How BAX exchanges started

British students invited to Egypt 1973

BAX (formerly known as the British-Arab University Association) started in April 1973, when a group of British university students were invited to visit Egypt by the Egyptian Ministry of Youth.

The invitation came about through the initiative of an architecture student at Cairo University, Nagia Abdel Mogney Said. Having visited Britain in 1972, Nagia decided there was a positive side to a Europe that was mistrusted by many in Egypt. She and her two friends approached the Minister of Youth to suggest inviting a group of British students to visit the Egyptian universities.

This was a time when Egypt’s President Anwar El-Sadat, who had succeeded Gamal Abd El-Nasser on his death in 1970, was introducing a radical change of course for his country. He had announced the ‘infitah’ (open door) policy towards the West, and severed links with the Soviet Union. Such changes were causing great turbulence. The Egyptian authorities were concerned about the values that would flow through the newly opened ‘door’ to the West. A prevailing stereotype of young people in Europe was of drop-outs focused on ‘sex and drugs and rock’n roll’. There was resentment of Britain’s former colonial role in the Middle East. The idea of receiving a group of young British students, with an attitude of respect, an interest in learning about Egypt, and a sincere desire to help build friendship and understanding, was a timely one.

The founders of British-Arab Exchanges

A number of key players laid the groundwork for this first exchange visit and the many that followed. First, as mentioned, there was Nagia Abdel Mogney Said and her student friends, and the Minister of Youth at that point, Dr Kamal Abul Magd. Then there was Mohsen Hussein, later Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Youth, who helped host that first visit, and with his wife Lamia accompanied the return visit to Europe by 15 Egyptian students in August 1973.

Supporting the project on the British side was Bill Conner, a specialist in community-building work, with a passion for inter-faith co-operation, and for helping build trust between people from Europe and the Arab world. He and his wife Chérie had made numerous visits to the Middle East throughout the period when official relations had been strained by revolution, the Suez crisis of 1956, and the subsequent alliance of much of the Arab world with the Soviet bloc.  As a close friend of Nagia’s father, Abdel Mogney Said, Egyptian Under-Secretary for Labour, Bill had taken a group of British trade unionists to Egypt in the early 1970s. In support of Nagia’s initiative, Bill recruited a distinguished ‘Committee for British-Arab University Visits’ to host the visits to Britain, and to liaise with Egypt and other Arab countries wishing to continue the exchange programme. It was this committee that grew into the British-Arab University Association, and then British-Arab Exchanges (BAX).

Members of the committee included senior academics, politicians, businessmen, retired diplomats and colleagues of the Conners and Mogney Saids from Initiatives of Change (IofC), or Moral-Re-armament as it was originally known. This organisation, dedicated to trust-building, conflict resolution and creative solutions, continues to provide key resources and support for the work of BAX. Conferences and training courses at the IofC centre at Caux in Switzerland have sometimes been included in BAX programmes.

The exchange programmes develop

After the first two exchange visits of 1973, many more followed. In due course the number of countries involved grew, and the nature of the delegations changed, to include a wider variety of young people, not exclusively university students.

Details of the exchanges can be found under the relevant country names.

Egypt

Sudan

Jordan

Lebanon

Palestine

Iraq