AN AMERICAN VIEW OF ANTI-BRITISH CHARGES

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25081, 13 January 1947, Page 6

AN AMERICAN VIEW OF ANTI-BRITISH CHARGES

EGYPT

In this article in the New York ‘‘Herald-Tribune’ HOMER BIGART, on December 23, reviewed the political and economic situation in which Anglo-Egyptian treaty negotiations are still inconclusive.

Cairo (via London) .—Any one coming to Egypt from Poland is soon struck by the surface similarity in the measures used by two unpopular governments—on opposite sites of the Iron Curtain—to maintain themselves in power. Lest any comfort be given the Propaganda Ministry in Warsaw, this correspondent would like to say at the outset that Egypt is by no means the f[aol Poland has become. There is much ess fear of security police than in Warsaw, where the Russian tommygun is the symbol of the government. The civil liberties which the decadent Western liberals set such store by have been dispensed with in the new Polish democracy—here they are just a little beat up. The score—Warsaw, 10,000 black reactionaries in prison, 30,000 m concentration camps; Cairo, 200 Communists gaoled. Russia firmly supports the present Moscow-trained Polish regime and will have no other. Britain favours the present Egyptian government of Nokrashy Pasha, but probably would accept popular Nahas Pasha, leader of the opposition Wafdist party, if the bitter personal feud between Nahas and King Farouk could be smoothed out. There is no comparison in the degree of control. The Warsaw Government does not dare raise a peep against the 100,000 to 150,000 Red Army troops guarding the Soviet lines of communication across Poland. The Egyptian government not only may howl about the continued presence of some 20,000 to 30,000 British troops guarding the Suez Canal, but can threaten to take its case to the United Nations. Opposition papers are free to demand immediate and unconditional evacuation by Britain of Egypt and the Sudan and can accuse Britain of attempting to saddle the protectorate on the nation. The Arab press, incidentally, is a revelation of fresh, virile and independent expression after the musty polemics of Warsaw’s “Glos Ludu’’ and “Robotnik.” Here the government does not control newsprint—as in Poland —and cannot starve out the opposition press by butting off the supply of paper. Comparatively, the Cairo press is free of censorship. . But the disquieting thing is that Egypt seems tending toward the rigid controls of a police state. In his Parliament speech on Monday [Dec. 16J, Nokrashy Pasha said that the stern measures against students and the temporary ban on Wafdist rallies were necessary in the interest of national security. This sounds ominously like the Warsaw Government, which uses the same excuse in its fruitless cynical suppression of the Polish Peasant In y Warsaw it is a betrayal of fear by a handful of Communists of the silent hostility of the Polish masses. Here it is a sign of anxiety by the small, rich pasha* class that control of the nation’s wealth will slip from their hands. The Arab world is awakening to the fact that a feudal economy sunk in social misery and corruption offers an attractive opening for the Communists or the sort of semi-Fascist agitator typified by the fanatic Moslem Brotherhood. In Egypt the urgency of reform is appreciated by all articulate classes, even including the pashas, but social reform involves tough, undramatic administrative drudgery and—what is even worse—taxes, and to both the Egyptians have an acute allergy. Consequently they find it much more pleasant to spend time in diatribes against Britain. Tragically, the Wafdist opposition, which could easily win a

free election, is so busy hunting sinister implications in the British proposals for treaty revision that the certainly worsening plight of the Egyptian people is largely ignored. This attitude is silly and dangerous. The British proposals for (revision of) the treaty of 1936 offer full recognition of sovereign independence of Egypt, freedom of the Nile delta from British troops within three months and complete evacuation of the canal zone’ in three years. In the dispute over the Sudan the British obviously cannot, as a democracy, yield to the Egyptian demand that the Sudanese must always remain subject to the crown of Egypt, but Britain is willing to safeguard Egyptian interests in the future of the upper Nile. Egypt could hardly expect fairer terms from the United Nations, and her motive for appealing to the Security Council would be hard to explain. The Communists, of course, would love it and Moscow already has indicated support of such an appeal. Meanwhile, Egyptian Communists, although small m number and harassed by a jittery government which slaps 10 years’ imprisonment on the few it catches, are content at the moment with distributing underground primers setting forth that Russia is the world’s only true democracy, that Great Britain and the United States are up to no good in the Middle East and that Moscow does not really want to change the Moslem way of life. A few Communists have worked themselves into the left wing of the Wafdist party, but the charge that the Wafdists are linked with Moscow is just about as true as the Polish Government’s claims that Mikola jezyk, Peasant leader, is tied up with the underground because some captured members of the underground carried P.S.L. party cards. _ In the drive for followers the Communists ignore 13,000,000 ragged, ignorant fellahin (agricultural workers), but go after students, clerks, and industrial workers. They bide their time, confident that next year will bring an economic clash and aggravate present discontent. At the moment conditions probably are not any more desperate than usual. The pashas made themselves a potful of piastres during the war and some profits actually tricklei down to the fellahin, who earn 10 piastres (40 cents) a day. But the fat is pretty well eaten off and the impending fall of cotton prices—Egypt’s mam cash crop—will hasten the slump. Solution lies in the following steps: 1 increase in irrigation by costly projects on the upper Nile (raising the difficult political problems in the Sudan and British Uganda); 2, increase production by better drainage, improved husbandry, and more fertilisers; 3, increase in oil production; 4, development of industry. Industrial development, given great stimulus during the wpr, has been hampered by the appalling loss of efficiency due to the very high incidence of debilitating diseases. Nearly 80 per cent, of the population suffers from bilharzia, a disease of the urinary tract, and more than half have hookworm. Government statistics are notoriously in error, but the infant mortality rate is estimated at 200 each 1000 live births, and the death rate has risen to 27 each 1000. The outlook for Egypt is grim, and only a stable, hard-working, responsible government can prevent chaos. Britain could help by refusing to sign the treaty with the present government until it takes opposition leaders into the coalition or calls a free, unfettered election.