Egypt's
terrorism
sets the tone
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
July 13, 2006
LONDON - Memories are short, and
perspectives even more so. None of the tourists I spoke
to visiting the Valley of the Kings remembered that only
nine years ago 55 Swiss tourists were murdered here in a
savage attack by the oldest of Egypt's proliferating
terrorist groups. The event pushed the tourist-dependent
economy into a severe recession and has been seen by many
as a prelude to September 11th, four years
later.
Doubtless it is good for Egypt that
the tourists were not frightened away for long, but there
is more good in the story than that.
The heartland of militant
violence-prone Islamic fundamentalism has long been
Egypt. What happens in Egypt is often a bell weather for
what will happen elsewhere. This is arguably even more
true than it was, now that the Egyptian inspired
off-shoot, Al Qaeda, is to all intents and purposes
directionless, broken up by the American-led onslaught,
even though Osama bin Laden is still in
hiding.
In retrospect the murder of
tourists at Luxor was a historical watershed in the long
journey of Egyptian terrorism. It may come to be seen as
also a watershed in the demise of Al Qaeda, although the
continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are confusing the
picture, to put it mildly.
Violence-prone fundamentalism in
Egypt goes back to 1928 and the founding of the Muslim
Motherhood, which is still highly active, if more sober
than then. It was led by Muslim militants angry with the
still continuing influence of Attaturk's Turkey, intent
on creating in their old colony a secular state. Later,
in 1948, they murdered two prime ministers as well as
targeting both domestic and foreign journalists. Later
still they tried to murder President Gamal Nasser, but he
retaliated with a massive act of repression that
effectively smashed them for fifteen years.
They only revived when bin Laden's
intellectual godfather, the theologian, Sayed Qutb, came
to the fore. Much of Qutb's writing was done from the
prison cell in the 1960s, inspiring a new generation of
Brotherhood members who plotted consistently to kill the
secular-inclined Nasser. Qutb was eventually hanged and
since then millions of his books have been printed
throughout the Islamic world, inspiring terrorist
movements both at home and abroad.
In Egypt the two most successful
were Jihad and Gama'a. It was a combined action of the
two groups that led to the murder of President Anwar
Sadat (Bin Laden's deputy, Dr Aiman Al Zawahiri, was one
of the leaders of the plot.) Later they tried
unsuccessfully to assassinate President Hosni
Mubarak.
From the 1980s on these violent
groups were officially shunned by the mainstream Muslim
Brotherhood, although sympathy was maintained. That and
the wearing effect of Mubarak's successful repression,
leading to the arrest of over 20,000 members and
sympathisers, pushed the leadership to start to rethink
their tactics. From their prison cells the leaders began
to consider a truce.
Then came the Luxor massacre,
engineered by a group of militants estranged from the
leadership. It not only repulsed Western opinion, it had
the same effect inside Egypt. It was for the Gama'a
leadership the turning point. In 1999 they formally
abandoned violence and in 2002 they published from their
prison cells a four volume series of books admitting
their past mistakes, distanced themselves from bin Laden
and Al Zawahiri and forbad their members to join Al
Qaeda.
A combination of tough repression
on the one hand and, on the other, the growing sentiment
against violence within Egypt itself, a liberalising of
the government's attitude towards the politicking of the
Muslim Brotherhood as long as its rhetoric and activities
were non-violent, together with the middle-ageing of the
leadership of Jihad and Gama'a, all worked to stabilise
Egypt.
There still remain fringe groups of
terrorists - such as those who a year and a half ago
bombed the tourist resorts in the Sinai. But mainstream
militant Islam has now made a sort of peace with the
Mubarak regime and has little sympathy for Al Qaeda, even
though it is highly anti-American and
anti-British.
Slowly, too slowly say critics as
diverse as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Bush
administration, Mubarak is loosening up. The Brotherhood
in last year's carefully orchestrated election were
allowed to win a substantial presence in
parliament.
It is well within the realms of
possibility that as before what happens in Egypt will
profoundly influence what happens in the rest of the
Islamic world, given an interlude for the message to
percolate. If the U.S. and Britain had not overreacted in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and concentrated on police work at
which they are good rather than war at which they are
manifestly bad and which continues to stir the emotions
of the masses as well as the militants, by now we might
well have seen the end of Al Qaeda too.
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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