As its Islamic radicals grow bolder and more vicious, Egypt is being forced to recognize that its problems are largely homegrown. A growing body of evidence suggests that terrorist groups have infiltrated the army, an alarming development given the regime’s reliance on the military establishment. Two of the assailants killed in the raid were members of the revived Jihad organization–the same group that recruited junior military officers to assassinate President Anwar Sadat at an army parade in 1981. Last week, 53 people went on trial for alleged terrorist activities, and three of them were from the army–the first soldiers since Sadat’s assassination to be tried for terrorism.
It’s generally assumed that as long as the Egyptian army is quiescent, then President Hosni Mubarak’s pro-Western regime is more or less safe, too. The 410,000-strong armed forces have been the backbone of Egypt’s stability. Mubarak himself is a former air force commander who, as vice president, watched from the viewing stands as Sadat was gunned down in front of him. Not surprisingly, Mubarak has been careful to weed out anyone with fundamentalist inclinations from the armed forces. Even relatives of suspected hard-core believers were exempt from the draft.
American military aid–to the tune of $1.2 billion a year–has been critical in bolstering the pro-Western allegiance of Egypt’s officer corps. A growing Islamic movement there would be disastrous for Washington. Egypt is still the only Arab country to make peace with Israel, and it’s the cornerstone of U.S. policy in the oil-rich Middle East. If Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, were to fall into the hands of militant Islamists, the political psychology of the whole region would be transformed. Certainly the radical Islamic states of Iran and Sudan would like to see Egypt join their ranks. Last week Washington added Sudan to its list of states that sponsor terrorism, and a State Department official insisted, “Sudan is the biggest foreign patron of terrorist activities in Egypt.”
Afghanistan has probably influenced Egypt’s radicals more. Many extremists fled Egypt after Sadat’s assassination. They ended up where all Islamic true believers tended to gravitate during the 1980s: with the mujahedin fighters battling the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Since early last year, these hardened military men have been drifting back to Egypt. And they’re evidently finding comrades in the Egyptian army today.
Muslim extremists are still not very popular in the streets of Cairo. But they have succeeded in sowing confusion and doubt among ordinary Egyptians. The government’s response to the terrorist threat has seesawed between accommodation and brutality. Earlier this month a civilian court threw out all charges against 24 men accused of assassinating the speaker of the Parliament in 1990. The judge ruled that police torture made their confessions inadmissible. Among the defendants were some of Egypt’s most dangerous extremists. When the next attack occurs, the Egyptian government will have no one but itself to blame.
