Almost 8 years of my Foreign Service career were spent in Egypt. It holds many great wonders and I found the Egyptian people to be warm and generous. For the most part they were also pro-American even though our support of Israel often gets in the way. I have followed an Egyptian blog for several years and I have mentioned before that I don’t always agree with it’s contents but I do admire it’s editor. She did a piece today that sardonically reports that Cairo is listed in a report about 7 mega-cities of the world that have severe economic problems and as aconsequence could be a threat to global security. I understand her frustration with the present government of Egypt but I have not seen any viable alternative. There is a fair amount of support for the Muslim Brotherhood which has been officially outlawed in Egypt but I believe that the election of any government with a religious base would be “out of the frying pan into the fire.”
Whatever party is in charge the fact is that unless and until Egypt can manage its population growth there is little chance for improving the lot of average Egyptians. I first spent time in Egypt in 1954 and the population at that time was around 23 Million. Today it is 73 Million! I believe the Egyptian government promotes birth control practices but based on the statistics they obviously are not very effective. Egypt does not have that many natural resources and this kind of exponential growth is unsupportable. Rather than just simply wishing for change of leaders I believe that the young activists could accomplish more by supporting practical programs such as birth control.
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