Egypt Remains Stable despite "Annus Horribilis" in 1992

By James J. Napoli

On New Year's Eve, Cairo was braced for an attack by Muslim extremists on some highly visible Western target, say, a gala party at one of the five-star hotels.

Rumors had been circulating for days that the militants were about to make another violent splash to further disrupt the country's rocky tourist industry. And what could be more perfect for their purposes than an attack on a bunch of Westerners and Westernized Egyptians defiling Egypt by greeting the new year with a raucous party and very un-Islamic champagne toast?

But nothing happened, and the rumors sank back into the morass of misinformation or unverified chatter that has kept the country mired in tension all year. The real events, however, were bad enough to turn 1992 into Egypt's own annus horribilis.

Few people expect that the government is in any immediate danger from Islamic militants or any other source of opposition, despite what journalist and author Mohammed Hassanein Heikal called Egypt's prevailing atmosphere of "desperation, disappointment and frustration."

But continual skirmishing with domestic militants amid surging fundamentalist pressure from Iran, Sudan and Algeria clearly has President Mubarak rattled.

The year was marked by several sporadic attacks—one fatal—on tourists by Muslim militants, who also have carried out a violent campaign against Coptic Christians and police, particularly in areas south of Cairo like Sohag and Assiut provinces. One of scores of people killed was the popular Muslim columnist and critic of Islamic extremism, Farag Fouda.

The government responded by beefing up security around tourist areas, and conducting a rough crackdown with mass arrests. Although, for the moment, it seems to have kept the militants at bay, it also may harden many nonviolent religious conservatives into more active, committed opponents of the government.

In the meantime, many potential tourists apparently decided to bask in the Caribbean sun rather than visit the spectacular ancient treasures of Egypt this winter.

Tourism receipts in November and December initially were reported down between 25 and 75 percent, although there seems to have been some recovery over the holidays. Any substantial loss is a disaster in a country that expects to get its biggest annual chunk of foreign currency—about $3 billion—from tourism. So important is tourism, in the view of the government, that ways to talk and deal with tourists are going into school lesson plans.

Exacerbating the situation was the Oct. 12 earthquake, which seemed to unleash a buildup of social and political pressures. Islamic groups invited favorable comparison with the government, rushing in to help victims with blankets, food and medicine, while the immediate official response was tangled in red tape and confusion.

Attacks on tourists began last July, when someone identified as a militant threw a Molotov cocktail at a tour bus in the Upper Egyptian city of Luxor, site of several fabulous pharaonic temples and the Valleys of the Kings and Queens. No one was injured in that attack, but three Egyptian crewmen were injured in October when gunmen opened fire on a Nile cruise ship carrying German tourists.

A British woman, Sharon Hill, was killed by gunfire during a subsequent ambush of a tour bus by the outlawed Gamaa al Islamiya (The Islamic Group) on a remote road in central Egypt.

The fundamentalists know full well that an attack on tourism is an attack on Egypt's economic jugular that could kill the efforts of moderate, pro-Western President Hosni Mubarak to improve living conditions. Presumably, if conditions worsen, impoverished and disaffected people would more easily fall under the sway of militant Islam.

That explains but does not justify why the government acted with such embarrassment and anger—even tearing down tents distributed to victims—when Islamic groups provided earthquake relief so much more efficiently than did the government.

Many people in Cairo's poorest neighborhoods already rely heavily on mosques and religious groups for food, medicine, shelter and other needs—building a society within a society. Islamic activists also have taken control of several influential professional organizations, including the Lawyers' Syndicate.

The potential appeal of fundamentalism in hard times also explains the vehemence of the government assault on alleged extremists in Upper Egypt and, in December, in the Cairo slum of Imbaba. Thousands of police surrounded and swept through the area, breaking into mosques and arresting hundreds of people. One of them was a local leader, Gaber Mohamed Ali, whose media-conferred title of "emir" was derided by President Mubarak at an extraordinary Dec. 16 press conference.

Mubarak said his government does not condone human rights abuses, but admitted that in the course of the crackdown, some security forces might have been guilty of "violations. "

Last July, the death penalty was instituted for anyone belonging to a "terrorist" organization. In December, the president ratified 8 death sentences and 25 prison sentences passed by a military tribunal in Alexandria against alleged extremists convicted of anti-state activity. Further powers, including the right to detain people without trial, were given to security forces, extending those granted under the 1981 emergency decree.

Attacking the Western Press

The president lashed out at the foreign media for what he said were exaggerations of the danger posed by militants to tourists. He also attacked the Western press for "trying to damage Egypt" with extensive coverage of government sweeps.

"A tourist could go to London or America and be assassinated by some terrorist group. That doesn't mean the country is not stable, that there are no measures to secure the people," said Mubarak, who reiterated government claims that 90 percent of the wanted militants had been arrested.

He even took a trip to Luxor to be seen and photographed chumming it up with foreign visitors, including a blond American woman who became a minor local celebrity when she was televised speaking to him in halting Arabic.

The semi-official Egyptian press, which takes its cue from the president, promptly began protestations that tourists were safe in Egypt and indeed arriving in the thousands, and a drumbeat of criticism of Western media "propaganda."

Like earlier choreographed harangues against Iran for its alleged sponsorship of anti-government activity in Egypt, the attack on the Western press deflects attention from Egypt's overwhelming social and political problems.

It has become commonplace to compare conditions now with those before the 1952 Revolution: extremes of poverty and wealth and the perception of government corruption. But there are differences.

"I don't believe history repeats itself," said Heikal, who was a close confidant of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, in a Dec. 14 interview with the Washington Report at his Giza office overlooking the Nile next to the Cairo Sheraton hotel.

In 1952, he said, there were socialist Muslim and liberal options, as well as "army interference," in the air at the same time. Now the opposition parties are weak, and there is no viable alternative to the Mubarak government.

Heikal said the Muslim groups are not in themselves dangerous, and many people consider the Islamic option in Iran to have failed because "it's been tried and led to nothing."

As others have pointed out, unlike Iran, Egypt has little oil wealth to buffer a prolonged decline in tourism, on which some 10 million Egyptians depend for a living. And that could count against the militants.

Heikal maintained it was the government, not the Western press, that exaggerated the power of the Muslim groups through the Egyptian media. The massive government assault on Imbaba gave the militants a "bonus of strength" they didn't really have. It frightened people outside the country and "killed" tourism, he said.

Heikal said the militants rounded up in Imbaba are not religious in any true sense, but generally are society's "nobodies," who often play a role in Egypt during times of political unrest. They are "riffraff, on the periphery of life," he said, "creating a parallel society away from the government. "

Indeed, Imbaba—where the unemployment rate is about 50 percent—has a relatively high proportion of newcomers from Upper Egypt. This makes it one of the more volatile Cairo suburbs.

Ansaf Aziz, a social worker at a church-supported social service organization in another, more settled Cairo slum, Boulaq, pointed out that Islamic militants have trouble getting a footing in areas of the city with more stable populations. In Boulaq, a seemingly endless warren of congested streets, alleys and cul-de-sacs, Muslims and Christians have managed to live together peacefully for generations, she said.

Strong Tremors

But even there, the earthquake may have begun to prepare the ground for militant Islam. Boulaq's stability was badly shaken both literally and figuratively by the tremors.

After the quake, which killed more than 500 people and injured thousands more, the normally passive people of Boulaq— and people from elsewhere in the city— launched anti-government demonstrations because of the lack of effective relief. Hundreds of families were living in the streets, some clustered for weeks around a single couch retrieved from their collapsed homes.

People whose houses were destroyed or hopelessly cracked eventually were given new flats in far-off areas like Giza and Mokattam, expensive bus rides from their old neighborhoods and places of work, Aziz said. Some of those left behind are in homes so badly weakened that every footfall is met with a gelatinous shimmy. They are told by officials to fix their houses themselves, even though most don't have an extra plaster to pay for repairs. Resentment against the government therefore remains high in Boulaq.

An American economist on a consulting trip to Cairo maintains, however, that most Egyptians realize that the militant Islamic groups have nothing to offer in the way of an economic alternative. He also agreed that opposition to the government is still weak and disorganized. "Of course," he added, "that doesn't necessarily mean that Egyptians won't turn to the extremists if economic conditions get increasingly desperate. "

As previous attacks on tourists show, it doesn't take much to disrupt Egypt's economy. The earthquake really shook things up. Now, just an occasional, high-profile attack by militants seems enough to keep Egypt continuously on edge.

James J. Napoli chairs the department of journalism and mass communication at the American University in Cairo.