REALITIES IN EGYPT
By OWEN TWEEDY
OST-WAR problems—international or domestic—are today a common heritage all the world over. The international variety
with its wider implications—is more or less adequately ventilated in the Press of the world ; but domestic problems, with their localised and parochial issues, are less known outside the country where they arise. And yet the repercussions of these domestic realities can upset many an international apple-cart. Post-war realities in Egypt can almost be fisted. First and foremost there is the fact of Egyptian independence—a very real fact, as all of us know who have been or still are guests in that country. The policy of British evacuation has been launched. The Mixed Courts will end in under two years, after which litigation in Egypt affecting foreign residents in the country will be dealt with by Egyptian judges. Lastly, in 1968 the Suez Canal will revert to Egypt.
Meanwhile, life in Egypt itself will not be standing still, and suc-
cessive Egyptian Governments will have to cope on their own with three critical domestic realities. These three realities are, first, the phenomenal increase in the population of the country, and the problem not only of how it is going to live, but of where it is going to live ; secondly, the inevitable " new world " demand for rapid improvement in the standards of general living throughout the Nile Valley ; and, lastly, the immediate prospect of large-scale Egyptian unemployment. Egypt on the map is twice as large as Spain or six times the size of England and Wales. But only some 13,000 square miles of the total area of 363,000 square miles are non-desert, cul- tivable and therefore normally habitable. They comprise the " settled land" area which derives its productivity flora the Nile. The latest forecast of Egyptian population is 20,000,000, and on and from those scanty 13,000 square miles whiCh exist amidst the Egyptian desert 20,000,000 souls have to find their homes and livelihood. The density figures work out at over 1,5oo persons- to the square mile. Compare this with Belgium's figure of 702 and that of the United Kingdom at 703.
Already before the war Egypt's population was feeling the pinch
of the desert. Today, with an estimated 4,000,000 increase since the last census in 1931, the problem is all the more serious. Its solution is a matter of heavy finance—monumental hydraulic engineering works within the already dwindling limits of possible cultivation expansion in the Nile Valley and Delta. Perhaps, too, something can be done to recover the old Greco-Roman granaries on the Mediterranean, west of Alexandria. But this overcrowding is a terrible problem for any Government. The second reality—the demand for improved general standards of living for all classes— has also heavy financial implications. Egypt is, and has always been, an essentially agricultural country organised on a feudal or patriarchal basis. Such a social structure, with its corollary of an utterly un- even distribution of privilege and wealth, eventually raises all the problems of the " haves " and the " have-nots." In Egypt today the " have-nots " include the vast majority of provincial peasantry (the fellahin) and the artisan classes in the towns, most of whom have drifted from the agricultural provinces in the hope of escaping the overcrowded conditions of provincial life and of bettering themselves in Cairo or Alexandria, where they believed they might find oppor- tunities not open to them as long as they remained fellahin. During the war Allied employment brought a fugitive spasm of good wages to the artisan classes and increased the number of paper millionaires in the country from some thirty to over a hundred. But the majority of the "have-nots "—the fellahin—did not benefit much if at all. And today the Egyptian Government—like 'most, of the Governments in the post-war world—is faced with the problem of social adjustment on a wide and profound scale.
In Egypt the task is all the more difficult as to-day the Egyptian " have-nots "—thanks largely to the Arabic programmes of wireless which defy illiteracy—are more aware of their plight, of the factors which contribute towards it, and of the measures which other countries are taking to solve analogous social problems. The Egyptian Government of today is wide-awake and benevolent, and has a modern social outlook, Much has been done and more is in contemplation. But the Government will have to 'find money if it is to improve education, agriculture, health and the social services generally ; and, secondly, it will have to train administrative staffs to give full and quick effect to the social legislation now being sub- mitted for the approval of the Egyptian Parliament. This brings us to the third 'main reality in Egypt today—the fact of the existence of an urgent industrial unemployment problem. Egyptian industrial unemployment figures are now believed to be in the neighbourhood of too,000. This is due to two facts. The Allied war effort in the country has been steadily liquidated, and many locally engaged staff are no longer needed. Secondly, the purely Egyptian industries, such as, among many others, the cotton and woollen mills at Mehalla, which during the war worked magnificently and lucratively for the Allies, now have to find and develop new markets in the face of increased competition. This must affect, temporarily at any rate, their capacity for absorbing Egyptian labour.
Industrial unemployment on this scale is a new problem in Egypt, but the country has already administrative machinery to meet it. She has her Ministry of Labour, her Ministry for Commerce and Industry and her Ministry for Social Affairs. There is also a new labour law supplemented by other laws dealing with nationality, national health insurance, companies and the like, some of which are already on the Statute Book. An aim implicit in them all is the solution of unem- ployment and its relief. One form of relief is known as the "Egyptianisation " of local and foreign enterprises, both official and private, and the infiltration of Egyptian staff to replace non-Europeans to the fullest possible extent. This policy is linked with the new nationality laws which will separate Egyptian nationals from those who reside in Egypt on a permis de se:Our. There is nothing exceptional in the principle underlying this policy. For Egypt's present problem—unlike ours in this country where man-power is short—is to provide outlets, and to provide them quickly,. for an alarmingly superabundant local labour supply. There is now the outline of an Egyptian four years' plan which will provide employ- ment for all grades of labour on works of national utility. There is also a vast new project for the harnessing of the Nile at Assuan to provide electric power for further industrial developments which in time will absorb yet more of the unemployed. Almost all the Governments of the world are preoccupied with social problems. To some these problems—overcrowding, low standards of living, unemployment—are newer than to others. This is certainly the case with Egypt. Her hands will be full for many years with difficulties with which some other countries are perhaps better equipped to deal.
On my last day in Egypt—a few months ago—I drove out by taxi from Cairo to its southern suburb at Helouan. On the road my Upper Egypt chauffeur described to me the misery of a calling which has now lost the lucrative patronage of British troops. In Helouan we cruised round the sleepy streets, and our way led past the exquisite little British church where English tourists, taking the baths, had worshipped years ago. Later, in the two world wars, there had been large congregations of British home and Commonwealth troops stationed in the near-by desert camps. We stopped, and the Egyptian caretaker invited me in. There had been only four worshippers at the previous Sunday service, he said, and everything was dead. Then he asked me if I played the piano. He told me that he blew the bellows for the organ on Sundays and had the key. I played— extremely badly—for an hour, and by the end had an audience—the chauffeur and the caretaker's six children. And then suddenly I felt a bit lonely. I closed the keyboard with a sigh.
On the way back to Cairo we stopped by the roadside. Away behind us the modern chimneys of the Tura cement factories were belching good industrial smoke. Below me on the Nile flats ragged fellah families—husbands, wives and swarms of children—were hand- tending fields of dhurra (maize) as their ancestors had tended their fields in antiquity. Far to the north was the silhouette of the Cairo Citadel. It flew the Egyptian crescent and stars. Somehow I felt that I had come to the end of a story. Around me a future was beginning—a future of new realities. And it and its problems belonged to Egypt alone.
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