EGYPTIAN President Mohamed Morsi’s first visit to Pakistan was essentially a stopover on his way to New Delhi, where he had more important matters to attend to. Loyal he may be to the ummah, but that doesn’t mean he should ignore continuity in his country’s foreign policy, especially its traditional friendship with India and Egypt’s uncomfortably cold relations with Pakistan — bordering, sometimes, on hostility. Last November he didn’t turn up at Islamabad to attend the D-8 summit.

Gamal Abdel Nasser had kept no secret of his dislike for Pakistan. He admired Nehru and gravitated toward him. But even before Nasser came to power, King Farouk had poked fun at Pakistan.

Even though Egypt still had British troops in the Suez canal zone and the country was far from being truly sovereign, Farouk had a bloated opinion about himself and his country. What irked him perhaps were the Pakistani leadership’s references to Pakistan being the biggest Muslim country pledged to Islam. He said sarcastically that it seemed Islam was born in August 1947.

Provoked by a development that doesn’t concern us here, Dawn took up the issue editorially in its issue of September 27, 1956, by which time Farouk had been deposed. Written by editor Altaf Husain himself, the editorial said that Pakistan’s desire to serve the Islamic world was being misunderstood as an attempt to be the leader of the Arab-Islamic world (which place Egypt thought belonged to it). Subsequent events widened the gulf between the two countries.

The fifties and sixties were crucial decades in anti-colonial movements. This era saw, among other things, Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez canal, the tripartite attack on Egypt, the anti-monarchy coups in Iraq and Yemen, guerilla wars in many Afro-Asian countries, including Algeria, the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, the Bay of Pigs invasion by US-armed Cuban émigrés, the Cuban missile crisis and much more.

In all these world-shaking crises, when the spectre of a nuclear night sometimes haunted the world, Pakistan and Egypt were on the wrong sides.

Nasser was not a well-read man, and initially his understanding of geopolitics was poor. He said in an interview he could understand why Turkey and Iran had joined Nato and Cento, but he couldn’t fathom why Pakistan had done so. The failure — thanks to Eisenhower’s firm stand — of the attack on Egypt by Britain, France and Israel added to Nasser’s stature, and he unleashed the power of his rhetoric and the Saut al-Arab (Voice of the Arabs) broadcasts not only against the ‘imperialist powers’ but also against countries which had provided bases to Western powers. Turkey, Iran and Pakistan fell in this category.

The Saut broadcasts moved Arab masses, and Pakistan came to be regarded as a Western lackey and an opponent of Arab nationalism. India was then riding a wave of popularity with the Arab masses, and such neutral giants as Nehru, Nkrumah, Soekarno and Tito came to be regarded as the Arab people’s true friends.

TURNING POINT: Two events marked the beginning of the change in Egypt-Pakistan relations: the 1965 war, in which the Egyptian people’s sympathies were with Pakistan, and Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 Israeli blitz. This was a blow to Nasser’s prestige.

He lived on till 1970, but the shine was off. The real change in the two countries’ relationship came with Bhutto’s assumption of power and the 1973 Ramazan war.

Bhutto removed the distortion in Pakistan’s Arab policy by reaching out to the republican camp and forged close economic relations with them, flooded the oil-rich Arab countries with Pakistani expatriates, and developed military cooperation with Syria, Egypt and Libya. In 1974 Pakistan and Libya signed a 10-year nuclear agreement, and in the 1973 Ramazan war Bhutto sent elements of Pakistan Air Force to Syria. Anwar Saadat then and Hafez al Assad were grateful to Pakistan for this help.

The apogee of Pakistan-Arab relations came in 1974 with the holding of the Islamic conference at Lahore. Bhutto was opposed to a policy that stripped the relationship of a moral basis and predicated Pakistan’s support for the Arab world on the latter’s tilt on Pakistan’s side.

His reason for an Islamic summit appealed to the Arabs, for the summit was held to mobilise the Islamic world’s support for the Arab cause. The Arab leadership responded with warmth, and the summit saw the presence of such giants as Arafat, Assad, Boumedienne, Faisal, Qadhafi and Saadat.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan served to bring Pakistan and Egypt closer as the CIA began its covert financial and military aid to anti-Soviet fighters.

Saadat and later Hosni Mubarak shared Ziaul Haq’s passion for the US-led ‘jihad’ against the Soviet Union, with Pakistan becoming a conduit for Soviet-made arms to the militants. George Crile’s book, Charlie Wilson’s War, later turned into a film, gives details of how Soviet arms, captured by Israel in the wars with Arabs, were supplied to pro-American militants with Egyptian help.

Since then, the relationship with Egypt has been stable. There is no trace of hostility, but warmth is lacking, and the seven agreements the two governments signed during the Morsi visit are of no consequence, for they have initialled such documents with dozens of other countries. Essentially, Morsi wanted to visit New Delhi for mobilising the latter’s support for Egypt’s entry into what is called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Morsi wants it to become EBRICS.

The writer is a staff member