Tag: قرصاية

From AFP:

Bayonets fixed, the soldiers scrambled onto the island in the middle of Cairo, rolled out barbed wire and set up camp. The reasons why they did so are as murky as the Nile waters that flow around them.
Al-Qursaya island is home to 5,000 people, mostly farmers who have lived there for generations. It is one of the last undeveloped pieces of land in the mega-city’s ever-expanding concrete sprawl.
The army’s arrival in September heralded that of mechanical diggers swaying atop barges as they set about expanding the island, which can only currently be accessed by a small ferry.
More ominously, the farmers have been told to stop paying rent as the land “will be cleared,” according to the only official document any of the residents has seen.
Officials have spoken vaguely about transforming the area into a public park, but no one on Al-Qursaya believes them.
They fear that their homes and livelihood will be taken from them to make way for yet another tourist development dreamed up by wealthy men who straddle the worlds of business and politics.
And in Egypt, no explanation is needed when the all-powerful military is involved.
Sociologist Sameh Nagib says the army is increasingly involved in development projects and that “for tourism, for roads, there is always a struggle for the land.”
“The army is a major landowner in Egypt. If there’s a problem with a road project the army gets involved — they say the army owns it,” says the American University professor, who is based in Cairo.
But beyond so-called projects of national interest such as roads, Nagib says that the government, pushing a programme of liberal economic reforms, “wants foreign investors.”
“Because the value of real estate has tripled in recent years, because of all this the army’s involvement is accelerating,” he says.
One analyst who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue said that President Hosni Mubarak’s son, Gamal — a former merchant banker widely seen as being groomed to be the next president — could be currying favor with the army.
One question mark over Gamal’s inheritance is that he would be the first president from a non-military background, and “this could be Gamal’s way of winning the army over. Maybe he’s giving them a bigger cut with the businessmen,” the analyst says.