Reclaiming Sinai A blend of panic, rejection and denial emanated from Muslim Brotherhood media outlets once the National Defence Council, led by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, decided to create a buffer zone along Gaza's borders. The buffer zone will be five kilometres wide and run the length of the 13-kilometre border. In the first phase, a 500-metre strip will be cleared, an operation that will see the removal of 800 houses, with compensation to be paid to the owners. This will give the army the chance to destroy tunnels being used to smuggle weapons, ammunition and fighters into Egypt, leading to attacks on the army in Sinai and assaults in other parts of the country. The Muslim Brotherhood, outlawed and isolated, may throw all the tantrums it wants, but this is not going to stop the army from reclaiming Sinai. For the first time since Egypt signed the 1979 peace treaty, the army is deploying its shock troops and sending paratroopers to the border with Gaza, thus tightening the noose on Muslim Brotherhood affiliates there, including the bloody-minded Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. Every militant group that came out of this region has had some affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood and its leaders, people like Sayyed Qotb, who believe that governments should represent God, not man. It is this idea, ingrained in Muslim Brotherhood thinking, that has wreaked vengeance on every regime and society that has come in touch with this odious strain of militancy. In his book Milestones, Qotb argues: “God is the source of power, not the nation, not the party, and not man.” According to this theory, all political regimes in the region are apostate and must be destroyed. Only theocracies imposing the laws of God, rather than man, will be allowed to exist, Qotb declared. His ideas, appealing to generations of fanatics, are the source of this region's current malaise. Groups that call for the caliphate to return, organisations that kill or subjugate non-Muslims, brutes such as those of the Islamic State, all follow in Qotb's footsteps. Fanatics in this region, offshoots and splinter groups of the Muslim Brotherhood, receive the backing of media groups inside and outside the region (in particular, the Doha-based Al Jazeera television station), as well as the unlimited support of the governments of both Qatar and Turkey. The terror that fanaticism has unleashed upon us has taken a heavy toll. Dozens of police and army personnel have lost their lives in senseless attacks by zealots. And the battle, Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers keep reminding us, is far from over. Throughout our recent history, our repeated struggles against terrorism have been protracted and painful, but we always won in the end. In fact, we have defeated terrorism more than once since the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s. In the 1990s, terrorism made an ignominious comeback and we took some hits, but we stamped it out yet again. Now the fight is even tougher, for the current version of terrorism is even more venomous than before. The region is awash with Islamist movements, and many seem to espouse or promote ideas that lead to violence. As a result, many of the young are falling into the trap, embracing criminality under the guise of religion, committing atrocities in the name of righteousness. There is little doubt that our harsh social and economic conditions have fanned the flames of militancy, and so did the failures of our educational institutions, including the family and the mosque, to bring up the young on a foundation of common humanity. The active promotion of terrorism, its doctrines and practices, happened under our nose, and we didn't do enough to stop it. Now we are reaping its toxic fruits. Terrorism has been more successful than we wish to admit. And the evidence is that one still runs into people who cannot hide their sympathies with the murderers, people who blame the victims, and people who don't care if their country falls apart. Our confrontation with terrorism has not been free from errors and mishaps, and we are not going to uproot it overnight. But we are going to go after the terrorists with all our might, and they have more to fear from us than we have from them. As usual, terrorists will seek to inflict as much damage and pain as they can. And let's admit it, they have had time to develop their own intelligence networks, as evidenced by their choice of targets and the timing of their attacks. But they will be defeated in the end. We will win this battle. But first we have to have a complete picture of the terrorists, their affiliations, and their resources. We need to anticipate their moves and catch them, hopefully, before they act. This is a battle we cannot afford to lose — for the sake of this generation and those in the future.
