My Time Working for Egypt - Part 2 - Succession
In which I shockingly reveal that politics is a murky business
When I first started at the Egyptian Press Office, Hosni Mubarak had been president of Egypt for about thirty years – ever since the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Mubarak was essentially a military officer heading a military government. Yes, they had a functioning parliament and judicial system, and they were a democracy in name. However, the National Democratic Party (NDP) was effectively the party of power. They won with ludicrous majorities of the vote.
The main opposition force, the Muslim Brotherhood, was prevented from standing officially. (Some of their members ran as independents.) The education system was a shambles. Civil society was almost non-existent. The only truly decent institute of higher education in the country was the American University in Cairo, which was not Egyptian at all. Rich families sent their children there, or alternatively to universities in the United States or United Kingdom.
Egypt was considered a strong ally of the United States because it had made a peace deal with Israel and shared a common interest in defeating radical Islamist terrorism. However, Egypt was also abysmal in the area of human rights. They did not have a truly free press. They rounded up and imprisoned political dissidents. They were known to employ various methods of torture on their enemies.
All of this troubled me greatly, and I said so on occasion. Despite this, the government in Cairo was considered to be one of the “better” ones in the Arab world. Yes, their women were often illiterate, were routinely sexually harassed, and were almost always subject to female genital mutilation. However, the question was, could I do more good for these people inside the system or outside of it?
As we worked to develop talking points that the NDP could use in election campaigns and interviews with Western journalists, I tried to subtly challenge some of the false assumptions that they were promoting. For instance, the NDP frequently portrayed themselves as the only alternative to a government controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. To the extent that this might have been true, it was only because they had repressed their more liberal opponents. I believe this is also why the government made few substantial efforts to improve the education system.
The question everyone wanted to know the answer to was, “What happens when Mubarak is gone?” Even Arab countries that do not have monarchies are often controlled by powerful family dynasties, and Hosni Mubarak had a son who was rising in the ranks of the NDP: Gamal Mubarak. Mr. K knew him well, having previously worked with him.
Most American observers assumed that at some point, President Hosni Mubarak would either retire or die, and his son would be ushered in as the next president. Yet, even as an employee of the Egyptian government, I had no idea whether that was true. There did not seem to be a real plan in place. I think Mr. K might have been as much in the dark on this subject as any of us, but I didn’t dare ask.
Gamal Mubarak was the subject of many rumors. One time he actually granted an interview to CNN. This was considered a very big deal: a possible sign that he was the anointed successor. Even so, there was no public statement. The one time Gamal came to town during my period at the Egyptian Press Office, he did not meet with any members of the press except for one. A certain individual from a major newspaper had their secretary call me and say, “[REDACTED] is a friend of Gamal’s. Can they meet privately to talk?” Lo and behold, this was the one request that was granted, and rather quickly at that!
I clearly recall having a conversation with Mr. K in which I did not ask him point blank if Gamal was the successor, but said, “If they intend for Gamal to be the next president, they need to start getting him out there more. They need to prepare him.” Of course, I did not like the idea of a familial succession, but uncertainty seemed like the worst scenario.
The Egyptian regime was in general the worst of both worlds: it was both authoritarian and incompetent. It denied human rights but was unable to keep people fed. It was, in a word, a mess. I was under no illusion that it could suddenly become a fully liberal democracy: not without the kind of human infrastructure necessary for such a government to succeed. Therefore, I tried to work toward the best of a lot of bad options.
What was rather remarkable was that in a country of 80 million people, most of them poor, many of them young and unable to afford marriage, all of them forced to bribe officials to get anything done, and some of them subjected to false imprisonment and torture, there were few meaningful protests. Those that did occur were typically small and received little publicity. It seemed the people were convinced that taking to the streets would do no good. The government had been very effective in one thing: preventing the people from organizing.
What the government was not prepared for, probably on account of the fact that they were a couple decades behind technology-wise, was the impact of social media. Although many Egyptians lacked proper garbage pickup, adequate healthcare, and decent schools, a growing number had either a computer or smartphone. Facebook and Twitter were especially popular among young Egyptians. The officials in Cairo did not seem to appreciate how these tools could be used to create a unified and organized protest movement.
One day, Mr. K called me into his office. Mohamed was already sitting there. Both of them were looking at an Arabic blog. A young political dissident named Khaled Saeed had died at the hands of the police. The official story was that he was in possession of illegal drugs and behaved violently, forcing the police to take action. In all likelihood, those drugs were planted on him after the fact.
Everyone knew that Khaled Saeed had criticized the government. He had attempted to shine a light on police brutality and ended up being the recipient of their wrath. We saw a photo that someone had managed to upload of the dead man’s body. This was not a case of a few punches being thrown or a bullet being fired on accident. What I saw was deliberate, and it was done in malice.1 It struck me to the core.
The three of us sat there in relative silence, making no attempt to defend what we saw. We simply agreed that it was terrible. A Facebook page quickly sprang up proclaiming “We Are All Khaled Saeed,” but it gained little traction. It seemed at the time that the greatest effect of this incident was to make me doubt my position with the Egyptian government.
My conscience was deeply troubled. I wanted to help make things better for all Egyptians, but it felt like I was complicit in the government’s actions if I continued to support their propaganda efforts. “I am not working for these thugs,” I told myself. “I am working for the Egyptian people, and I am working for God.”
After attending an event at the embassy, I walked past a group of protesters gathered behind a barricade. I quickly said something encouraging to one of them and assured them that they had friends inside.
It was around this time that I had a meeting with the head of a group in D.C. that was working to improve human rights in the Middle East. He was an outspoken critic of the Egyptian government. I met with him because we had a mutual friend, and I was hoping to get some career advice. I nevertheless became nervous. I cleared my browser history on my work computer and searched my office for listening devices. The next time I spoke with this man on the phone, I did so from an alleyway down the street.
Finally, after much prayer and consternation, I walked into Mr. K’s office and told him that I was troubled by the actions of the Egyptian government, and I did not feel that I could work there anymore. I would stay on until I could find other employment. He did not attempt to argue with me, but simply accepted my decision.
When I informed my mother of what I had done, she freaked out. In truth, this was a rather impulsive action for me, and I was certainly afraid of ending up jobless and having to move back to Michigan and live with my parents. The job market was still a horror show. I had just started dating the man who would end up being my husband. I did not want our relationship to become a long-distance one. But what could I do? I felt like I was contributing to evil.
The story doesn’t end there! Come back next time to find out what happened before I had a chance to leave. Hint: It was a pretty big deal.
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PUBLISHED ELSEWHERE:
“Johann Spangenberg on Dying Well” at 1517
To be specific, the bottom half of his face seemed to be gone. He had been not only beaten, but mutilated. It was reminiscent of what would later happen to Jamal Khashoggi.