Nasser, Sadat, and ECON-100

I was sitting in my Egyptian Government class the other day and we got into a conversation about whether or not Sadat or Nasser's economic policies made more sense. Just as a bit of background, when Nasser came to power, his focus was on endogenous growth with a heavy emphasis on developing native industry, raising tariffs to protect said infant industries, socializing education and healthcare, subsidizing basics such as bread, and capping wealth at 15,000 LE per year. Sadat removed much of this in his infitah (Open Door) policies, in which he sought to attract western and Gulf investment by removing many of Nasser's socialized policies. Anyway, we established that the two were equally tyrannical and both failed to establish crucial institutions that would depersonalize their rule, so the only real difference became their economies and foreign policies. Much of my class as well as my professor came down on Nasser's side, and I found myself as one of the few Sadat warriors.

Sadat is an incredibly touchy subject here. On the one hand, he restored Arab honor in initiating the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt regained Sinai from the Israelis and, while they lost militarily, they dispelled the myth of Israeli invincibility and forced the Israelis to the bargaining table, making it a strategic victory for Arab nations. The day the war started, October 6th, has its own holiday over here. On the other hand, Sadat repealed many of the policies that made Nasser popular. Furthermore, the gap between rich and poor grew exponentially under his rule. But most controversial is his peace agreement with Israel. Most Egyptians were incredibly excited about the beginning of negotiations. Most Egyptian families had lost a son to one of the myriad wars the two nations had engaged in over the previous twenty years. They were tired of war. But most had high expectations of a more equal settlement with Israel that would more thoroughly address the Palestinian question and would include other Arab states. Instead, the agreement came off as a waste on Nasser's part in which he normalized relations with Israel and sacrificed the Arab cause in the name of getting back Sinai. As a result, the Camp David Accords aren't a terribly popular subject here, and they ultimately cost Sadat his life in 1981 when takfiri extremists assassinated him. So taking all of these emotions into account, my defense of a touchy subject reminded me of the fact that while in America I can be pretty far left, when I'm here discussing foreign policy or economics, I'm a full-on neocon relatively speaking.

I felt as though I could have summarized the debate in a statement made by one girl, an American, regarding Sadat's liberalization policies: "It's been proven that the free market works well in the short term, but isn't good for long-term growth." Besides flying in the face of high school-level economic theory and the course of history itself, I was awed by the fact that most people seemed to agree with this blatant fallacy. At least in the development of European industrial economies, the typical plan has been rampant protectionism in the short term that defends infant industries (much as Nasser did), followed by a long-term liberalization plan that opens the industry up to market forces, though allows for more outside consumption and investment, so in other words, the complete opposite of what this girl said. What it ultimately came down to in the end was a clash of values. I argued that Sadat did not liberalize enough, as evidenced by how complicated it is to start a business in the country, how much of the economy here is underground, and how hard it is for foreigners to invest and make money here. Many people responded in arguing that well, this didn't happen, so we can't judge him based on that. Duh. But where we disagree is whether or not liberalization ought to have been pursued in the first place. I'm of the school of thought where I would argue Nasser did the right thing in protecting his industries in the early going, but was wrong to restrict investment and capital gains. His redistributive policies made Egypt far less attractive to investors, who would fear that their wealth could simply be co-opted by the government for its own ends. Sadat did little to correct the institutional failures of Nasser's regime, though opening the door to outside investment was necessary. Egypt could not sustain itself with the sorts of subsidies it was implementing, and subsidized housing still affects the way Cairo has developed. There is no reason for landowners to renovate properties simply because it will cost more to do that than they can make off of rent, so the city just constantly sprawls outward as older sections of the city fall into disrepair.

By no means to I consider myself a disciple of the free market. I think it has plenty of shortcomings that aren't acknowledged enough in American economic discourse, namely in regards to how the economy interacts with the state and when it ought to take into account higher moral issues. I find the notion that the market is an end in itself is beyond silly. But the other end of the spectrum is absurd, and in the end, both ends are devoted more to the ideology itself than to serving the broader system of which they are a part.

The "Pledge to America"

I didn't really do anything exciting this past week, so I'm going to go off on a tangent here and write about American politics.

This past week, the GOP released their "Pledge to America." The text outlines their legislative priorities for 2010 and presumably beyond, which include repealing healthcare, cutting spending, and "restoring the Constitution" to government in America. All of these issues I find hilarious, for one overarching reason and a plethora of individual issues with the plans themselves.

First and foremost, it is vital to keep in mind that Republicans are an incredibly angry bunch right now. This anger allows them to bandy about silly tag words like "the Constitution" and "fiscal irresponsibility" as if absurd notions such as "common sense" provide a sound means for government, the elderly and military are immune from spending cuts, and the Constitution requires no interpretation whatsoever. And while this is true, I see a far greater issue with the platform: its reflection of a lack of desire to actually do anything.

By no stretch of the imagination do I consider myself a party hack. I find the Democrats in Congress to be morally spineless and completely and totally unable to stand up for the moral issues that, to me, made the party appealing in the first place. But I do see one fundamental difference in the way the Republican and Democratic parties are organized. The Democrats have stood for a broad series of concepts, namely equality of opportunity and under the law, educational reform and consolidation, environmental awareness, and consumer protection to varying degrees throughout history. This makes them (in my mind, unfortunately) far less likely to pursue vindictive legislative policies once made the dominant party and makes it far harder for them to get work done, as they are not united around a series of legislative objectives but broader conceptual approaches to issues. However, this allows them to actually get things done.

On the other hand, the Republicans run on a series of points, as they have done since the Contract with America. These legislative objectives allow the party to behave in a far more cohesive manner. However, it also provides them with what I see as an immense electoral scam that can cover their inaction within the legislature. Let's take Roe v. Wade into consideration. Candidates such as the much-beloved Christine O'Donnell of Delaware love to campaign on platforms that will restrict abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Lord knows this will never happen. What it essentially comes down to is that there is an acknowledged social implication to restricting abortion too heavily, and while you can make it as difficult as possible to get an abortion to puff up your legislative resume, no one will ever be able to restrict it entirely at a federal level. No one can ever build up the political capital sufficient to overturn Roe except for in hard-right states. So why has it not just been accepted as something far more controversial, the Civil Rights Act, was in the 1960s? There wasn't a set block of people that opposed the Civil Rights Act. Contrast this to Roe, whose detractors are primarily Catholics and evangelicals that can be easily mobilized during elections. What happens when you overturn Roe? All of a sudden Catholics and evangelicals might be a little more interested in Democratic policies like social welfare instead of Republican small government strategies. At best they don't have a hugely compelling reason like abortion that drives them to the polls in droves as it did in 2002 and 2004, and at worst, they start thinking about voting Democratic. It is an attempt at consolidating an electoral bloc, and nothing more. To elected officials, the costs far outweigh the benefits.

I view the "Pledge to America" in the same way as I view Republican tactics with Roe, though I at least admire the genius of Republican tactics with Roe in a way I cannot with the "Pledge to America," as they are sacrificing their commitment to hugely important issues like deficit reduction at the altar of electoral politics. The plan calls for cuts to discretionary spending across the board. Let's break this down here. In the FY2009 budget, defense, interest payments on debt, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, TARP, and miscellaneous non-discretionary spending constituted 88% of the national budget. This leaves 12% of the budget that the Republicans are interested in cutting. Break this down a little further, and taking into account Republican desires to keep Bush-era tax cuts alive, and I don't see much debt reduction here. It's a charade meant to draw out fiscally conservative voters. No one is advocating meaningful plans for making cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or other entitlement programs geared toward our elderly, who are, harsh as it is to say it, the least productive segment of our population. They shit their Depends every time someone says anything about adjusting the way in which or to whom Social Security payments are disbursed and politicians really love catering to that. While I hated many of Bush's policies, I at least admire him for having the moral fortitude to push for more controversial things like revamping Social Security. If only John Boehner was worried about more than his disgusting orange tan we might be getting somewhere and dare I say it, I would consider voting Republican.

Thoughts On The Veil

Well, seeing as how it's everywhere, I figured it might be an apt time to provide my bit on the veil. First, I want to make a distinction. There is a lot of diversity to what is referred to as "the veil," and it often gets convoluted. What you see the most is the hijab, that being the headscarf that has a lot of diversity in way of design and color and can be worn with most anything. For the purpose of ease, I won't be including the burqa, which is more of a South Asian phenomenon that you never see in Egypt. So with that taken into account, the only other thing I'll be looking at is the niqab, which is the facial covering that is quite common in more conservative families here.

This past weekend I went to Fayoum, a town about two hours south of Cairo that has a large salt water lake where you can actually swim without getting parasites (!). Besides the Hawara Pyramid and Lake Qarun, Fayoum is known for producing about half of the terrorists involved in the mass slaughter of 63 tourists in Luxor in 1997. I had a police escort the entire time I was there, and many who stay overnight are not allowed to leave their rooms without police (for the record I had no trouble there, because it was a weekend and Fayoum is a favored weekend destination for Cairenes). Personally I found the whole thing excessive and merely a means to protect Egypt's hugely important tourist industry, but the point is that Fayoum's highly religious population has a reputation.

At Lake Qarun, I was shocked by the number of niqabs I saw. Modesty is certainly valued there (I swam with my t-shirt on), but I never expected to see women swimming in full niqab. This admittedly made me feel a little uncomfortable. I live in a country where I can walk down the street with no fear of harassment (which is disgustingly common here), wearing nearly whatever I want, with no repercussions. In contrast, on a day at the beach that was easily 95 degrees Fahrenheit, women were outside in all black cloaks with their faces covered - swimming. It was funny on one level insofar as women have not let this restrict them in any way.

However, I find myself agreeing entirely with Blake Hounshell's recent piece on France's so-called "burqa ban." While it may be uncomfortable, it cannot be banned. It's important to keep two things in mind here: women do have an element of choice in wearing the veil. It is not compulsory, and while you might get more stares walking down the street, people will likely assume you are a Copt or a foreigner and not give it a second thought. In fact, one of Egypt's most treasured national icons, Hoda Shaarawy, is famous for spurning the veil in a dramatic display as early as 1919. And while there is a social expectation that women will dress modestly, there is a similar expectation for men. At the beach, many men wore pants while swimming, and I am yet to see an Egyptian wearing shorts. It just isn't as apparent because men have more choice with what they wear as a means of expressing conservative values (jeans, t-shirts, etc., all of which women can wear).

Just as my experience at the beach made me feel, Hounshell points out that he is a little uncomfortable when he sees a man walking down the street wearing an Armani Exchange t-shirt and Diesel jeans with a woman in full niqab in tow. The niqab is increasingly popular in a country that strives to prove its religious devotion and does not seem to be going away any time soon. I can't say I would be mourning the loss of the niqab if globalization destroyed the trend.

All this being said, I vehemently disagree with France's ban on principle. I resent the notion that one can restrict something so simple as what someone wears. France has assigned a meaning to the veil (backwardness) that may have nothing to do with the reasons why a woman may chose to do so. Many women choose to do so independently of outside forces other than their religion. For these reasons, it is not the place of the state to decide the meaning of religious objects of this sort, especially ones with as complicated a history and range of purposes as the veil. Society and the free market can do this well enough, and they don't need state influence to do it for them. Women do have voices, and it is demeaning and flat-out untrue to tell them that they cannot speak for themselves. Women here can vote, which is more than African Americans in the 1960s could say. If the veil and niqab become such oppressive institutions that they need to be repealed, let those wearing it to stop doing so. It doesn't take an act of the French government to end it.

Classes And Campus

I'll be posting quite a bit this week just to make up for what I've missed. Sinai was about two weeks ago, so I'm due to keep you updated about what has happened between then and now. In the interest of making it easier to read/save me time, I'll be doing it in several posts.

AUC is a bizarre place that epitomizes the wealth of Cairo in many ways. Cairo does not gentrify in the way other cities do. Take DC, for example. Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant were once the "scary" part of town that no one dared to go to. All it took was a few college kids or yuppies, not to mention a major shopping center or two, to make it a major residential area that exemplifies the way wealth typically enters new areas. Cairo differs from this model greatly. When a new wealthy class develops, instead of finding a part of town like Imbaba or Bulaq where poverty runs rampant (though violence is low across Cairo) and redeveloping it, they move to entirely new districts created by the state. New Cairo and Rehab are stellar examples of the trend.

I take a bus every morning at 7:25 AM to school for my 8:30 class. As I drive out of the city, I take a highway that passes most of the old recognizable mosques in Cairo, namely Masjid Husayn (which, while it is a Sunni mosque, it supposedly holds the head of Imam Husayn, "chief martyr" of the Shi'i faith) and past the cramped streets of Old Cairo. At the edge of the city is nothing but desert for several kilometers until the bus reaches New Cairo. In a few years, the Mubarak regime hopes this will be a major residential area for the city's stratospherically wealthy. As of now, the skyline is dominated by cranes and construction is presumably proceeding at a rapid pace, though I drive out there too early to really tell if anything is going on (after the US credit bubble popped, much construction in Egypt halted entirely). The neighborhood is dominated by wide streets, homogeneous buildings, and posh subdivisions, all of which are a rarity in a city developed before the car and the only "subdivision" was a military district. Even more striking is AUC itself, which dominates nearly half of the currently existing region. While certainly enormous, it is typified more by its student body than anything else.

AUC is an island into itself. All students are required to be able to speak English (though some classes are in Arabic), and most students have developed that skill via education in international schools. Its distance from the city is a decent analogy for the detachment of the campus from the rest of Egypt. It feels like a different world. A school with American-value tuition and where a student in anything other than a Ralph Lauren polo is bizarre in a country where a third of the citizens live on less than two dollars a day. People at AU love to complain about how yuppy its student population is given how social justice-y they are, but that disconnect doesn't have real-world consequences in the way it does in Egypt. In my Egyptian government course, two of the Egyptian students were commenting on how they feel as though they are not governed by Egyptians and have no choice in the matter. I wonder how if these students, who have everything their country can possibly afford, can feel alienated from the state, what must the typical Egyptian feel?

I am living in a country that was not ruled by native Egyptians from Alexander the Great until the Free Officers Revolt in 1952. When you think about it, the country went as follows: the Pharaohs (numerous dynasties, many of which were foreign), Alexander, Ptolemy, Rome, the Byzantines, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Mamluks (Bahr and Burj), Ottomans, Muhammad Ali (Albanian) and his successors, the British and their pseudo-independence, and now military rule. Even under Egyptian rulers, native Egyptians have had no say in the way their country was governed. Egyptians have developed entire parallel institutions that make them wholly independent of the government. As I said earlier, Egyptians go hungry, but do not starve. They litter, but zabbalin pick it up. Traffic makes no sense, but no one drinks and drives. It works, so no one cares that their government will never represent them. It is tragic that Egyptians have felt this way for so long that at this point such feelings are an expectation, not an exception. Apathy has become an institution into itself that is replicated from generation to generation. Skepticism of state authority is so ingrained that I have no idea how many free and fair elections it would take to get anyone to believe their vote mattered.

Sinai

Last weekend I climbed Mount Sinai with my roommate here in Cairo, my one at AU, my real estate agent, and a British fellow I met at the hostel I stayed in before I moved into my flat. We took a 45 LE (about $7) to Sinai. We arrived too late in the day to make it up in time for the sunset, but we hired a bedouin guide (as is now legally required to climb the mountain) to climb it at night so we'd get there in time for the sunrise. The climb itself was surprisingly strenuous, but I think this had more to do with my recent lack of physical exertion and the amount of extra energy expended looking for places to put your feet when climbing in the dark.

We were awoken at about 4:30 AM EEST to the sound of a Polish man singing while his congregation quite literally mumbled along with him. I would have been greatly amused if it weren't 4:30 AM and the sunrise wasn't supposed to start for about another hour. I suppose the one plus is that I got to see the sunrise in its entirety, though I could have done without the most awkward choir in church history as my alarm. It removed a bit of the ambiance. The sunrise really was amazing. I've posted several photos from the trip on my Facebook profile, but even those can't really capture how beautiful it is. It's a little too touristy, but I think that's more a function of the time of the year than anything else. All in all I'm glad I had the chance to go.

The way back was quite the adventure. Bus drivers out at St. Katherine's (the monastery at the base of the mountain) know they can rip Westerners for all they are worth because the exchange rate is so heavily slanted in our favor, so they do. Note how little I paid to get all the way from Cairo to Sinai. On the return, we were offered prices anywhere between 350 LE (which we were ultimately forced to take out of desperation: classes started the next day) and 1400 LE, and these were only to Ras Sadr or Suez, not even all the way to Cairo. We took a 350 LE bus to Ras Sadr, which is a really, really pretty town. It's right on the Gulf of Suez, which is quite the sight in itself. It's easy to overlook the town itself, as when you drive through it, you go in on a highway that is filled with gas stations and other eyesores. The town itself was filled with some amazing fish stands and was a brief walk from the beach, though we unfortunately didn't get to see the beach because our bus left soon after our arrival there (the bus cost another 35 LE, but all the way to Cairo). I'm considering going at some point later in the semester for a day trip.

All in all, Sinai was a grueling, but worthwhile experience. I recommend that if you go, go with a tour group or where you pre-pay for your return trip. Getting out there is a piece of cake, but getting back can be far more complicated, especially during a holiday.

Egyptian Oddities

There have been a number of things that have surprised me so far in travelling to Egypt. Here are some of them:

5) The number of women that wear the niqab

Men here very rarely have beards because it is an easy way for the police to identify them as fundamentalists. There is an immense fear of being connected with them (at least publicly) due to a sort of sarcastic disdain for far right religion here that combines with an understandable fear of Egyptian police and military authority to make public displays of faith a little uncouth, at least among men. Thus most of the people you see handing out religious pamphlets are women. Frequently, they wear the full niqab. Women rarely perpetrate acts of violence here, so there is less reason for the state to expend resources on cracking down on fundamentalism among them. Furthermore, this is not only among the poor. Most of the women I have seen wearing the niqab have been in Downtown and Maadi.

4) The prevalence of shame over guilt

It's easy to think in the West that the only driver of moral behavior is a negative reaction to guilt of the possible feeling thereof. At least here in Egypt, this is not the case. If one is deterred from a particular line of behavior, it is not because one will feel guilty but because it falls out of line with public expectations if a certain action is or isn't performed in response to an outside stimulus. For example, I saw two fights break out at various points in the day yesterday. These were not one-on-one affairs. Usually a crowd would build up that would watch for a period of time. There were usually two options at this point. Often the people are family, who become involved along familial lines and support whomever they are related to. The other option is how fights usually end. The goal of a fight isn't necessarily to achieve a concretized end. Rather, it is to maintain public face. As a result, fights will continue to escalate until a third party intervenes to tell everyone to cool their heels. For example, last night my real estate agent and boab (doorman) got into a shouting match over payment for services until a random bystander approached them both to tell them to calm down, at which point they both walked away. Backing down without this would have made someone look weak, and as a result outside mediation is both expected and encouraged.

3) The sheer size of the Egyptian support system

Max Rodenbeck points out in Cairo: The City Victorious that many people go to sleep hungry here, but no one ever starves. This has definitely been the case in my limited experience here, especially during Ramadan. Religion, like anything else, certainly has its plusses and minuses. Here, Islam creates an immense spirit of charity in which there are no questions asked regarding helping the poor or less fortunate. There are free iftar dinners everywhere and there is an expectation that one will tithe a portion of one's annual income to the poor, even if you yourself are struggling. No one chafes under this system, and it gives a society that would otherwise deal with crushing poverty a safety valve that channels away grievance.

2) Deference to authority

Most Cairenes chafe under excessive authority, though they rarely speak out against it, especially for abstract concepts like democracy and electoral representation. You're a lot more likely to see a protest about power outages or hashish shortages than taxation. You aren't going to see a revolution against the Mubaraks or Omar Suleiman any time soon due to a mixture of apathy and an unwillingness to stir up the pot in public.

1) The fact that the city functions at all

People here throw their trash everywhere, so the city has produced a class of people to pick it up (the zabbaleen). Poverty is an issue, so people give money to the poor. Traffic is awful, but somehow it functions and people get from point a to point b. I don't really know how or why it happens, but somehow the city pulls it together and works.