Issue No. 593
Opinion
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4 - 10 July 2002 Issue No. 593 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
A revolution's course
The revolutions that have shaped modern history are singular affairs: each has its supporters and detractors, its moments of success and failure, and the July Revolution is no exception. Some 50 years on it has become, at least for the generation that witnessed its dawning, a distant if palpably relevant dream of sunset and of sunrise.
I was at an early stage of my university course when the revolution flared. The campus provided a political arena: ideologies and party lines played out their conflicts through the students' clashes and demonstrations. The silent majority, who did not belong to any party or group, however, felt both confused and expectant. It was as if they were waiting for a miracle to happen. No sooner had the revolution declared itself than this majority encircled it, hanging its own hopes on the success of the revolution.
The generations that witnessed the revolution have invariably celebrated its principles: fighting corruption, eliminating the monarchy and royalty's despotism, extracting political life from the whirlwind of petty party intrigues. The revolution gave vent to hopes for social equality and a national renaissance that would eliminate poverty and disease as well as what remained of the British occupation. The Tripartite Invasion, following the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, signaled the onset of a difficult phase. Foreign affairs and international conflicts, brought about by Israeli greed, topped the agenda, pushing domestic issues -- the building of a true democracy and preparing the people to assume national responsibilities -- to second place.
During the 1960s and the early 1970s I was a foreign correspondent based in Europe, away from the relentlessly speedy internal transformations that governed the ups and downs of the revolution. Yet I did not for a moment stop observing the events: being far away may have thrown the picture into clearer focus. The international spotlight on Nasser and his revolution had placed everything under the microscope. Nasser was a true eastern challenge to Western hegemony. But as the revolution developed, the power-hunger of its leaders, the cracks in the structure, became apparent. From a distance I watched as Arabs and others were increasingly mobilised in the service of their regimes, not their nations. This is why I wasn't paralysed by shock -- the way many were -- after the 1967 defeat. It merely confirmed my growing suspicions that the ambitions of the revolution were way beyond its capabilities.
What has the revolution achieved? What remains of it? These are, in the end, the questions that really matter.
In my view the revolution's most important achievement was making Egyptians and, by extension, Arabs, aware of the challenges of a new era -- the conditions of which were forming in tandem with the delicate balance of international and inter-Arab relations. What was at stake was nothing less than the building of a modern state. Another aspect of the process concerned the gestation of a conscious human being capable of assuming the responsibilities that come with freedom. Sadly, 50 years of political, ideological and human experiments have achieved only fragile results, incapable of arming the Egyptian and Arab individual with the skills necessary to progress on most fronts. Complete submission to even the most corrupt authorities, a lack of independence and initiative, continue to mire hopes of progress. The Arab-Israeli conflict remains unresolved, and Arab countries continue to lag behind in developmental terms, having remained chained to slogans and the most unlikely wagers. The one remaining hope of those far-off, optimistic days is that the spirit of the revolution may yet be liberated from the constraints that have been imposed by practice. Only then will what remains of that spirit be put to useful ends.
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