CAIRO — A campaign by the Arab masses to boycott US brand names is intensifying amid growing rage over Israel’s invasion of Palestinian land and alleged US corporate donations to the Jewish state.
It is especially hurting business at fast food franchises, but also sales of soft drinks, as well as a range of supermarket and pharmaceutical products in Egypt and other Arab countries, industry sources said.
The campaign is being waged on the television, in the newspapers, by e-mail and mobile telephone text messages as well as pamphlets on the streets and mosques of Cairo and other Arab capitals.
Lists are circulating with hundreds of brand names to be boycotted, including McDonald’s and Burger King outlets, Tide and Ariel detergents, Pampers, Coca Cola and Pepsi, Marlboro cigarettes, and Heinz ketchup.
"Boycott a product, save a Muslim," reads a statement in a leaflet obtained in Cairo.
Leading the campaign are religious clerics, members of Arab parliaments and leaders of professional associations and unions, including journalists, artists, pharmacists, engineers, and many others. The campaign also includes calls to boycott Israeli goods and gives tips about how to identify Israeli products exported from third countries.
Unable to influence the policies of their governments, non-governmental and civic organizations, student bodies and professional associations have urged citizens to buy local and European alternatives to US goods.
"If all Arabs boycott US goods, we will force the United States to reconsider its unjust policies against Arab and Islamic states," said one Bahraini calling himself Ali.
The United States gives Israel $3 billion a year in aid and sells it the world’s most advanced weapons.
"Why should I help the economy of what I see as an enemy when it is destroying the social structure of a fellow Arab nation (Palestinians)?" asked Salem Seif, an Omani banker. Boycott organizers have drawn up lists of companies, mainly American, that are alleged to channel aid to Israel.
American fast-food chains appear to be suffering the most. Managers at KFC and McDonald’s branches in the Omani capital Muscat said sales had fallen by 45 and 65 percent respectively since January.
"People have stopped coming like they did last year, mainly to show sympathy with the Palestinian problem," said a McDonald’s branch manager, who declined to be identified or to give figures.
Local McDonald’s franchise owners in a number of Arab states have published advertisements declaring that their staff are all locals and denying giving aid to Israel.
In Jordan, McDonald’s went a step further. Marketing manager Nadia Al Dairi said the franchise donated 10 percent of all sales in the first half of April to the Hashemite Relief Fund, a Jordanian government charity that gives aid to Palestinians.
In Bahrain, which has seen some of the most violent protests in the Gulf against Israel’s military offensive, many ordinary people have started boycotting US goods following calls by hundreds of protesters during the past three weeks. "The American offensive against what they say is terrorism was in Afghanistan yesterday, is in Palestine today and we don’t rule out Baghdad being the next target tomorrow, followed by Syria and Lebanon," one trader said. "For this reason, we are boycotting all US products."
In Morocco, the newspapers L’Economiste and Assabah have launched a campaign against the US dollar, printing a headline every day urging Moroccans to avoid using the currency in their business dealings.
"Boycott the dollar in your operations for the sake of Palestine. Whenever possible, opt for the euro," it said.
Cigarettes are another important target.
"I’m a heavy smoker, but I quit smoking Marlboro and am currently smoking a French brand of cigarettes," said Jordanian Duri Ajrami.
However, business leaders and a US official say the grassroots campaign is mainly missing the intended target and hitting Arab businesses, as many franchises are Arab owned and many products are made regionally under license. "It’s turning very serious," according to Mahmoud El-Kaissouni, an executive with an industry association representing 22 fast food chains, most of them American like McDonald’s, Kenny Roger’s Roasters and Little Caesar.
"The number of people going into these restaurants is less and less every day, despite all that we’re doing," said Kaissouni, who has led a counter-campaign on television to warn of the threat to Egyptian jobs.
Sales at most of the 562 fast food restaurants in Egypt dropped 20 percent since Israel’s invasion of the West Bank on March 29, on top of the five percent decline just after the Intifada erupted on Sept. 28, 2000, he said. A spokesperson for Burger King in Britain said in reply to a question about the impact of the boycott that "in the Middle East region, we have felt our business momentum slow down in recent weeks," without specifying the reason. No officials were available for comment at McDonald’s regional office in Dubai. A US official who has contacts with US businesses in the region said fast food outlets in the Arab Gulf countries had also experienced a "significant decline" in sales.
Supermarket products in the Gulf were also being hurt. In the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, Ibrahim Mahrous, sales manager at the Bin Dawood supermarket, said Coca Cola was the worst hit of all US brands, down 60 percent, with Pepsi Cola next at 45 percent, and Procter and Gamble products such as Pampers diapers down by 30-35 percent.
In Bahrain, Abdulmunem Al-Meer, general manager of the Al-Muntaza supermarket chain, the biggest in Bahrain with eight stores in the tiny kingdom, sees sales opportunities in boycotting US goods.
"We are not selling American products anymore, we have cleared our shelves (of one million dollars in) US products and returned them to the importers," he told AFP when contacted by telephone from Cairo.
"When we did this, our customers increased in number, and people have been calling to express solidarity with al-Muntaza," he said.
In Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, some private hospitals have stopped buying products from Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) and other US firms, said Mustafa Hassan, BMS vice president for sales and marketing in the Middle East. Hassan, based in Cairo, said the pharmacists syndicate in Egypt has agreed verbally with pharmaceutical firms not to boycott US brand names made under license in Egypt, which account for 91 percent of the Egyptian market. However, he said a few Islamist pharmacists are refusing to prescribe even Egyptian-made products.
The US official, who asked not to be named, said the campaign seems to have largely hit non-durable goods and spared the bulk of US exports to the region, which are capital goods, equipment, and agriculture commodities like wheat.
Nonetheless, he said: "They’re concerned about the impact so far and concerned it will get worse before it gets better."
Boycotting US products is "not feasible" and Arabs should focus more on penetrating US public opinion as a means to influencing decision-making, billionaire Saudi businessman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said in an interview published yesterday.
A "boycott is not feasible, as a matter of fact, it is us, the Arabs, who stand more to benefit from maintaining trade ties with the US because the trade balance between the Arabs and the US is in our favor," he told the English-daily Arab Times.
Prince Alwaleed, who holds worldwide investments worth billions of dollars, said the volume of US trade with the Arab world amounts to no more than three percent of its total trade volume. "Israel took advantage of the Sept. 11 attacks to brand Arabs and Muslims terrorists, and went about freely massacring Palestinians with the support of US public opinion — totally neglected by us and highly exploited by the Israelis," he said.
Arab countries can influence US decision-making "if they unite through economic interests, not political," he stressed. "We have to be logical and understand that the US administration is subject to US public opinion," he said.
"We (Arabs) are not so active in this sphere (public opinion).
And to bring the decision-maker on your side, you not only have to be active inside the US Congress or the administration but also inside US society."