From the WSJ Opinion Archives
GLOBAL VIEW
With Friends Like This
Bush betrays Egypt's democrats, for what?
CAIRO--In Washington last month, President Bush met with Gamal Mubarak, heir apparent to the Egyptian throne, and sent regards to Mr. Mubarak's father, President Hosni Mubarak. The House Appropriations Committee turned back an effort by Wisconsin Democrat David Obey to withhold a fraction of Egypt's $1.7 billion annual aid allocation. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that any cuts would damage a "strategic partnership" that is "a cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Middle East."
Also last month, in Cairo, pro-democracy activists such as 39-year-old Ahmed Salah of the Egyptian Movement for Change and dozens of his colleagues were beaten, arrested and detained--ostensibly for congregating publicly in groups larger than five. The emergency law through which Mr. Mubarak has ruled for 25 years was extended again. The judiciary--the only semi-uncorrupted branch of government--is under political assault. And Ayman Nour, the imprisoned liberal politician who ran second to Mr. Mubarak in last September's rigged presidential election, lost his final appeal against a five-year prison sentence on forgery charges.
Maybe there is no connection between the first and second set of events. Maybe Mr. Mubarak did not need tacit American acquiescence to embark on his latest campaign of repression. Maybe there are plausible reasons for the administration to go soft on the regime for now. But speak to opposition figures here and the sense of American betrayal is palpable.
Few Egyptians have felt this betrayal more keenly than Gameela Ismail, a prominent journalist and Mr. Nour's wife of 17 years. President Bush, she says, "made a very encouraging statement," referring to the line in his 2005 State of the Union address in which he called on Egypt, "which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, [to] show the way toward democracy." Mr. Nour, an independent member of parliament, heard from then-U.S. Ambassador David Welch that the administration was, in Ms. Ismail's words, "very interested in political reform in the Middle East and would support calls for democracy."
Mr. Nour was then launching a new political party as well as a newspaper, both called Ghad (Tomorrow), which he hoped would appeal to younger voters, political liberals, the middle class, Coptic Christians and moderate Muslims. "It was such a bright, clear, sunny prospect," Ms. Ismail says. "We had all sorts of confidence in the future."
That confidence ended abruptly on Jan. 28, 2005, when Mr. Nour was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and detained for 43 days on forgery charges. The story of his release (under heavy U.S. pressure), his bid for the presidency and his subsequent conviction are matters of public record. Less well known is the ferocity and manic persistence of the regime's effort to discredit Mr. Nour and Ms. Ismail.
"Fourteen security people arrived in our house that morning," Ms. Ismail recalls. "They went through every paper, every book, CDs, videos, our children's belongings. They opened the safe box, went through our checkbooks, sniffed his cigars. . . . I asked them, 'What does this have to do with the charges?' It was clear they were looking for anything at all that might be incriminating."
The harassment, both petty and serious, has never let up. Ms. Ismail says security officers have infiltrated the Ghad, forming a breakaway faction and an alternative newspaper. Ask for a copy at a Cairene newsstand, and you'll be asked whether you want "Security Ghad or Nour's Ghad." Ms. Ismail's TV shows have been canceled, and she is being charged, preposterously, with assaulting a state security officer.
The culprit here, Ms. Ismail insists, isn't simply the regime but Gamal Mubarak, who despite avowals to the contrary is setting himself up as his father's successor. "What provoked Gamal," she explains, "is that he and Nour are the same age, but Nour's been elected to parliament twice, he takes buses, he takes the metro, he knows what's happening with the people. He did not just say, 'Down with Mubarak.' He did more: He offered himself as an alternative."
It's partly for this reason that Ms. Ismail can hardly account for why Mr. Bush would receive Gamal so cordially, even as she says she never once has been personally contacted by Francis Ricciardone, the current U.S. ambassador. "Everyone is asking what Gamal did in Washington: Were we sold out in exchange for something?" She also notes that despite the billions the U.S. provides Egypt, the Mubarak regime continues to stoke anti-American sentiment in its press campaigns against Mr. Nour. "They call my husband, 'Nour, the spy of the U.S.' 'Nour, the friend of Rice.' 'Nour, the child of Madeleine Albright.' "
As for the regime, its game plan is clear: It needs to destroy liberal opponents such as Mr. Nour so that Hosni Mubarak, and eventually his son, can present themselves to the U.S. as the only viable bulwark against the Muslim Brotherhood. Little wonder that, despite being officially banned, a visitor has no trouble finding the Brotherhood's headquarters and interviewing its leadership at locations that are anything but secret. Beneath the surface tension, the regime and the Brotherhood depend on one another to exclude any decent middle way.
Meanwhile, Mr. Nour sits in the hospital ward of Cairo's Tora prison, recovering from a 25-day hunger strike. Ms. Ismail says he's in somewhat better spirits, and there are rumors of a presidential pardon on July 23, a national holiday. Ultimately, however, it's not her husband Ms. Ismail worries most about. "Nour is getting plenty of attention; he knows the law; he has experience; he's paying the price for the course he has chosen. It's the young [activists] I'm worried about. They don't have experience; they don't know the law; nobody knows them. What's happening to them is . . ." She trails off.
Maybe next time, President Bush can give Gamal Mubarak a miss and acquaint himself a little better with "them." As with Republican voters in the U.S., Egypt's democrats are part of his base--and he's fast losing them, too.
Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.
