Back, with a vengeance

Militant armed Islamist groups were weakened long before 11 September. Now, however, the possible expansion of the US "anti-terror" campaign could mark their comeback, writes Khaled Dawoud
Signs that Egypt's armed militant Islamic groups were in retreat surfaced in mid-1997, when several key leaders of the country's largest armed militant group, Al-Gama'a Al- Islamiya, announced what became known later as the "cease- fire initiative," calling upon their followers to halt all anti- government attacks.
The call came nearly after six years of violence, in which over 1,200 were killed -- mainly policemen and militants, but also foreign tourists and Coptic Christians.
Supporters of the "initiative" said that over six years of violence had brought more harm than good to their movement, and that it was useless to try to topple a powerful regime by force.
The government response to militant violence depended largely on the security apparatus, and eschewed the idea that armed Islamism could count as political opposition or the reflection of social injustices. 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 were also referred to military courts, where defendants have no right of appeal, and at least 100 were sent to the gallows.
The "hard-liners" among Al-Gama'a's leadership rejected the appeal for an unconditional cease-fire, and demanded a quid pro quo -- specifically, the release of thousands of young men detained for years without charge or trial, and an end to military tribunals. In confirmation of their stance, the hard- liners carried out the Luxor massacre of November 1997, in which a group of six young men murdered 58 tourists and four Egyptians in cold blood. The bodies of a few victims were mutilated.
The attack appalled Egyptians, and many of those who had blamed the government's tight security measures for escalating militant attacks reconsidered their position. Possibly for the first time, many average Egyptians came to agree with the government's view that militants were "terrorists" and that no cause could justify such a horrific act. The economy was also devastated; over a million Egyptians in the tourism industry, particularly in Luxor, found themselves suddenly jobless.
Montasser El-Zayyat, a militant lawyer arrested in 1995 for acting as the Gama'a spokesman, was among the first to support the cease-fire initiative. Like other "moderate" members of Al-Gama'a, he blamed the government's heavy-handed policy for the escalation in hostilities. Yet, after the violence that marked the 1992-1997 period, he began to wonder whether the Gama'a had made the wrong choice, and supported calls for the group to form a legal political party. "Before the violence started, we had our own mosques and were able to move freely to spread our ideas and principles," El-Zayyat said. "After six years of violence, thousands are in prison or on the run, and we are not able to express our views."
The Luxor massacre also convinced several Arab and European countries to begin cooperating with Egypt for the first time by limiting the freedom they had offered exiled militants. The wide-ranging international network these groups had been able to build, with Afghanistan as its base, was the main reason for their rise in several Arab and Muslim countries, including Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan and Tunisia. After the US embassy bombings, the CIA took over the pursuit of suspected militants, whom it handed over to countries like Egypt. Many Eastern European countries, former Soviet Republics and even a few countries in Latin America (another indication of the militant network's scope) began handing wanted militants over to Egypt.
The deepest crack in the unity of the armed militant groups, however, was the decision by Osama Bin Laden and his followers in Al-Qa'eda to declare war on the United States. In February 1998, Bin Laden and the leader of Egypt's Jihad group, Ayman El-Zawahri, along with two hard-line Pakistani groups and one from Bangladesh, announced the formation of the "International Islamic Front for Fighting Against Jews and Crusaders." Many observers thought at that time that Bin Laden's declaration was mere rhetoric and that no one could challenge the world's sole superpower.
But one attack followed another, demonstrating that Bin Laden was perfectly serious. In August 1998, suspected members of Al-Qa'eda blew up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing over 200 people, mostly Kenyans. Then US President Bill Clinton responded by bombing suspected training camps run by Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
El-Zawahri's Jihad, which had emphatically rejected the Gama'a cease-fire initiative, declared that it was no longer interested in fighting the regime. Instead, "we will fight the bigger evil, which is supporting all the tyrannical regimes in the Arab world: the United States," declared Ahmed El- Naggar, one of El-Zawahiri's closest aides, during his appearance before a military tribunal in 1998.
In response, the United States declared war on the very militant organisations it had supported and trained during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. At the time, Bin Laden and his ilk were referred to as freedom fighters. When Moscow, unable to withstand the Afghan resistance, pulled out, the United States gave both Afghanistan and Pakistan the cold shoulder. After the Taliban took over 90 per cent of Afghanistan, the country drew militants from all over the Arab and Muslim world. New generations of young militants flocked to Afghanistan to receive military training; the purpose this time was not to fight communism, but to topple their governments and establish an Islamic nation.
According to one security official, militants collected funds abroad and sent them home to followers, thus financing attacks and supporting the families of detainees or victims of anti-Islamist violence. In many cases, the official said, the leadership of militant groups, as well as the non-violent Muslim Brotherhood, asked members to contribute a regular percentage of their salaries to support the cause. Zakat, or alms money, was also one important source of financing for militant activities. Advances in communications technology, particularly the Internet and satellite phones, were a blessing for armed militant groups, allowing them to coordinate their activities and convey their message to the media easily.
Bin Laden carried out his second strike in Yemen, his country of origin, killing 17 US marines whose air carrier was waiting in Aden's port. He released another of his slickly executed videotapes, praising the attack on the USS Cole, but did not admit direct responsibility.
The deadliest and most unpredictable attack, however, was that of 11 September, on the symbols ofglobal capitalism and American military might. The US's response has been merciless. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld did not even consider it necessary to investigate the massacre that ended the prison riot in Mazar-i Sharif shortly after the city was taken over by anti-Taliban forces. The US government has adopted a slew of measures no different from those taken by Egypt and Algeria to quell armed militants. In Egypt, during the recent military trial of a number of suspected Islamists, a police officer said sarcastically: "Now they [the United States and Britain] are praising what we are doing. But even our military trials are better than those held in the United States. The trials in the US will be secret, while ours are open -- because we have nothing to be ashamed of."
Diaa Rashwan, an expert on militant organisations at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, agrees that armed militant organisations were weakened before 11 September, "but they could easily make a comeback and may even be joined by others who have nothing to do with militant Islam." Rashwan noted that the United States in its present clampdown has not made any distinction between what he describes as "socio-political Islamic groups" (like the Muslim Brotherhood) and "armed political Islamist groups."
Rashwan and others also believe that if the US insists on expanding the military campaign to include other Arab or Islamic countries, more young men will want to join militant organisations "to confront the external enemy." Many Arabs and Muslims are already angry with the way the United States has been handling the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. This, according to experts, could explain why most Arabs and Muslims were reluctant to support the US campaign in Afghanistan, even though they opposed the terror attacks on New York and Washington.
Rashwan is among those who believe that the US's refusal to moderate its blind support for Israel will feed militant groups. Furthermore, he conjectures, "a front might emerge uniting Islamists and other nationalist forces, like the Nasserists." When Bin Laden or El-Zawahri spoke of the Palestinian cause after 11 September, he noted, "they were speaking the mind of all Arabs and Muslims -- not just the Islamists."
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