I admit that many
– including me – are bored and sick of the argument over division into civilian
and military that goes in the same system aiming at dismantling our country ,either
by talk or action, into Muslims, Christians and atheists… then into Sunni
Muslim and Shiaa Muslims… then into Asha’ari Sunni, Salafi Sunni and Sufi
Sunni… then into Zaydi Shiaa and Twelver Shiaa… then into Hizbi Salafi and
Jihadi Salafi… then Banna, Qutbi and Telmesani muslim brotherhood… to the end
of this microscopic level in the side of Islam…
As to the side of
Christianity, they are divided into Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and other side
sects… moreover, Orthodox have been through the hardship of fragmentation when
a man called Maximus claimed he is the patriarch of the Athanasius Orthodox… as
to atheists, they are divided – at least according to the point of view of some
others – into atheist seculars, even if they have prayers and fast, philosophic
atheists, materialistic atheists and nihilist atheists!!
Division
continues into racist fragmentation; meaning into Egyptians, Nubians,
Amazighens and others… and another one according to place; meaning Upper
Egyptians, Lower Egyptians, Sinai people and people inhabiting Matrouh… to the
extent that some questioned the loyalty of some of those people toward their
homeland and its unity…
And here we have
a new fragmentation that hits the heart of our country by division into
civilians and military men… it hits us in the heart because the Egyptian army
was, still is and will be a model of the tough sticking-together Egyptian alloy
where all components are united together and where diversity and variety are
source of strength, solidarity and progress.
And since I
cannot and do not think of preventing others from going wild in their thoughts
or imagination towards whatever direction, I do not and will not ask to stifle
those who aim at enabling this plan of dismantling and who work hard and
diligently to market it… instead of thinking of how to stifle them, I believe
it is better to work intellectually and practically to honor the unity of our
land and unity and cohesion of the societal fabric… also to contribute to
enabling the welcoming atmosphere of exchanging opinions and different points
of view.
I do not know why
I always think, specifically in this phase of our society’s history, that we
are facing a catastrophe that when takes place in a country, an emergency state
is declared, not by laws or imposing curfew, but with societal emergencies so
that all variant social, political and intellectual components of a society are
united and deployed in the mission of facing such catastrophe… exactly like the
case when facing tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanoes… I will not say plagues
lest one of those so-called liberals or revolutionaries come up saying “they
are depicting the revolution as a plague”… despite that I, my colleagues, folks
and children were in the streets and participated in January, 2011 and June,
2013 revolutions… and tens of years before, I was not for once a supporter of
the regime and my writings were always in the side of opposition.
Only then we can
talk about the role of armies in general and the Egyptian army in specific… I will
start with the common model; that is all the big developed countries that take
their armies as a pulling wagon for progress.
According to what
I know, strategic military industries are always the leading ones in waves of
consecutive industrial revolutions… until now, space industries are military
industries in the first place where they are surrounded with secrecy and
confidentiality until a long time passes on any invention or discovery and then
it goes down to the civil industries where the public can make use of such
discovery.
Yes… the private
corporations can be the capital owner in some of those strategic industries
connected to the national security of the developed countries… these are private
companies owned by civilians but their plans, researches and production are
inseparable of the security system at the highest and most discipline contexts.
The catastrophe
that requires us in Egypt to do all our best to strengthen the role of the Egyptian
army as a pulling wagon is that we are fighting a real war, even if it took
different forms and degrees, on five fronts; north, south, east, west and right
in the heart of the social and geographic centre… regardless of the different
views in analyzing the reasons behind this, we are living a catastrophe on the economic
level… and crises that sometimes reach the level of catastrophe in criminal
security, social relationships and most, if not all, productive, health and
educational sides in industry and agriculture… and maybe the sector of commerce
is the one left, specially proxies and importation…
In my opinion,
the Egyptian army with all its capabilities, expertise and graduates of the
military technical college and higher academy colleges can do a lot in such
regard.
I know and expect
those who will yell “hey… see… they started cajoling the army to open the door
for retired and in-service military men to take command of the country… we are
back again to men of trust… the military kindred will replace the muslim
brotherhood kindred”.
Again I say that
lack of capabilities and expertise and tendency for corruption are issues that
have nothing to do with the outfit people wear either now or in the past as
there are many so-called elite civilians, including university professors, councilors
and experts, who proved no efficiency in their positions.
Actually, the most
prosper times of wide corruption, looting and stealing was when some names of
the Egyptian capitalism reaped the revenues of the great victory of October,
1973… for those who do not remember, Egypt was drained economically by that
contractor and the other one who monopolized trading with Russia to the endless
list of those whom we all know… those who fed us rotten gulls as chicken… those
who stole the savings of millions of Egyptians in capital investment companies raising
Islamic slogans… that money that some Egyptians spent their lifetime to save
from their work in oil-rich Arab countries… I do not deny that some of those
who made profits at that time were ex-generals who did not miss the chance to
take part in that looting process in an atmosphere when the then-president;
highest head in the state, said “the one will not be rich in my time, will
never be one”…
We are about to have
a comprehensive confrontation of the catastrophe where everyone must take part
in… and until we can create the environment for this comprehensive
participation and dividing work on the whole social mass, the entity ready to
do its role and maybe more in such critical phase is the Egyptian army due to
many reasons, least of them is cohesion, discipline and abundance of
specializations in more than one field.
In my opinion,
the real challenge is not having the army back to its barracks as some are never
bored to reiterate such saying all the time… but actually the challenge is to
work as fast as possible to align all the social compositions and all service
and productive sectors in doing their normal jobs armed to the full with the
spirit of dedication.
The real
challenge is to make maximum use of the expertise, capabilities and discipline
of the Egyptian army so that it can be the locomotive that will haul our
country train to the first station of stability where everyone can go his way
in serving the nation and people.
Stop fragmentation
and dismantling… I wish we can see pioneers in the national work in more than
one field, specially fields of education, culture and enriching the awareness of
the wide public sectors in the heart of Delta and far areas in Upper Egypt,
Sinai, Red Sea and Western Desert… and let those who work as per the European
and American agendas stand in the front lines.
Translated into
English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in Al Ahram newspaper on June 5, 2014.
To see the original article, go to:
#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #Egyptian_army
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