Death of Coptic Pope Shenouda III

The one time I went to Egypt back in 1988, I did the regulation tourism things: the pyramids, the Nile, the temples and the Red Sea. But the one thing I regret was the thing I did not do which was to take up an offer. It was at Aswan where a Coptic taxi driver befriended me. I cannot remember his name but I do remember he asked would I go home and meet his family. I turned him down either out of suspicion or because I wanted to spend more time at the poolside bar (Photo:AP).

It was a shame because I would have learned a lot more about Copts and their ancient form of Orthodox Christianity inherited from the Pharaonic Egyptians. I had blithely assumed Egypt, or officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, was a Muslim country but as my taxi driver reminded me, 10 percent were not. He also told me the leader of that 10 percent, some eight million Copts, was a Pope, just like the more famous one in St Peter's.

The leader then was Pope Shenouda III and he died on Saturday in Cairo after 40 years on throne, aged 88. Shenouda will be buried at St Bishoy Monastery of Wadi al-Natrun in the Nile Delta, where he spent time in exile. President Anwar Sadat banished Shenouda to the Monastery in 1981 after he criticised the Sadat government one too many times. Shenouda was an outspoken critic of Sadat and a thorn in his side who berated him over his handling of an Islamic insurgency in the 1970s and Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

Shenouda was the 117th pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Tradition says the Church was founded by St Mark but its independent history is traced back to the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The 'Chalcedonian Definition' defined Jesus as having a separate manhood and godhood. Still central canon to the Catholics and most Orthodox Churches, it was rejected by Alexandria. It was also in Alexandria where the concept of a “pope” first developed, long before Rome stole the idea. Deriving from the Greek word πάππας (pappas), the first man to carry the title was Patriarch of Alexandria, Pope Heracleus who died in 249.

In 451, the entire Egyptian population followed Pope Dioscorus in rejecting Chalcedon and the Coptic Church was born. Coptic was the language they spoke, grammatically closely akin to the hieroglyphic Late Egyptian. The Copts were hated by the Byzantines who saw them as heretics. There was a brief interregnum of Persian conquest by the Sassanids before the Muslims conquered Egypt in 642. The religion was left undisturbed on condition they pay Jizya to the new rulers. The new tax slowly took its toll though the conversion to Sunni Islam would take three centuries.

Copts survived but would remain second class citizens suffering petty discrimination in their own country until the 19th dynasty of Albanian Muhammad Ali Pasha. Ali abolished Jizya and saw their value as an administrative caste. In this, Ali emulated the British divide and conquer strategy of raising the profile of a despised minority. The Copts thrived and started their own schools of education. A 20th century Diaspora took the faith to every continent.

Nazeer Gayed Roufail was born into the faith on 3 August 1923, the youngest of eight children. He grew up in the ancient Nile settlement of Asyut, the Egyptian city with the highest Coptic concentration. Here, a traveller in 1918 wrote, “the wealthy Christian families have built themselves palaces and made gardens by the river side - The domes of the Coptic Cathedral and the minarets of the Mosques may be seen in the distance”.

Roufail was active in Sunday School and went to Cairo University, graduating in history and later the Coptic Theological Seminary. Roufail retreated to the Nitrian Desert where he joined the ascetic life of the Syrian Monastery under a new name of Father Antonios el-Syriani. The Monastery had already supplied one Coptic Pope in the 15th century and from the early days el-Syriani was marked out as a special candidate to repeat the feat. For six years he lived as a hermit before being ordained as a priest.

In 1962 Pope Cyril VI made him bishop of Christian Education and President of the Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary. Cyril also gave him a third name: Shenouda. He was named for St Shenoute the Archimandrite, the most renowned saint of the Copts who lived for 118 years. The modern Shenouda revolutionised the seminary and tripled the intake of students. His influence ruffled Cyril’s feathers causing a reprimand when Shenouda argued bishops should be elected. It would not be his last fight over democracy.

In March 1971, Cyril VI died and Shenouda was enthroned the 117th pope six months later on 14 November. A year earlier Anwar Sadat had inherited political power of Egypt and was keen to flex his muscles. The Six Day War with Israel in 1967 had halted Coptic pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a situation that lasted for 11 years. When Sadat brokered the Camp David agreement with Carter and Begin, he hoped the Copts would lead the return of Egyptian travel to Israel. Shenouda did not play ball and decreed a papal ban on Coptic visits to Israel in 1979. “From the Arabic national point we should not abandon our Palestinian brothers and our Arabic brothers by normalising our relations with the Jews,” he said.

Shenouda’s inconvenient pro-Palestinianism irked Sadat as did his support of its suicide bombers. In 1981, Sadat sent Shenouda back to the Nitrian Desert where he had previously lived as a hermit. Sadat was assassinated later that year and on 2 January 1985 his successor Hosni Mubarak reversed the decree. Pope Shenouda came back to Cairo to a hero’s welcome celebrating the Orthodox Christmas on January 7. Shenouda expressed forgiveness to those who wronged him. “All Copts open their hearts to their brothers, the Muslims,” he told the congregation.

As the 20th century ended, more and more extremist Muslims were not prepared to open their hearts to their Christian brothers. In the predominately Christian village of El-Kosheh in 2000, riots between Christians and Muslims led to a shoot-out in which 21 Christians were killed. When the judge blamed Coptic incitement and acquitted most of those accused, Shenouda spoke out in rare public criticism. “We want to challenge this ruling. We don't accept it,” he said. But Copts were increasingly on the outer losing their positions of influence across society with only one percent of MPs.

Worse was to come after Mubarak was overthrown in the Arab Spring. For all his faults, Mubarak was a sometime protector of the faith and allowed them religious freedoms including the right to repair their churches to live broadcasts of Easter services and punished Islamists who persecuted them. When he was deposed, over 100,000 Copts fled Egypt, mostly to Canada. The killing began with a church bombing during a 2011 New Year’s Eve mass that left more than 20 dead and dozens wounded, followed by another deadly attack during the Coptic Christmas a week later. Islamists have called them infidels and accused them of being Western spies and traitors who are stockpiling arms in plots to secede from the country.

Shenouda was the peacemaker, often calling for harmony and he regularly met Muslim leaders to ease tensions. He was revered among Copts and popular among many moderate Muslims who respected him as a survivor. But the strain eventually told on his elderly frame. He flew regularly to the US this year for medical treatment and died on Saturday of lung and liver complications.

His death is a massive blow not only to the 8 million Copts but the 80 million Egyptian Muslims he leaves behind. A strong voice of moderation in a troublesome time, his absence will leave a huge void and may exacerbate the trend of Copts to leave the country. The loss of Egypt’s Copts would not only be tragedy for the millions of refugees, but also one for those left behind. Like my taxi driver in 1988, the Copts form much of the nation’s professional and business class. The loss of their expertise could be a fatal blow to Egypt’s faltering economy.

Have yourself a very Orthodox Christmas

Minus all the Western commercial hoopla of 25 December, 300 million members of the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrated its Christmas today. The day is celebrated on January 7 according to the old Julian calendar by the Russian, Serbian, Georgian and Jerusalem Orthodox Churches and Mount Athos monasteries commemorate the birth of Jesus 13 days after Western Christmas. Unlike the Catholic Church where the Pope in preeminent, there are 14 autocephalous churches in the Orthodox community, though the mother church is Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the “first among equals”. Photo: Orthodox priests lead a Christmas service at the Bosnian Orthodox Church in Sarajevo (Amel Emric / AP)

At the 1459 Council of Florence monks from the self-governing Mt Athos in Greece refused to let Catholic and Orthodox Churches in return for Western military help against the Turks. As a result Constantinople fell to the Ottomans but Orthodoxy survived doctrinally intact. In today’s Istanbul as in many places across southern and eastern Europe, Orthodox Christian worshippers plunged into chilly waters to retrieve crucifixes in ceremonies commemorating the baptism of Jesus. Hundreds from Istanbul's now tiny Greek Orthodox community and Greek tourists attended the Epiphany ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters. About 20 faithful leaped into the cold Golden Horn inlet to retrieve a wooden cross thrown by the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Apostolos Oikonomou, a 40-year-old Greek man, clinched the cross. "This year I was the lucky guy," he said. "I wish everybody peace and happy New Year."

Over 5,000 worshippers gathered at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ Our Saviour including outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called on the congregation to withstand the “cult of hasty lucre”. Archpriest Sergius Zvonarev of the Moscow Patriarchate said the day was both a solemn ritual and joyous celebration, Zvonarev said the Russian Orthodox Church remained loyal to the Julian calendar which regulated church life and traditions for centuries. “It reveres these traditions as the entire civilized world used to live by them in the past,” he said.

Orthodox Christians gathered in Bethlehem in front of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the Church of the Nativity. Barely days after a fight between various Christian sects over territorial rights in the church, the Mayor of Bethlehem Victor Batarseh said the theme of this year’s celebration was Palestine celebrates hope. “Our message in these days is love and peace to all especially in the Holy Land”, Batarseh said. Over 2,000 scouts from all over the West Bank held a parade through Bethlehem with their marching bands and bagpipes.

Many in Bethlehem say the best band is the Syriac Orthodox Scouts’ pipers. Bethlehem’s Syriac Orthodox community is proud to trace its roots to the ancient Aramean peoples and are among the few people left that speak the language of Jesus, Aramaic. The scouts were established in 1958 and became internationally successful in sports in the 60s and 70s. After the Oslo Accords, their pipers became President Yasser Arafat’s military band. One former band member said they were in Gaza playing the bagpipes for Arafat when the news of Rabin’s assassination was announced. “They thought it was a Palestinian who had killed him so they would not let us leave Gaza,” he said. Today they took centre stage in Manger Square.

In Egypt, Copts nervously celebrated the day as sectarian violence continued, the first Christmas in the post Hosni Mubarak era. US President Barack Obama used the occasion to call for the protection of Copts and other minorities. "I want to reaffirm the commitment of the US to work for the protection of Christian and other religious minorities around the world," he said. The call comes after the military rulers cracked down on a Coptic march in October. Coptic Pope Shenouda III commended Islamist leaders, who attended the Coptic Church service. "We all celebrate together as Egyptians,” Shenouda said.

A Year of Revolt: In memory of Mohammed Bouazizi

Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book The End of History and The Last Man was misinterpreted as a triumph for democracy in the wake of the fall of western communism. It was therefore easy to laugh at him being hopelessly wrong as the New World Order collapsed in the late 1990s and new enemies appeared to replace old bugbears. Yet the “end of history” Fukuyama spoke about was the foremost importance of dignity in life not the success of democracy. This thesis was right then and remains true today. Democracy has massive failings but it always offers the dignity of revenge against oppressive or incompetent rulers in the promise of a future ballot box.

The Eastern European revolutions of the 1980s understood this as do today’s democracy-deprived Arab World. Societies dominated by single parties and long-term dictators are almost always intrinsically corrupt. People always privately grumbled about this lack but were too smart or too fearful to do much in public. It took someone to strike a match to bring serious people power out on the street. That someone was Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi and it was his search for dignity that began a worldwide revolution. When authorities took away Bouazizi’s vegetable cart because it was unlicensed and then slapped and humiliated him when he paid the fine, they unleashed consequences that would not just wipe away the certainties of their world, but also of our world.

Because Bouazizi was “humiliated and dejected”, he set fire to himself outside a Sidi Bouzid police station on December 17. The burns were horrific but Bouazizi did not die straight away. After 18 agonising days, he died on 4 January 2011, almost exactly a year ago. But by then the spark had already been lit. While Bouazizi lay dying in hospital, an impotent rage exploded across Tunisia. Hundreds of thousands had been victim to similar pettinesses at the hands of Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year-old regime and rose in protest at his treatment. An alarmed Ben Ali visited the dying man in hospital but it was too late for both of them. Bouazizi died a week later and Ben Ali was out of power just 10 days after that.

With winter still in full swing, Bouazizi gave birth to the Arab Spring. It is only the west that calls it the Arab Spring, in the affected countries it is the Sidi Bouzid Revolt in honour of his hometown. Bouazizi’s enraged relatives, friends and acquaintances were first to take to the streets in support of his act of mad defiance.

The Labour unions quickly got on board. Inspired by the same need for dignity and respect, the country’s largest trade union, the normally pliant General Tunisian Workers' Union (UGTT), mobilised its half million members in favour of the revolution. Top level officials previously loyal to Ben Ali changed their tune under pressure from members and a vibrant youth movement.

The tremors from the earthquake epicentre on Sidi Bouzid quickly spread across the region once Ben Ali was overthrown. Just 11 days later, there were massive protests in Cairo against the regime of Hosni Mubarak who had been in power for 30 years and about to effect a handover to his son Gemal. After three weeks of mass protest across the country, Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced Mubarak was handing over power to the military much to the joy of the Tahrir Square protesters. But their joy was short-lived with the military junta showing no signs of wanting to share power and the protests continue a year later.

Between Tunisia and Egypt lay Libya, complete with its own long-term dictator. Mad Muammar Gaddafi had clever held on to power for 40 years despite often being public enemy number one in the West. In the end it was his own people that dislodged him after a bitter and long-lasting war. Riots independent of Tunisia’s problems were happening in Benghazi in January over chronic housing shortages but Gaddafi threw Libyan oil money at the problem to quieten the Benghazi protesters.

Those riots were still fresh in the mind at the end of the month when dissident writer Jamal al-Hajji issued an Internet call for demonstrations across Libya “in the Tunisian and Egyptian fashion”. Al-Hajji was arrested in early February and Gaddafi issued a warning to political activists, journalists and media figures to behave.

When Libyan lawyer Fatih Turbel was arrested in Benghazi on 15 February, police broke up protests and made dozens of further arrests. Yet the riots spread quickly through the east and a Day of Rage two days later shook the regime to its core. Within 24 hours, rebel forces controlled Benghazi. In the first week they pushed east to Misrata and Tobruk fell in yet another war. The rebels shouted the same slogans heard in Tunisia and Egypt: the people want to bring down the regime.

It seemed to the watching world a third regime was about to quickly topple but Gaddafi had no intention of quitting gracefully. Those that did not love him deserved to die and he threw the full force of his armies on the rebels. Their majority support among the people was endangered by Gaddafi guns purchased from Western countries.

Perhaps inspired by guilt for this – or more likely for their own political expediency – David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy pushed for intervention to save the revolution. Obama, already stretched by two wars in Islamic states, was harder to convince but eventually NATO airpower swung the pendulum back in the rebels favour. Tripoli fell in August and Gaddafi was butchered in October. Cameron and Sarkozy were heralded as heroes in Libya and Tunisia’s Burning Man had played a small part in overthrowing a third tyrant.

Bouazizi also indirectly or directly inspired protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Palestine and Yemen with varying degrees of success. Bouazizi could well claim two more leaders this year in Saleh in Yemen and Asad in Syria. The Arab Spring template was closely watched by many in the western world and played a symbolic role in the Occupy movement. Time Magazine, with eyes on both phenomena, called the anonymous protester its person of the year. But there is a good case to be made the protester was far from anonymous. Mohammed Bouazizi’s loss of dignity and death sacrifice was a pivotal “end of history” moment across the planet.

Algeria's disaffected find their voice

“Acts of violence don't win wars. Neither wars nor revolutions. Terrorism is useful as a start. But then, the people themselves must act. That's the rationale behind this strike: to mobilise all Algerians, to assess our strength,” Larbi Ben M’hidi The Battle of Algiers (1966)

To no one’s great surprise, the wave of people power revolutions that have shaken North Africa to the core has now washed over Algeria. There is something circular in this too, as Algeria was the scene of the first protests this year which spread to Tunisia and then to Egypt. Yesterday 2,000 protesters marched in the capital Algier’s May First Square where the overcame a security cordon to meet up with other protesters despite being vastly outnumbered by 30,000 riot police. Protesters want greater democratic freedoms, a change of government and more jobs. They are determined to remain peaceful and not react to police provocation as they march despite being banned by a nervous government.

The Algerian Government has much to be nervous about as it attempts to keep power it stole two decades ago. In December 1991, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) stunned the FLN which had ruled Algeria since independence from France in 1962 by smashing them in an election with a slogan of “No Constitution and no laws. The only rule is the Koran and the law of God.” A month later the army declared a state of emergency, overturned the result and formed a collective presidency known as the High State Council. The FIS was stripped of its victory, declared illegal and its leaders jailed.

The move sparked a civil war which lasted ten years and cost 200,000 lives. The army cemented power as the standard of living slowly lifted with new oil finds. Algeria has estimated oil reserves of nearly 12 billion barrels, attracting strong interest from foreign oil firms. Although political violence in Algeria has declined in recent year, the country has been shaken by campaign of bombings carried out by a group calling itself Al-Qaeda in the Land of Islamic Maghreb. Poverty remains widespread and unemployment high, with 30 percent of Algeria's youth without work.

On 9 January, major protests broke out over food prices and unemployment, with three people being killed in clashes with security forces. The demonstrations started in the poor westerns suburbs of Algiers. They grew in intensity spreading to the country's second largest city, Oran. Then the unrest spread to the working-class district of Bab El Oued in central Algiers. One by one, the other working-class districts of the capital followed suit as well as the cities of Tipaza, Annaba, Tizi-Ouzou.

The Algerian cabinet responded by agreeing to lower the custom duties and taxes on sugar and other food stuffs by two-fifths as a temporary act to cut prices. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika also promised the imminent repeal of the hated 1992 state of emergency law. The decision was greeted with cautious optimism but rejuvenated opposition groups vowed to keep the pressure up on the government. The Rally for Culture and Democracy said they would proceed with a protest on 12 February as originally planned. In a statement last week they said authorities chose to resort to political manoeuvres and to sow discord rather than respond to “legitimate aspirations and demands for changing the political regime that destroyed the country and enslaved the people.”

RCD leader Said Sadi claim that Saturday’s demonstrations were spontaneous and not organised seems a bit far-fetched. However it is true the decision of Hosni Mubarak to flee Egypt on Friday has further galvanised the Algerian opposition movement. On Saturday demonstrators waved front pages of newspapers showing the Egyptian news and shouted "Bouteflika out!" Latest reports say 400 protesters including four MPs have been arrested. The government claimed it banned the march for public order reasons not to stifle dissent. But as other regional leaders have found to their cost, dissent has a strong mind of its own.

The US and Mubarak: Our sonofabitch

“The day is coming when the promise of a fully free and democratic world, once thought impossible, will also seem inevitable. The people of Egypt should be at the forefront of this great journey, just as you have led this region through the great journeys of the past.”

This extract from a stirring speech was not made in the last few days by Mohamed ElBaredi or Ayman Nour in an attempt to rouse the crowds to overthrow Mubarak. It was in fact spoken in 2005 by the then American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the American University of Cairo. Rice told her audience this call for democracy marked a change from long-standing American policy. “For 60 years, my country pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither,” she said. “Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.”

Rice’s public demand for Hosni Mubarak to call elections was as startling as it was embarrassing for one of the US’s greatest allies. But in the end pragmatic priorities triumphed over promises. The US glossed over Mubarak’s sham poll victory later that year and the true state of affairs was shown by George W Bush when he met Mubarak at Sharm el Sheikh in January 2008. Bush spoke about building a “democratic future” in Egypt but problems elsewhere meant he had to rely on Mubarak’s support. “It's important for the people of Egypt to understand our nation respects you, respects your history, respects your traditions and respects your culture,” Bush said. “Our friendship is strong. It's one of the main cornerstones of our policy in this region, and it's based on our shared commitment to peace, security and prosperity.”

Bush’s blarney may have boosted Mubarak’s ego but did not fool ordinary Egyptians. Despite financial largesse of up to $33 billion in military aid in the last 25 years, opinion polls show anti-Americanism to be higher in Egypt than in any other Middle Eastern country. Egyptians are all too aware of the dirty work their government does on behalf of the US. Egypt was home to many American cases of extraordinary rendition.

Al Qaida camp commander Ibn-al Shaykh al-Libi, was captured by US forces in late 2001 and taken to a prison in Cairo where he was repeatedly tortured by Egyptian officials. Mamduh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian citizen was apprehended in October 2001 in Pakistan and taken to a prison in Cairo where he was repeatedly tortured by Egyptian officials. Habib was beaten frequently with blunt instruments, including an object similar to an “electric prod.” His jailers told him if he did not confess to belonging to al-Qaida he would be anally raped by specially trained dogs. Habib was returned to later sent to Guantanamo after his stint in an Egyptian prison. The Mubarak regime’s contempt for due process was an ideal fit with Bush’s “war on terror”.

Condoleezza Rice’s own tune was changed just two years after she attempt to rouse the nation to democracy. As the New York Times noted, underground media were full of state-sanctioned atrocities in the weeks before Rice arrived in the country again in 2007. “Cellphone videos posted on the Internet showed the police sodomising a bus driver with a broomstick. Another showed the police hanging a woman by her knees and wrists from a pole for questioning. A company partly owned by a member of the governing party distributed tens of thousands of bags of contaminated blood to hospitals around the country,” the Times said. But faced with chaos in Iraq, rising Iranian influence and the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the US decided stability was a more important priority than encouraging freedoms for everyday Egyptians.

The Obama administration has shown an equal unwillingness to rock the boat. Obama did show Rice-like signs of bucking the trend when he went to Egypt in June 2009 and made a historic speech in Cairo about US-Muslim relations. He told his audience no system of government should be imposed by one nation by another. “That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people,” he continued. “Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose.”

The crowd enthusiastically applauded Obama for his lesson on freedom but may not have been so happy with what he told Mubarak when they met at the White House two months later. “I want to thank the government of Egypt for being an Arab country that has moved forward to try to strengthen Iraq as it emerges from a wartime footing and a transition to a more stable democracy.” Once again, the needs of Egyptians played second fiddle to the Great Game of American oil security in the Middle East. As FDR said of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in the 1930s, “he may be a sonofabitch, but he's our sonofabitch." The now powerless Americans are now watching Al Jazeera like everyone else wondering whose sonofabitch will emerge victorious from Tahrir Square in the coming weeks.

Return of the Bread Riots: Egypt spinning on its history

(photo of Egypt's bread intifada of 1977 from libcom.org)

There is a good reason why only Israel gets more American military money than Egypt. Both are vitally important countries at the centre of the world’s political, economic and religious fault lines. Stopping the two from tearing each other's throat has been a vital plank of US foreign policy for 40 years. US religiosity will keep Israel, the home of the bible, front and centre of their overseas donations. Americans may be less keen to celebrate the role of next door Egypt in the lives of Moses, Joseph and Jesus but their Government realises the importance of Cairo.

Though it was in decline by Jesus’ time, Egypt was an extraordinary civilisation in the ancient world. Alexandra had the largest library in the world and the Pyramid of Cheops was the tallest building in the world for 3800 years until one of the country's eventual colonial masters built Lincoln Cathedral in 1311.

The pyramids of Giza were cathedrals of their own and part of a rich culture. Egypt’s brilliance began after it mastered irrigation of the Nile and established a system of agriculture that built the foundation stones of western science: writing, mathematics and medicine. Its art and architecture were legendary and the pyramids were the result of advanced quarrying, surveying and construction techniques.

It was also created by slave labour and the Greeks inherited the Egyptian acceptance of slavery in its sense of democracy. This failure to see how the proper division of labour was crucial to a human’s sense of self importance would haunt Egypt to modern times. A succession of rulers including Romans, Arabs, Mamluks, Turks, an Albanian named Muhammad Ali, and later the English and Americans made sure it was the bondholders not the bonded that kept control in the country.

General Abdel Nasser was the first Egyptian in thousands of years to properly lead his country. He tried to steer an independent course but his attempt to nationalise the Suez Canal brought down the wrath of the UK, France and Israel in an opportunist war that crippled his state and brought the problems of Gaza to world attention. Israel's continued nagging killed him of a heart attack in 1970.

Vice President Anwar Sadat was Nasser’s logical successor. He was a senior member of Nasser’s Free Officers group that overthrew the hated royal regime and the one who announced Farouk’s removal on radio. Sadat was an astute president. When the Russians refused his request for more arms, he retaliated by agreeing to American terms for a peace settlement with Israel. He also courted senior Christian religious figures such as the Pope and Billy Graham to humanise himself with American voters. His visit to Israel in 1977 cemented his status as a senior Arab leader and earned him a Nobel a year later, even if it brought on the wrath of most of the Arab world.

But in the same year he went to Jerusalem, there were riots in Cairo. Sadat like other rulers before him tolerated no dissent on the home front and like Nasser he never put himself up for election. His economic policy “infitah” aimed at liberalising the economy saw cuts to subsidies to foodstuffs. The cuts to flour, rice, and cooking oil subsidies triggered the bread riots of 1977 forcing Sadat to backtrack. Despite its oil money, Egypt was caught between the demands of its people and the international bankers.

With rage growing over his Israeli peace deal, his opponents attempted a coup that was defeated by Sadat’s intelligence organisation. Their crackdown missed one key opposition figure Khalid Islambouli who murdered Sadat in a victory parade in 1981. Egypt executed Islambouli while the Ayatollah’s Iran celebrated him as a martyr. Sadat’s death brought his deputy Hosni Mubarak to the presidency where he tentatively remains to this day.

Mubarak kept to the Sadat agenda. He survived six assassination attempts and got his payday in 1991 when the US and its allies forgave Egypt $20 billion in debts for joining the war to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. By then Mubarak was able to play the “politically stable” card as a long-term leader in a country with few changes of power. The west was prepared to overlook it was a lack of democracy that led to this stability, in order to “deal with” the Egyptian regime.

Its oil industry, tourism and shipping made it a safe bet for western business that showed (just as it does with China, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere) it was prepared to export anything to the country except its political ideas. Mubarak held elections in 2005 but with the opposition Muslim Brotherhood banned it was a sham. The real source of his power was control over the media and enforcement by police intimidation.

As long as oil prices were high, Muburak could buy his way out of trouble. But the global crisis has hit Egypt hard with a triple whammy: high unemployment, rampant food inflation and low wages. The fuel was there and needed just a spark. That was provided in near-by Tunisia which exploded into riots against a similarly corrupt long-term leadership.

When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire it was as if millions across the region shared his pain. His martyrdom set off a wave of discontent against Egypt and countless similar autocratic rules across the Arab world. The monied West which was happy to accept these countries' sacrifice of lack of democracy to keep the dollars rolling now finds itself in an awkward position of exposed hypocrisy and redundancy. They can only watch as Mubarak and other dominoes wobble and fall in a feverish show of people power. For once, the West can no longer control what will happen next.

Dances with democracy: Tunisia at the crossroads

Tunisia’s leaders resist change. It has had only two leaders in the 55 years since independence (though two more in the last 12 days). Colonial master France not only left its language and its culture but it also imparted the doggedness of its political elites. It was a lesson well absorbed by Habib Bourguiba. Bourguiba spent 11 years in French and Nazi custody for sedition where he picked up western ways with power. The Rassemblement Constitutionel Démocratique party was the vehicle for Bourguiba to seize power in 1956. The RCD became synonymous with Tunisian politics and The Supreme Warrior was voted the honour of president for life in 1975. He lasted another 12 years. (photo of Tunisian protests courtesy AP)

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was Bourguiba’s Prime Minister and natural successor. Ben Ali had widespread experience in the military, politics and diplomatic service. With a sluggish economy and the support of the west he took control he used an 1987 medical report and Article 57 of the Tunisian constitution to show his boss should be removed on the grounds of “total incapacity”.

Ben Ali would prove just as tenacious in power as the man he replaced, with the added knowledge of knowing just how vulnerable life at the top could be. He kept Bourguiba under house arrest for the rest of his life and set about cementing his own reputation. He kept the ruling class of the RCD onside by keeping most of them in the powerful positions they had during the Bourguiba era. He won five elections, all of them rigged. After the Soviet era, the West was happy with Ben Ali because he was a strong and stable and secular ruler. Over time, Ben Ali was an elder statesman of the region. The US rewarded the Ben Ali’s regime with an estimated $350million in military aid between 1987 and 2009.

The Americans were not blind to Tunisia’s problems. As a Wikileaked cable said, Tunisia was a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems. “They tolerate no advice or criticism, whether domestic or international," the cable said. "Increasingly, they rely on the police for control and focus on preserving power. And, corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising.”

Despite knowing all this, the Obama administration continued to distribute largesse. As recently as last year the US sold Tunisia $282 million worth of 12 Sirkorsky military helicopters to Tunisia. Congress approved the deal on the grounds they would “enhance the modernisation of the Tunisian Air Force's overwater search and rescue capability and enable continued interoperability with US Armed Forces and other coalition partners in the region.” The sale would also improve “the security of a friendly country that has been and continues to be an important force for economic and military progress in North Africa.”

The sale of the helicopters showed the military progress. But it was harder to make the case for economic progress in Tunisia, particularly for the lower classes. There wasn't much progress in the life of 26-year-old Mohammed Bouazizi. Bouazizi had a computer science degree but sold fruit and vegetables without a licence in Sidi Bouzid because he could not find any other job. On 17 December, police confiscated his produce when he could not produce a permit. When he tried to snatch his apples back, the police officer slapped him in the face. Two other officers then beat him up. Bouazizi walked to the municipal building demanded his property, and was beaten again. Then he walked to the governor’s office, where he was refused an audience. In front of the governor’s gate he drenched himself in paint thinner and set himself alight. The burns covered 90 percent of his body. He died a painful death 18 days later in hospital.

Bouazizi had tapped into something in a repressed national psyche. People protested on the street in Sidi Bouzid where he was arrested. In a country where protesting is rare and the media is oppressed, the word was spread through amateur video which eventually made its way to Al Jazeera. A mass uprising was springing up from a groundswell of long-term grievances with the regime. Ben Ali knew the writing was on the wall and fled to Saudi Arabia on the 14th.

Within 24 hours his longtime ally and prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, assumed power. But the Constitutional Court ruled Fouad Mebazaa, the speaker, should be made president and given 60 days to organise new elections. Both men are heavily associated with the RCD and the protesters want the party removed from power, not just a new name at the top. Another Ghannouchi lies in the wings. Rachid Ghannouchi is the exiled head of Tunisia's Islamist party who plans to return to the country within weeks.

The likelihood of an Islamist Government if true democracy was restored is what scares the West the most. It also scares the other leaders in the Maghreb. The Algerian elite overturned the 1993 election when it seemed the Islamists were going to win at the ballot box and unleashed a civil war that killed 150,000 and goes on to this day. Other long-term leaders fear copycat immolation suicides such as the one in Mauretania. Egypt has also had copycat suicides and activists in Cairo using social networks are launching a "Day of Wrath" against Mubarak’s 30-year rule later today.

Next door in Libya Gaddafy is also worried. When he told Libyans in a broadcast “Tunisia lives in fear” he was really referring to himself. “Families could be raided and slaughtered in their bedrooms and the citizens in the street killed as if it was the Bolshevik or the American Revolution,” he railed. Gaddafy, in power for 40 years, has strong self interest at work but he does have a point. Nobody is sure what Tunisia’s troubles will lead to: a transition to multiparty democracy, an Islamist Government, a military coup or a prolonged period of turmoil.

Rachid Sfar, a former prime minister, outlined the problem in an editorial he wrote in La Presse yesterday. "We have to make the democratic process real and irreversible and at the same time guard against the violence and anarchy that threaten our country,” he said. Striking unionists have refused to recognise the new government because Mohamed Ghannouchi is there. A democratic vote will be held in six months but what if people suspicious of the West and the elites that serve it award it to the other Ghannouchi? The unions, and the left generally, should be careful about what they wish for.

Gaza: A History of Neglect

While the recent flotilla attempts to end the economic blockade have turned it into front page news, Gaza has been a forgotten add-on for most of its 62 years of existence. For millennia it was simply a part of Palestine occupied by a succession of foreign rulers. On 14 May 1948 the last of those rulers, the British high commissioner, left Palestine formally ending the colonial mandate. (photo:AP)

The Zionists immediately proclaimed an independent Israel. Within 24 hours armies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq launched an attack across the frontier but stopped short at occupying Jewish settlements. The Israelis battle-hardened from fighting Germans and British alike routed the invaders.

When fighting ended in January 1949 Palestine had disappeared from the map. Most went to Israel, the west Bank went to Jordan leaving behind just the tiny strip of Gaza administered by Egypt. The strip was home to thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled across the border or were forced to leave by Jewish settlers.

Egypt’s King Farouk ordered the building of a new palace in Gaza where he could preside over a Palestinian Arab Government. But his grandiose schemes fell apart when Nasser and his Free Officers deposed him in a coup in 1952. Nasser turned his attentions to removing the hated British from the Suez Canal Zone while Gaza reverted to near lawless anarchy and fedayeen raids against Israel.

Four years later the Israelis invaded the strip in the Suez War. It followed a blitz attack on Egyptian forces in Sinai then a diversion south to open up the Gulf of Aqaba. The southern end of the Strip became one of the key battlefields of the war but the Israelis quickly overran the 8,000 Egyptian defenders before taking Gaza City.

After the war Israel told the UN it would keep its troops in Gaza and Sharm el-Sheikh in Sinai. The Americans although sympathetic to Israel, reacted angrily and threatened to cut off aid and end its guarantee of unrestricted oil supplies. With a likely vote on a UN resolution condemning Israel, then Prime Minister Ben Gurion accepted the inevitable and agreed to withdraw from Sinai and Gaza in exchange for access to the Gulf of Aqaba. The war ended the facade there was an independent government in Gaza. Direct control went back to Cairo with a military governor installed in Gaza City.

Gaza changed hands again in 1967 when once again the Strip and Sinai were vital battlefields in the Egyptian flank of the Six Day War. At the end of the war the Israeli Government voted unanimously to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in return for peace agreements. However Gaza was conspicuously absent from the decision and the arrangement was rejected by Egypt and Syria.

Israeli historian Benny Morris said at least 70,000 Gazans emigrated to Egypt and were forced to sign documents saying they were leaving of their own free will. Israelis moved into the Strip in large numbers taking up one fifth of the land in an already crowded area. Israel finally gave Sinai back to Egypt in 1979 but once again the status of Gaza was not addressed by President Carter’s peace treaty. Egypt did however agree to renounce its territorial claims on the area freeing it to become a part of Palestine, in theory.

Growing Palestinian unrest led to the First Intifada from 1987 to 1993 and a year later to the Oslo Accords which called for the total withdrawal of the IDF from parts of Gaza and the West Bank. It also created the Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority for these areas for a transitional period of five years. It was also the first time that Israel and the Palestinians agreed to view Gaza and the West Bank as a single territorial unit. The Oslo Accords were a brave move but ultimately foundered on aspects that had been deliberately put into the ‘too hard basket’: Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees, security and border control, and the status of Jerusalem.

Yet there was impact in Gaza. The IDF left Gaza City and the urban conurbation around it and the Palestinian Authority began to administer and police the region in their place. The PA was racked by corruption and mismanagement and by 2000 most of the Strip’s 400,000 residents were frustrated by the lack of progress and the squalid conditions they lived in. The scene was set for the Second Intifada and the fracturing of the Oslo Accords.

After Israeli soldier were killed by a Palestinian mob in the West bank, the IDF launched retaliatory air strikes against PA targets in the West Bank and Gaza. Attitudes hardened on both sides with Israel turning to the right wing Likud Party while Hamas grew in popularity in Gaza. As matters dragged on for years, an exasperated Ariel Sharon decided in 2004 to unilaterally evict all Israelis from Gaza’s 21 settlements. The IDF withdrew a year later. The disengagement did not address wider issues of occupation. Israel still retained control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, coastline, infrastructure and power grid.

Nevertheless the withdrawal gave fresh hope to a peace settlement, hopes that were soon dashed again. In Palestine parliamentary elections were held in early 2006 for the first time in 10 years. Hamas stunned the ruling Fatah party by easily winning the election. With Hamas refusing to recognise Israel, the US and EU imposed sanctions on Palestine. Israel also imposed a blockade on the Strip which exists to this day. The election result also led to the “fratricidal war” between Hamas and Fatah and the latter used its greater numbers in the West Bank to wrest back power there. Hamas remained entrenched in the Strip.

They also continued their low-level war against Israel with home-made Qassam rockets a constant irritant in border regions. In December 2008, Israel lost patience and launched Operation Cast Lead with a series of air strikes before a ground-based invasion in which over a thousand Palestinians were killed and most of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed in a three-week campaign. Today the border remains sealed and the IDF strictly controls travel to and from the area.

The end result may to be harden attitudes within the Strip that its future lies not as part of a united Palestine with the West Bank but as a separate country in its own right. It is this reality that no one in the region has yet confronted.

Egypt releases Ayman Nour

Egypt is still coming to terms with the surprise release of former opposition leader Ayman Nour. Nour was released from a Cairo prison on Wednesday after Egypt’s attorney general announced late on Wednesday that nine prisoners, including Nour, had been released for “medical reasons.” The government rationale was challenged by Nour's appearance as he emerged from prison in what seemed like rude good health. He had served three years of a five year jail term on politically motivated trumped up forgery charges.

According to The Arabist, American media pressure is responsible for Nour’s release. It came just two days after the Washington Post said the new administration should not deal with Hosni Mubarak unless Nour was freed. The Arabist says the release signals a new intent in US-Egypt relations. Eight softly-softly years of the Bush administration had failed to effect any lasting change in the Egyptian polity and perhaps Obama’s new hardline stance might work.

Obama has been aware of Nour since August when he wrote a letter to the then-presidential candidate. Nour told Obama his real charge was that he was a competitor to Mubarak in the 2007 presidential elections. He said he threatened Mubarak’s dream to bequeath the presidency to his son. At the time of the election Nour was the leader of the Hizb el-Ghad party. In December 2005, he was imprisoned for five years on forgery charges. At the time, the Bush administration claimed it was 'deeply troubled' by his conviction but did little to seek his release.

Nour, a 44-year-old lawyer, was the main challenger to Hosni Mubarak in Egypt's first multi-party presidential elections in 2005. Officially he only took seven percent of the vote but no external monitors were allowed to check the results. Despite winning easily, Mubarak was not happy with Egypt’s brief experiment with democracy. He conjured up a charge that Nour faked signatures on petitions he had filed to create his party. Hundreds of riot police cordoned off the courthouse entrance as Nour was sentenced to five years’ hard labour.

According to the terms of his release, Nour is prohibited from seeking public office barring a presidential pardon. In a press conference yesterday he said would not resume his post as Ghad party leader but instead promised to rebuild it in a new role. Speaking at the party headquarters in Cairo (which was still a shell after being suspiciously burnt down in November), he said he would be responsible for organisational work inside the party. But few doubt he is preparing for another tilt at the presidency.

Nour faces a Herculean task to overcome the institutional bias in favour of the president who has ruled Egypt for almost three decades. Hosni Mubarak was sworn in on 14 October 1981, eight days after Islamist militants assassinated Anwar Sadat at a military parade in Cairo. Despite a low domestic and international profile, Mubarak consolidated power thanks to a period of domestic stability and prosperity. He has also kept the country under emergency law for his entire period in office which has proved convenient for keeping dissent to a minimum. But as he turns 80 this year, attention is focussing on his son Gamal who is being groomed to take over. Nour’s release may affect Gamal more than his father Hosni. “I am against bequeathing the presidency,” Nour warned yesterday. “I was against it before and I will remain against it.”

Sayyid Qutb: the father of Islamism

The name Sayyid Qutb is little known outside the Muslim world but he is a significant voice of the 20th century. Although dead for over 40 years, he and his movement the Muslim Brotherhood remain a giant influence on Islamic politics and a guiding light for radical Islamists. In the last month, Qutb's name has been all over the news. The International Herald Tribune's HDS Greenway said Al Qaeda drew their inspiration from him. The Pakistan Christian Post gives an interpretation of Sufism drawn from Qutb’s writings. The American Family Security Matters said Islamic youths were rebelling “in the footsteps of Qutb". Indian Muslims calls him a pioneer of contemporary Muslimism and British theological think-tank Ekklesia calls him “the father of modern Islamism”.

Born in Egypt in 1906, Sayyid Qutb is now also considered the guide of the modern jihadi movement. Hia book Milestones (written in an Egyptian prison) is now a standard in Islamic education and is an honoured text of jihadi groups. Yet in many respects, Qutb was quite ordinary. He worked for the Egyptian ministry of education as an inspector of schools where he gained a reputation as an intellectual. In 1948 he did a scholarship at Colorado State College of Education to study the US educational system. He didn't like what he saw in America. A conservative Egyptian, he loathed the licentiousness he saw around him. He opposed Western imperialism and materialism and was appalled by the immorality and corruption of the Christian West.

Qutb was influenced by the ideas of Maududi, the man who founded Jamaat-e-Islami in British India (now Pakistan) in 1940. Maududi in turn, was inspired by Ibn Wahhib whose 18th century conquest of the Arabian peninsula was based on the idea of a purer Islam. Maududi was translated into Arabic and his ideas spread across the Muslim world. Qutb acknowledged his influence saying the freedoms of Western women were an illusion. In his view a woman is better protected by the paternal Islamic state rather than be a sex object for by any random passer-by. Qutb's ideas spread through the Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood (Jamiat al-Ikhwan Muslimum) began after the collapse of the Istanbul caliphate in 1924. In Egypt, Hasan al-Banna was upset by his country’s new secular constitution. Al-Banna was a schoolteacher who hated the evils of modernity. Like Maududi in India, he wanted his new state to become Wahhabist. Al-Banna found the Brotherhood in 1928 with a manifesto which read: “God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Koran our constitution, Jihad our way and dying for God our supreme objective”.

But the short-term objective was to survive. In its first 10 years, the Brotherhood was preoccupied with recruitment and propaganda against modernisers and communists. Critically Al-Banna kept his organisation aloof from the growing Egyptian pro-Nazi movement. Under the front of a social movement, he developed the Brotherhood’s political credentials. After World War II, he collaborated with the British against the Communist Party by unleashing a terror campaign against left wing leaders. They also bombed theatres and attacked Jewish interests.

In 1948 the Brotherhood killed the head of police, which was one step too far in their extra-judicial campaign. The Farouk Government responded by banning them. In retaliation, they assassinated Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha. In a tit for tat,a government agent killed al-Banna. His loyal deputy Sayyid Qutb was appointed Supreme Guide. Qutb was highly respected for his resistance to compromise, his honesty, integrity and his austere lifestyle.

By then, the movement had grown to 250,000 members and was a significant threat to state power. In 1952, the Free Officers led by Gamal Abdul Nasser launched a coup against British interests and forced Farouk to abdicate. Four of the 18 Free officers were Brotherhood members. Nasser turned on the Communists and took over in a de facto alliance with Qutb who had one third of the power.

But when the Brotherhood demanded Shari’a Law in Egypt, Nasser turned on them. They were banned again in 1954 and Qutb and others were arrested. In prison he wrote Ma'alim fi'l-tareeq ('Sign-posts on the Road'), usually translated as Milestones). It became an international bestseller and an inspiration for global jihad after his death in 1966. Some scholars called the book turgid, repetitive and uninspiring, but it had massive impact on later generations of Muslims.

The core of Qutb’s ideas is a return to ths supposed purity of the earliest Muslims. This is jihad in the name of Allah and his prophet Muhammad and social justice according to the laws of God. Qutb said Islam abandoned its purity in the generation that followed Muhammad and only a return to the “true faith” could save it. A two-phase jihad was needed. Preaching and persuasion would be followed by physical power to abolish an oppressive state apparatus. His bleak message was a direct challenge to Nasser’s secular regime.

The Brotherhood remained active despite Qutb’s arrest and launched several attempts on Nasser’s life. Three attempts in 1964 were the last straw. Mass arrests followed. Already in jail, Qutb was charged with treason and plotting a Marxist coup. After a show trial he was executed in 1966.

His legacy was preserved by his brother Muhammad who fled to Saudi Arabia where he became an influential professor of Islamic studies. Among those to study under Muhammad Qutb was Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network borrowed directly from Sayyid Qutb’s ideas of jihad. More importantly, Qutb shows the US and Israel are not Al-Qaeda’s targets. What they want is the abolition of the corrupt Saudi regime and the liberation of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the name of a purer Islam.

British power in the Sudan: the story of the River War

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir celebrated the opening of a new Chinese-funded bridge across the Nile this week at the city of Merowe, 350km north of the capital Khartoum. The bridge is the only road crossing of the Nile between the Egyptian border and the capital. Al-Bashir told the inauguration ceremony the new 440m span was an important achievement. “With China’s help,” he said Thursday, “Sudan will certainly score glorious achievements one after another along our path of construction and development.”

The Nile played a central role in the 1898 River War which established British power in the Sudan. The story is vividly told in eye-witness fashion by Winston Churchill in his 1899 book “The River War: An account of the re-conquest of the Soudan” when he was a young serving officer in the British army. Churchill himself saw action in the decisive Battle of Omdurman where the native forces were comprehensively defeated leading to the establishment of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium which would rule Sudan until independence in 1955.

In his 1997 foreword of “The River War” Churchill’s grandson, also named Winston S. Churchill, said the significance of the book lies not in Britain’s attempts to subjugate the Sudan, but rather it is the first major work of the man who 40 forty years later did more than any other single individual to save the world from Hitler. However I disagree. The story of the colonial winning of the Sudan inadvertently shows up European attitudes towards Africa that remain today. The seeds of the modern wars and genocide in Sudan were laid in these times. There is no doubt Churchill is a great story teller and his accounts are lively and detailed. They also reveal his casual racism and his supreme belief in the civilising power of the British Empire.

When Britain decided on a mission to invade Sudan, Churchill used his American mother’s influence to get onto the staff of the 25th Lancers overriding the opposition of the Field Marshall Herbert Horatio Kitchener. Thanks to the technical superiority of the British, the outcome of the war was never really in doubt. The British built railways, took heavily armed gunboats down the Nile. Its most potent weapon was best described by the poet Hilaire Belloc who wrote “Whatever happens we have got / the maxim gun, and they have not”. Nonetheless there was no doubt Churchill’s courage. Involved in the British army’s last ever cavalry charge at Omdurman (across the Nile from Khartoum), Churchill would only have been armed with a lance and a pistol.

The most interesting part of Churchill’s story is the meticulous history of why the campaign was launched in the first place. Britain had been involved with Ottoman Egypt since the bombardment of Alexandria in 1881 as Britain defended its newest prize possession: the Suez Canal. In that typical British way, they were “invited” to give governance to Egypt and Sir Evelyn Baring (later Lord Cromer) became agent and consul-general. Sudan, which at the time was an Egyptian conquest, took advantage of the chaos in Cairo to launch a successful rebellion against their hated northern masters.

It was called the Mahdi Rebellion. The leader was Mohammed Ahmed from the northern riverine town of Dongola. Ahmed was a wandering religious preacher who cloaked himself in the guise of the “Mahdi” (prophet) who would rid Sudan of its invaders. He launched an Islamic revolution with the help of a young man named Abdullah. While the British fleet were bombing Alexandria, the Mahdi took control of Sudan. Only well-defended Khartoum held out. The British Prime Minister William Gladstone was unwilling to save Sudan but promised to relieve the defenders of Khartoum. They sent in General Charles Gordon, an old Sudan expert, to “wind up affairs” and end British interest in Sudan.

General Gordon proved to be an embarrassment to his bosses. Having fought his way down the Nile to Khartoum, he then refused to leave his post. He realised he could not extricate the garrisons. He asked for military support from Egypt which was refused. The Tory opposition lambasted Gladstone in parliament for his refusal to support Gordon. As the newspapers fed popular support for Gordon, a “flying column” was quickly assembled to rescue the city now besieged by the Mahdi’s forces. They arrived in Khartoum two day too late.

The Mahdi had stormed the city overnight and killed Gordon and his Sudanese defenders. The British mission was deemed a failure and they withdrew the field leaving the Sudan in the hands of the Mahdi. Barely five months after his campaign, the Mahdi fell sick of typhus and died. Abdullah took charge and became known as the Khalifa (successor). He would rule for the next 12 years until overthrown by Kitchener’s forces. The Mahdi’s Tomb would dominate the new capital of Omdurman, across the Nile from the destroyed city of Khartoum.

The Mahdist regime imposed the world’s strictest Islamic laws. It was a jihad state, run like a military camp. Sharia courts enforced Islamic law and the Mahdi's precepts, which had the force of law. In 1892 Kitchener became “sirdar” (commander) of the Egyptian army and started preparations for the reconquest of Sudan. With Belgian and French colonial claims converging at the Nile, it was deemed too dangerous to leave Sudan unmolested. In 1895 Kitchener launched his campaign. Britain provided men and materiel while Egypt financed the expedition. The Anglo-Egyptian Nile Expeditionary Force included 25,800 men, 8,600 of whom were British. The remainder were troops belonging to Egyptian units that included six battalions recruited in southern Sudan.

The British constructed a rail line from Wadi Halfa on the border to Abu Hamad and an extension parallel to the Nile to transport troops and supplies to Barbar. Gunboats sailed down the navigable portions of the Nile (more was passable when the river was in flood). Railhead needed to be built to cross the 7 cataracts between Wadi Haifa and Khartoum. Merowe was a significant town at the head of the third cataract where at the end of 320km of clear waterway. The army met little resistance as it snaked down the Nile by riverboat and railway.

Battle was finally joined outside the Khalifa's capital. On 2 September 2 1898, his 52,000-man army launched a frontal assault against the Anglo-Egyptian force on the plain outside Omdurman. Thanks to superior British firepower, it was a massacre. During the five-hour battle, about 11,000 Mahdists died whereas Anglo-Egyptian losses amounted to 48 dead and fewer than 400 wounded. The Khalifa escaped but died in fighting the following year. The Islamist reign in Sudan had ended. It would not resume until Omar al-Bashir took power almost one hundred years later in 1988.

Egypt bans female circumcision

Egypt’s health ministry has announced a complete ban on female circumcision in response to the death last week of a 12-year old girl in a botched operation. The move follows a partial ban ten years ago which allowed the practice to continue in exceptional circumstances. The ban will be difficult to enforce as the practice is almost universal among Muslim and Coptic women in Egypt. However there there is no doctrinal basis for this practice in either Islam or Christianity and the new ban has been supported by Egypt's first lady, Susanne Mubarak as well as Islamic and Coptic religious leaders.

Dr. Ismail Salam, Egypt’s Minister of Health and Population, initially banned female circumcision in July 1996. The ban was in response to public outcry over a CNN television broadcast of the procedure performed on a nine year old girl by a barber. The government decision was upheld by a junior administrative court in Cairo. However Muslim fundamentalist Sheik Youssef Badri took the government to court a year later and got the decision overturned on the basis that the practice was “Islamic”. The government then appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court who ruled that female circumcision is not a personal right according to the rules of Sharia Law, and hence not Islamic. The ban was re-instated although could be overridden in “exceptional cases”.

Often performed without anaesthetic by amateurs with little medical knowledge, female circumcision can cause death or permanent health problems as well as severe pain. Its supporters see it as an integral part of their cultural and ethnic identity, and some perceive it as a religious obligation. But its critics say the practice is detrimental to women's health and well-being. Some go so far as to categorise it as a violation of human rights, child abuse and violence against women. Mutilated genitalia also reduce and can even eliminate a woman's pleasure during sex.

More properly known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), female circumcision is a social custom, not a religious practice. Muslim advocates of the practice quote the hadith (traditions associated the life and deeds of Mohammed) which reads “A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet said to her: Do not cut too severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband”. However many Muslims regard this hadith as having little credibility or authenticity and the practice is not mentioned in the Koran.

FGM is most widely practiced in Islamic Africa. Egypt is both the ancestral home of the practice and also has the highest official rate of FGM in Africa. According to a 2005 UNICEF survey an astonishing 97 per cent of Egyptian women aged 15 to 49 have suffered mutilation (however no data was available for Somalia where many believe the practice is just as widely spread).

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines FGM as “the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for cultural or other nontherapeutic reasons”. It estimates that somewhere between 100 to 140 million girls and women have been subjected to the operation. It also believes that about 3 million girls, the majority under 15 years of age, undergo the procedure every year.

WHO recognise four different types of FGM. Type 1 (clitoridectomy) is excision of the prepuce, with or without excision of part or the entire clitoris. Type II (excision) is excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora. Type III (infibulation) is excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora. Type IV (others) has a number of different methods including pricking, piercing or incising of the clitoris and/or labia; stretching of the clitoris and/or labia; cauterisation of the clitoris; scraping of tissue surrounding the vaginal orifice or cutting of the vagina; and introduction of corrosive substances or herbs into the vagina.

FGM has been practiced in Africa for centuries usually as a rite of passage preparing young girls for womanhood and marriage. Greek papyrus from the pre-Christian era Greek papyrus mentions girls in Egypt undergoing circumcision. Agatharchides of Cnidus wrote about female circumcision as it occurred among tribes residing on the western coast of the Red Sea. Based on the geographical locations of FGM, scholars accept that it originated in Egypt in pharaonic times and spread outwards from there.

Islam arrived in Egypt in 639 barely seven years after Mohammed’s death. Egypt was then still nominally a part of Constantinople's empire. However its authorities had persecuted, flogged, tortured and executed Monophysite Christians, and the Monophysites saw the Arabs as liberators. By 646 the Muslims conquered all of Egypt, turning Egypt into a colony. Although FGM pre-dates Islam, its presence as an Egyptian tradition made it difficult to dislodge. Even with the latest ban, it remains a universal practice, with most circumcisions occurring at home, out of sight of authorities.

Statistical analysis suggests it will be difficult to eradicate. More that 80 per cent of Egyptian women support the continuation of circumcision. 74 per cent believe that husbands prefer circumcised women and 72 per cent believe circumcision is a religious tradition. Relatively few women recognise the negative consequences of circumcision, such as reduced sexual satisfaction (29 per cent, possible death (24 per cent), and higher risk of problems in childbirth (just 5 per cent). The real challenge remains to change attitudes not laws.

Six Day War: consequences keep coming

On the fortieth anniversary of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Amnesty International issued its damning 2007 report on “Israel and the Occupied Territories.” The report (pdf) condemns Israel’s policy of military checkpoints, blockades, and a 700km fence inside the West Bank which curtails movement between communities and is destroying the Palestinian economy. Amnesty say the restrictions are not there to prevent suicide bombing in Israel but instead are imposed on Palestinians to benefit Israeli settlers in the area.

The report was issued on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the Middle East’s most defining event: the Six Day War which started on 5 June, 1967. The war changed the political map and its impact is felt to this day. The war itself was swift and severe. Israel gained a spectacular victory over its Arab neighbours. Egypt lost Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, Syria lost the Golan Heights, and Jordan lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Arab countries call this war an-Naksah (the setback).

The roots of the war lie in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis. In 1956, Egypt nationalised the canal which was already off-limits to Israeli shipping. Israeli forces attacked the Sinai while British and French paratroopers took back control of the canal. The US demanded British withdrawal from the canal and Israeli troops from Sinai. A United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was deployed to the Canal Zone and the Sinai to keep the peace.

The next major flashpoint was over access to water in the early 1960s. Israel began by withdrawing water from the Jordan River to fund its irrigation projects in the arid south. Syria retaliated by building diversion works to take the waters from the Banias Stream out of the Sea of Galilee and into a dam for use by Syria and Jordan. Israel attacked the dam works in 1965 precipitating tit-for-tat low level violence between the countries for the next 18 months.

The third escalation was the Samu incident in 1966. An Israeli border patrol struck a mine and three soldiers were killed and six others injured. Israel blamed West Bank terrorists and launched “Operation Shredder” a revenge attack into Jordan. A 4,000 strong force entered the small village of Es Samu near Hebron, blew up 50 houses and killed 15 Jordanian soldiers and three civilians.

All throughout May 1967 tension increased as the Arab side prepared for war. The Soviet Union issued a false warning that Israel was massing troops in the north in preparation for an attack on Syria. Egypt and Syria already had a military alliance from the year before and Jordan joined in at the end of May. Nasser’s Egypt demanded the evacuation of UNEF from the Sinai. The Egyptian navy also blocked the strategically vital Straits of Tiran at the bottom of the Gulf of Eilat between Sinai and Saudi Arabia. The move effectively blocked Israeli vessels from getting in and out of its southern port of Eilat. With forces from other sympathetic Arab countries joining the force, Israel was confronted with an army of 465,000 troops, 2,880 tanks and 810 aircraft massed at their borders.

Alarmed by the build-up, Israel began a call-up of reserve forces and tried to find a political solution to the growing crisis. UN Secretary General U Thant visited Cairo. He agreed to remove the UNEF troops and recommended a two-week moratorium on aggressive acts in the Straits of Tiran. He also asked for a renewed diplomatic effort to solve the crisis. The US, preoccupied by the Vietnam conflict, was slow to move and its mediation plans were overtaken by events. Convinced that the Arab forces were about to attack, Israel drew up its own counter-offensive plans.

On 5 June, Israel decided on a pre-emptive strike. They took just three hours to destroy the bulk of Egyptian air force on the ground. Coming in below radar cover they killed 100 Egyptian pilots and destroyed 300 of the country’s 450 Soviet-made planes by the end of the day. With air superiority assured, Israeli army divisions swept through Gaza and into the Sinai towards the canal.

The main Sinai Desert battle took place at Abu Ageila (pdf) near the town of Arish in the north of the peninsula. This was a key battlefield in 1956 and now again eleven years later. Major General Ariel Sharon’s forces encircled the town and attacked Egyptian positions from the front, flanks and rear. Egyptian defences, ringed by mines, proved to be stronger than the Israelis expected. After two days, sappers cleared the minefield and the Israeli infantry broke through the trenches. The road to the Central Sinai was now open for the Israelis. When the Egyptian high command heard about the fall of Abu-Ageila, they ordered the retreat of all forces from the Sinai. The Egyptian campaign was effectively over.

Meanwhile Israel issued an ultimatum to Jordan to keep out of the war. Jordan refused and instead convinced that Egypt’s air force was winning the war, issued an artillery barrage on West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Israel counterattacked. On 7 June the order was given to capture the Old City of Jerusalem. Defence Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin marched through to the Zion Gate formally mark the Jews’ return to their historic capital’s holiest site. At the Western Wall, army chaplain, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, blew a shofar (kosher instrument made from ram’s horn) to celebrate the event. Within three days they had comprehensively defeated the Jordanian army and captured all of biblical Judea and Samaria.

One day later, Israel attacked Syria. Backed by the unimpeded fire from the Israeli air force, troops entered the Golan Heights in force. Within 24 hours four brigades broke through onto the plateau. Two more groups joined them from the north and south in a pincer movement that effectively ended Syrian resistance. Israel captured the entire Heights including its now abandoned principle city of Quneitra. Fighting stopped along a defacto border that became known as the Purple Line.

By 10 June, the war was over and the parties signed a ceasefire. Israel had more than tripled the size of the area it controlled, from 20,000 square kms to 67,000 square miles. It controlled the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Sinai and Gaza. Israel now ruled more than three-quarters of a million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were hostile to their new political masters. Another 325,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank fled to other parts of Jordan where they became a significant and troublesome minority group.

Israel itself thrived as a result of the war. Beforehand it was a small country of two million people surrounded by 80 million Arabs. But now the Arab world knew it could never push the Jewish state into the sea. Armed with this self-confidence and renewed energy, Israel attracted major immigration from the West and more than a million immigrants from the Soviet Union. Its population has tripled to 7.1 million (including 1.4 million Israeli Arabs), its gross national product grew by 630 percent and per capita income tripled to $21,000.

In November 1967, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which it hoped would established a formula for Arab-Israeli peace. Israel would withdraw from territories occupied in the war in exchange for peace with its neighbours. This resolution has served as the basis for peace negotiations from that time on. But the emerging Palestine Liberation Organisation embittered by the plight of their people refused to accept the resolution and turned to the terrorism that would define their struggle for next 25 years.

Some of the geographical consequences of the war were eventually unravelled. Israel withdrew from Sinai after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The withdrawal allowed Nasser’s successor Sadat to make a historic peace with Israel. The 1993 Oslo accords marked the beginning of a political dialogue between Israel and Palestine and allowed Jordan to make peace with its old enemy across the river. Israel and Syria maintain an uneasy peace. But the demography of the entire region has changed. 450,000 Israeli settlers now live in illegal settlements in the West Bank. They brought with them a biblical sensibility that informed their belief that this was ‘their country’. Israel remains defiant that an undivided Jerusalem is their capital. Six days have caused forty years of pain that still refuses to go away.