6 - 12 December 2001
Issue No.563
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 December 2001 Issue No.563 |
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Al-Ahram:
A Diwan of contemporary life (419)
When the Egyptian economy began to flounder in the late 1920s, the subsequent rise in crime caused the authorities to start putting a premium on public safety and security. Previously, policemen -- especially poorly paid officers -- had come under scathing attacks in the press for being too weak of character to properly enforce the law. This alleged inability to project a sense of security to the public compounded an already dangerous situation in a capital that had to deal with drug trafficking, prostitution, agrarian thefts and police complicity in assorted criminal activities. As a result, several studies were published in Al-Ahram calling for reforms in law enforcement, including recruiting officers with higher academic levels. Professor Yunan Labib Rizk* checks on Egypt's law and order strategy
Safety first
Public safety became a major concern on the pages of Al-Ahram in 1927 and 1928. Plummeting cotton prices had brought severe economic stagnation, along with the rise in crime that tends to follow declining economic prosperity. Such was the situation that Director of Public Security Mahmoud Fahmi El-Qaisi issued a report in which he reviewed the state of public security in Egypt. It was published in full in Al-Ahram.
In 1927, Egyptian traffic policemen cruised around Cairo's streets on motorcycles. There were also riot police, like those standing at attention above, while other officers rode in US-made Ford cars to patrol the city
Growing anxiety over the rise in crime began to show in several news items, commentaries and recommendations for reform published in Al-Ahram in 1927. We note, for example, the reports concerning the government's decision to expand the jurisdiction of the Mixed Courts, which had been restricted to civil claims to cover crimes related to drug trafficking and tampering with food and medicines. Up to then, foreigners could commit such crimes with impunity, protected as they were from the reach of the Egyptian judiciary by the immunities accorded to them under the capitulations system.
Al-Ahram provides numerous instances of cases in which foreign lawbreakers emerged entirely unscathed. Under the headline: "Shocking Incident -- European Officer Caught Smuggling Heroin," the newspaper reports that the officer, stationed on a European warship, was apprehended on pier 14 in the harbour of Alexandria, in possession of 1.8 kilogrammes of heroin. After arresting the man, whose nationality was not revealed, the Egyptian authorities turned him over to his consulate for trial, which never took place. The smuggler was simply allowed to return to his ship which transported him back to his home country safe and sound."
Several days later, a front page news item announced that four officers were brought before the disciplinary board to face various charges. One had forced soldiers under his command to perform chores in his home and farms and the second was accused of "immoral association with women." The third was charged with "protecting houses of ill-repute and the wrongful arrest of a prostitute," while the fourth was charged with "protecting hashish dens and frequenting houses of ill-repute."
The first reaction to the crackdown came from police officers who complained that the public simply did not abide by the law. In European capitals, they said, when a policeman raises his baton, "tens of thousands come to a halt and do not budge, complain or become haughty and obstinate. This is because that small signal made by the policeman represents the will of the nation, which must be respected and obeyed. Indeed, observe how, when a European policeman puts his hand on the shoulder of a criminal, he says, 'I arrest you in the name of the law,' and leads him away. The criminal does not attempt to flee." Egypt was another case entirely. When a policeman attempts to arrest a lawbreaker, "the two begin to argue and scuffle and the offender falls on the ground as crowds gather around and express sympathy for him."
Other police officers claimed they were coming under attack in the press unfairly. Al-Ahram relates that one police officer appeared at its doorstep to complain that the newspaper was waging a systematic campaign to tarnish the reputation of certain officers, thereby depriving them of opportunities for promotion. Another officer succeeded in speaking for himself through the pages of Al- Ahram. His letter, which appeared on the front page of the newspaper's 18 September 1927 edition, charged that "certain newspapers" had mounted "a concerted campaign attacking police officers on every front, including their dignity and honour."
He continues: "Take for example that insidious campaign that a certain weekly newspaper has been waging relentlessly against police officers in the capital. Not a week goes by without subjecting at least one officer to the most heinous accusations and slurs." What such papers fail to understand and what makes policemen such easy targets is that they are under enormous pressure from all sides, he said. They are caught between "the gunfire that targets them for having performed their duties, thus creating numerous enemies" and "the gunfire of their superiors who want policemen to be malleable instruments." The writer goes on to remark, "should a policeman show an independent spirit, his superiors will crush him, and should they offend him, it is the policeman's duty not to feel offended for if he does his reward will be destruction."
Against this background, the annual report of Maj Gen Thomas Russel appeared. Russel served as Cairo's police commandant from 1913 to 1946 and, therefore, it is little wonder that he figures prominently in historical studies on Egyptian security services. Russel's report offered an analysis of the state of the security services in the capital and recommendations for remedying flaws. Such importance did Al-Ahram attach to it that it published it in full over four issues.
One of the major problems Russel addressed concerned the paltry pension provisions for policemen. A policeman could work for 20 years or more "and then get kicked out onto the streets with no more than a LE50 compensation, even though during his period of service he could find numerous ways to make a fortune without ever being discovered," the report said. In order to keep temptation at bay, certain modifications had to be made to the terms of service. Above all, the government should introduce a system of permanent employment, thereby entitling policemen to a pension upon retirement. Literacy, Russel added, should be a major criterion for employment and an administrative body should be created to help police find new jobs after they leave the service. He also suggested creating residential quarters for police in certain areas of Cairo, such as Shubra, Old Cairo, Sayeda Zeinab, Al-Khalifa and Abbasiya. These quarters would be linked to the city by tram-lines. One of Russel's suggestions became reality in the second half of the 20th century, in the form of the popular housing quarters constructed for low-income Egyptians.
As drugs and prostitution were the two main sources of crime in the capital, Russel devoted a lengthy section of his report to ways to combat offences relating to these activities. Drug trafficking was a particularly alluring occupation; the profits were excellent and the risk was relatively low. "A policeman, coastguard officer or customs guard earns LE48 a year, while a kilo of heroin costs LE120 abroad and can be sold for LE320, earning the smuggler a net profit of LE200." Moreover, even if this profit is shared with a few employees in the agencies responsible for combating drug trafficking, the traffickers still come out ahead, particularly when one thinks that a law enforcement conscript who takes part in uncovering a smuggling operation receives a bonus of LE1.
Prostitution posed something of a conundrum. Russel states that he hoped to relocate official prostitution areas that were in the centre of the capital to one of the suburbs, where "all the prostitutes would be native Egyptians to serve society's lower classes." At the same time, he was concerned by the spread of unofficial houses of ill-repute, which he estimated had become more numerous than the official brothels and which, therefore, gave rise to an increase in soliciting as well as to a greater risk of the spread of venereal diseases. His recommendation was to establish a vice bureau, a suggestion that the Egyptian government implemented, albeit many years later.
Russel was saddened by some of the tragic consequences of rural migration to the capital. Most migrants, he wrote, could only find work in extremely arduous and low-paying construction jobs. But they were worse off if they could not find a job at all. To make matters worse, migrants who shunned life in the capital and returned to their villages left behind scores of illegitimate children who ended up growing up in the homes of women with no husbands and who eventually were driven to a life of vagrancy.
El-Qaisi's report on public security in Egypt was more comprehensive than Russel's and better substantiated by facts and figures concerning the progress made in law enforcement over the preceding years. As such, it represents an unprecedented attempt to analyse the causes and effects of crime, as well as the means of combating it.
Nearly the whole of Al-Ahram's front page of 18 January 1928 was devoted to El-Qaisi's introduction to his report. He readily acknowledged the rise in crime in the country and sought to present "the true causes" behind this phenomenon. For example, he observes, "Egypt is more of an agrarian than an industrial or commercial country. As the greater majority of its populace is engaged in agriculture, when the prices of crops and particularly cotton drop, it is little wonder that the pressures of economic hardship lure them into breaking the law and that many embark on the path of crime in order to meet their fundamental necessities. This leads to a proliferation of thieves and robbers."
The fall in cotton prices in 1926 precipitated this dynamic. In The Egyptian police: 1922-1952, Abdel-Wahab Bakr notes that the cost of a kantar (about 45 kilogrammes) of Egypt's prized Sakalarides cotton dropped from LE9.20 at the end of 1925 to LE4.60 by the end of the following year while the lower grade Ashmouni cotton fell from LE6.40 to LE3 during the same period.
The effect on the Egyptian fellahin, or peasants, was disastrous. El- Qaisi writes, "Their toil day and night barely produced the money to meet their essential needs, let alone the exorbitant rents they had to pay." The result was that "their hearts began to burn with envy against landlords to the extent that they no longer felt any compunction against avenging themselves by destroying their crops, poisoning their livestock, burning their waterwheels or expressing their outrage through murder and the like."
In a single year, from 1926 to 1927, incidents of agrarian-related crime rose from 711 to 847. Most of these crimes involved the theft of crops, in which regard the following cases seem typical: "attempted theft of cucumbers to the value of five milliemes (one millieme = 0.1 piastre) in Farskur; the attempted theft of onions valued at 10 milliemes, also in Farskur; the theft of tomatoes valued at seven milliemes in Tahta; the theft of 20 milliemes worth of sugarcane and 40 milliemes worth of watermelon in Naga' Hamadi; the theft of 30 milliemes worth of corn in Kafr Al-Zayat..." Today's readers may be tempted to smile at the paltry sums involved, were it not for the fact that the perpetrators were brought before the criminal court.
El-Qaisi also attributes the rise in rural crime to political causes. Perhaps the foremost incident was that of 1926 when an unprecedented number of village mayors were dismissed. The ensuing local power vacuums engendered such intense rivalries and hostilities that "everyone was set against everyone else and crimes proliferated of a nature heretofore unknown."
Against this background, El-Qaisi went on to compare different kinds of murder. One category of killing included traditional disputes such as blood feuds, disputes over alimony and inheritance and dishonourable relationships and pregnancies out of wedlock. The second category of murders and attempted murders was motivated by agricultural concerns, such as disputes over irrigation waters, property borders, shares in crop yields and allowing livestock to graze in other people's fields.
But there were also several instances in which acts of murder were committed or attempted due to what El-Qaisi termed "temporary inflamed passions." He cites a case in Abu Tig in which "the victim had snatched part of a cornstalk from the defendant." In Damietta a defendant murdered a man for refusing to allow him to hitch up his water buffalo to a palm tree he owned and in a third case the victim had allowed his goat to stray into the defendant's field.
El-Qaisi's report addresses an important concern that receives little mention in studies on the history of the Egyptian police: "the temporary suspension of criminal cases." This cliché was tantamount to an admission that the police were unable to identify the perpetrators of a crime. El-Qaisi was grateful that at the time of his report such cases did not exceed 58 per cent, or just over half the number of criminal investigations that year. If the figure appeared high, he said, it was lower than previous years.
El-Qaisi did not shy away from discussing the number of policemen condemned for collusion or complicity in criminal activities. Again, however, he was glad to report that the phenomenon had declined greatly since the previous year. In 1926, he writes, 140 policemen and police agents had faced such charges compared to 24 in 1927.
El-Qaisi was keen to reassure the public on another important front: statistics on paper did not necessarily reflect an actual rise in crime. Rather, advances in communications and transportation had now made it easier for the public to notify the authorities and for offenders to be tried. With the spread of railways and roads to all parts of the country, he writes, "opportunities for litigation have become available, whereas formerly a large segment of the populace had to make do with informal modes of reconciliation or would suppress their grievances in anticipation of a suitable opportunity for revenge."
He confesses security services were not as effective as they could be. Investigating officials tended to downplay certain crimes so that they would not be categorised as felonies. Apparently, these officers were all too ready to rely on the statements of the victims who, "for reasons of their own," preferred to deny the facts and to give credence to the reports of local mayors and elders. It was well-known, however, that these village officials were inclined "to lower the figures of crimes committed in their areas and to attribute incidents of arson, for example, to causes that defy all reason and logic." On the other hand, El-Qaisi could find some justification for reducing the seriousness of some crimes, especially thefts involving fractions of a piastre.
He also conceded the poor condition of the police force in general. In civilised nations, he said, law enforcement forces were selected on the basis of skill, integrity and physical fitness. The situation in Egypt, by contrast, was deplorable, for "the great majority of our security forces display none of the qualifications present in their counterparts abroad." The reason for this was the selection process. "They are taken from army draftees or reserves unable to afford the military service exemption fee. They come from that part of society where ignorance and moral corruption are rife."
It was once the case that plainclothes policemen had also been recruited in this manner, with such ludicrous results that a new system had to be adopted to recruit undercover agents. He writes, "It was thus necessary that this activity be assumed by a team of educated youths who were carefully selected from the constabulary department of the Police Academy and who were schooled in everything pertaining to criminology and methods of investigation and collecting evidence."
The final section of El-Qaisi's report covered "those in charge of the forces engaged in safeguarding law and order in the country." Here, too, he was less than satisfied because of a certain lack of vigour and dedication on their part. "They have begun to work in a mechanical fashion that produces no results and they no longer feel the importance of the duties that have been cast upon their shoulders. All they care about is how to avoid the responsibilities pertaining to their offices. I believe that the cause for this shortcoming resides in their small numbers and lack of expertise."
Naturally, the report did not pass without comment. There followed a number of articles and letters to the editor praising it and seconding its views. Perhaps, too, it succeeded in galvanising some into action. One of these was Col Ali Fahmi Zeitun, the director of the Police Academy, who issued a report on ways to improve the academy.
Zeitun opens with a brief account of the history of this institution. When it was founded in 1896, the period of officer training was eight months and candidates were accepted without higher educational certificates. Thus, its first class consisted of seven baccalaureate holders, two who had failed the baccalaureate exams, 102 primary school graduates and 87 who had no educational qualifications at all. This situation continued for eight years by which time it had become apparent that the poor standards of graduates necessitated fundamental changes. In 1904, therefore, the period of instruction was extended to two years, although applicants were still not required to have even minimum academic qualifications, which meant that the student body continued to feature a hodgepodge of educational levels.
It took another five years until other reforms were introduced. In 1909, a committee headed by Ismail Sidqi drew up several recommendations, perhaps the most important of which was to institute a minimum academic level for entry, which was the equivalent of a preparatory school certificate. Primary school graduates would be accepted on four-year programmes, two of which would bring them up to the minimum academic standard. The reforms also included provisions for technical and legal training. In spite of these reforms, Zeitun said the academy still did not attract baccalaureate holders who preferred other higher educational institutes "due to the privileges that awaited their graduates."
Although there were subsequent reform efforts, Zeitun argued that they remained minimal until 1923 when some radical changes were introduced. The date is significant, for Egypt had only recently become recognised as an independent nation in accordance with the Declaration of 28 February 1922. Now Egyptian officers could be appointed to the management of the Police Academy, which had remained up to then a British preserve.
Although one of the reforms in 1923 was to raise the minimum academic entrance requirement to a baccalaureate degree, the academy still could not attract enough applicants. The school loosened the standard slightly to accept candidates who had failed the baccalaureate exam. But when this, too, failed to produce results, the management was forced to compromise again and accept preparatory degree holders. As a result, Zeitun remarked, instruction in the academy continued to be hampered by an academically heterogeneous student body, and his major recommendation was to reintroduce the baccalaureate entrance requirement.
Al-Ahram's chapter on the state of the public security forces drew to a close with a series of articles submitted by a reader, Riad Daoud Youssef, "licentiate in law and graduate of the study mission to England on criminal investigations and diagnostics." Under the headline, "Reforming Public Security Services," Youssef presented a number of recommendations.
His first article treated the "scientific means of crime prevention." These included raising the academic standards of ordinary policemen, promoting the study of criminology and developing the awareness and use of the art of diagnostic investigations. In his second article, he outlined a range of qualifications for selecting applicants to the Police Academy. Candidates should have reached a middle level of education, be between 21 and 26 years old and no less than five feet, six inches tall, and should be required to submit character references from at least three individuals of good standing who had known the applicant for a long time.
In his third article, Youssef focuses on the art of "tracing the perpetrator of a crime by his modus operandi," a subject he studied intensively during his mission in England. He goes into considerable detail on the methods of analysing how a crime was committed, profiling the perpetrator and other technical procedures involved in criminal investigations. This was the final chapter on the issue of Egypt's public security, at least temporarily .
* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
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