Interview with Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

INTERVIEW WITH _____ MOHAMED SID-AHMED The text ofthis interview includes excerptsfrom a talk given by Mohamed SidAhmed at SAIS on October 7, 1981, one day after the assassination ofEgyptian President Anwar A I-Sadat. SAIS REVIEW: In 1973 Egypt launched a war against Israel that was claimed as a victory even though the Arabs ultimately lost. However, in 1977 Sadat's trip to Israel and the resulting Camp David accordsforced Egypt to surrender its role as a leader in the Arab world. Could you assess this role historically and in light of Sadat's assassination? SID-AHMED: By the seventies, most Arab countries had achieved sovereignty, and a new phenomenon emerged—petro-wealth. In 1973, we saw petrowealth . A new power structure linked to petro-wealth, a new deal on oil. The Arab became the buyer and seller with the West, reversing the previous colonial terms and, as a consequence, the West became less the colonial enemy than the oil customer. In other words, what was earlier perceived as a fundamental antagonism began to be perceived as a possible complement in economic terms—that interdependence should replace the issue of independence . In a certain way, peace has never been anything more than a trilateral relationship with the West, and with the U.S. in particular. No, it has not been a bilateral issue between Israel and the Arabs, because there has been no reason why the Arabs should perceive Israel otherwise than before. But what Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, a journalist and author, is a well-known figure in Egypt's opposition movement. A former editorial writer for the Cairo daily, AlAhram, he was in jail during both the Nasser and Sadat regimes. He is also the author oíAfter the Guns Fall Silent, 1974, and Egypt After the Peace Treaty, 1979. He has written widely on socialism and Middle Eastern affairs. 49 50 SAIS REVIEW has happened is that since the Arab world now sees the West differently, there is the issue of how to deal with Israel, which is organically linked to the West; so in this trilateral relationship peace is nothing more than how to fit Israel into this relationship within the new power structure — the oil power structure. SAIS REVIEW: You stated that oil has transfigured relations between the Arabs and the West. How has it affected inter-Arab relations? SID-AHMED: It so happens that the most historically and culturally developed part of the Arab world, for whom nationalism and socialism have been inspired by the Western world, or by the Western experience, is on the Mediterranean , and it extends from Egypt to the Fertile Crescent. The area around Israel is the locus of this most culturally developed part of the Arab world, but it is not the locus of the most geographically developed part. One epicenter is Palestine, the other epicenter is the Gulf. In the previous stage of the decolonization process there was a core and a periphery; what was decided in the core resonated elsewhere, as in Algeria and Yemen. Now with petro-wealth, we have a bipolar Arab world. This bipolar Arab world does not have a core and periphery. It has two poles, and one pole is becoming more and more important, and could eventually become the brain center. This is the oil pole, the petro-wealth pole. Of course this restructures the Arab world in many ways. On one level, we see the trickle-down effect of petro-wealth and the corrupting effect of easy wealth. But in the opposite direction, we see the gravitating effect and the mobility of Arab labor toward this new pole with the same perverting effect of easily acquired remuneration. SAIS REVIEW: What has Egypt's role been in this new bipolar Arab configuration ? SID-AHMED: In a certain way, Egypt was used to being the trend-setter in the Arab world and, thus, with this new relationship, became threatened with no longer performing that role. The trends began to be set elsewhere, with the new relationship being between petro-wealth—the petro-structures —and the West. Sadat's game, in both war and peace, was to say that Egypt retained the keys to...