II. HOW WILL MUBARAK'S SUCCESSION TAKE PLACE IN EGYPT?
The rapporteurs arrived in Cairo on February 22, 2009, the same day a young Frenchwoman, Cécile Vannier, was killed in the attack on the Khan Khalili bazar. As President Hosni Mubarak's succession draws near, they found a society under control but beset by deep tensions.
A. A SOCIETY BESET BY DEEP TENSIONS
1. A worsening economic situation
Egypt has 80 million people, making it the Middle East's most populous country. Its weak economy offers bleak prospects to the 600,000 young people entering the labor market every year. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says 58% of the population lives on less than two dollars a day.
The situation is bound to worsen due to the global economic slump. Revenues from the three mainstays of Egypt's economy will plummet in 2009. Tourism, the main source of income at $11 billion a year, is expected to drop by 40%. So are oil and gas exports. The finance minister says Suez Canal revenues are likely to fall by 25%.
Economic expansion is expected to decrease from 7% in 2008 to 4% or even 2% in 2009, but a 5% growth rate is necessary to absorb newcomers on the labor market.
2. No glimpse of change on the political horizon
The Muslim Brotherhood is far from universally popular and unlikely to win power in free and fair elections. The organization itself says it is not ready to govern. The rapporteurs met its parliamentary group's leader, who sought to put across the image that the Muslim Brotherhood is a reasonable opposition party based on religious values, comparable to Europe's Christian Democrats. Mentioning what happened to Hamas after its election victory in Palestine, he said he cared more about winning over public opinion with an active social program than about winning elections, for fear of sparking a violent reaction from the army and the international community.
The political center is fragmented between the hegemonic National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Muslim Brotherhood. Some parties, like Al Wasat, are banned. The most charismatic leaders, such as Ayman Nour, head of the Hizb al-Ghad ("the party of tomorrow"), are in jail. Nour's case is revealing. On December 24, 2005 he was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and sentenced to five years in prison without parole for fraud in the procedure of the recognition of his new party's statutes in 2004. But the real reason was for being President Mubarak main rival in the September 2005 presidential elections, when he won 7.3% of the votes--a very high score in a country where no stone is left unturned to ensure that the candidate in power achieves an overwhelming victory and voter turnout is just 10%. The strong show of support for Nour worried the regime, which changed the election laws so that such an event could not happen again. Nour was released in February 2009 after Hillary Clinton pressured Mubarak at the Sharm El Sheikh summit.
3. A diplomatic position that sparks popular anger and frustration
Egypt insists on remaining an indispensable mediator between the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All roads lead to Cairo: negotiations between Israel and Hamas for the release of Gilad Shalit, as well as between Fatah and Hamas. But the lack of tangible results reveals how hard it is for Egypt's leaders to influence the course of events and attests to the contradiction in Egyptian foreign policy caused by the deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since the late 1990s.
Egypt is trying to preserve its international status by playing a role that brings it closer to Israel and the United States, which ruffles the feathers of public opinion. "Where is the Egyptian army?" chanted protestors demonstrating against Israel's offensive in Gaza.
Yet Egypt's diplomacy was the last aspect of President Mubarak's policy that remained uncriticized in public opinion, except for the relationship with Israel.
B. A BLOCKED SOCIETY
1. Widespread unease
Egypt is not the only country plagued by economic and political tensions, but they have combined with anger and frustration over its diplomacy during Israel's Gaza offensive to cause widespread resentment against the government. The police have put down street demonstrations but people have internalized their revolt, causing a hardening of identity. Egypt is one of the Middle East's most significant examples of this.
The hardening of identity takes the form of the return of religion as a social norm, community bond and factor of aggressiveness. Clashes between the Muslim majority and the community of approximately six million Coptic Christians have never been as violent as in the past few years. They are accompanied by a deliberate display of religious signs.
The return of religion is also accompanied by dwindling support for the Western-style women's emancipation movement that the urban upper and middle classes backed in the 1920s. Veiled women work, study and are very visible in public spaces. The veil has enabled young women from the most patriarchal and conservative circles to leave the family and, in a way, fostered a certain degree of emancipation, but others consider it a step backwards.
2. The risk of terrorist attacks
According to information the rapporteurs obtained on site, the February 22 attack in Cairo was probably committed by a small group of improvised terrorists. The bomb was handmade, the explosive power low. Nobody ever claimed responsibility. Egypt had already experienced a wave of similar attacks in 2005. They are carried out by small groups expressing widespread anger through violence. They do not seem to fit in with the overall pattern of attacks in 1980s whose aim was to destabilize the regime. These kinds of attacks strengthen rather than weaken President Mubarak's regime. Most Egyptians are outraged by them because they kill innocent people and deter tourism, the main source of income for a million Egyptian workers. The hypothesis of a punitive action against France remote-controlled by Lebanon's Hezbollah has been mentioned but not proved.
C. A SOCIETY UNDER CONTROL AS PRESIDENT HOSNI MUBARAK'S SUCCESSION DRAWS NEAR
1. A society under control
Egypt has only had two short-lived revolutions in the past century (1919 and 1952). Many observers say Egyptians are exceptionally peaceful and patient. Widespread poverty and harsh living conditions inflict a structural violence that generates little crime compared to countries confronted with the same tensions, in Latin America for example. The endless patience of a still highly-structured society combines with omnipresent police control to maintain relative calm.
In addition, the government conducts pursues a clever policy to curb political alternatives. The Muslim Brotherhood is split into two main currents: the "conservatives", who are actually "radicals", advocate the merger of religious and political authorities, whereas the "progressives" or "liberals" espouse the strict separation of political and religious institutions. The Egyptian government is trying to leave the monopoly of the Islamic opposition to the radicals in order to strengthen their role as a scarecrow by systematically imprisoning the progressive wing's leaders. That is a classic political strategy consisting of giving the partisans of "chaos" center stage in order to swing public opinion behind the upholders of law and order.
2. Hosni Mubarak's succession
The way has been paved for Gamal Mubarak, a highly Westernized businessman, to have real power in the NDP, strengthening his chances of succeeding his father. Nevertheless, his candidacy has come up against many stumbling blocks, starting with the fact that many Egyptians, in particular army officers, resent that Mubarak has handpicked his son to be his political heir, viewing it as an imitation of the Syrian model and an example of the decay of the republican spirit. The fact that Gamal Mubarak is not from the ranks of the military also weakens his chances. Lastly, some of his father's unpopularity rubs off on him.
However, if constitutional procedures are followed, only a handful of people in the in the NDP is eligible for the highest office in the land. Gamal Mubarak is one of them. A small group will make the final choice based on an already established procedure and the decision will probably not clash with the army's orientations.
But to tell the truth, the question of knowing who will succeed Mubarak matters little because the new president will necessarily be an insider chosen for his ability not to ruffle the army's or business circles' feathers.
The choice of when the succession is settled will be crucial: Gamal Mubarak will have a good chance during his father's lifetime; after Hosni Mubarak's death, the army will probably impose its man.
Since 1952 the army has been the only organization whose legitimacy is unanimously unquestioned in Egypt. It is a leading political and economic power and the country's biggest property owner, with military and civilian manufacturing sites, tourism investment programs and retired generals in parliament. The army controls diplomacy, which is not in the hands of a diplomat but of a military officer. The same is true of the economy. The army is a parallel society that supplies all its members with housing, health care and holiday villages. It will undoubtedly resist any attempts to loosen its ties to power.
In those conditions, the likeliest hypothesis is that General Omar Souleiman, the minister of internal security, will become president. That is also the opinion of the Muslim Brotherhood leader the rapporteurs met.
In conclusion, Egyptian society resembles a pressure cooker. Freedom of expression, limited to a fringe of the population, acts as a safety valve, so an explosion will probably not occur. If destabilization takes place it will probably come from an external shock or a major regional crisis.
The Arab world still looks up to Egypt because of its big population, outstanding scientific, artistic, intellectual and medical elites and skilled diplomats, but its dependency on the United States and desire for peace with Israel weaken the country's position in the Middle East. Egypt's diplomatic influence is limited to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, which it wants to keep under its control.
French diplomacy must continue to consider, but not overestimate, Egypt's importance in the region in general and in the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. The fact that Egypt signed a separate peace with Israel has weakened its position with all the other parties and reduced its margin of maneuver as an honest broker. The deadlock of the talks under its aegis between Fatah and Hamas is one example. France must respect the importance of Egypt's role as co-leader of the Arab world with Saudi Arabia but also pursue the diversification of its relations with the Arab League countries.