In the first of what is likely to happen often in the course of this blog, I must correct myself. In my last article “The Winter of Discontent”, I explicated that Egypt has not seen any outstanding progress in public health or society. This was, to say the least, an oversimplification of a complex social and economic history. Egypt has gone through many cycles of growth and decline; longer I stay in this country I become more aware of my presence in its less-than-best condition. It was a grave error to estimate and judge history and politics through the lens of the current deterioration. However, this does not excuse the socialist dictatorship from its responsibility in the present day problems. On this point I will not yield.
Today I had the pleasure of listening to a lecture by Amitav Ghosh and once again found evidence that irregardless of location, culture, or background, enterprising individuals will bring greater wealth to their region than any government initiative. Wealth redistribution can and will occur naturally if people are given enough liberties to act upon their entrepreneurial instincts. From his lecture one can actively discern the growth and decline of rural communities in the Nile Delta region in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.
Ghosh spent a great deal of time living in the Nile Delta as part of his anthropoligical field work. When he arrived the villages had no running water or electricty. The purchase of water pumps during the author’s stay from his native country, India, was highlighted with some comedic effect in the lecture, but represent real changes and improvement in the lives of the Egyptain fellaheen. Later when Ghosh returned to the village he found it almost devoid of young men who had left Egypt to work in the oil rich sheikdoms of the gulf. Despite this demographic shift, the money that was sent back had given the village an unprecedented boost. Ghosh described the new village as almost “unrecognizable”. The period between the end of the Yom Kippur War and the Gulf War seems to have been the golden age for the Egyptain fellaheen. This was not only a golden time for the rural communities but also for the urban centers as many long time residents and visitors to Cairo have explained to me.
This short period of wealth came to an abrupt end in 1990 with the onset of the Gulf War. By the end, the sheikdoms of Kwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, etc. became wary of Arab immigrantion and substituted Egyptian and other imported Middle Eastern labor with that of Indian and Indonesian labor. This suddenly severed the source of weath that had so strongly driven the socio-economic changes in the delta region.
Upon his third visit to the village, Ghosh found a disgruntled population, unemployed and turning increasingly towards fudamentalism. Here, Ghosh brings his lecture to its darkest point. Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers in the 9/11 attacks on New York, was from the Nile delta region, close to where Amitav Ghosh stayed for his field research. Ghosh himself seems haunted by the rapid decline of the rural communities.
This presents another example of how state and political intervention has led to not only economic decline but has also indirectly caused great human tragedy. The Gulf War despite all its “clean” tactical victories indelibly left a huge scar across the Middle East and among other things, the skyline of New York. This is not to say that the US and the coalition should not have defended the sovereignty of Kwait in 1990/91, but rather to reflect upon the unintended consequences of long term political interference in the Middle East. Nations are left to their own devices. Peace, economic liberty, and freedom of movement all have tremendous impact upon the global society.
What this lecture by Ghosh has vested in me is the justification for a foreigner to critically comment upon the affairs of the Egyptain society, politics, and economics. Every nation and person, however small or seemingly insignificant, has the potential to decisively impact the lives of every other nation and person on the planet. The impoverished Nile delta region that Ghosh had stayed in had done just that. As individuals we must defend socio-economic and political freedoms, for our very lives may stand tested against an illiberal world void of aspiring people endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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