Daily Times Editorial March 20, 2013

President Mohamed Morsi’s visit Mohamed Morsi has paid the first visit by an Egyptian president to Pakistan in five decades. This is the first leg of the Egyptian president’s trip to South Asia. He will be visiting India next. Interaction between the presidents and delegations of Egypt and Pakistan has produced the expected and welcome drawing together of the two brotherly countries. President Asif Zardari has come out with a very wise offer for Pakistan and Egypt to play a role in finding a peaceful solution to the Syrian conflict. He said the drive for peace in Syria must be led and owned by the Syrian people (shades of Pakistan’s formulation for peace in Afghanistan). President Zardari urged concerted steps to take the existing Pak-Egyptian relationship to new heights, with a focus on trade and investment. As a result of the talks, the two countries have signed various agreements and MoUs in the fields of postal services, merchant shipping, media cooperation, science and technology and small and medium enterprises. A biennial summit in rotation in Pakistan and Egypt was mooted. Support for the Palestinian cause was reiterated, with emphasis on the Palestinian people being given their right to a state that is contiguous and viable. The history of the relationship between Pakistan and Egypt is full of ups and downs. Soon after independence, the gravitation of Egypt and India towards each other, particularly in the Non-Aligned Movement, at the same time as Pakistan was entering the fold of the ‘most allied ally’ of the US-led west, inevitably meant some distance between Cairo and Islamabad. Despite lip service to the cause of the Arabs and Palestinians against Israel and its western backers, unfortunately Shaheed Suhrawardy’s government in 1956 did not support Gamal Abdul Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal or the subsequent war between the Arabs on the one hand and Israel, France and Britain on the other, despite the sentiment of solidarity with the Arabs on the street in Pakistan. That further soured relations with Cairo. In the subsequent wars between the Arabs and Israel too, Islamabad’s support remained shrouded in ambiguity. In 1970, then Brigadier Ziaul Haq led his armoured brigade's tanks against the Palestinian camps in Jordan, slaughtering and driving out the Palestinian fighters and refugees into Lebanon. Whatever support was forthcoming in the wars between the Arabs and Israel, was always heavily compromised by this history and the bitterness it evoked in the Arab world against Pakistan. Of course things changed when Egypt under Anwer Sadat made peace with Israel, effectively betraying the Arab and Palestinian cause and suffering the consequences in his assassination at the hands of Islamists. Hosni Mubarak continued Sadat’s legacy and policy for 30 years until finally overthrown by the Arab Spring movement of the people of Egypt that brought Mr Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement to power in the elections. Although the subsequent tenure of Mr Morsi has been dogged by controversy and opposition by the liberal, secular, democratic forces that actually spearheaded the Egyptian movement against Mubarak, President Zardari papered all that over diplomatically by praising the change in Egypt and wishing his guest more and better achievements along the path of democracy and change underway in that country. While we wish President Morsi and the Egyptian people well and hope for the consolidation of a democracy acceptable to all the people of Egypt, including the alienated forces on the street against the Muslim Brotherhood’s domination of post-Mubarak Egypt, it needs to be reiterated that Pakistan must undo the history of mistrust and suspicion in Cairo because of the past and come forward to support not only Egypt but the Palestinian and Arab cause wholeheartedly. There can be no peace in the Middle east if the Palestinians are not given their inalienable rights, including statehood, and unless the good sentiments expressed vis-à-vis Syria are translated into concrete steps to stay the hands of the west-supported Syrian opposition (which includes al Qaeda affiliates) and bring all parties in that conflict to the negotiating table. Whatever else it produces, and no matter how much bloodshed transpires before, the fall of the Bashar Al-Assad regime at the hands of a rebellion backed covertly and overtly by the west and certain Arab monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar will only end up weakening further the anti-Israeli, anti-imperialist front in the region. The powerful states of the region and the west must not be allowed to overthrow another anti-imperialist regime in the Arab world after the blatant intervention in and overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya. Imperialist intervention needs to be stopped in its tracks in the Middle East and wherever else it is contemplated if the world is to take a turn away from wars and towards peace, development and prosperity on the basis of global cooperation.