CAIRO - On three consecutive days last week, Islamists, led by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, organised three rallies in support of Syria, where a deadly war has been raging for more than two years. On Thursday, Sunni Muslim clerics from Egypt and beyond gathered in Cairo and called for jihad (a holy war) in Syria. The following day, Islamists congregated on the Amr bin Al Aas Mosque in southern Cairo where a famed Saudi cleric urged young Egyptians to go to Syria to fight along mostly Sunni opposition forces to oust dictator Bashar al-Assad. On Saturday, President Mohamed Morsi appeared at the Cairo Stadium, which was packed with thousands of Islamists to show solidarity with the Syrians against al-Assad. Addressing the televised rally, Morsi, who hails from the Brotherhood, announced severing diplomatic ties with Syria and closing the Syrian embassy in Cairo. The Egyptian leader also called for imposing a no-fly zone in Syria and warned the Lebanese Shi'ite Hizbollah movement of fighting alongside al-Assad's troops. On the surface, the Islamists' pro-Syria gatherings signal sympathy for Syria where the UN estimates that at least 93,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since March 2011. A closer look at the massive showings and their timing will, however, disclose their ulterior motives. The well-attended gatherings were held as Egypt is gearing up for mass protests planned by the secular-minded opposition on June 30, which marks the first anniversary of Morsi' presidency. Accordingly, one aim is to flex the Islamists' muscles ahead of the planned protests. Significantly, the gatherings came amid growing discontent in Egypt over a series of daily problems including frequent power cuts, an acute fuel shortage and constant price hikes of most goods. The Islamist-dominated Government is widely perceived as being too incompetent to handle these problems. Meanwhile, in its desperate bid to prop up its popularity that has suffered recently, the Brotherhood is strengthening its alliance with hardline Islamists, who push for allowing Egyptian "jihadists" to go and fight inside Syria. This is a recipe for disaster. Let's remember that in the early 1980s, self-styled jihadists went to Afghanistan to fight the then Soviet occupation of the Muslim country. When the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, many of the warriors returned to their home countries and turned their guns against their compatriots. Egypt was among the countries that bore the brunt of the so-called Afghan Arabs' militancy. The Afghanistan lesson should be on the mind of the Islamist rulers as they approve involvement in a Sunni-Shi'ite war in Syria based on narrow-minded calculations related to domestic problems. Jumping into the Syrian fray is not the best formula to fix the situation in Egypt. It will only make things worse in the near and distant future.
