Middle East - Anthony Ham [98]
Alexander founded a new capital, Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast, and for the next 300 years the land of the Nile was ruled by a dynasty established by one of the Macedonian’s generals, Ptolemy. Romans followed the Ptolemaic dynasty, and then came Islam and the Arabs, conquering Egypt in AD 640. In due course, rule by the Ottoman Turks and the Europeans followed (the French under Napoleon, then the British) – shifts of power common to much of the Middle East (Click here).
* * *
HOW MUCH?
Cup of tea E£2 to E£4
Newspaper E£1
One-minute phone call to the UK E£3.75
Internet connection per hour E£5 to E£10
Museum admission E£40
LONELY PLANET INDEX
Litre of petrol E£1.75
Litre of bottled water E£3
Bottle of Stella beer E£8
Souvenir T-shirt E£35
Fuul or ta’amiyya sandwich E£1
* * *
Self-rule was finally restored to the Egyptians as a result of the Revolution of 1952. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, leader of the revolutionary Free Officers, ascended to power and was confirmed as president in elections held in 1956. That same year, ruminants of the colonial yoke were dramatically shaken off in full world view when Nasser successfully faced down Britain, France and Israel over the Suez Canal. Nasser was unsuccessful, however, in the 1967 war with Israel, and died shortly after of heart failure. Anwar Sadat, his successor, also fought Israel, in 1973, a war that paved the way for a peace settlement, culminating in the Camp David Agreement in 1979. In certain quarters, Camp David was viewed as a traitorous abandonment of Nasser’s pan-Arabist principles and it ultimately cost Sadat his life at the hands of an assassin in 1981.
Sadat’s murderer was a member of Islamic Jihad, an uncompromising terrorist organisation that aimed to establish an Islamic state in Egypt. Mass roundups of Islamists were immediately carried out on the orders of Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, the vice president and a former air force general, who declared a state of emergency when he assumed power that continues to this day.
Mubarak was able to rehabilitate Egypt in the eyes of the Arab world without abandoning the treaty with Israel. For almost a decade, he and his National Democratic Party (NDP) managed to keep the domestic political situation calm – with the constant presence of the armed forces always in the background. In the 1980s, however, discontent brewed among the poorer sections of society as the country’s economic situation worsened. With a repressive political system that allowed little or no chance to legitimately voice opposition, it was almost inevitable that the Islamist opposition would resort to extreme action.
Frequent attempts were made on the life of the president and his ministers, and regular clashes with the security forces occurred. The government responded with a heavy-handed crackdown, arresting thousands and continuing to outlaw the most popular Islamist opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood. By the mid-1990s, the violence had receded from the capital, retreating to the religious heartland of middle Egypt where, in 1997, members of the Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Brotherhood) carried out a bloody massacre of 58 holidaymakers at the Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor.
The massacre destroyed grassroots support for militant groups and the Muslim Brotherhood declared a ceasefire the following year. Things were relatively quiet until October 2004, when a bomb at Taba, on the border with Israel, killed 34 and signalled the start of increasing social unrest. In early 2005, President Mubarak bowed to growing international pressure and put forth a constitutional amendment aiming to introduce competitive presidential elections that year. Though ostensibly a step in the right direction, many pundits saw it as a charade. Opposition groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, by