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Posted on 10/13/2001 4:19:47 PM PDT by sarcasm

	Norbert Schiller for The New York Times The spire of a mosque towers above a McDonald's in Cairo.

AIRO, Oct. 13 — The Bush administration's war on terror, in effect, is a war on the Islamic extremism that was born and bred in the crowded slums of Egypt and the sterile desert cities of Saudi Arabia. To uproot hatred's seeds — that abject sense of powerlessness that drives some people to loathe anyone who represents power — would require colossal change in both nations, where the rulers have traditionally been America's strongest Arab allies.

"This war on terrorism may eliminate a few terrorists," said Mohamed Zarea, a human rights activist in Cairo who believes political and social improvements are the ultimate answer. "But without basic reforms, it will be like killing a few mosquitoes and leaving the swamp."

American strategy in the Middle East has long relied on Egypt as a moderating force, particularly in the conflict with Israel, and Saudi Arabia as a stabilizing influence on the weak tribal regimes of the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

Despite the risk to their standing in the Arab world, the leaders of each country have generally accepted their roles and the rewards that came with them. The Bush administration's appeal now would seem to be tailor-made for the Egyptian and Saudi rulers.

The Egyptians have known terrorism first hand — President Hosni Mubarak was the target of an assassination attempt by Islamic militants in 1995. His predecessor, Anwar Sadat, was killed by them in 1981. The Saudi royal family, whose power rests on its claim to religious piety, has endured Osama bin Laden's charge of being unfit to oversee the Muslim holy places of Mecca and Medina.

Yet both the Egyptian and Saudi rulers are also entrenched elites dealing with increasing social frustration — rooted in stagnant economies and a paucity of jobs — and the difficulty of managing generational change at the top.

In the last year, the rulers have tried to weather a storm of anti-American sentiment arising from the perception that the United States is Israel's backer against the Palestinian uprising.

And now, the list of America's most- wanted terrorists, replete with the names of Egyptians and Saudis, has made it abundantly clear to everyone that hatred for the United States and its friends was nurtured on their own soil.

Egypt, with 69 million people, is the Arab world's most populous state. In a region made up of nations carved by European powers from the carcass of the Ottoman empire, it has the distinction of being the only Middle Eastern country living within its historic borders.

The Arab world's defining political ideologies have emanated from Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood, the grandfather of the modern movements that seek to replace secular governments with Islamic states, was born here. Pan-Arab nationalism, the secular movement that sought to erase the European-made borders and create a single Arab nation, took concrete form here.

Egypt was also the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, a decision that ushered in Egyptian-American cooperation but cost President Sadat his life.

In the view of many Egyptians, the peace treaty has not brought the rewards they were led to expect in compensation for their isolation in the Arab world. The bulk of the more than $2 billion annual American aid goes to the military. Huge public housing projects, built far from the city centers in the desert, sit empty. Unemployment, especially among college graduates, has been rising.

Reform of the centrally planned economy has never really gotten off the ground. One third of the work force still holds government jobs that pay so little — about 300 Egyptian pounds a month, or the equivalent of $71 — that most people have to supplement their incomes with another job or two.

Yet Egyptian universities continue to grind out graduates. Each year, 20,000 new lawyers hit the streets, swelling the ranks of what economists here call the "educated poor."

Mr. Zarea, like many young men from working-class families, went to law school, carrying all his family's dreams of a better life.

Mr. Zarea ended up in human rights work. Most of his classmates — those lacking political or family connections to get a high-paying job — ended up scraping by in private practice on the equivalent of $30 a month.

"You can't afford to take a taxi to court," said Mr. Zarea, who is 36. "You go by bus. You can barely afford the suit you need to appear before a judge. So you work a second job as a waiter or a taxi driver or a manual worker. And after all this physical and mental effort you can't even start a life and get married because you can't afford it. And you end up blaming society and the government."

He recalled a friend with an engineering degree, the first in his family to reach such heights.

While studying, the young man worked part-time as a waiter in a neighborhood coffee shop, where the patrons respectfully addressed him as "Mister." Once he graduated, they showed even greater respect by calling him "Engineer."

He could only find a government job that paid less than $50, but considered himself lucky. Still, he kept his night job in the cafe. And at the office, his government coworkers teasingly called him "waiter."

"He couldn't leave his job because it gave him the prestige he needed," said Mr. Zarea. "He couldn't leave the cafe because it gave him the money he needed. It pushed him into a serious depression and eventually he just quit the government." Now, he works full-time at the cafe.

Frustration is likely to intensify. Like most Arab countries, Egypt is awash in young people. More than 55 percent of the population is under the age of 25 and has known no other president than Mr. Mubarak.

In Saudi Arabia, 59.4 percent of the population is under the age of 25. Unemployment is high. The oil wealth that seemed unlimited in the 1980's has proved insufficient to subsidize today's young people to the extent that it did their parents. Criticism of the Saudi royal family that has ruled the country since its creation in 1932 is dealt with severely.

Predictably, the disappointed and disenfranchised youth of both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where Islam is a way of life, turn to religion for comfort. They blame the government but are fearful of expressing their anger openly. They blame outsiders — in the Middle East, that is the seemingly all-powerful United States — who seem to have everything.

"It's easy for the average Egyptian to say, we tried modernity but it didn't take us anywhere and we didn't become Europe," said Tarek Heggy, a wealthy Cairo businessman and political analyst. "It's easy for him to say, we tried pan-Arabism and it didn't work and it didn't take us anywhere. And, if he's a simple- minded person, he might say they didn't work because God wasn't with us."

The Palestinian uprising, and the continued American and British bombing of Iraq, have also stoked the discontent about America.

When Mr. bin Laden was blamed for the attacks in the United States, many here reacted with anger and disbelief.

"Every time it has to be Muslims to blame, every time!" shouted Amaal abdel Rabboh, a housewife of 42, outside a mosque in Cairo on Friday. "Our blood is cheap, eh? No, our blood is precious and the American blood is water. Bin Laden is just an excuse to occupy Afghanistan."

When Mr. bin Laden, a son of one of the richest men in Saudi Arabia and a one-time hero for taking up arms against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's, portrayed himself as a champion of Palestinians, he struck a responsive chord.

"You cannot expect people to join him tomorrow," said Fahmi Howeidi, an Egyptian commentator on Islamic political movements. "But in the long run this increases sympathy for him."

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