A continuing confrontation
Just back from a pan-Arab conference of his peers, Interior Minister Habib El-Adli asserted that the state security bodies were fully capable of aborting any terrorist plans. Jailan Halawi writes
Habib El-Adli
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At a press conference on the sidelines of the Arab Interior Ministers' Conference in Tunis last week, Minister of Interior Habib El-Adli said that terrorism is a crime that "never dies". At the same, El-Adli said the state security apparatus is "on the alert with a preemptive strategy ready to stop any [terror] plan" at a very early stage.
Terrorism, El-Adli opined, is an "ongoing" crime because terrorists won't stop trying to achieve their goals. Hence, said El-Adli, "the state security apparatus must always be on its guard, watching these [terrorist] elements closely, and ready to confront and preempt their attempts before they happen."
El-Adli cited the recent arrests of 43 suspected members of the underground Jihad group, saying security forces foiled their plan to conduct anti-Western attacks in Egypt. "Suspects are currently being interrogated by the state security prosecution, with which we don't interfere... we have done our job and are expecting the prosecution to conclude [its investigation into] this important case soon," he said.
When it comes to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, however, there has always been some confusion regarding the nature of the relationship between the state and Egypt's oldest opposition group, founded by Hassan El-Banna in 1928. While occasionally allowing the group to stage public gatherings, the brotherhood has also consistently been the target of systematic clampdowns placing the group's most senior members either in prison or on the road to military trials.
Eleven members of the group were arrested earlier this month in what the brotherhood called a government attempt to "lay siege to and suppress any signs of popular discontent against an impending US attack on Iraq".
As the most organised opposition group in the country, the brotherhood's members are active in most trade unions, syndicates and universities, voicing opposition to the government's policies in a peaceful manner. The government, however, believes that all other militant groups -- like Al-Gama'a Al- Islamiya and Jihad -- emerged from beneath the Muslim Brotherhood's cloak.
According to El-Adli, although the brotherhood tries hard to look like a peaceful political party with a religious platform, "their actions confirm that their hidden agenda is to achieve political gains at the expense of the nation's well-being, which is absolutely rejected. This is a group that functions in the dark, plotting to use regional conflicts to escalate tension, inciting university students to demonstrate against the regime with illegitimate demands under the pretext of nationalism, only to serve their interests."
Further, El-Adli pointed out that while democracy in Egypt allows various political parties to function and voice their opinions within the boundaries of the law, "defying legitimacy will not be tolerated".
According to Ma'moun El-Hodeibi, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, El- Adli's statement is a "continuation of the state's policy of not allowing any real opposition force to exist, since they consider that a threat to [the government's] stability."
For almost 50 years, the Muslim Brotherhood has been struggling for recognition from the government, with no success. The group was disbanded in 1954, after political parties were first dissolved in 1952, by the Revolutionary Command Council [RCC]. Later, his successor, President Anwar El- Sadat established a multi-party system, which tolerated the Brotherhood, but did not give it legal status. The group continued to enjoy a fair measure of government tolerance well into the 1980s, but by the mid-ninties the government became convinced that the Brotherhood was playing both ends against the middle in the then raging confrontation with militant Islamist groups. The clampdowns began. Hodeibi told Al-Ahram Weekly that "these are all governments that derive from the same political system and ideology, that of the revolution's one-man rule."
Ever since his appointment in 1997 following the November Luxor massacre that killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians, El-Adli has made it clear that there will be "zero" tolerance for groups working outside the law. The government's response to militant violence depended mainly on the security bodies, which over the past years, has more or less successfully managed to drain terrorist resources and cut off their communication with their expatriate leadership. Police rounded up thousands of militants, combing the sugarcane fields of Upper Egypt and enlisting international support to extradite militants accused of masterminding attacks from abroad. Over 1,000 suspects have also been referred to military tribunals, where defendants have no right of appeal, and at least 100 have been executed.
In 1997, after nearly six years of violence, during which over 1,200 (mainly policemen and militants, as well as foreign tourists and Coptic Christians) died, Egypt's most militant armed group, Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, declared a unilateral cease-fire initiative calling upon its followers to halt all anti- government attacks. Supporters of the "initiative" said that the violence had brought more harm than good to their movement, and that it was useless to try to topple a powerful regime by force.
Last year the so-called historic leaders of the Gama'a, serving prison terms for their role in the 1981 assassination of president El-Sadat, announced -- after publishing four books that were reviewed and approved by El-Azhar -- that the reasons for their shift in strategy were in accordance with Islamic Shari'a [law]. Consequently, all their followers complied with the initiative.
According to El-Adli, this shift in strategy was not the result of any dialogue or concessions to the Gama'a, but was rather a reflection of the group's own conviction that the doctrine they had adopted had proved erroneous. "These are militants who carried out the deadliest of attacks claiming the lives of hundreds, believing it to be a struggle in the name of God. They would never have changed unless they reviewed these doctrines in depth and realised that Islam prohibits these acts of violence," El-Adli said.
El-Adli also said that the Ministry of Interior would offer all sorts of assistance to militants who "renounce violence and correct their deviant thoughts, [thus] welcoming their reintegration into society".
