“The revolution continues” no longer applies, contrary to the hopes of some groups of youth, romantics, leftists and, occasionally, some people with diseased minds. But for those who are looking for a continuing something, “the battle continues” against ignorance, disease, intellectual backwardness and impoverishment of all sorts. These plights have remained with us and we have been aware of them since we emerged from the Ottoman Middle Ages. We have never been able to overcome them. But the time to do so has come or, perhaps more appropriately, the opportunity presents itself if we want, although it is encumbered by a war of one form or another. This is our battle against terrorism, victory in which is key to our victory in all other battles. Over the last four decades, Egypt endured three waves of terrorism. The first struck in the 1970s, in the wake of our military and diplomatic victory in the October war, and brought the Saleh Sirriya Islamist paramilitary groups, the assassination of Sheikh Mohamed Hussein Al-Dahabi and more groups of the jihadist takfiri stripe, such as Al-Takfir wal-Hijra. All these groups, which emerged from the fold of the Muslim Brotherhood, spread their hatred, destruction and violence, culminating in the assassination of President Anwar Al-Sadat. The confrontation against them ended with their disappearance back into their burrows, on the one hand, and their entrance into parliament, on the other. The second wave struck in the wake of another victory of the Egyptian army, which it won through its participation in the international and regional coalition to liberate Kuwait. The wave lasted from 1992 and ended with the appalling massacre of tourists in Luxor in 1997. The confrontation drove the terrorists back into their lairs again, and/or to ideological revisions that were in small measure genuine and in large measure a form of dissimulation. We are currently in the midst of the third wave. This one hit after the great victory of the alliance of the people and the Armed Forces over the Muslim Brotherhood organisation and its regime. This victory gave rise to a roadmap that pointed in a direction totally opposite to the one that the Muslim Brotherhood wanted to steer the country towards. The essence of the new roadmap is “continuing development.” As suggested above, the line connecting the three waves is that, in all cases, terrorism reared its head after we achieved a victory. It is as though some kind of evil spirit emerges from the depths of the earth in order to suck us down into a deep abyss from which we will never emerge before turning into another Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, Somalia or some other version of religious terrorism. Although the state prevailed over the first two waves, the disappearance of the Muslim Brothers and their peers into their pits was akin to a virus beaten back by the immune system only to lie in wait until it can once again unleash its lethal venom. The problem this time is that as the state fights the terrorist virus its “immune system” is not all that robust after three years of “revolution.” Consider, for example, the recent announcement by the minister of investment that if all goes well our economic growth rate will reach six per cent by 2020. This was meant as encouragement, yet when one recalls that six per cent was the growth rate in 2006 one realises that we have lost a decade and a half. Still, as they say, better late than never. But even that “late” will be out of reach unless we win the battle against terrorism and liberate every inch of the Sinai from it. This brings us to a subject that I have touched on in previous articles, which is that the Egyptian army is today engaged in a battle of a different order than those in the past. President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi is clearly fully aware that the war against terrorism involves more than the military/security dimension, which is why he enumerated other essential fronts, most notably the drive to reform religious discourse and, of course, the need to promote development, especially in Sinai. All Egyptian public and private institutions need to be mobilised towards the realisation of such comprehensive ends. Unfortunately, so far none of us has stepped forward with a significant initiative apart from applauding the president. Any major battle, especially at the strategic level, requires time, persistence, analysis and planning, and structural changes in the educational and knowledge structures in the country. Lieutenant-General Osama Askar, who was recently appointed head of a unified command for the war against terrorism east of the Suez Canal, also realises the magnitude of the task and has set into motion the first steps towards commensurate change. Just as a reminder, the road to success begins when we concentrate our efforts on a leadership capable of undertaking an urgent mission. After the defeat in June 1967, when we realised the need to counter Israeli air superiority, we focused on the development of our air force and a unified air command that evolved into one of the most powerful and important instruments that enabled the success of the battle to cross the Suez Canal during the October 1973 war. A unified command is not just an organisational measure. It is a military innovation needed to confront an enemy of particular characteristics, capacities and permutations. The battle today is not against an adversary endowed with superior firepower, a popular base or even large troop numbers. What it does have is a mixture between agility (the ability to strike and retreat rapidly) and terror (literally, in the form of the fear and panic it spreads in society in order to sap the public of its will and resolve) which it wreaks in fierce and atrocious ways by striking at “soft targets” which makes everyone a possible candidate for murder, immolation and beheadings. In the military sciences, the means of confronting that enemy come under the heading “counterterrorism.” Counterterrorism has evolved to contend with a type of warfare that is not only different from conventional warfare but also from the type of guerrilla warfare that took place in Vietnam and Algeria. In conventional and guerrilla warfare the factor of “deterrent” force is operable as the enemy uses violence to attain a political objective and hopes to remain alive in order to fulfil it. That factor is not operable in the war against terrorism as to the terrorist death is the automatic key to heaven! That illusion creates another difference, which is that it eliminates any possible window for negotiation, reconciliation and assimilation into a democratic system, contrary to what liberals at home and abroad believe. Look at what happened to the Jordanian pilot. Jordanian authorities had wanted to secure his release by negotiating an exchange of some prisoners who had been sentenced to death. But, as we know, his captors burned him alive before negotiations began. The battle against terrorism involves going straight to the terrorist and killing him. But it takes a lot of information to do this and this requires extensive public cooperation and excellent technological capacities. It also requires superior speed, which is to say the power to strike the target virtually at the moment of receiving the relevant intelligence. At the same time, terrorists must be deprived of the ability to strike “soft targets” at times when security forces are in “static defence” mode, as was the case during the attacks at Farafra, Karm Al-Qawadis and Al-Arish. Counterterrorism is an offensive war in its truest form. It depends on acting before the enemy has time to act. In our case, it requires a considerable degree of international cooperation in order to obtain the intelligence and technological capacities that other regional and international powers are using to fight the same enemy. Perhaps all this means that we will need to make some changes to the military doctrine we have adopted. However, that is another subject for another day. In the meantime, we have the fullest confidence in our leadership.
