The history of Egypt under Hosni Mubarak spans 29 years, beginning with the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat and lasting until the Egyptian revolution of January 2011, when Mubarak was overthrown in a popular uprising as part of the broader Arab Spring movement. His presidency was marked by continuing the policies pursued by his predecessor, including liberalising Egypt’s economy and committing to the 1979 Camp David Accords. The Egyptian government under Mubarak also maintained close relations with the other member states of the Arab League, the United States, Russia, India, and much of the Western World. However, international non-governmental organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly criticised his administration’s human rights record. Concerns raised include political censorship, police brutality, arbitrary detention, torture, and restrictions on freedoms of speech, association, and assembly.
Mubarak’s presidency greatly impacted Egyptian society and politics. This is mainly due to Egypt’s political structure, in which the President must approve all legislation and state expenditures before they are enacted.
Politics
Hosni Mubarak became Egypt’s President following Anwar Sadat’s assassination on 6 October 1981; this was subsequently legitimised a few weeks later through a referendum in the People’s Assembly, the lower house of Egypt’s bicameral legislature. He had previously served as Vice President since 1975, a position he gained after rising through the ranks of the Egyptian Air Force during the preceding two decades. He also held the title of Deputy Defence Minister during the 1973 October War.
Political reform was limited during this period. Before 2005, opposition candidates were not permitted to run for President, reaffirming the position via referendum in the People’s Assembly at six-year intervals. This changed after a constitutional amendment on 25 May 2005, transforming it into a de jure elected office accountable to the Egyptian people. Presidential elections were held four months later, with Mubarak receiving nearly 89% of the popular vote against two other candidates. To be listed on the ballot, a presidential candidate must have the endorsement of a political party and the approval of a national election commission. Opposition parties called voters to boycott the referendum as meaningless, but it passed with over 80% approval.
Shortly after mounting an unprecedented presidential campaign, Nour was jailed on forgery charges critics called phoney; he was released on 18 February 2009. Brotherhood members were allowed to run for parliament in 2005 as independents, garnering 88 seats, or 20 per cent of the People’s Assembly.
The opposition parties have been weak and divided compared to the NDP. The November 2000 People’s Assembly elections saw 34 opposition members win seats in the 454-seat assembly, facing a clear majority of 388 ultimately affiliated with the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, was kept illegal and not recognised as a political party (current Egyptian law prohibits forming political parties based on religion). Members of the Brotherhood have been elected to the People’s Assembly and local councils as independents. Members are known publicly and openly to speak their views. The Egyptian political opposition includes groups and popular movements such as Kefaya and the 6 April Youth Movement, although they are somewhat less organised than officially registered political parties. As Courtney C. Radsch terms them, bloggers or cyber activists have also played an essential role in political opposition, writing, organising, and mobilising public opposition.
President Mubarak had tight, autocratic control over Egypt. A dramatic drop in support for Mubarak and his domestic economic reform program increased with surfacing news about his son Alaa being favoured in government tenders and privatisation. As Alaa started getting out of the picture by 2000, Mubarak’s second son Gamal began to rise in the National Democratic Party. He succeeded in getting a newer generation of neo-liberals into the party and, eventually, the government. Gamal Mubarak branched out with a few colleagues to set up Medinvest Associates Ltd., which manages a private equity fund, and to do some corporate finance consultancy work.
Emergency law rule
Egypt is a semi-presidential republic under Emergency Law (Law No. 162 of 1958) and has been since 1967, except for an 18-month break in the 1980s (which ended with the assassination of Anwar Sadat). Under the law, police powers are extended, constitutional rights are suspended, and censorship is legalised. The law sharply circumscribes any non-governmental political activity: street demonstrations, non-approved political organisations, and unregistered financial donations are formally banned. Some 17,000 people are detained under the law, and estimates of political prisoners run as high as 30,000. Under that “state of emergency”, the government has the right to imprison individuals for any time and for virtually no reason, thus keeping them in prisons without trials. The government claimed that opposition groups like the Muslim Brotherhood could come into power in Egypt if the current government did not forgo parliamentary elections, confiscate the group’s main financiers’ possessions, and detain group figureheads. These are virtually impossible without emergency law and judicial-system independence prevention.
Foreign policy
Mubarak maintained Egypt’s commitment to the Camp David peace process while re-storing relations with other Arab states. Mubarak also restores relations with the USSR three years after Sadat’s expulsion of USSR experts. In January 1984, Egypt was readmitted to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation; in November 1987, an Arab summit resolution allowed the Arab countries to resume diplomatic relations with Egypt; and in 1989, Egypt was readmitted to the Arab League. Egypt also has played a moderating role in such international forums as the UN and the Nonaligned Movement.
Under Mubarak, Egypt was a staunch ally of the United States, whose aid to Egypt has averaged $1.5 billion a year since the 1979 signing of the Camp David Peace Accords. Egypt was a member of the allied coalition in the 1991 Gulf War, and Egyptian infantry were some of the first to land in Saudi Arabia to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The US government deemed Egypt’s involvement in the coalition crucial in garnering broader Arab support for the liberation of Kuwait.
Although unpopular among Egyptians, the participation of Egyptian forces brought financial benefits to the Egyptian government. Reports that sum as hefty as $500,000 per soldier were paid or debt forgiven were published in the news media. According to The Economist:
The programme worked like a charm: a textbook case, says the IMF. Luck was on Hosni Mubarak’s side; Egypt’s President joined without hesitation when the US was hunting for a military alliance to force Iraq out of Kuwait. After the war, his reward was that America, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and Europe forgave Egypt for around $14 billion of debt.
Egypt acted as a mediator between Syria and Turkey in a 1998 dispute over boundaries, Turkey’s diversion of water, and alleged Syrian support for Kurdish rebels. Mubarak did not, however, support the 2003 Iraq War by the US, arguing that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict should have been resolved first.
In 2009, when the Obama administration “indicated it would consider” extending protection to its Middle Eastern allies “if Iran continues its disputed nuclear activities”, Mubarak stated, “Egypt will not be part of any American nuclear umbrella intended to protect the Gulf countries.”
Propaganda
Mubarak “fostered a culture of virulent anti-Semitism in Egypt” and turned Egypt into “the world’s most prolific producer of anti-Semitic ideas and attitudes”. During the Mubarak years, the Egyptian media portrayed the infamous anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as genuine, accused the Jews of spreading venereal diseases in Egypt, of working to sabotage Egyptian agriculture, and of causing the problems of drug addiction among the Egyptian youth. The Egyptian Ministry of Education made the anti-Semitic pamphlet Human Sacrifice in the Talmud mandatory reading. In 2002, a mini-series, Horseman without a Horse, aired on Egyptian state television, portraying The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as genuine. The Israeli historian Major Efraim Karsh wrote in 2006 that in Egypt, “…numberless articles, scholarly writings, books, cartoons, public statements, and radio and television programs, Jews are painted in the blackest terms imaginable”.
Unrest and terror
Unrest was not unknown during Mubarak’s reign. In February 1986, the Central Security Forces mutinied, taking to the streets, rioting, burning, and looting in demand of better pay. The uprising was the greatest challenge of the Mubarak presidency up to that point, and only the second time in modern Egyptian history was the Army dispatched to Egyptian streets to restore order.
In 1992, 14,000 soldiers occupied the Cairo shantytown suburb of Imbaba (est. population 1,000,000) for six weeks, arresting and removing some 5000 people after al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya followers of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman attempted to take control there. In the following years, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya waged war against the state and foreigners. In one year (1993), 1106 persons were killed or wounded. More police (120) than terrorists (111) were killed that year, and “several senior police officials and their bodyguards were shot dead in daylight ambushes.” The terror climaxed in 1997 when at least 71 people, primarily Swiss tourists, were killed by al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya shooters at the Hatshepsut Temple in Western Luxor. Egypt was free of Islamist attacks for several years until July 2005, when 86 people were killed and over 150 were wounded in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
In 2007-8, Egypt witnessed more than 150 demonstrations and strikes. “Some were violent and required the heavy deployment of the security forces.”
Human rights
The Emergency Law remained in force during Mubarak’s presidency and provided a basis for arbitrary detention and unfair trials. All through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, human rights violations by the security services in Egypt were described as “systematic” by Amnesty International. In 2007, Amnesty International reported that the Egyptian police routinely engaged in “beatings, electric shocks, prolonged suspension by the wrists and ankles in contorted positions, death threats and sexual abuse”. In 2009, Human Rights Watch estimated that 5,000 and 10,000 Egyptians were held without charge. Police and security forces regularly used torture and brutality. According to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, 701 cases of torture at Egyptian police stations were documented from 1985 to 2011, and 204 victims died of torture and mistreatment. The group contends that crimes of torture occur in Egyptian streets in broad daylight, at police checkpoints, and in people’s homes in flagrant violation of the people’s dignity and freedom.
Freedom of Expression, association and assembly was limited under Mubarak. The Press Law, Publications Law, and the penal code regulated the press and called for punishment by fines or imprisonment for those who criticised the President. Freedom House upgraded Egypt’s Press Freedom status in 2008 from “Not Free” to “Partly Free” in recognition not of the liberalisation of government policy but because of the courage of Egyptian journalists to cross red lines that previously restricted their work and to recognise the more fantastic range of viewpoints represented in the Egyptian media and blogosphere. This progress occurred despite the government’s ongoing—and in some cases increasing—harassment, repression, and imprisonment of journalists.
In 2005, Reporters Without Borders placed Egypt 143rd out of 167 nations on press freedoms, and its 2006 report cited continued harassment and, in three cases, imprisonment of journalists. The two sources agree that promised reforms have been disappointingly slow or unevenly implemented.
Economy
In 1991, Mubarak undertook an ambitious domestic economic reform program to reduce the size of the public sector and expand the role of the private sector. During the 1990s, a series of International Monetary Fund arrangements and massive external debt relief resulting from Egypt’s participation in the Gulf War coalition helped Egypt improve its macroeconomic performance.
In the last two decades of Mubarak’s reign, inflation was lowered, and from 1981 to 2006, GDP per capita based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) increased fourfold (from US$1355 in 1981 to an estimated US$4535 in 2006 and US$6180 in 2010).
However, this growth was far from evenly spread. Monetary restructuring, especially the flotation of the Egyptian pound, the liberalisation of the country’s money markets, a reform of the tax system and strategic reductions in governmental social spending, resulted in “staggering hardships for the majority of the people”, according to at least one observer. With housing scarcer and more expensive, “marriage became harder for young people; it became common to have a family of six or seven living together in a single room.” In many Egyptian households, it was common for family members to take turns sleeping on the same beds as overcrowding made it impossible to have more space for beds for everyone. Only a quarter of poorer Egyptian families purchased toothpaste for their children as it was considered a luxury item for people with low incomes in Egypt.
As of 1989, early in the Mubarak era, Egypt continued to have a skewed distribution of wealth; about 2,000 families had annual incomes over LE 35,000, while more than 4 million people earned less than LE 200. Social conditions in Egypt improved, but modernisation “did not succeed in reaching a critical mass of its citizens,” furthermore “; some of the recent gains were reversed due to the 2008 food price crisis and fuel price shock and to the global crisis-related slowdown in economic activity.” According to the World Bank:
The economy and the living standards for the vast majority of the population improved, although unevenly. Infant mortality and malnutrition among children under five decreased by half, and life expectancy rose from 64 to 71 years. While 18% of the Egyptian population still lives below the national poverty line, this figure goes up to 40% in rural Upper Egypt – and an additional 20% of the population has experienced poverty at one point during the last decade, heightening a sense of social vulnerability and insecurity.
According to an article by The Settle Times in January 2011, “about half the population lived on $2 a day or less.”
State corruption
While in office, political corruption in the Mubarak administration’s Ministry of Interior rose dramatically due to the increased power over the institutional system necessary to secure the prolonged presidency. Such corruption has led to the imprisonment of political figures and young activists without trials, illegal undocumented hidden detention facilities, and the rejection of universities, mosques, and newspaper staff members based on political inclination. On a personnel level, each officer can violate citizens’ privacy in their area using unconditioned arrests due to the emergency law.
In 2010, Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index report assessed Egypt with a CPI score of 3.1 out of 10.0, based on perceptions of corruption from business people and country analysts (10 being no corruption and 0 being corrupt). Egypt ranked 98th out of the 178 countries included in the report.
Society and Education
Early in the Mubarak presidency (1986), a census found Egypt’s population at 50.4 million, including about 2.3 million Egyptians working in other countries. More than 34% of the population was twelve years old or younger, and 68% were under the age of thirty. Fewer than 3% of Egyptians were sixty-five years or older. Like most developing countries, there was a steady influx of rural inhabitants to the urban areas, but just over half the population still lived in villages.
In 2010, The Economist reported that Egypt’s population was rural primarily because the villages that had expanded to over 100,000 people were not classified as towns. Three-quarters of Egyptians lived in urban areas. In 1989, the average life expectancy at birth was 59 for men and 60 for women. The infant mortality rate was 94 deaths per 1,000 births. A survey in 2010 showed that 93% of Egyptians living in villages complained that the villages lacked proper sewage, with human excrement being dumped in the Nile.
The same survey showed that 85% of Egyptian households did not have garbage service, leading to people burning their rubbish, leaving it on the streets or canals, or letting animals eat their litter. Visitors to Egypt almost always commented on the “grubbiness” of Egyptian streets covered with garbage and human excrement. The World Bank estimated that about 16 million Egyptians lived in squatter settlements. Almost all Egyptian households had electricity and piped water. Still, the quality of the service varied widely, with low-income families getting only a few hours of electricity per day and variable amounts of water that were often polluted, leading to high rates of kidney diseases.
Under a law passed shortly before the Mubarak presidency, the structure of pre-university public education in Egypt made a nine-year education compulsory. Despite this, most parents removed their children from school before they graduated from ninth grade. The basic cycle included six years of primary school and three years of intermediate school after passing special examinations. Another particular test gained admittance to the non-compulsory secondary cycle (grades ten through twelve). Secondary students chose between a general (college preparatory) curriculum of humanities, mathematics, or the sciences and a technical curriculum of agriculture, communications, or industry. Students could advance between grades only after receiving satisfactory standardised test scores.
As in many developing countries, the enrollment rate for girls lagged for boys. In 1985–86, early in the Mubarak presidency, only 45% of all primary students were girls. An estimated 75% of girls between the ages of six and twelve were enrolled in primary school, but 94% of boys were. In Upper Egypt, less than 30% of all students were girls. Girls also dropped out of primary school more frequently than boys. Girls accounted for about 41 per cent of total intermediate school enrollment and 39 per cent of secondary school enrollment. Among all girls aged twelve to eighteen in 1985–86, only 46 per cent were enrolled.
Overthrow
After 18 days of demonstrations during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, Mubarak was ousted when, on 11 February, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned as President and transferred authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. On 13 April, a prosecutor ordered Mubarak and both his sons to be detained for 15 days of questioning about allegations of corruption and abuse of power. He was then ordered to stand trial on charges of the premeditated murder of peaceful protestors during the revolution.
