It was Dean Acheson, the US secretary of state after World War II, who coined the phrase being “present at the creation.” He was referring to the establishment of the new world order that the US had engineered, with Acheson being at the drawing board and helping to manufacture and later also to lead it.
I was not around at that time. But I was present at the creation of the Al-Ahram Weekly 45 years later when Hosny Guindy and Mohamed Salmawy assembled a small group of talented individuals to develop this English-language newspaper to serve as a window of the world into Egypt and as Egypt’s window onto the world.
Soon afterwards, Salmawy went on to found a French-language version, the Ahram Hebdo, while Hosny Guindy, as the Weekly’s editor-in-chief, continued to lay the foundations of this excellent periodical that continues today under its current editor-in-chief Ezzat Ibrahim. I have had the privilege to meet the editors-in-chief between them, Hani Shukrallah and Assem Al-Qersh. All four men were born after World War II and lived through the sweeping changes and upheavals that turned the world upside down several times over.
As these individuals grew to adulthood and entered university, Cold War tensions were soaring, and the key players had their fingers not just on the triggers of conventional weapons but also on the buttons of nuclear ones. The latter had come a long way since they were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, as the range of nuclear missiles had increased a thousand-fold and their numbers and payloads could destroy the planet several times over.
This was the generation that held its breath in dread during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, about which it was later said that the odds had been “between one in three and even” for escalation to take place leading to the war to end all wars. As terrifying as that crisis was, it also proved to be the wake-up call that paved the way to the era of détente in the 1970s. Then followed another phase of the Cold War that culminated in the collapse of the former Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, ushering in the era of globalisation and the monopolar world led by the US.
This was precisely when the Weekly was born. It was present to watch and document that fraught and critical moment in 1991 after the end of the war in the Gulf to liberate Kuwait. Before the year was up, then US president George Bush had announced the birth of a new world order, and the Madrid Peace Conference had announced the birth of a new regional order shaped by direct and multilateral negotiations that, according to the participants, would herald a new and different Middle East.
The rest of that decade seemed to bear out Bush’s promise. By the turn of the millennium, the world was more stable and life was getting a lot easier thanks to the inventions of the third technological revolution. However, the worldwide spread of these marvels did not cause happiness to prevail in the world or in this region. And while humanity was getting to know the world better than ever before, the rules of the game of nations were still far from ideal for those of us who came from non-Western nations.
Eventually, the optimism that had accompanied the turn of the century burst with the abruptness of the collapse of the World Trade Centre in New York. The world plunged into new rounds of violence with the fight against terrorism, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and various revolutions and civil upheavals. Then, as though such calamities and tragedies were not enough, the Covid-19 pandemic sent its shockwaves across the globe.
Life in Egypt did not remain the same during the first two decades of the Weekly’s life. Bolstered by its rise in regional and international stature due to its critical contribution to the war effort in the Gulf, Egypt embarked on an albeit rocky period of reform. The country was changing steadily and subtly in other ways. Young people were becoming a larger and larger slice of the country’s demographic, and they were quick to come to grips with the incoming trickle and then the flood of the products of the IT revolution.
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The Muslim Brotherhood was in its heyday in the country’s syndicates, political parties and even in parliament. However, the most exciting and tumultuous decade in the Weekly’s life was yet to come. It opened with the phenomenon famously known as the Arab Spring in early 2011, which had swept into Egypt from Tunisia and then spread to other Arab states.
In fact, that “Spring” brought three stages of change to the region: the overthrow of authoritarian leaders whom no one imagined could ever be removed from power; the Muslim Brotherhood’s control of government and political processes in collaboration with their radical allies; and, thirdly, their downfall after they failed to convince public opinion of their ability to govern well, at which point they were ousted from power or had their power significantly curtailed in favour of other political forces, as occurred in Tunisia, Jordan, Libya, Yemen and Kuwait.
As the story of the 2011 uprisings unfolded, it revealed new forces at work and scenes no one could have predicted amidst the heated passions and romantic fervour of the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square in Cairo and similar places in other Arab capitals. The price of revolution was high and the return was little, however. At all events, the Weekly had a front-row seat as history played itself out around it.
I have always enjoyed a good relationship with the Weekly, its writers, and, of course, its editors-in-chief, who were of my generation or a little younger. This affection was never marred by the fact that the newspaper was on the left of Al-Ahram’s political spectrum while I was taking steps towards the right. In fact, the distance between us may have grown a bit during the Arab-Israeli Peace Process, in which I tried to play an active part by joining the international alliance for Arab-Israeli peace known as the Copenhagen Group. But differences over that issue did not diminish the mutual respect founded on the spirit of professionalism that prevailed between me, in my capacity as head of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, and the successive editors-in-chief of the Weekly.
In fact, such is my respect for the newspaper that I tried my best in the days of former chairman Ibrahim Nafie’s stewardship of Al-Ahram to transform the Weekly into a daily. However, Hosny Guindy felt that the time was not right and that perhaps the resources were not sufficient for a daily of the calibre he envisioned. Later, when I became chairman of the board of Al-Ahram, my first decision was to ask Hani Shukrallah to head the Al-Ahram portal in English. Then, as he was settling into that position, I put to him the idea of a daily. He was of the same opinion as Hosny Guindy, but this time I was in a position to meet the promise of providing the necessary resources. But in the midst of the changes that took place after the 25 January Revolution, I left Al-Ahram and Hani left the newspaper, but our friendship, which dated from the mid-1970s, remained.
Since its inception, the Weekly would occasionally translate and publish an article of mine in English. However, when I began to write regularly for the Al-Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper in 2004, it became possible for my articles to appear simultaneously in English in the Weekly. Since then, I have addressed my column not just to audiences in the Arab world, but also to English-speaking readers in the West for whom the Weekly offers one of the most important windows onto what is happening in Egypt and the region.
There were also many other occasions when the newspaper invited me to contribute other articles, and it was always a pleasure to say yes. This time was no exception. So, I will take this occasion marking the end of the Weekly’s third decade to convey two messages to my dear colleagues there. The first is to wish a happy 30th anniversary to the entire Weekly team. The second is that I still dream of one day seeing it as a daily, not just for their sake but, ultimately, for the sake of Egypt.
With my fondest regards to my younger, more energetic and more capable friends at the Al-Ahram Weekly.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 4 March, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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