New Film's Popularity Gives Mubarak Government a Victory

By James J. Napoli

Terrorism doesn't seem to have had as much an impact on Cairo as "The Terrorist."

The new film, starring the ubiquitous rubber-faced Egyptian comic actor Adel Imam as a bearded bomb-thrower, was breaking box office records in March as thousands of Cairenes ignored real terrorists to join the queue to see the movie version. Rumors were flying that real terrorists would attack cinemas showing the film.

The fact that the movie going public was undeterred and that the film was a hit constitutes at least a minor victory for the Mubarak government, which badly needs more victories against terrorism right now.

Despite the touchy topic, the Egyptian government cooperated in making the film and whisked the screenplay through censorship, presumably as part of its effort to build public antipathy to religious radicalism and enlist public cooperation in fighting it.

That effort has taken the form not only of heavy anti-terrorist propaganda in the media, but also a recurring government initiative to close ranks against terrorism with a "national dialogue" between the ruling National Democratic Party and opposition parties. And that has taken place in the midst of bloody counter-attacks against terrorists, mass arrests, executions and much-publicized death sentences.

Terrorism—most of it attributed to the underground Gamaat Islamiya and Jihad organizations—is clearly getting worse in Upper Egypt, though it seemed to have settled, since late March, to a chronic low level in Cairo.

According to the private Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, the number of casualties in Egypt's war of attrition with the Islamic militants had increased from 322 in 1992 to 1, 116 in 1993-a 367 percent increase. The number of policemen killed increased from 23 in 1992 to 120 in 1993. Police deaths outnumbered the 111 militants killed by police. The number of killed and wounded among civilians rose from 139 to 442.

Those numbers will probably continue to rise in every category this year. Many violent events in the Adel Imam film-blowing up a video shop, killing a policeman, machine-gunning a tourist bus-reflect what has become an everyday reality in parts of Upper Egypt, such as Assiut, which has largely been abandoned by foreign workers.

Cairo itself is under siege. Over the holy month of Ramadan, which this year ended in mid-March, the capital's deserted streets at iftar took on a particularly eerie aspect. Terrorists had gotten into a routine of planting bombs in front of banks and setting them to go off while most people were at home breaking their fast.

Shortly before 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 22, an explosion outside a 15-story office and residential building in Garden City blasted cars, shattered windows and damaged the interiors of offices of the Misr-America International and Al-Ahli banks. Residents on the 10th floor felt the explosion as a great "whomp" and one watched debris that had been shot into the air from below dropping by his window back to the street. Other whomps have reverberated through the city from Ramses Square in downtown Cairo to Moliandessin and Giza.

A New Round of Bombings

The new round of bombings followed the killing of seven members of the Gamaat Islamiya Feb. 1 during a commando raid on a militant hideout in the Zuweyat Al Hamra working-class district in north Cairo. Two weeks later, three more alleged terrorists were killed in an ambush on the opposite end of town in the neighborhood of Zeinhom Al Abdin.

In response to these and other events, the militants issued a series of faxes to news agencies threatening attacks on tourists and investors, and warning banks to stop charging or providing interest, which is considered by some Muslims as a violation of Qur'anic injunctions against usury.

The threats against foreigners gave rise to fears-reflected if not stated in various embassy security notices to their citizens in Egypt that an Algerian-style campaign of murdering foreigners was about to begin. But so far, that has not happened in the capital, where the extremists have not fared well.

In fact, the radical groups have been so badly bloodied in Cairo, which is teeming with security, that they seem to have reconcentrated their terror campaign to the south. Every day brings fresh news of attacks, sometimes fatal, on police, officials, Coptic Christians and tourists. Nile cruise boats, trains and even a monastery have been shot up or bombed. Tourism, a staple of Egypt's economy, has been devastated.

Nevertheless, reports of the imminent demise of the Mubarak regime, such as a London Times article with the headline "Mubarak at grave risk of being overthrown by march of Islam, " may be greatly exaggerated. The government is still in control, though it clearly is worried, particularly since Islamists have penetrated many of the nation's institutions, including the army, professional syndicates and the universities.

Unpredictable outside events can easily spark mass demonstrations that could turn against the government. This may explain why security forces cracked down so hard on Cairo demonstrations by students and others following the February massacre of Palestinian worshippers by an Israeli settler in Hebron.

The government is seeking a broad consensus, including the main opposition parties, against extremism. That, according to Saad Eddin Ibrahim, chairman of the Ibn Khaldoun Center, is a motive for the "national dialogue, "first suggested by President Mubarak in the inaugural address of his third term of office last October.

"The government wants to use the national dialogue to have a united front against the militants," said Ibrahim at a recent public lecture. "The opposition parties want to use the dialogue to gain for themselves greater participation in government. These two motives are not, by the way, mutually exclusive. "

At this writing, however, the parties have not yet linked arms. The dialogue, originally planned for February, was postponed to the latter part of April. Opposition leaders were not even certain whether all the opposition parties, including minor parties like the Ummah and Social Justice Party, would be asked to participate. If the dialogue doesn't proceed, a liberal Wafd Party spokesman said, there could be a period of strikes and civil disobedience. Political observers also were surprised at the signals from President Mubarak and Prime Minister Atef Sidki that the Muslim Brotherhood would not be invited to join in.

Although outlawed, the Brotherhood is an unofficially tolerated political presence.

Excluding the Brotherhood could make it more difficult to get some legal opposition parties to participate. And, perhaps more importantly, exclusion from dialogue with the ruling party could drive the Muslim Brotherhood to a farther extreme—one closer to that of the Islamic militants who are terrorizing Egypt.

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