Egypt Sobers Down
By LORD KINROSS
SMILES, surprisingly, greeted me at the aerodrome. Was I a tourist ? Yes, in a sense I was. With more smiles I was ushered into a V.I.P.'s sitting-room, furnished with basket-armchairs and gay-coloured travel posters. Here I sat in lonely isolation, while my passport was stamped and my baggage cleared, unopened, by a policeman; and while the baggage of the other less-favoured passengers—the Lebanese students from Beirut, the United Nations " pro- grammers," the Azhar sheikh with the black umbrella—was scrupulously searched: calico bundles unpicked, an egg-full of liqueur-chocolates broken 'open, bottles uncorked and their contents suspiciously sniffed and tasted. For more than half- an-hour I awaited them, alone and unsuspected, the last of an almost extinct species which it had been decided, at the eleventh hour, to protect.
We drove into Cairo past street-corners bristling with the bayonets of white-clad policemen and tables laid neatly on the pavement, with vases of flowers, for their midday meal; past Shepheard's, where bodies (perhaps of tourists) were still being dug out of the wreckage; down streets where burnt-out bars and shops had reopened in resourceful temporary quarters, and where the burning of Cairo seemed merely to have pro- duced a bigger and better boom in building.
The awful events of January 26th have frightened and sobered Egypt, and there is a strong desire to return to normal —or what looks like normal. Old British residents are leaving. So is much foreign, including Arab, capital. Old-established firms, with assets too big to liquidate, are decentralising their activities, as a precaution, to Beirut and elsewhere. So are certain official bodies. But the ordinary Egyptian tries to reassure the foreigner—sincerely determined that the awful events shall not be allowed to recur.
Treaty conversations with Britain are generally known to have reached a deadlock. But no one, at this time of the year, wants openly to admit it. Egyptian politics move in seasonal cycles. Opportune as ever, the summer heat envelops the country like a merciful narcotic, muting passions and dulling nerves. More pashas than usual, it is true, are staying at home this year. since a conscientious Government has cut their foreign-exchange allowance to a minimum. But they stay at home in a mood of fatalistic lethargy. There will be a crisis, of course, in the autumn, when the drug wears off. There always is. Time enough to face it when it comes.
Plus ca change. . . Ever since most-Egyptians can remember, the dispute with Britain has been flaring up in the autumn and subsiding in the summer—and life has gone on much the same. But this time, beneath the surface, life is not the same. Insurrection has been very near, and an uneasy tension holds the country. Egypt, perhaps for the first time in her history, has an honest and reasonably competent Egyptian Govern- ment: a Prime Minister bent on reforming the administration, a Minister of the Interior (tipped as a future Prime Minister) with the reins of security firmly in his hands. In such an atmosphere reason might prevail. But can it ?
A year ago the sensible Egyptian was beginning (in private) to see the Treaty as a minor issue compared with his country's immense and urgent social and economic problems. Reform was top priority, Treaty second. Today these problems are acuter than ever. Thanks to the Wafd Government's policy of buying up the cotton-crop at grossly inflated prices, so that it is now unsaleable, Egypt faces a £E40m. budget deficit, while countless fellaheen, small farmers and share-croppers, caught by the drop in the price, face ruin.
But the effect of this, paradoxically, is to strengthen the Wafd, which brought it about. Under the Wafd cotton-prices were high. Under the present Government they have dropped. The moral, to the illiterate, is obvious: Bring back the Wafd. The power of the Wafd might have been broken by drastic action against its leaders during those few days following January 26th. But this was not done. No Prime Minister has felt strong enough to do it, partly because so many other elements are equally tarred with corruption's brush. Since then the economic situation has deteriorated, and an agree- ment with Britain has not been achieved.
Thus after five months the Wafd is again as strong as ever and, if not out for blood, then against any whisper of a reasonable solution. And the only organised popular alterna- tive is the more extreme Moslem Brotherhood. The Wafd's less scrupulous elements may yet be eliminated; its more honest elements remain; but they are fanatical. Thus today the sensible Egyptian sees a settlement with Britain as the only issue that counts. Without it, so strong is the Wafd in Opposi- tion, there can be no hope for a moderate, reasonable regime, no hope for reform.
Much will depend on how Hilaly Pasha uses these few hot months of grace. For they must be used, not allowed to drift by until something turns up in the autumn. Britain, for the present, has done all that she can. We have made some errors, tactical and otherwise, in our search for an Anglo- Egyptian agreement. It was probably a mistake, in the first place, to open negotiations at all, on a bilateral basis, with the Wafd, which was committed to a policy more extreme than its predecessors. Instead, in 1950, we should have been ready to shift them on to a broader international basis. When, tardily, we did evolve the idea of a Middle East defence pact, it was a mistake to come out with it directly following the Wafd's denunciation of the Treaty.
It was possibly a mistake, despite the strong political provo- cation from Egypt, to put ourselves juridically in the wrong by giving unilateral promises to the Sudanese, which did not accord with the letter of the Condominium, and to hasten, to the extent that we did, their progress towards self- government. Just as it would have been better, in 1950, to make an international approach to the problem of the Canal, so it would have been better to insist on a tripartite approach with Egyptians and Sudanese, to the problems of the Sudan, and to embark on negotiations only on such conditions.
As things are now, the Middle East defence pact is still-born, but an agreement on the Canal, on a bilateral basis, is in sight —evacuation within an agreed number of years, with an Egyptian contribution to defence and certain British civilian technicians to fill the gap. This, however, is cancelled out,. irrelevantly, by our inability to recognise the King of E.Opt's title to the Sudan without the consent of the Sudanese. Thus today we are in the position, for the best • moral of sacrificing a major material interest to a mini one. Nothing. of course, will convince -the cynical Egyptian that the motives are moral. He assumes- that, 'in our familiar-' Machiavellian way, we are plotting to relax our grip on' Egypt in the Canal with one hand, only to tighten it on the Sudan with the other.
Is there, in such an unreal atmosphere, the smallest hope of a realistic solution ? Perhaps there is. For the first time an Egyptian Government has recognised that the Sudanese, as a would-be independent entity, exist, and are not merely a figment of Britain's imperialist designs. For the first time, on Egyptian initiative, the future of the Sudan has been discussed around' a table between the Egyptian Government and a responsible Sudanese delegation, sent by Sayed Sir Abdul Rahman el Mandi. The talks may not have got very far. The Egyptians, in view of their past pronouncements, may find it hard to convince the literal-minded Sudanese that King Farouk's pretended kingship over them is designed merely as a symbol, equivalent to that of the King of England in the Commonwealth. But at least the talks have taken place—and may lead to other talks, with other Sudanese elements.
Here then is a chink of daylight in an otherwise dark situa- tion. It may conceivably lead to some compromise, acceptable to moderate Wafdist opinion, in the autumn, when, after all, self-government in the Sudan may well be a fait accompli. But meanwhile, through the lotus months, Hilaly Pasha will have to work hard to re-educate that public opinion which the demagogues have led so far astray from realities. If he fails there will be, perhaps not a repetition of violence, but certainly organised boycott and passive resistance to Britain, with the Wafd once again calling the tune. And that will not be healthy for tourists.
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