It
looks like being ignorant of history and ignoring reading and comprehending its
lessons is one of the factors leading to what is called “Becoming” which has
linguistic and philosophical meanings that may help move from one state to
another, including phenomena ending for others to be born.
I
believe we have a case telling of such ignorance of history and ignoring its
lessons represented in two sides; the first are some businessmen in Egypt and
the second is the muslim brotherhood and all who accepted to be their
supporting allies in achieving what they want.
I
will not talk about the first case in this article and will go straight to the
second case that became totally immersed in the swamp of taking sides with
foreign regional and international parties targeting besieging and undermining
the Egyptian experiment related to June 30th revolution, as the
goals of muslim brotherhood and their allies met with the goals of those
foreign parties, with each party willing to embroil the other one more and more
without realizing – muslim brotherhood and their allies – that the history
lesson, relatively far and also recent in the same time, confirms that taking
sides with the foreign enemy and believing it may change the situation in Egypt
is nothing but a lost bet.
What
is really strange is this lesson is that whether taking sides with the foreign
party was for achieving a noble patriotic cause or even the contrary, it always
fails. All or some of us remember how in the time when the national resistance
against the British occupation and working hard to have their forces evacuated
and get independence was at its peak, we remember how the patriotic and always
memorable leader Muhammed Farid wanted to strengthen the relation with foreign
parties to help Al-Watani Party or the National Party in that sacred
mission. We remember how Muhammed Farid Pasha sold most of the land he
inherited from his father; estimated to be 500 feddans for the sake of
financing the national cause. It even happened that he became broke and died in
a bad way abroad and could not find someone to help, until one of the merchants
in Gharbiya governorate donated to pay for the expenses of returning his body
back to Egypt!
Then
we come to the post-July 1952 revolution when goals of the revolution conflicted
with those of muslim brotherhood and some of the non-muslim-brotherhood
figures. Of those non-muslim-brotherhood figures were Mahmoud Abul-Fath and his
brother Ahmed Abul-Fath where the first represents a model for the opposition
figure believing that disagreeing with the ruling regime and its leaders allows
all that is forbidden just like the rule “Necessity knows no law” says.
Of
these forbidden deeds is taking sides with foreign parties to help or actually
bring down the ruling regime, or at least besieging it and practicing pressure
over it to accept what that opposition figure wants, without realizing that
Egypt is the one bearing all the damage and it is the victim in this case, for
his “political and abstract” bullet that he aims at his opponent, whether it is
the ruling regime or the president in this case, actually goes through the
nation’s body, which is by all means an unjustifiable and imprescriptible
crime.
Amid
his extreme dispute with Nasser and entangling trivial own interests with big
political goals, Mahmoud Abul-Fath collaborated with Nouri as-Sai’eed;
then-Iraqi PM who opposed the Egyptian regime at that time and cooperated with
the West to establish Baghdad Pact. As-Sai’eed also cooperated with Britain and
the United States of America.
Mahmoud
Abul-Fath wanted to import a deal of “buses” for Egypt, but the tender, then
supervised by Mr. Abdelatif Al-Bughdadi, went to “Abu Regela”. Mahmoud Abul-Fath
also wanted to supply military rifles for the army, but his offer was rejected,
and his brother, Ahmed Abul-Fath talked to president Nasser during a meeting in
an attempt to clear things between Mahmoud and the Egyptian leadership
regarding the issue of providing buses and rifles and considering rejecting the
two offers as an action of antagonism against his brother Mahmoud. Nasser then
looked very annoyed and wondered: what do I have to do with buses and rifles
that Mahmoud wants to sell?!
Then
Mahmoud Abul-Fath – who is the maternal uncle of one of the journalists who does
not cease for a moment to attack Nasser and the July revolution thinking that
people do not know his motive behind that – sent a letter to the English
foreign minister, then another for the British PM offering to cooperate with
all means with the British government against the ruling regime in Egypt. In his
correspondence, he claimed to the British that he has an existing alliance in
Egypt containing some like Mustafa An-Nahas Pasha and Muhammed Naguib, and that
he has officers doing activities, and also he has a political organization and
military one in the army. Moreover, he sent a message to the American president
Eisenhower asking him to take a stance against what he called “the corrupt
military group existing in Egypt”.
The
worst thing was when Mahmoud Abul-Fath – along with some others – established radio
broadcasting stations working against Egypt. What is really ironic was that the
British foreign ministry doubted their ability to do anything, but the entity
which adopted and paid more attention to them was the British military
intelligence as Britain was preparing for the invasion and onslaught on Egypt.
There
are a lot of details to tell in the case of Mahmoud Abul-Fath. For whoever
wants to know, they can find them in a complete episode given by Mr. Heikal in
TV and no one replied to him regarding it. Such details are now available in
the British documents that are now open for everyone to check!
The
lesson is, not Mahmoud and Ahmed Abul-Fath, nor the foreign parties which they
sought their help, could change the situation in Egypt. The same thing happened
with muslim brotherhood who resorted to Saudi Arabia, some Gulf countries and
Europe and kept on working against Egypt and Nasser but to no avail, until they
made a reconciliation with Sadat through a Saudi intervention.
We
go with time until we come to the opposition against Sadat which spread abroad;
in London, Paris, Tripoli, Baghdad, Beirut… but we shall talk later about this.
Translated
by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper
on October 2, 2019.
To see the original Arabic article, go to:
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