First They Came For The Pigs...

By John Ballard

Earlier this year, in a stunning display of high-profile bureaucratic ignorance, Egyptian authorities responded to the global H1N1 pandemic by ordering the slaughter of all the pigs in the country. The Arabist surveys the results. I can't decide whether to laugh or cry.

Was killing all the pigs as stupid as it seemed?

This summer, the government killed all the pigs and we all made fun of it. Now the streets are awash with garbage in part (but not only) because the pigs are no longer eating it, and we still don�t know what the longer-term impact on the zabaleen community is going to be. Michael Slackmann made this point beautifully in a recent article, with the wonderfully laconic headline Belatedly, Egypt Spots Flaws in Wiping Out Pigs. Best part:

When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring � in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu � it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.

The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba.

Ramadan Hediya, 35, who makes deliveries for a supermarket, lives in Madinat el Salam, a low-income community on the outskirts of Cairo.

�The whole area is trash,� Mr. Hediya said. �All the pathways are full of trash. When you open up your window to breathe, you find garbage heaps on the ground.�

What started out as an impulsive response to the swine flu threat has turned into a social, environmental and political problem for the Arab world�s most populous nation.

It has exposed the failings of a government where the power is concentrated at the top, where decisions are often carried out with little consideration for their consequences and where follow-up is often nonexistent, according to social commentators and government officials.

In the meantime, the government is now declaring a war on education (well perhaps it won that one a while back) and has postponed primary and secondary school until early October, leaving millions of parents with kids on their hands, and millions of kids who don�t know what to do with themselves. For many of them it may seriously impact the all-important end-of-year exam (esp. for students taking the thannawiya amma), and again it�s not clear whether there is a compelling reason to stop school.

He refers to a link-filled piece by Deboah McKenzie in New Scientist whose recapitulation of the Egyptian fiasco concludes with this.

This reminds me of what happened when, for reasons of good husbandry, Indian farmers started giving their ailing cattle the painkiller diclofenac. Some animals died, and as always in India, the big griffon vultures ate the remains, diclofenac and all. Now the vultures have almost entirely disappeared from India. Turns out diclofenac destroys their kidneys. Who knew? Now animal remains feed packs of feral dogs instead, raising the risk of rabies, a horrible death for thousands every year, mainly children.

It's an unpredictable time to be alive. Especially if you're a virus.

I find it reassuring to know that a teabagger mentality is not unique to North America. It can be found in one form or another all over the world.