacle of Iranian generals being executed in the aftermath of Khomeini’s revolution in Iran. Iran also demonstrated that a radical revolution also means a radically transformed military, with the traditional army shunted aside. (Egypt’s generals have a constant reminder of that lesson nearby:  The Shah is buried in a Cairo mosque.).

Under Mubarak, the top military ranks have also enjoyed a pampered existence in rambling developments such as Cairo’s Nasr City, where officers are housed in spacious, subsidized condominiums. They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, schools and military consumer cooperatives featuring domestic and imported products at discount prices.

One of the most indulged divisions is the Egyptian Republican Guard, responsible for defending Cairo and key government institutions. They are under the control of the Minister of Defense. It is apparently the only significant military unit allowed in central Cairo, apart from the intelligence service’s military branch. Its ranks are filled primarily by highly-trained, highly motivated volunteers rather than conscripts. They are rewarded with bonuses, new cars and subsidized housing.

The Guard was created originally in 1952 as a kind of Praetorian Guard by Nasser to protect the presidency. Do they still view that as their main mission today?

But we’re not just talking about official perks. Many of Egypt’s military brass are notoriously corrupt. It was military land, for instance, that was sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo-with little if any accounting.

The military also presides over 16 sprawling factories that turn out not just weapons, but an array of domestic products from dishwashers to computers to medical diagnostic equipment. The military’s farms also produce enough food to feed their ranks with plenty left over to sell to civilians.

The justification for all this non-military activity is that the army is just more efficient that civilians. But that’s hard to prove since their operations are off the books. Many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia.

The U.S. also has a 1.3 billion dollar carrot dangling in front of the Egyptian Army. That annual American military aid to Egypt has allowed the Egyptian officers to get their hands on lots of nifty weapons—as we’ve seen over the past few days in and over downtown Cairo.

The generals realize there is no way the U.S. will continue paying for those playthings if a new regime more hostile to the U.S. and/or Israel takes power in Cairo.

Will the generals be willing to forego that aid?

There has also reportedly been a surge recently of religious feeling among the ranks of the military themselves—and their wives.  

Will they be willing to reconsider their traditional antipathy to the Moslem Brotherhood and more radical Islamic movements?

Tune in tomorrow.

The Egyptian Army: The Unknown Factor

In attempting to convince Mubarak to leave the scene, Washington obviously wants  to temper any further radicalization on the streets of Egypt and, above all, to ensure that the Egyptian Army remains unscathed. That would enable the generals to remain the power behind the scenes in the coming weeks and months—ready to step in, if necessary, to veto any attempt by Islamic fundamentalists to come to power—even by free and open elections. 

But determining what the Egyptian Army will ultimately do requires weighing a host of factors.

The announcement, for instance, that the Egyptian Army would refuse to take up arms against the people played perfectly into Washington’s game plan. It undercut Mubarak and prevented him from attempting a bloody showdown that could have been disastrous. In fact, the Egyptian military made that same announcement in 1977 when they were called in to quell riots after President Sadat announced cuts in basic food subsidies. The Army refused to intervene unless the subsidies were reestablished. Sadat restored the subsidies.

But does that mean the Army would be willing to step aside for whatever the will of the people turns out to be?  For a government dominated by the Moslem Brotherhood, for instance? For a government hostile to the U.S.? to Israel?

Of course, the Army is not monolithic. Its lower ranks are very much of the people: filled with hundreds of thousands of conscripts, drawn from the most humble ranks of society. The army has traditionally been the most important means of socializing and educating the lower classes, in theory, inculcating them with a sense of pride and patriotism. Indeed the 1971 Constitution says that the Egyptian Army shall “belong to the people”" This sentiment was made dramatically clear by the iconic images of soldiers shaking hands and embracing the demonstrators, even allowing them to paint slogans on their battle tanks.

The top ranks of the army, however, have other concerns—beginning with personal survival.  They certainly will never forget the lurid spectacle of Iranian generals being publicly executed in the aftermath of Khomeini’s revolution in Iran. Iran also demonstrated that a radical revolution also means a radically transformed military. (Egypt’s generals have a constant reminder of that lesson nearby:  The Shah is buried in a Cairo mosque.).

Under Mubarak, the top ranks of the Egyptian army have also enjoyed a pampered existence, in sprawling developments such as Cairo’s Nasr City. There, as elsewhere in Egypt, officers are housed in spacious condominiums, at highly subsidized rents,  They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, schools and military consumer "cooperatives" selling a range of domestic and imported products at discount prices.

One of the most indulged units is the Egyptian Republican Guard, a heavily armored division, with the main responsibility of defending Cairo and key government institutions. They are under the control of the Minister of Defense. It is apparently the only significant military unit allowed in central Cairo, apart from the intelligence service’s military branch.  Its ranks are filled primarily by highly motivated volunteers rather than conscripts. They are rewarded with bonuses, new cars and subsidized housing and greater training than the regular army.

The Guard was created originally in 1952 as a kind of Praetorian Guard by Nasser to protect the presidency. Do they still view that as their mission today?

But we’re not just talking about subsidized apartments.  Many of Egypt’s military brass are notoriously corrupt. They have used their power to line their pockets, just as have their civilian government counterparts. It was military land, for instance, that was sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo-with little if any accounting.

The military also presides over a sprawling network of 16 factories across the country, employing tens of thousands of Egyptians. These factories turn out not just weapons, but an incredible array of domestic products from dishwashers to computers to medical diagnostic equipment. The military’s farms produce enough food to feed their ranks with plenty left over to sell to civilians.

The military’s justification for all this non-military activity is that the army is just more efficient that civilians. But many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia. The army’s operations they say are riddled with cozy inside dealings. In any case, once again, there is no public accounting. No one is quite sure whether they are making or losing money or who is pocketing the profits. Their operations are all off the books.

Though unspoken, such considerations will certainly be in the minds of the generals calling the shots in Cairo.

The U.S. also has a 1.3 billion dollar carrot dangling in front of the Egyptian Army. That annual American military aid to Egypt has allowed the Egyptian officers to get their hands on some of the most sophisticated of modern weapons—as we’ve seen over the past few days in downtown Cairo.

The generals realize there is no way the U.S. will continue paying for those goodies if a new regime more hostile to Israel takes power in Cairo.

Will they be willing to let that go?

On the other hand, there has reportedly been a surge in Islamic militancy among the ranks of the military themselves—and their wives. 

A frightening new era opens for Israel and its American friends.

It's (partially) the food, stupid!

On the face of it, the protests currently sweeping across the Arab world have been driven by overwhelmingly leaderless, frustrated, impoverished, unemployed youths battling, geriatric dictatorial regimes, supported by a pampered military--and the United States.

Fueling all these protests though, from Egypt, to Yemen, to Jordan to Tunisia to  Algeria is another common factor: rocketing food prices, just as they fueled the French revolution.

A “perfect storm” of natural disasters around the globe, plus rising oil prices and rapacious speculators have produced the current dramatic spike in food prices, but even without those events, the fact is food prices will continue to spiral upward, and will continue roiling the planet, no matter who is governing.

What is outrageous is that our leaders know this—they’ve known it for years--but, like deer transfixed by the lights of an onrushing truck—they’ve done precious little to avert catastrophe.  Indeed, rather than deal with impending disaster, they’ve made the situation even worse.   

The statistics are stark:  Almost 7 billion people currently inhabit this planet, one billion of whom are already on the brink of starvation. By 2050 the total will be 9.2 billion, with higher incomes for many; thus much larger and demanding appetites.

The bottom line is the world will need 70% more food in 2050 than it produced in 2000. But at the same time, the resources available are plummeting. The amount of agricultural land per person on the planet will drop from 10.6 acres in 1961 to 3.7 acres in 2050.  

As for water, just to maintain current levels of (mal) nutrition--never mind improving things—farmers will need 17% more fresh water by 2050.  Problem is 70% of the world’s fresh water is already used for irrigation.

But instead of investing in agriculture, the world’s leaders, and development organizations have been obsessed with industrialization. The statistics are shocking: development assistance from all sources to agriculture went from 20% of all aid twenty-five years ago--to only 4 % today.   

Developing countries themselves reduced their own investment in agriculture from 11% twenty-five years ago to 7% in 2007.

These figures from Pandey Shivaji, a soft-spoken Indian official I spoke with at the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Offices in Rome.

First off, he says, food production has to be transformed from a dull, bureaucratic backwater to page one of the international agenda.  75% of the world’s hungry and poor still live in rural areas and derive their livelihood from the land.

O.K., I ask, but surely it makes sense to industrialize, get those people good factory jobs and off the over-crowded land, right?

Wrong, he says.  “Agriculture has been shown to be twice as effective in eliminating hunger and poverty as any other kind of development. There is scientific evidence that every one percent increase in crop productivity will reduce the number of poor and hungry by .4 percent.”

What about the wonders of the “green revolution”? That’s over,” says Shivaji. “Sixty years ago, rice, wheat and maize yields in countries like India, were dramatically rising at 3% a year. No longer. The rate of growth instead is declining heading for about one percent a year by 2050.”

It was the soaring food prices of 2007 and 2008 and the radical political unrest they sparked, that finally got the world’s leaders to start paying attention.  One result, Pandev Shivaji heads a steering committee under the auspices of the FAO, tasked with figuring out how to dramatically increase food production without at the same time destroying the ecology.

One of the first things he did was to tell his experts to stop their research.  “Of, course, there are still things to learn,” he says, “but we already know a lot of the answers. We’ve known for decades.”

 The problem is that the politicians who call the shots have refused to listen.

-To arguments against protectionism, for example. According to Mark Malloch Brown, the former head of the UNDP,  the developed world, lavishes a billion dollars a day on subsidies and support prices to protect their farmers, many of them huge agribusinesses. That protection costs developing countries $50 billion in potential lost agricultural exports. That sum is the equivalent of all development assistance to the third world.  

--Another well-known problem: since bio energy became the flavor of the month, almost 5% of the world’s cereals are now used not to feed people but to produce 0.3% of the world’s energy.

--One major problem, says Pandey Shivaji, is that many of the new technologies have been developed for rich, large farmers. Governments have generally ignored the 400-500 million of the world’ farmers who cultivate less than 5 acres of land. “They have no strong political voice, but those small farmers produce more than half of the world’s food.”

It was small farmers tilling an average 2.7 acres of land in India’s Punjab who were responsible for the Green Revolution in the 60s and 70s, a revolution that took India from the brink of famine and to actually exporting food by 1985.   Similarly, the agriculture revolution that occurred in China in the past twenty-five years occurred on the back of farmers with less than half an acre of land.  

The “white revolution” that made India the world’s number one milk producer was achieved by women and men farmers with only one or two cows.

Says Shivaji, “In a country like Madagascar, where seventy percent of the population live on less than one dollar a day, where agriculture is the most important contributor to the GDP, if it is not agriculture that will get them out of their misery what do the so called experts propose? So many other countries are in that same situation in Africa.

“Certainly some consolidation of small land holdings would be better, but today we can make this world a better place only by making it easier for those who’ve been ignored for so long.”

--But one of the biggest victims of the lack of investment in agriculture is teaching and research. Says Shivaji, “Around the globe, many of the so-called “agriculture experts” are less qualified than they were fifty years ago. Many don’t even understand what they’re supposed to be teaching. They don’t even know that they don’t know.”

-There’s also been no investment in infrastructure to aid the farmer. That means roads, storage, electricity, and access to credit.

Of course, all that costs money. But some solutions are remarkably—if deceptively--simple. For instance, huge numbers of small landholders across the globe don’t have title to their farms. Says Shivaji, “If I don't own it I’m not going to invest in it or protect it. So they don’t invest.” In Vietnam in 1989, in the face of a dramatic food crisis, the Communist government—which was importing food--gave titles to the peasants. Within just three years, Vietnam became the world’s third largest rice exporter. “It wasn’t the only factor, but giving those titles had a major impact. Even Cuba now is talking about giving 7000 square meters of land to farmer.”

Some ways of raising production would actually save money. Thirty years ago, for example, the “experts” advised farmers to thoroughly plow their land, get rid of all weeds, ruffage and waste. Bad advice, says Shivaji.  Such methods actually destroy the soil. 

“Now we tell them to till the earth only when and where necessary.” Sounds simple, and there are dramatic side effects. In addition to saving the land, less plowing also means the farmer spends less for tractors and fuel. It also means less greenhouse gas emissions—in two ways:  less fuel burned, but also, if the soil isn’t thoroughly plowed, more carbon remains trapped in the earth —74 kilograms per acre per year.

“This reform actually means spending less, and it requires no new technology. It’s just teaching the farmer not to do something,” says Shivaji.

-It all seems obvious, but less than 10% of global farmland—largely in North and South America --is under this kind of system.

-Other reforms—like rotating crops, cutting back on rampant use of pesticides and fertilizers—are nothing new, but they can have a revolutionary impact, often in ways you would never think of. Such as teaching farmers not to burn their waste, but to use it as a mulch on their fields. That improves soil quality, but it also means less evaporation, which means farmers will need 30% less water. Also, in Australia researchers found out that such mulching also reduces the temperature of the plants by one degree--which could greatly reduce the impact of climate change on crop production.

Shivaji’s task force will present these and other strategies to agricultural ministers from around the world in Rome this June. “We’re going to boil thing down to 100 to 120 pages, something that national leaders can digest in a couple of hours while they’re flying from one spot to another.”

            On one hand, there’s reason for optimism, says Shivaji,  “The lessons we have learned in the past 40 to 50 years have taught us now we can produce more on the same amount of land, and can do it in a way that does not destroy the ecosystem.”

            Problem is, implementation is not in the hands of FAO experts. They have to convince policy makers to make the reforms, many of which have been proposed for decades.   

            Perhaps this current dramatic wave of unrest will convince at least some leaders they no longer have a choice.

Tunisia: Democratic Triumph or Prelude to U.S. Disaster?

Officially, the Obama administration greeted the “Jasmine” revolution in Tunisia with open arms, calling for free and fair elections as the U.S. scrambled to get aboard the democratic bandwagon. 

Celebration is restrained, however in Washington. Instead, there’s serious concern about who will take the place of the corrupt, 74 year-old Tunisian dictator, who, until the end, was considered an important American ally in the War against Terror.

Assuming the Tunisian military actually agrees to hold free elections [not at all a sure thing] will the generals really throw open the doors to all political groups? Nationalists? Islamists? Marxists? Anti-militarists? What forces will roil to the surface after decades of political repression? Will they throw in their lot with America’s War against Terror, or join the ranks of those in the Middle East who increasingly see what’s going on as the U.S.’s war against Islam?

Washington’s ambivalent view was evident even before the revolution was victorious. In Doha on Thursday, Hillary Clinton lectured Arab autocrats and others meeting there on the urgent need for reform and an end to rampant corruption if they wanted to save their regimes.

But just a couple of days earlier, as young demonstrators were being gunned down in the cities and towns of Tunisia, when Hillary was asked which side the U.S. was on, she replied that the U.S. was “not taking sides"”

U.S. officials have reason to hesitate. Jasmine uprisings across the Middle East and Central Asia could spell disaster for American policy.

--There is no way, for instance, that Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 30 years, will permit a democratic opening. Thanks to his ironclad dictatorship, the only group who has been able to organize politically are the Islamic radicals. More secular-minded opponents have been either co-opted or imprisoned or totally cowed. The influence of the religious extremists has grown throughout the country--anti-American and anti-Israel. It’s only the military that stand between Mubarak and chaos.   

But, like a deer frozen in on-coming headlights, Washington seems immobilized. On the one hand, there’s the corrupt, despotic, and failing Mubarak. But he’s a friend. On the other hand, truly free and fair elections would almost certainly bring leaders to power much more virulently anti-Israel and opposed to U.S. policies. Perhaps they’re hoping for the Egyptian the military to step in again to save itself and its privileges--and the U.S.

-Indeed elsewhere throughout the region, from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Yemen to Ethiopia to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the picture seems markedly similar: U.S. allies are invariably corrupt dictators, maintained in power by lavish patronage and the military.

-Ironically, in Lebanon, where the public has had a growing voice in national politics, it’s the anti-American and anti-Israel Hezbollah who have ridden popular acclaim to become the decisive voice in the country.

-Similarly in Iraq, popular participation has also benefited America’s most outspoken enemy there: Moqtada al-Sadr., whose followers fought bloody battles against the U.S. after the invasion.  Seemingly vanquished, he has returned from three years in Iran to wield a decisive political voice in Iraq. He demands the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases from his country.

Ironically, because of the elections in Iraq, the country that will almost certainly be calling the shots there in the future will not be the United Statues—but Iran.

-Meanwhile moderates pushing for something akin to democracy and secular rule are losing ground. In Pakistan, the soldier who killed the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, who had been outspoken in his fight against religious fundamentalism, that soldier was showered with rose petals while many of the country’s lawyers—who had once gone to the streets demanding democratic reform—celebrated the murderer as a national hero.

-And democracy in Israel? A true democracy with a vote for every person—Jews and all the Arabs under Israeli control—including those living on The West Bank? Forget it. It would be the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish State.  We don’t hear Hillary or Obama talking much about that these days.

-Indeed, at the end of her lecture to the Arab leaders in Doha, one of  Hillary’s Arab audience asked why the U.S. wasn’t doing it’s share to fight the war against Islamic fundamentalism by putting more pressure on Israel to deal with the Palestinians.  Her answer –pointing out that the U.S. paid more to finance the Palestinian Authority than did most of the Arab countries—simply dodged the issue.

-Of course, it would be unfair to point out that, after her civics lesson in Doha,  Hillary returned to Washington where, even after the lurid shootings in Arizona, U.S. legislators are unable to even to discuss  clamping down on firearms, because of the all-powerful gun lobby.  It’s also Washington where American officials, from Obama on down, are terrified of taking on the pro-Israel lobby - not because the lobby represents the views of the majority of Americans—or even a great majority of American Jews, but because it wields a very undemocratic power far beyond its  numbers.