Al Ahram Weekly
Abdel-Moneim Said, Tuesday 22 Aug 2023
Abdel-Moneim Said takes the long view
On 23 January 2014, I wrote an article in Al-Ahram Weekly titled “The sin of Steven Cook”, referring to one of a group of US think tank researchers who spent an inordinate amount of effort criticising the 30 June Revolution and its aftermath. They have not changed a bit, even though the world, the Middle East, Egypt, and even the US have changed tremendously in the past decade.
Steven Cook and his colleagues share a black-and-white view of the world. Countries are either democratic or authoritarian. In the former you find material and moral good; in the latter, only intellectual and moral decay and destruction. American foreign policy today is grounded in this outlook, which is instrumental in the current global crisis. It is a world view formulated by people with no knowledge of world history, how countries have evolved, or how the US itself has developed since the American Revolution and Civil War.
When it comes to Egypt, those people espouse another premise with consummate certainty. They hold that, as long as Egypt keeps the Muslim Brotherhood out of power, it will head to the abyss. In a recent Foreign Policy article titled “How Sisi Ruined Egypt”, Cook supplies a bundle of facts and figures about the state of the Egyptian economy: inflation rates, currency exchange rates, national debt and its ratio to GDP, etc. He then scoffs at the Egyptian development process and concludes with a stab at what he claims is Egypt’s declining regional influence, evidence of which is to be found in its handling of the current Sudan crisis. Of course, he fails to mention the huge success the US has had in keeping that crisis under control.
The main problem with surgical precision selectivity when speaking about the economic crisis in Egypt is omission. It omits mention, for example, that Egypt has never failed to pay its debts. It is blind to how the country’s inhabited area has doubled during the past decade from seven per cent in 2010 to 15 per cent this year. In that same period, Egypt never recorded negative growth. Economic growth has consistently surpassed the rate of population growth even during the Covid-19 pandemic. You can see this on Google Maps, in the 7,000 km expansion in the road and transportation network, which is more than the total length of this network since the beginning of the 21st century. The US Foreign Affairs Council member would have to exert great research efforts to learn that everything related to Egyptian infrastructure, from electricity, transport and potable water to seaports and airports, schools and universities, has doubled in the past 10 years. Meanwhile, debts were covered by assets. That is why there has been no economic collapse and no rush on the banks in a country whose population increased by 20 million during that period.
The most important development that occurred in Egypt is the unprecedented shift in population concentration from the Nile Valley to the Red Sea and Mediterranean coasts and Sinai (the Suez Canal zone and Aqaba). Nothing like it has happened since Khedive Ismail built the Suez Canal and founded its three cities. President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi has founded 24 cities and built six giant tunnels linking the Nile Valley with Sinai. Inroads of a similar magnitude were accomplished vertically with linkage between the Toshka project in Upper Egypt with land reclamation and the development of the New Delta to the south of New Alamein on the Mediterranean. As a result, the area under cultivation in Egypt will have increased by 50 per cent by 2025. Many of these projects had been proposed and studied under president Hosni Mubarak. That they have been implemented in the space of a decade testifies to the government’s perseverance and ability to get things done. Bear in mind that this agricultural expansion required major desalinisation and water recycling work at a time the country was dealing with three successive crises: terrorism, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine.
On the one hand, the New Administrative Capital is meant to connect with Cairo’s eastward expansion, with such satellite cities as New Cairo, Rihab, Madinaty, Badr, Shorouk, and New Heliopolis. On the other hand, it would be impossible for Cairo, with its 22 million people, to survive without a new and modern capital, free of random urban development. The US research makes no mention of the fact that the new capital proved to have positive repercussions for what is known as “historic Cairo”. Restoration works in Fustat, Fatimid, and Ayoubid Cairo, the later Ottoman, and Khedival quarters has boomed. Never have so many cultural centres, museums, and theatres opened their doors. At the same time, some two million modern, fully equipped housing units were built for inhabitants of the poorer “slum” areas, and they are complemented with health and educational facilities. Cook might also find it edifying to learn that rural Egypt is experiencing the largest ever modernisation process, with 5,000 villages under development in the framework of the Decent Life initiative.
This is all a far cry from the decay and destruction he would like to portray. This is the reconstruction of an ancient state. Perhaps if Cook understood the virtue of comparison with the debts and economic straits that weigh on all countries, he would be better able to understand Egypt’s current condition in a global context. He was clearly disappointed in the past when the Egyptian government was not defeated. He will be in for another disappointment when Egypt and the rest of the world emerge from the global crisis by 2030, the target date of Egypt’s 15-year comprehensive development plan.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 August, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Anti Egyptian propaganda is endemic in that group and wishing the MB on Egypt is what disqualifies them the most. Maybe America should be ruled by religious factions too! This Cook guy is obviously a paid hack on multiple payrolls, let him bray as much as he wants, his writings disqualify him as a observer or analyst, just a hack hacking along.
Posted by: Dr Reda Sobky | 08/24/2023 at 03:13 AM