BY MAXI ORTIZ AND ALFONSE MALONE
CAIRO, Egypt - A wave of demonstrations against Washington swept most universities here the third week of February, sparked by the U.S. government's preparations for a military assault against Iraq.

"We despise the bully from the United States treating our Iraqi brothers, and all other Arabs, as victims and beggars," said Hossam El Din Mustaffa in a March 8 interview here. Mustaffa is a student at Cairo University and an organizer of the student actions that peaked at 25,000 - nearly half the students on that campus - on February 22, the day before United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan struck the deal with the Saddam Hussein government that deflected a U.S.- organized massive military strike for the moment, while simultaneously codifying imperialist prerogatives and tightening Washington's "rules."

"We marched to stand with the people of Iraq when it looked like they would be slaughtered once again," Mustaffa added. "And we marched to show our dignity and our determination to fight imperialism."

Most of the two dozen students Militant reporters spoke with, including a number interviewed on March 9 outside Cairo University and American University who themselves had not taken part in the protests, voiced a similar anti-imperialist defiance.

"The first large demonstration started at the Arabic Language and Islamic Sciences faculty on February 20," said Bhaa El Din El Mola, a student at that department of Cairo University. "About 2,000 students, mainly Muslim, left their classes and began marching. Soon the protest grew and got broader."

As the word about the action swept the campus, many more quit class and joined in, chanting: "Stop the bombing," "U.S. hands off Iraq!" and "Don't stick your nose in our internal affairs!" Up to 4,000 demonstrated that day, according to El Mola.

Mustaffa and other students said the Islamic Association was the student group that initiated the action. In less than a day most student organizations at Cairo University -including the Democracy Movement, Nasserism, and the Progressive Current - threw their support behind the mobilizations.

Gamal Abdel Nasser was the former Egyptian president whose regime carried out extensive nationalizations beginning in the 1950s, including the 1956 expropriation of the Suez Canal, which sparked a British, French, and Israeli invasion of Egypt and massive popular mobilizations throughout the Arab world.

Prior to the protests, several student groups had set up a photo exhibition depicting the devastating effects of the seven-year-old United Nations embargo against Iraq, pushed and policed by Washington.

A high percentage of Palestinians and students from Jordan took part in the actions, relative to their numbers at Cairo University, said Mustaffa and Ahmed, a medical student there who asked to be identified only with his first name. Palestinian flags dotted the crowd of protesters and slogans demanding an end to U.S. support to the Tel Aviv regime could be heard throughout the mobilizations, which lasted for five days, ending February 24.

"Clinton and [U.S. secretary of state Madeleine] Albright talk about stopping proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rationalize their crimes against Iraq," Ahmed said. "But they are the biggest proliferators. They are the ones who have poured weapons of mass destruction into Israel and have now filled the Persian Gulf with warships, bombers, and nuclear weapons."

Actions on other campuses
Similar actions took place at other campuses February 20-24. The largest mobilization, of more than 30,000, took place at Aim Shams (Eye of the Sun) University February 22, according to journalist Sameh El Shall and most students interviewed by the Militant. About 10,000 students demonstrated at El Azhar and Zhaka Zhik universities in Cairo, we were told, and smaller actions of 2,000-3,000 took place in Alexandria and other Egyptian cities.

About 100 students from American University, a smaller private college in the center of Cairo, left their classes February 22 and marched through the campus and then toward the nearby U.S. embassy, chanting "Stop the bombing!"

"By the time we got to the U.S. embassy we numbered over 1,000," said Ramy, an 18-year-old computer science student, who asked that his last name not be used. "It was spontaneous. No particular student organization called us to go out. We just heard the United States was about to start the bombing. We are Arabs. We must act."

Most students on that campus come from upper middle-class or bourgeois families. Tuition fees there exceed $9,000 a year, double the annual income of a well-paid industrial worker.

Several of the students Militant reporters interviewed on that campus were clearly not opposed to U.S. imperialism or to the efforts by Washington and its imperialist allies to deepen their domination of the Middle East. But even those students were against Washington's impending military assault, echoing the position of the Egyptian government. "Getting access to some presidential palaces is a lousy excuse for war," said Khalid Mustaffa, another computer science student at American University who did not participate in the February 22 demonstration. "At least in 1991 they had a good excuse," he added, referring to the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi army in 1990 that the U.S. government used as the pretext to organize the slaughter against the Iraqi people at the time.

Attitude of Egyptian authorities
The action at American University was the only one the police did not interfere with. At all the other universities, which are public, the cops forced the students to stay within the confines of the campus or the immediate vicinity of the school.

Ahmed and other students interviewed outside Cairo University said protesters filled the city street running through the middle of the campus, but were prevented from marching into the city by the cops. "The government in this case particularly wanted to prevent the march from reaching the Israeli embassy a few blocks away," he said. "But compared to 1990-91, when two students were killed in clashes with police, the political gulf between the students and the authorities was narrower."

The Egyptian government backed the U.S.-led assault on Iraq in 1991, but distanced itself from Washington's war preparations this time, calling instead for negotiations with Baghdad and a diplomatic solution to the crisis. This was a common stance among the governments across North Africa. Over the last four months, editorials in the big-business press here have often criticized or condemned Washington's war preparations against Iraq and the U.S.-initiated embargo, as well as sanctions maintained against Libya.

"The way the West, particularly the U.S., has been handling the Arabs over the past few years, especially in the aftermath of Gulf War II, reinforces the Arab misgivings over the thrust of the New World Order," said the lead editorial in the March 9 Egyptian Gazette, the main English-language daily in Egypt. (Gulf War II is the common term used in the press here to describe the 1991 U.S.-led assault on Iraq. Gulf War I designates the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s.) "Plain and simple, the Arabs have every reason to believe that the sanctions are an arbitrary weapon only wielded against them and on unfair grounds. Any perceived failure to toe the American line risks the wrath of the U.S., which could in turn lead to tightening the noose around this or that state and stigmatizing it as a pariah country."

The editorial focused on condemning the most recent UN Security Council decision to renew sanctions against Libya because of Tripoli's refusal to extradite two of its nationals to Britain or the United States, whom Washington and London claim are responsible for planting a bomb in a Pan Am airliner that exploded in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The UN Security Council decision came shortly after a February 28 ruling by the International Court of Justice (IJC) that it has jurisdiction over where a trial of the accused should take place, as well as to hear Libyan complaints of Washington's and London's actions in this case, which Tripoli hailed as a victory in its fight against the sanctions. "This week's Security Council move to retain the sanctions for a further four months makes a mockery of the IJC decision and adds to the growing Arab cynicism over the U.S.-led New World Order," the Egyptian Gazette editorial said.

While the anti-imperialist actions were concentrated on campuses, smaller protests also took place elsewhere. Mohammed Abdel Rahman, a novelist, said 1,200 writers and other artists marched in solidarity with the student actions.

Where protesters focused their fire on the policies of the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak, they faced harsher treatment by the police. Mohammed Abdel Zaher, a student at Al Azhar University, said about 50 students began an impromptu march February 13, during the Cairo Book Fair, that quickly grew to 300 people and drew the attention of the press. Protesters demanded an end to the UN sanctions against Iraq, opposed U.S. military intervention, and called for severing economic relations between Egypt and Israel. Zaher said cops attacked the demonstrators, beating two students unconscious.

Similarly, when thousands of people, many of them workers, who had congregated at the El Azhar mosque attempted to march down the street February 20 against Washington's announced plans to bomb Iraq, they faced heavy police cordons. The cops prevented the outpouring by roughing up many people.

Since the UN "deal" with Iraq, protests have receded. But most students and others interviewed by the Militant said they expect hostilities will resume. "I think the U.S. government will try this again," said Mohammed Abdel Rahman, who is also an officer of the newly formed Egyptian Committee to Confront American and Zionist Threats Against the Peoples of the Middle East. "The United States and Israel have great interests in the region because from here they can reach the oil-rich areas of the former Soviet republics and thereby control the oil that Russia, China, and Japan depend on. Some day they will pay dearly for trying to plunder every corner of the world," Ahmed said, referring to Washington. "We will fight them."

Maxi Ortiz is a member of the Young Socialists in Stockholm, Sweden. Maria Isabel Le Blanc, a member of the Young Socialists in Montreal, Quebec, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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