There's An Important Man On That Plane

“There’s an important man on that plane,” says Heny.

“What plane? Where?!” I say, dozily.

Z already has his eyes on it. It’s a sleek big beast, but it’s the four fighters escorting it that catch the eye. Just as I’m trying to figure out which individual in post-Mubarak Egypt could be important enough to require four fighter planes — a general? — Heny helps me out.

“Americans,” he says, and he and our Bedouin host exchange some rapid Arabic. We’re sitting on carpets in the desert outside Dahab, drinking sweet Arab tea from glasses, fresh from a walk up a wadi.

“Oh!” I say. “The democracy guys.” A bunch of American democracy activists, including the son of a US government minister, have just been flown out of Egypt without standing trial for the crimes of which they are accused.

“Yes,” says Heny. “Most Egyptians are angry about that. It’s interference. Things should be separate. It’s with the courts. Let the judges handle it.”

“Yes,” I say. “We have that in England too. You have the government – the executive – the courts – the judiciary – and the legislature – parliament. And all three powers are separate. They have to be, or you don’t have democracy.”

More Arabic exchanges. “That’s what we have in Egypt, too,” says Heny. Egypt acquired its first (basically) democratically elected Parliament in 60 years a month or so ago, and, while they’re still working on the new constitution, that’s certainly how things should be.

Now, some of the nicest people I know are Americans, but that doesn’t stop me thinking that American foreign policy, in general, sucks. Ours does too, of course – Zac and I marched against the invasion of Iraq with a million-plus others, and a fat lot of good that did — but our government lacks the military heft to screw the world up as much as it might like.

“It’s a paradox, isn’t it?” I say. “The American idea of bringing democracy by overruling or overturning democratically elected governments when democracy doesn’t deliver what they want.”

Nodding and Arabic ensues.

“You think it’s Obama?” says Heny.

I have no idea, obviously, who was on that plane, so I speculate. “Not Obama,” I say. “Clinton maybe?” I turn to Z. “You know who Clinton is, right?”

“Yeah,” my son says. “Bill Clinton.”

“Not in this context,” I say. “Hillary Clinton. You know who SHE is, right?”

“Umm, Secretary of State?” he says.

I decide not to labour the point that it might have been an important WOMAN on the plane. Or it may not have been an American at all. But I’d be interested to know who it was.

And even more interested to know what the activists fighting for democracy in a country that’s not their own think of the manner of their release. Because if you believe in democracy, surely you let the judiciary do its thing?

14 Responses

  1. Mary says:

    Sadly, no one running the US government cares a rats ass about democracy except to spout off on a regular basis that it is what they are spreading across the world. You know, one occupation at a time…Ughhh!

    • Theodora says:

      Mmmm… I think I’m going to do a series on Voices of Egypt while I’m here. Getting some very interesting, if generally depressing, views on the future.

  2. Sadly, I can’t think of any nation that has emerged from a period of world domination with clean hands. Surely Britain’s colonial period wasn’t its finest moment. Once past WWII, US foreign policy has been a muddle of zenophobia, arrogance, clumsiness, and stupidity with a few bright moments in the mix. Right now, however, I feel a lot more comfortable with Obama at the helm that with our former cowboy troglodyte.
    My understanding is that the Americans arrested in Egypt belonged to NGOs (NON-governmental organizations) who were trying to help the young democracy. Yes, naive and maybe arrogant. But they weren’t associated with the government. And it wasn’t Bill Clinton on the plane. My daughter works for his organization here in New York, and he was home.

    • Theodora says:

      You’re right that colonialism was very much not our finest hour (I personally think of the Opium Wars as a particular low point — bombing hell out of China to force them to take our opium exports), and, yes, better Obama than the last one or any of the putative next lot (eek!).

      I think some, if not all, of the Americans belonged to something called the International Republican Institute, set up in the Reagan era to bring democracy in, umm, Latin America — http://www.iri.org/frequently-asked-questions. It’s funded by the US government and something called the National Endowment for Democracy and directed by a chap whose CV probably doesn’t play that well in the Middle East (trogolodyte-era politico who rings a bell from the Iraq war hearings). So, yes, it’s an NGO. But, umm, rather a special kind of NGO?

      Your daughter, though, would probably know more about what this particular NGO is than I do. And both sides of the story are pretty murky. The only thing that isn’t murky is that the Egyptians are hopping mad that the courts weren’t allowed to follow their process.

  3. I meant xenophobic. 😉

  4. Completely disagree on the plight of the people on trial currently in Egypt. First, they are not all Americans. There are a variety of countries represented in the almost 40 people being put on that witch hunt trial.

    Basically what you have in this particular trial is one of the Mubarak cronies that is still trying to hold onto power — and the best way to do that is bashing “foreign influences” that supposedly brought down the corrupt Mubarak regime (now replaced, not unpredictably with the corrupt military regime that was basically the power behind the Mubarak regime in the first place).

    Those organizations that are now charged in this shitty example of “justice” were there to promote democracy in Egypt. They ran education programs in one of the least democratic countries in the world, just so that when the country DID finally get to the point where they were going to have semi-fair and free elections that there were democratic organizations in place, so that the whole thing didn’t fall into chaos. Those are just the exact type of non-government NGO organizations that everyone that supports and believes in democracy should be standing up and applauding.

    They operated fully and openly in Egypt for years, even under the Mubarak regime, and basically in the end, they got arrested under this bullshit charge that they were the reason behind the uprisings. The basic government charge against them is “the Egyptian people didn’t want to overthrow Mubarak, shadowy foreign governments wanted it,” which couldn’t be any further from the truth for anyone that has ever talked to actual Egyptians and know ho hated Mubarak was. Add to that the fact that the US government actually wanted Mubarak to stay in power (ergo the very slow response on the part of the Obama regime last year) and it is easy to see that these trials are bogus, sham efforts.

    It is a load of shit — and it is a good sign that they let the Americans leave, instead of jailing them over these bullshit charges. I just feel sorry for the various people they didn’t let leave and who will likely spend time in jail as a result of this sham trial.

    • Theodora says:

      I carefully avoided in the article observing on anything other than the paradox of using anti-democratic means to free people who campaign for democracy, rather than going into the complexities of the trial. My point, which is a simple one, is that if you believe in democracy you should hire lawyers to argue for the case to be thrown out / that the accused are innocent, rather than leveraging the executive to lean on the judiciary.

      It was more an opinion piece on how Egyptians aren’t necessarily that keen on foreigners helping out with democracy.

      You are wrong on a number of counts in your analysis here. The charges are that the organisations breached laws on foreign government backing.

      From an analysis of the IRI — US gov’t funded, staffed by luminaries including Brent Scowcroft and John McCain (more here, and on the links in my previous comment: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/31/american-democracy-promotion-rings-hollow) it would seem that there *may* be a case to answer under Egyptian law.

      The IRI has not been operating in Egypt for over ten years. It began operations in Egypt last year. Prior to that it ran activities it describes as “offshore workshops”: it has worked to overthrow democratically elected governments it doesn’t like in a range of countries (I can’t imagine it’s a fan of the Islamist government that’s incoming). This is *not* the kind of organisation that “anyone who believes in democracy should be standing up and applauding”.

      I’m not entirely sure what you mean by sham trial. Do you mean they’ve broken no laws?

  5. Just to make sure that people understand how crappy this whole prosecution is — even the three Egyptian Judges that were in charge of the trial all pulled out of the case, because they realized the prosecution was a sham.

    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/02/2012228222228344573.html

    • Theodora says:

      They pulled out because they refused to bow to political pressure to accept a “bail” deal, which is why the “bail” was paid to a court with no judges.

  6. Further excellent reading on how this whole thing is basically just the witch hunt of a Mubarak hold over, Fayza Abul Naga.

    http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137290/stephen-mcinerney/fayza-abul-naga-and-cairos-campaign-against-ngos

    for those that want to be educated.

    • Theodora says:

      To paraphrase the article: the Egyptian Ministry of Justice began investigating the funding of NGOs and whether this was in compliance with Egyptian law, because they perceived American interference in the direction of the new government (Islamist).

      “The United States decided to use all its resources and instruments to contain [the January 25 revolution],” the government’s official news agency, MENA, quoted her as saying, “and push it in a direction that promotes American and also Israeli interests.”

      I would say that, as least as regards the IRI, this may well not be an unfair summary of its activities.

      There is *nothing* in the article which says, as per your original comment, that this is a conspiracy to disavow the revolution or present the revolution as foreign-backed. Quite the reverse, in fact. Her statement embraces the revolution as Egyptian and is objecting to quasi-governmental interference, backed by government funds, *after* the revolution.

  7. asma says:

    The Democratic Party NGO NDI was equally accused and arrested to be brought to trial in a maneuver designed to distract the Egyptian public from the ruling SCAF’s attempts to hang on to power, rather than transition to the democratically elected government promised 14 months ago. Egypt’s ruling junta is not inclined to step aside and is prosecuting the NGO workers based not on charges related to the overthrow of the Mubarak government but rather on charges designed to distract from the continuing revolution aimed at removing the SCAF.

    • Theodora says:

      I’m not sure why you talk about a continuing revolution: from a feminist perspective, I can see why one would wish for one, but there are also presidential elections beginning next month, and campaigns in place for that.