Within a week of Sadat's assassination his vice president, Hosni Mubarak, was elected president of Egypt. Mubarak represented a major change in Egyptian politics. He was the first president too young to have participated in the 1952 revolution as a member of the Free Officers' movement. He had gained recognition as commander of the Egyptian air force during the 1973 October War with Israel, but his chief assets were his managerial efficiency, quiet competence, and integrity. Mubarak had been a good partner of the flamboyant, charismatic Sadat.
As president, Mubarak brought stability and openness to Egypt's international relations. He renewed Egypt's close contacts with the Soviet Union, while reaffirming its commitment to peace with Israel and friendship with the United States. Egypt joined the U. S.-led coalition against Iraq during the Gulf War
Of 1990-1991 and was rewarded with substantial economic benefits.
Mubarak's calm, competent management of Egypt's foreign policy continued to win support from the United States and other Western nations into the late 1990's. This close friendship with the United States, however, did not lead Egypt to support all U. S. proposals. For example, in November, 1997, despite strong U. S. pressure, Egypt boycotted a U. S.-backed Middle East economic conference with Israeli representatives because of the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
In addition, Mubarak maintained reasonably good communication with and support for Libya, Sudan, Iraq, and Iran, while the United States tried to build opposition to all four of these states with the pretext of combating "terrorism."
Egypt's independent actions were accepted because they were tied closely to its national interests in the region. Because of the success of its foreign policy, Egypt played a pivotal role in the ongoing Middle East peace process.
Domestically, the Mubarak government placed its highest priority on building a steadily growing economy. Mubarak continued Sadat's economic policy of creating a free-market economy, with a more even balance between private and public ownership. He also established a more consistent and austere budgetary policy to control severe inflation and strengthen employment. Productivity increased in both agriculture and industry, and oil and gas production and exploration expanded. Egypt made a strong commitment to reducing barriers to free trade and invested substantially in a booming tourism industry. Mubarak moved toward these objectives while reducing inflation to 7 percent (from 40 percent under Nasser and Sadat) and bringing government budget deficits almost to zero.
In the early 1990's the Egyptian parliament adopted a privatization law that encouraged the selling of many publicly owned companies and forced more productive practices onto a resistant public sector. Moreover, controls were removed from agricultural land and urban housing rents, which stimulated productivity and self-sufficiency in economic activity. These changes brought opposition from certain groups of society that were still committed to the socialist ideals of the Nasser period, but this opposition was much less than expected and did not seriously disturb the progress of the regime.
As Egypt economic markets became more open during the 1990's, a growing class of young entrepreneurs moved into the service sectors of the economy, and the information age took hold. By 1998 "cybercafes" (computers and Internet links in a traditional Arab coffeehouse setting) appeared in the more prosperous neighborhoods, and live television talk shows covered important local, national, and international issues.
Mubarak reasserted Sadat's original commitment to move toward greater democracy, but always within rigidly enforced limits of what was accepted behavior. In the late 1990's the government continued to suffer from persistent Islamic militant violence, based primarily in the Al-Minya region in Upper Egypt. Egypt pointed to foreign assistance as the source of support for its Islamic violence.
Relations with Sudan were especially strained in 1995 after an unsuccessful attempt by Islamic militants to assassinate Mubarak during his official visit to Ethiopia, a terrorist effort that was officially linked to the Sudan. Border clashes took place between the two countries in the disputed Halaib region of southeastern Egypt. However, most authorities blamed high underemployment, a wide gap between rich and poor, and the increasing evidence of western influence as the real causes for continued Islamic violence.
Militant attacks against police and tourist buses, especially from September, 1992, to July, 1994, and again in November, 1997, caused severe economic hardship for Egypt's tourism industry. Nevertheless, Islamic militancy appeared well contained by the government's security forces and did not seem to pose a serious threat to the political stability of the regime. A possibly more serious threat was posed by the persistent legal and social battles that fundamentalist Muslims conducted against the Mubarak government in order to force a more traditional interpretation of Islamic justice and family lifestyle.
Egypt is a land that depends heavily on its environment. An environmental protection law took effect in March, 1998, and the government slowly enforced this law in an attempt to control the actions of owners of public and private industries who showed little concern for the toxic air and water pollution they have caused. The government also launched a new Toshka project that requires vast quantities of Nile River water to be piped from Lake Nasser west to the New Valley in southwestern Egypt. The goal is to eventually expand the land available for cultivation by 25 percent and create new job opportunities and homes for the increasing population.
Egypt's social problems are severe, but not unusual for a developing country. The population is increasing at a reduced rate of 2.08 percent (down from 2.8 percent a decade earlier), but the rate is still higher than desired. Thirty-five percent of the population is under fifteen years of age. Illiteracy is high, reaching 48.9 percent in rural areas and 38.6 percent overall. These forces create serious pressures on educational institutions at all levels and on the growth in skilled and managerial labor to support an increasingly modern economy. Relations between the Coptic religious population and the Sunni Muslim majority are good, although some discriminatory practices exist and occasional violence occurs against Copts in rural areas.
During the early years of the twenty-first century, Egypt had a growing population of over 70 million people, a relatively stable political leadership, friendly relations with the leading nations of the world, and a central geographic position in both the Middle East and Africa. Great challenges remain. A large centralized government bureaucracy resists change. There are major obstacles to expanding crucial economic productivity. An increasingly modern and secular society poses serious problems for a population committed to a conservative Muslim faith. The autocratic governmental structure places a priority on order and stability, while an educated public clamors for more democratic participation. Nevertheless, Egypt, with its assets and current efforts, may well handle these problems and continue to play a major role in shaping the decisions that will affect the future of the Middle East.
One of Egypt's greatest challenges has been the improvement of its human rights situation. Some of its problems in this area have attracted international attention. After the secretary-general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), Hafez Abu Saada, published a report describing police brutality, he was arrested in December, 1998, for accepting foreign funding for the purpose of publishing materials contrary to Egypt's interests. Although Abu Saada was freed after an international campaign in his behalf, similar governmental repression continued. In June, 2000, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, chair of Egypt's Ibn Khaldoun Center for Developmental Studies, was arrested at gunpoint on charges almost identical to those made against Abu Saada.
The existence of radical Islamic parties within Egypt posed problems both for Egypt itself and for the world. The Egyptian government's efforts to suppress radical Islamic activities did not make militant organizations go away. Instead, banned opposition parties engaged in extensive underground organizing. Islamic radicals who were shut out of electoral politics worked their way into positions of leadership in professional associations and labor unions. They created charities and free clinics that increased their support in poor communities.
Egypt's suppressed Islamic parties provided leaders and participants in international terrorism. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, one of the founding members of the Egyptian Islamic Group, received a life sentence in New York for taking part in a plot to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. The international al-Qaeda group, led by Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden, had close ties to both the Algerian and the Egyptian groups. The al-Qaeda organization became well known to the world in September, 2001, when members of the organization hijacked airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, destroying the towers. A number of bin Laden's top lieutenants had come out of the Egyptian Islamist movement. These included Mohammed Atef, a co-founder of al-Qaeda, believed by some to be the one who would replace bin Laden if he were killed. Ayman al-Zawahri, a former Cairo surgeon, was also a founding member of al-Qaeda and one of its leaders. Saif al-Adel, another Egyptian was a member of al-Qaeda's military committee.
John S. Murray Updated by the Editors
World History
