The war in the Egyptian press
Aziza Sami looks at the US-led war against Iraq through the pages of Egypt's press
The Egyptian press this week highlighted the stiffer than expected resistance of Iraqi troops during the US-led war against Iraq, and the change which this has instigated in Anglo-American military strategy. The rising number of civilian casualties was also given prominence, with many photo-spreads.
Several editorials spoke of the political cost the war would entail, notably by promoting terrorism and producing further alienation within the Arab world towards the US and Britain.
The issue of the UN's weakened authority as a result of Anglo-American actions also featured in several articles and was the butt of political cartoons.
Lauding the unexpected performance of Iraqi troops during the invasion, the weekly newspaper Al-Arabi, mouthpiece of the Arab Nasserist Party, led with a front-page banner in bold red, reading "Baghdad, Fortress of Lions" .
For its part, the independent weekly Al-Usbou' declared, "Confusion", with the paper's editor-in-chief, Mustafa Bakry, writing two articles, entitled, "Signs of Victory and Divine Anger" and "Bush is in Shock, and Rumsfeld looks for excuses".
In an interview with the Al-Ahali, a weekly newspaper issued by the left-wing opposition Tagammu Party, Iraqi Foreign Minister Nagui Sabri was quoted as saying that "The spirit of the Iraqi people remains high." Al-Ahali's front page also featured a photograph of the award-winning American film director Michael Moore, together with his now famous phrase: "Shame on you, Bush!" as the caption.
The paper published a statement issued by the Tagammu, Wafd and Nasserist parties, as well as the Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity, demanding a boycott of US interests and the right of peaceful protest. The statement also demanded that "the media [be] supportive of [Iraqi] resistance and not undermine it".
This was a reference to a drama that had been widely reported in the opposition and independent press. Al-Ahali in the same issue published a "petition" signed by a number of journalists from Al- Ahram addressed to the newspaper's Chairman Ibrahim Nafie.
Entitled "the History of Al-Ahram is bigger than promoting America," the petition stated that Al- Ahram "has recently, without discussion or comment, adopted the American point of view, which is totally congruent with the views of the Zionists and the extreme right-wing [within the US]".
It demanded that Al-Ahram become once again "a forum for free expression that identifies itself with the issues that are important to Egypt, and to the Arab and Muslim nations".
Al-Ahali printed on its front page a news item which read, "America's supporters are removed from Al-Ahram's Central Editorial Desk," columnist Hussein Abdel-Razeq writing in the paper of "the stark contrast between European and world leaders who denounced the Anglo-American invasion of Kuwait and the Arab rulers who could not wait to hear news of the fall of Saddam Hussein, some conspiring with the invading forces by providing them with facilities".
The harsh practices exercised by the police and security forces during the anti-war rallies on the first days of the war were highlighted in three weeklies, Al-Ahali, Al-Usbou' and Sout Al-Umma.
Islamist lawyer Mohamed Selim El-Awwa in his weekly column in Al-Usbou' criticised the unprecedented sanctions exercised against two members of parliament, Nasserist MPs Hamdeen Sabahi and Mohamed Farid Hassanein, who were arrested after their participation in a rally despite their parliamentary immunity. El-Awwa questioned the charge that the two MPs, arrested two days after the rally, had been caught "red-handed".
The question of the legality of the current war and the future of the UN also figured in several newspapers.
The daily Al-Wafd, voice of the liberal opposition Wafd Party, wrote that "British MP says Washington wants to convert the UN into an ambulance," referring to veteran British Labour MP Tony Benn, who had reportedly "spoken of a dispute between the US, which wants to use the UN as an 'ambulance' that will carry away Iraqi casualties and wounded, while Britain wants the UN to go into Iraq in order to give the invasion legitimate cover".
Veteran liberal economist and head of the New Civic Forum Said Al-Naggar wrote in an article in Al-Wafd entitled, "George Bush's War" that the war had been instigated by President Bush and not by the American people. "The invasion might bring material dividends, such as benefiting the 'oil interests' of Bush and his Vice-President Dick Cheney," Al-Naggar wrote. "It will bring profit to the American military industrial complex and satisfy Israel's aim of redrawing the Middle East and attaining hegemony. But it will also entail a loss of credibility and respect for America in the world, which cannot be compensated for."
Al -Wafd also wrote an investigative report entitled "Fleeing from war -- 2,590 Egyptians return from the Gulf in the hope of finding job opportunities."
Al-Arabi published a statement issued last week by the Judges Club, in which it protested the war and thanked the Christian Churches for their stance on the issue. It criticised authoritarian Arab regimes "which seek to transform their authority into hereditary rule" and admonished President Hosni Mubarak, to refute claims made by the "tyrants of our age" (the US and Britain) who claim they will install a "model of democracy in Iraq". This can be done, the statement said, only by the president's taking the initiative and "making Egypt a model of democracy, to be emulated by the Arab world".
An article by Al-Ahram columnist Fahmy Howeidy also featured in Al-Arabi with the comment, "Fahmy Howeidy's article, banned by Al-Ahram". Entitled "To Jerusalem through Baghdad" the article quoted British political analyst and historian Patrick Seale's prognosis that "Iraq has been a strategic threat to Israel since its attack on it in the 1991 invasion of Kuwait. A primary objective of Israel and its supporters, therefore, has been to direct a blow to Iraq that will weaken it forever."
The independent weekly Sout Al-Umma's war coverage depicted the Iraqi and American presidents standing back to back as in a duel each wielding a small pistol.
The opening article by the paper's Editor-in-Chief Adel Hammouda read, "Bush kneels in Iraq and Saddam becomes a National Hero."
"As it fed data into the computers dictating its policies and objectives, the American military failed to take into account words like 'nationalism', 'sacrifice', 'dignity', and 'resistance'," wrote Hammouda. "These were regarded as obsolete and no longer suited to the era of globalisation, GATT and the End of History."
Al-Usbou', in an unsigned article, asked why US military ships were being allowed to pass through the Suez Canal. "If the argument is that the ships must be allowed through because of Egypt's international obligations, then one must ask whether the Anglo- American alliance was bound by international law when it waged war on Iraq. Was late President Gamal Abdel-Nasser in breach of international law when he nationalised the Suez Canal?"
The article suggested that nuclear warheads and WMD on the military ships posed an imminent threat. "Are the arguments for allowing the ships to pass a means of intimidation, designed to shackle Egypt's political and economic will?" the paper asked.
A banner headline in the national daily Al- Akhbar read "Charges that the invading forces have used napalm and cluster bombs", while, inside, satirist Ahmed Ragab wrote in his daily column 'Half a Word' that "I would have loved to have seen (US Defence Secretary) Rumsfeld's face when he heard that an old Iraqi farmer had felled an Apache helicopter with his gun."
For his part, Al-Akhbar's Editor-in-Chief Galal Dowidar wrote a column entitled, "Thank You, Friendly Fire" that "We should not be surprised if we see Iraqi officials directing their thanks to the friendly fire that every day reaps dozens of American and British casualties, downs planes and bombards tanks. But the American and British people also have a right to be surprised at this news, repeated daily by military spokesmen at the unified command in Qatar. The matter has reached such proportions that it is being criticised in the US and British papers."
Mustafa Hussein contributed a cartoon depicting the UN wearing a massive clown's cap. Another showed silhouettes of British soldiers, two of them plunging daggers into a depiction of the Iraqi people, while a third soldier was shown assuring headquarters through his walkie-talkie that "Everything is fine. We have blocked satellite channels and chased the news agencies away. It is dark. No one will see anything."
The national weekly Ahkbar Al-Yom's Editor-in- Chief Ibrahim Se'da, warned that war on Iraq, had come as "a god-send to what remains of Osama Bin Laden's terrorist organisation," Se'da predicting that terrorist attacks would now extend "to the US, Britain, the Western nations, and the Arab countries as well. It will make the clash of religions and civilisations a reality".
The national daily Al-Ahram gave prominence in its headlines to the statement made by President Mubarak that "Egypt has not, and will not, participate in any war or military aggression against any Arab country."
Also on the newspaper's front page criticism was directed by Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, to "Arab countries that have been satisfied with merely 'condemning' the aggression, and the Gulf states which have pumped extra oil" to support it.
Al-Ahram also reported that "Egypt has refused to expel Iraqi diplomats, since this would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council Resolution 1441."
Inside, poet Ahmed Abdel-Moeti Hegazi wrote of the "Mongols within and the Mongols without", likening the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq to "Mongols outside the gates", with the repressive Arab regimes, of which the Iraqi regime has been a prime example, as "the Mongols within".
Hegazi cited the predicament of Iraqi lawyer and novelist Fouad Al-Takerli, in exile in Tunis, who at the onset of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq had returned to Bagdad "to face the invasion and defend his homeland".
Al-Ahram, on 30 March published an open letter by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in which he gave his country's position on the war.
In the letter, Blair wrote that "120 million pounds sterling have been given in aid to the Iraqi regime since 1991," and "Britain will help the Iraqi people in reconstruction efforts after the destruction that has resulted from a quarter century of despotism and corruption under Saddam Hussein."
Blair wrote of his "promise", along with those of US President George W Bush and Spanish PM Aznar, to "place Iraqi oil under UN jurisdiction for the benefit of the Iraqi people, and work to lift the sanctions, as long as Iraq complies with its commitments". The retreat of British military troops from Iraq "will be determined by practical circumstances," Blair wrote.
The British prime minister also wrote that he hoped "soon to see a civilian government making the transition to a representative one" in Iraq, and he repeated his commitment, "along with that of President Bush", to reach an equitable and just solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the year 2005, which will set up a sustainable Palestinian state and ensure Israel's security.
In the same issue of the newspaper, Al-Ahram's Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Nafie responded to Blair's article with a strongly worded piece saying that he "totally disagrees with the logic of Blair's argument", countering that war on Iraq was "neither inevitable nor necessary".
If Iraq has "failed to comply with UN resolutions, then it is the manner in which the US and Britain have conducted their relations with Iraq which is to blame", Nafie wrote, referring to "the worst and harshest sanctions regime ever imposed in the history of international relations, which has deprived Iraq of the minimum incentive to comply with its commitments".
The war is "illegal according to the UN and international law", Nafie wrote, and "regime change is an internal matter pertaining to the Iraqi people."
The Anglo-American war on Iraq was an "arbitrary one, discriminating against the Arab countries and reflecting the absence of justice in international relations," Ibrahim Nafie wrote. "It presages a human tragedy, and we have no references to fall back on that will make us believe what is now being promised about Palestinian rights."
