Nabil Naim, a leader of the Egyptian Jihad Organisation who had fought for many years in Afghanistan and was an associate of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahri, told me of a Muslim Brotherhood leader, who went by the codename “Ezzeddin”, who had travelled to Peshawar via Europe on more than one occasion during the 1990s with the purpose of financing terrorists to carry out attacks against the ruling regime. When he put this proposal to Al-Zawahri he was told, “we have currently chosen to fight the West, which to us is the ‘distant enemy', and to defer the confrontation against the ruling regimes in the Arab world that are the ‘near enemy'. Also, the jihadists do not have a strong presence in Egypt because most of them have come to Afghanistan. So I am unable to respond to your request.” Naim goes on to relate that “Ezzeddin” turned to Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya leaders, who had managed to flee to Afghanistan, and struck a deal with them in accordance with which he would finance operations carried out by them with the purpose of wreaking attrition on the regime by showing it as powerless against terrorism and by wreaking economic deterioration through strikes against tourism and the flow of investment from abroad. After every attack, the Muslim Brotherhood would issue a statement of condemnation so as to cast itself in the eyes of the regime and Egyptian public opinion as opposed to terrorism and as a force that can be relied on to fight terrorism or to curtail and eliminate violent organisations if the Muslim Brotherhood were granted legal and political legitimacy. We should therefore not be shocked, today, to learn that the Muslim Brotherhood has secretly allied itself with Al-Qaeda and other jihadist organisations, regardless of its publicised stances against such organisations and its condemnations of their terrorist acts. In fact, Al-Qaeda's black banners have appeared in all Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations since the famous “Kandahar I” march in Tahrir Square during the days when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had assumed control following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. These banners were more in evidence in the sit-ins at Rabaa Al-Adaweya and Nahda Square, which the Interior Ministry's Central Security Forces succeeded in dispersing last week. The picture grew yet more distinct during the hostile actions organised and carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood in Ramses Square on Friday when, in addition to black banners, there were firearms brandished in the air by Al-Qaeda elements in the Muslim Brotherhood ranks. Then more solid evidence came with the arrest by security forces of a Pakistani, Sudanese and some Palestinians and Syrians among the group that tried to storm Al-Azbekiya police station. During the Mubarak era we would occasionally read news reports of the arrest of terrorists. Some were convincing in view of the evidence and testimony while other reports lacked clear and incontrovertible corroboration. Such inconsistencies led many to doubt such reports and to conclude that they were Interior Ministry fabrications intended to show that the regime was fighting terrorism and to ensure that senior security officers in charge of antiterrorist operations retained the material and moral perquisites granted to them since the wave of terror began in the 1990s. While Egypt was still under effective SCAF rule, in July 2012, there was a lot of commotion in the press over the apprehension of an “Al-Qaeda cell” in Madinat Nasr. My response in an article I wrote at the time was: “I hope this isn't another fabrication and that our security services are being vigilant in safeguarding the security of the country. I hope this isn't a ruse to augment alarm and panic among the people and the president, leading him to take a hasty decision to impose extraordinary laws that would end the revolution entirely. The president, himself, may be fully aware of what is happening and this may please him, or it may suit his interests to bring a return of the tyrannical security fist since he has no clear solutions, at least until now, for the chronic day-to-day life problems that plague the country and he has no conception of what action to take against the heavy brutal legacy bequeathed by Mubarak.” It is now clear to me that many of those reports were not untrue at all. We can no longer deny that takfiri elements — radical fundamentalist militants — from Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups have reared their heads in Egypt during the past two years. They have displayed their banners and their ideological stances in numerous events and their threat has become concrete in our beloved Sinai. Many of them took advantage of the confusion that followed the outbreak of the revolution and that accompanied the events in Libya to infiltrate Egypt from various points of origin, and huge quantities of arms followed in their wake. As though to make this situation clearer yet, the ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi had availed himself of his prerogative to grant presidential amnesty in order to release terrorist jihadist leaders from prison. Many were shocked by this action at the time. They warned of the danger. To some it confirmed a secret alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of terrorist groups and, indeed, further confirmation came in that massive assembly of Muslim Brotherhood members and their jihadist supporters in Cairo Stadium when Morsi severed diplomatic relations with Damascus and declared holy war in Syria. But well before this, the Muslim Brotherhood, itself, exposed an inclination to violence and bloodshed. This began with their raid on Tahrir Square in October 2012 and escalated with their attacks, kidnapping and torture of peaceful protesters in front of Al-Ittihadiya palace at the time of the mass demonstrations against the dictatorial constitutional declaration that Morsi issued in November. A more recent instance occurred in Muqattam during the “restoration of dignity” demonstrations when over 200 gunmen fortified themselves inside the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters and fired live ammunition at demonstrators. Brotherhood official Mohamed Al-Beltagui furnished conclusive proof of the alliance with violence when he famously said, “if Morsi is restored to power the armed operations against the army in the Sinai will stop immediately.” He issued this statement before the pro-Brotherhood throng at Rabaa, among whom were groups of jihadist Salafis that, in April 2012, had begun to storm the Ministry of Defence but were repelled by Special Forces. The Muslim Brotherhood-Al-Qaeda alliance should come as no surprise after the Muslim Brotherhood organisation fell under the total control of a contingent that subscribes to the ideas of Sayed Qutb, which justify recourse to arms against a government and society condemned as heretic, classify the West as the “House of War”, and sanctify the taking of Christian lives and property. That alliance also makes sense in light of the Muslim Brotherhood's need for militant takfiris to carry out its plan to debilitate the Egyptian state and lay waste to the country, as is happening to Egypt at present. Undoubtedly, the vigilant eyes of the powerful security apparatus under Mubarak had prevented the Muslim Brotherhood from arming and training its “special wing” in order to equip it to defend their grip on power once they attained it after the 25 January Revolution. In like manner, the huge revolutionary waves that filled the streets with millions of anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters on 30 June and 26 July put paid to the Muslim Brotherhood plan to create and unleash against the people an Egyptian version of the Iranian Basij, in spite of the preliminary steps that it had taken to create such a force. Consequently, the only force the Muslim Brotherhood had to fall back on in order to carry out its terrorist design was to be found in Al-Qaeda elements that had infiltrated into Egypt, especially into Sinai, and in some Gamaa Al-Islamiya groups that had rebelled against the ideological revision of their leaders who had renounced violence and recourse to arms against the state and society. These terrorist groups had begun to unleash their vengeance, primarily in Upper Egypt, following the people's overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood rule with the assistance of the army, and they escalated their attacks following the dispersal of the sit-ins in Rabaa and Nahda squares. Clearly, the immediate and urgent need to confront these terrorist formations, to which the Muslim Brotherhood has contributed with personnel, money and political cover, demands an intensive security drive, both at the intelligence gathering and review level, and at the level of rapid and innovative preemptive action, in application of the laws that are currently in effect in Egypt. As for the long run, the authorities must subscribe to and act on the firm conviction that the battle against jihadist and takfiri inspired violence and terror must extend beyond security measures to include the dissemination of a moderate religious discourse that promotes spiritual health, moral enlightenment and the philanthropic spirit. Religion should no longer be used as a tool to garner parliamentary seats and government positions or to inflame political conflict. In addition, this conflict entails promoting rational and scientific thinking and strengthening the role of civil society in politics, the economy, social affairs and development. We must set into motion a great national project that seeks to establish social justice, give root to public rights and freedoms, elevate the dignity of the Egyptian people and engage the energies of youth so as to prevent them from falling prey to terrorist organisations, whether these sprouted locally like weeds or were borne like particles of blinding dust by winds from abroad. All who contemplate recourse to bloodshed, destruction of private and public property and inflicting terror on innocent civilians should bear in mind that guns never shook a hair on the head of Mubarak and his clique. Indeed, those who wielded weapons only served to perpetuate his regime and the domestic and international support it received, while they were ultimately forced to surrender. It was the millions who shouted “Peacefully! Peacefully!” at the full throttle of their voices and who pounded their fists into the air in the squares of freedom that brought down the Mubarak regime and drove him and his cronies to the courts and then to prison, and who subsequently brought down the Muslim Brotherhood regime and brought its leaders to prison alongside Mubarak and his men.
