EGYPT AND JORDAN RUMOUR-FED PEOPLE SEE A COUP BEHIND EVERY PYRAMID

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33094, 8 December 1972, Page 12

EGYPT AND JORDAN RUMOUR-FED PEOPLE SEE A COUP BEHIND EVERY PYRAMID

(By a special correspondent of the "Economist") (Reprinted from the "Economist" by arrangement)

Two days of sudden and abnormal rain last week brought communications in Cairo to a virtual stop. The oily, undrained lakes called streets did nasty things to the few cars pretending to be amphibious; the telephone system, always erratic, collapsed under a thousand curses as people tried to pound their half-dead receivers into life. The morning newspaper, “Al Ahram,” prepared a cartoon of water-logged frustrations captioned “Our country sunk.” Overnight somebody (the censor?) killed the point by substituting “city” for “country.” But Egyptians do not require “Al Ahram’s” discreet needling to feel small and bemoan the decomposition around them.

"Decomposition” is a favourite word. Some critics, sniffing carrion, say the regime cannot last: others, that much more critical, say that the crumbling disintegration of authority and willpower has eroded even the initiative that might fire conspirators into successful action. This is probably too academic an assessment of the resentful lethargy enshrouding a nation for which nothing in the past few year's has gone right. Undoubtedly President Sadat no less than King Hussein, the other Arab ruler under obvious threat, has been taking his precautions; the president’s men are said to be placed strategically. But in Cairo, unlike Amman, the precautions are not visible in the shape of machine gun posts, security check-points and the rest of the paraphernalia of an authoritarian regime with many enemies. Half-baked attempts On the surface Cairo is as relaxed and welcoming as ever, feeding the correspondent’s nightmare that a coup might happen without his noticing it. Some sort of middle road has to be found between the exaggerated reports of attempted coups emanating from Beirut and elsewhere (the 8.8. C. is currently considered top culprit in rumour-mongering) and the limp denials and talk of apolitical "disciplinary action” which is the way chosen by the Ministry of Information, and the military censors, to reveal the truth to the world. A few stories stand up better than others: there would seem to have been a couple of half-baked attempts by a handful of individualist junior officers in Cairo to intercept President Sadat, plus a more serious incident at an air force camp involving 24 officers (the official version is that 12 air force officers are being interrogated for spreading false rumours). A number of senior military men have been dismissed, some of them arrested; they include, although this has been denied, the chief of military intelligence. Conspiracy in Jordan In Jordan, too, official reticence tends to give credence to blown-up stories from abroad. But in a smaller community it is slightly easier to distinguish fact from fiction. A conspiracy to assassinate King Hussein and his very energetic young brother, Crown Prince Hassan, was apparently unearthed early in November; only seven officers were believed involved but the position of their alleged leader in the royal guard shows up the weakness of any security apparatus, however tight. The embroidery on the story is that an actual attempt was made on the king’s life and that as a direct result he retired to hospital for a couple of days last week. He went to hospital all right, but not because of this. With all due scepticism to palace gossip, the more relevant factor contributing to his official “exhaustion” was his renunciation, a few days before, of any intention

to divorce Princess Muna and marry a Jordanian girl, Miss Alia Touqan. His senior military commanders, it is said, “persuaded” him that this would not be seemly for the ruler of a country partly under enemy occupation.

In Amman, frustrated love: in Cairo, just plain frustration. Many Egyptians who condemn President Sadat for his lack of a consistent, or intelligent, foreign policy dread the prospect of his overthrow. They would welcome a ruler strong enough to decide a policy and to stick to it — even if the policy was to do nothing about Israeli occupation. But the divisions in the country are reflected in the army and many people fear that the alternative to Mr Sadat would not be a stronger man but a bunch of contending officers. The dread is that Egypt should drift into a decade of aimless palace revolutions. “We could become,” they say, “like Syria in the 19505.” Eyes are turned inward: since Egyptians believe that internal dissension is the prime determinant of what happens next, there is relatively little interest either in the possibility of a new round of peace talks or in the fighting on the SyrianIsraeli frontier, seen glumly as a repeat performance of the events that drew Egypt into the 1967 war.

The most forceful pressure could be from the religious right. The recent anti-Copt demonstrations (themselves complex) are one major manifestation of this. Another smaller signal was the move within the People’s Assembly to follow Libya’s lead in adopting Koranic law, and punishment, for certain offences. The move was quickly and skilfully squashed but Libya’s return to Islam has a certain appeal not only to the rich peasants (kulaks, says the Egyptian left dismissively) in the assembly

but to their sons, now officers in the army. The left straggles along, much weakened. Socialists and Communists draw together under the banner of Nasserism, not because they like Nasser more but because they like his successor less. Students are divided, some say very deliberately, into right and left groups. So far their energies have been concentrated against each other but if one faction or the other does get out into the street it could work as a catalyst for workers—and eventually the army. The puffs of revolutionary steam, released by Mr Sadat’s loosening of Egypt’s disciplinary lid, blow all ways. One danger is a domestic explosion; the other, closely related, is the length to which President Sadat may go in a bid to unite and galvanise his country. A widely shared view is that he believes that the only way open to him is to fight Israel. The editors who are now thought to reflect his attitude write of fighting, simply and without qualification. They do not write of winning. The President may yet be checked by his military advisers. When General Sadek was War Minister, he refused to consider renewed war without adequate air defence —and the only air defence he considered adequate was a weapon that could threaten Tel Aviv. But General Sadek has been sacked, and his chief of staff, General Shazli, equally realistic about Egypt’s military chances, has been passed over. Possibly the talk is still bluster; certainly to an outsider it sounds all too familiar. But the threatened belligerency this time last year fell into the pattern of Mr Sadat’s pressure on the major Powers for a peace settlement; now it could be primarily to save the regime’s skin. And which motive, do you think, is the more powerful?