From the archive of Abdelrahim Ali

Egypt’s fate and our destiny

Published
Abdelrehim Aly

Since the Egyptians discovered the reality of their country's status and its geographical and historical importance, as one of the most important places on earth, making history, shaping civilizations and building nations, in ancient and modern history, they started planning and building their strategies on this basis.

Egypt is not one of those countries that has the luxury of turning to itself, whether for construction or development, or even enough to harm oneself or others. Neither its vital geographical location in the heart of the world nor its historical position allows it to do so.

The Egyptians remained rulers and ruled according to this formula, whether the sons of Muhammad Ali who ruled Egypt for nearly a century and a half, or the July revolutionaries who ruled after them.

Politicians, whether they were in power or the opposition, and information services, whether internal or external, continued to deal according to that formula, aware of all its political and security dimensions.

Those dimensions that impose on Cairo expansion and influence in any part of the world, affect or be affected by the national security of Egypt, this happened during the era of Presidents Abdel Nasser and Sadat and continued throughout the first twenty years of the rule of former President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak.

We are not here to try anyone or attack anyone. President Mubarak, as he himself emphasized, in his last speech to the nation, presented what he presented to Egypt out of a sense of national responsibility.

But today we present a set of ideas that we believe were adopted and implemented in the last decade of his rule, seriously damaging Egypt's status and national security, and we are still paying for them dearly until now.

The Egyptian protesters' grievances focused on legal and political issues, including police brutality, state-of-emergency laws, lack of political freedom, civil liberty, freedom of speech, corruption, high unemployment, food-price inflation and low wages. The protesters' primary demands were the end of the Mubarak regime.

Why was the Egyptian armed forces able to protect Egypt from these schemes and to cross them to safety?!

During that decade of years, the armed forces remained completely far from using or applying that vision, and no principles of the new thought were applied to it.

The Egyptian nationalist is not only against the attacking armies, but also against anyone who seeks to undermine the security and stability of Egypt internally and externally, which is what benefited the Egyptians after the will of God Almighty to recover their country that was usurped for a whole year, which is the year of the terrorist group’s rule.

Later, it became clear, of course, the extent of the weakness of the Egyptian arm, which was described as tall, when what happened on our western borders in Libya, and the eastern ones in Sinai, as well as what happened and is happening in the Nile water file, and finally what happened and is happening in Yemen.

Egypt woke up to a catastrophe, a short and weak arm and intricate and intense conspiracies, and here began to work vigorously to restore that long and strong arm, to restore Egypt's prestige and its ability to deter, even without the use of force, or sending armies, of course we have many years until we reach 2001, by 2015, and we bridge the gap that lasted fourteen years, but I am confident that those responsible for this mighty work pray night and day, and work throughout the twenty-four hours, every hour ten times as much, in order to bridge the gap in a few years or months, and we must understand what happened and is happening.

So that we realize the magnitude of the historical responsibility that rests on our shoulders, not to ask, in idiocy, what is the benefit of that, why do we go to Libya and Yemen, and why we stress that what is between us and the Gulf states is a “kickback”, this is Egypt’s destiny, and our destiny.