EVIL INFLUENCE

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 252, 26 October 1942, Page 3

EVIL INFLUENCE

INTRIGUE IN GAIRO. NEUTRAL EGYPT'S POLITICS. Egypt is the political paradox of the war; though her soil is used as a battlefield, slie remains neutral. So long as the battle for Egypt remained the battle of the sands of Libya, it was strictly a military equation. Once Rommel's Afrika ! Kcrps rumbled down the Halfaya 1 Pass towards Mersa Matruh and ! the inner ramparts of the Nile Val- j ley, ancient feuds and modern intrigues were stirred, writes Edward • D. Kleinlerer, in an article in the Christian Science Monitor. While British and Allied troops move across Egypt, strange things go on behind their backs. Their movements are watched by native leaders, sorne of them unfriendly, some wily, some downright sinister. In Cairo, the uncertainties of the immediate future agitate an exotic cast of characters. ROLE OF YOUNG KING. The Royal personage of King Farouk I, whose thought has been turned against the British, looms large on the Egyptian stage. He wields a mighty influence. And as Egypt enters upon the most perilous hour of her destiny since Napoleon, the role of the young monarch gains in significance. The belief that under his reign Egypt is destined to play a dominant role in the Orient as a political and spiritual power has been cleverly instilled in the young and impressionable Farouk by the Sheikh Mustafa el Maraghi, rector of the powerful Moslem University of A1 Azhar. He steers the King's sympathies to the Axis Powers — in recent years diligent wooers of the Arabs. POWER BEHIND THRONE. While apparently progressive, in view of the reforms he has introd.uced into the medieval seat of Moslem learning, Mustafa el Maraghi is credited with a very conservative outlook in respect to Eastern customs and culture. He is to-day the real power behind the throne, and plots ceaselessly to make Farouk the Caliph of the faithful and leader of a potential pan-Islamic realm of 300,000,000 Moslems. Outside the Royal palace gates, eyeing the monarchy and Sheikh el Maraghi with equal hostllity, stands the leader of the Wafd, Egypt's strongest political movement. He is Premier Mustafa Nahas Pasha. When Farouk was summoned to Cairo after the death of his father in 1936 to assume the kingship, the then Prime Minister Nahas Pasha objected, as he was unwilling to share his popularity. He maintained that the young King had not come of age, and that the Council of Regency should continue to reign. It was Sheikh el Maraghi who decreed then that, according to the Orthodox Moslem calendar, Farouk was old enough to wear the Crown of Egypt.

THE WAFD PARTY. The bitter struggle which ensued between the palace and the government of Nahas Pasha was resolved in January, 1938, when Farouk, acting according to the advice of el Maraghi, ejected 'the Prime Minister, and engineered a parliamentary election which swept the Wafd Party out of power. Aly Maher Pasha, a man with strong connections in Court circles and with friends in Rome and Berlin, later grasped the Premiership, becoming less and less corhpatible with the British. He is one of tlie wiliest politicians in Egypt and has been working for the Italians since the reign of King Fuad, to whose son and heir, Farouk I, he has imparted his pro-Italian prejudices. Upon Italy's entry into the war on June I 10, 1940, the situation became impossible. Sir Miles Lampson, British Ambassador in Cairo, went to King Farouk and explained -to the young i

man that Aly Maher Pasha must go. He went. DEMONSTRATION BY STUDENTS. Once out of the Government, Aly Maher devoted his energies to sabotaging Anglo-Egyptian co-operation. He used his channels of influence to frustrate a move to round up a number of Itailan spies and saboteurs and for sundry obstructionist activities. His successor, Hassan Sabry Pasha former Egyptian Ambassador in London, and a personal friend of Sir Miles Lampson, tried to put Aly Maher Pasha under house arrest, but was balked by the Court clique. Aly Maher continued his pro-Axis machinations. As recently as January of this year, students of A1 Azbar University demonstrated on the streets of Cairo, crying out in/Arabic, "Long live Rommel! Long live Aly Maher!" The next month Nahas Pasha regained power ;n a Ministerial crisis. Aly Maher 's jig was, at least temporarily, up. Nahas Pasha arrested his old foe "for reasons of security of the State" and began to keep close watcli on Aly Maher's friends. MASSES AND THE WAR. At the same time that Rommel's troops were crossing into Egypt, Nahas Pasha made a cautious speech, asking the Egyptian people to cooperate with the British on the one liand, and recalling, on the other, that the British had not asked Egypt to fight or send troops to the frontier. The peasantry of Egypt, the Fellaheen, are the country's masses. Tlrey are largely illiterate. They don't understand the war, and, since it is between foreigners and "infidels," they want no part of it. Sir Miles Lampson is using all his influence and propaganda resources to hold Egyptian goodwill. He has not, however, forgotten the days when Mustafa. Nahas Pasha was openly Anglo-phobe. Diplomats know only too well how Axis military suceesses alter the tunes that native politicians sing. V