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CAIRO: AMID the din of the people’s uprising in Egypt, one voice has been singularly quiet: al Qaeda’s. Until now.
In a statement posted on Islamist websites by the Islamic State of Iraq, an al Qaeda front, the group, which has long opposed the Mubarak regime, has denounced the Egyptian government and called for jihad against it: “If the people of Islam die trying to reach this goal, it is better for them than having a tyrant who rules them with laws other than God’s Sharia law.”
The message, translations of which haven been reported by the international media, goes on to read: “Here is the market of jihad, and all the reasons to facilitate it in your home. The doors of martyrdom have opened.”
But the belated response has only served to underline the deafening silence of al Qaeda and other radical groups as a peaceful, non-ideological people’s uprising has in less than three weeks come close to achieving what militant Islamists have claimed for decades could never be achieved without violence: the toppling of the Mubarak regime.
Al Qaeda’s number two, Ayman Al Zawahiri, is the group’s most famous Egyptian-born member, but other prominent figures have included Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attacks. But al Qaeda appears to have been caught unawares by the youth-led movement against the Egyptian regime. The group and other radical, violence-preaching entities have struggled to craft a coherent message at this historic juncture.
Equally apparent, though, is many Egyptian journalists and analysts are avoiding any discussion of the radical fringe in Egypt at the moment, perhaps out of concern the ‘people’s revolution’ may be tainted by false association.
“There a few groups, radicals, advocating violence, sure, but to link the revolution with those groups or to Al Qaeda would be immoral,” said Yosri Fouda, an Egyptian journalist who has written extensively about Islamist radical groups, deploringly.When asked about the possible presence of al Qaeda and other radical groups in Egypt, Mamoun Fandy, an Egyptian scholar, was also categorical: “The short answer to your question is no. Zawahiri would be lynched alongside Mubarak if he came here today.”
But even foreign experts are circumspect about al Qaeda’s appeal in Egypt.
According to Bruce Riedel, an al Qaeda expert, “Al Qaeda has not had a significant presence in Egypt for over a decade. What activity it carried out was mostly in the Sinai, not in the Egyptian heartland. But the suicide bombing of the Coptic Church in Alexandria suggests it may have been building a larger presence in the last year. It has sympathisers in Gaza that it works with.”
Since a vicious campaign by the Zawahiri-led Egyptian Islamic Jihad and its cousin, the Islamic Group, in the 1990s was met with a brutal crackdown from the Mubarak regime, the influence of radical groups appears to have waned. Mr Mubarak’s security apparatus also reached out to less radical elements and co-opted them, further lessening the space for more radical ideologies.
According to Dina Shehata of the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, “(The violent Islamists) have been neutralised since the late 1990s and there is very little presence other than a few incidents where individuals inspired by al Qaeda propaganda or Hamas and Hezbollah have carried out the occasional attack.”
Islamist violence peaked in the late 1990s, Ms Shehata added, but the Mubarak regime’s response “drove them out of the country to Pakistan and Sudan”.
In November 1995, the first-ever suicide bombing in Pakistan was carried out by Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad in an attack against the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad.
But in Egypt itself, the presence of and support for violent Islamists appears to be decidedly on the fringes of society.
The popular Muslim Brotherhood, invoked by allies of President Mubarak as an Islamist bogeyman, has for years been mocked by Zawahiri and other radicals for participating in elections and denounced for officially rejecting violence.
Indeed, analysts suggest recent events in Egypt pose a direct threat to the violent Islamists’ appeal.
“This is not al Qaeda’s revolution, at least not now. Zawahiri and Bin Laden had nothing to do with this and they may emerge as the biggest losers if the democratic movement wins out,” according to Mr Riedel.
Mamoun Fandy said: “The radicals thrive in the darkness, but this is a new dawn for Egypt. Democratic environments have little room for radical elements.”
