Stop Egypt from becoming another radicalised Arab state
Egyptians were yet to recover from the shock of last Friday’s daring bombing at a police checkpoint adjacent to a mosque near the Giza pyramids, a short distance from Cairo, when tragedy struck again, this time on Sunday at a Coptic chapel in the old quarter of the city.
Six policemen were killed in Friday’s bombing. 25 Christians, most of them women and children, were killed and scores injured when a suicide bomber pulled the trigger inside the chapel on Sunday.
Attacks on Copts and their churches and homes are not unknown in Egypt. Memories of the 2011 New Year’s Day gruesome attack on a church in Alexandria at the fag-end of the Mubarak era still linger on.
Impact
Christians, who comprise between 10 and 15 per cent of Muslim-majority Egypt’s population, were also viciously set upon when the Muslim Brotherhood was in power for a brief while. In contrast, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had ensured safety and security for Copts. That was till Sunday’s devastating bombing.
More than the lives and limbs the suicide bombing claimed, the psychological impact has been huge. As has been the popular revulsion. Almost on cue all of Egypt went into mourning. Although a national holiday, Milad un-Nabi, Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, sees celebratory crowds in the streets of Cairo late into the night. This year Milad un-Nabi was on Sunday. But the streets wore a deserted, forlorn look.
Sisi wasted no time in condemning the attack on the chapel, part of the ancient St Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral complex which is the headquarters of the Egyptian Orthodox Church. He promised to bring those behind the bombings to book and swore vengeance against the perpetrators.
A three-day state mourning was declared. Sisi and his Cabinet members attended the funeral on Monday.
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| 25 Christians were killed and scores injured when a suicide bomber pulled the trigger inside the chapel on Sunday. |
Investigators remarkably put together the remains of the suicide bomber, reconstituted his face, and identified him as Mahmoud Shafik Mohamed Mostafa. Mostafa was a known supporter of Mohamed Morsi, who was thrown out of the president’s office by the popular uprising against the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013.
Sunday’s bombing was thus pinned on the Ikhwan and its faceless front organisations that have been seeking to undermine Sisi’s, and the new Parliament’s, authority.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State has owned up responsibility for Sunday’s attack, adding a twist to the gory tale of death and gore. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the ISIS said the bombing was carried out by its member Abu Abdallah al-Masri. Apparently, that was an alias used by Mahmoud Shafik Mohamed Mostafa. The statement threatened more such attacks on "polytheists".
Senior officials and security experts in Cairo I spoke to said Egypt’s main Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, seamlessly morphs into organisations. “The Islamic State owning responsibility for the church attack does not absolve the Brotherhood which is the fountainhead of all terrorism,” said a senior official.
Desperation
“This is an act of desperation. The Islamists in Sinai are now fighting with their backs to the wall… the Army has put them to flight and they are trying to signal that they still retain the ability to strike terror at will,” he explained.
That could well be true. A group calling itself the "Hasm Movement" has claimed responsibility for the Giza bombing. In the past it has claimed responsibility for similar targeted attacks on security forces. Little is known about this group or Liwa al-Thawra, the Revolution Brigade, that claims to have carried out deadly bombings too.
If what the government believes is true, that the Muslim Brotherhood is the fountainhead of the terrorism, then the use of multiple names of amorphous organisations is classical radical Islamist tactics. The idea is to propagate the belief that such is the groundswell of support for Islamism that various organisations are taking form and shape to beat the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
It’s psy-war by another name.
Ruthless
On his part, Sisi is determined to take the battle to the heart of the problem: The Ikhwan, or the Brotherhood.
He has been ruthless in dealing with Morsi’s sympathisers and Islamists of all hues. Morsi’s death sentence has been set aside but he remains in jail, facing several other charges of high treason. So are his mentors and colleagues.
Egyptians struggling to cope with Sisi’s sweeping economic reforms, including the drastic devaluation of their currency that has wiped out 50 per cent of its value, and galloping inflation, find themselves torn between the desire for greater freedom and the acknowledgement that desperate situations call for tough responses.
There is no sympathy for either radical Islamism or its practitioners. But there is growing concern, at least among Egypt’s intellectual elite, that rights and liberties are now at a discount. With the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, it was supposed to be the other way around.
The "Revolution" did bring about epochal, if not radical, change but the Arab Spring, much extolled when it was happening, is now distant memory. Both young and old scoff at it. Tahrir Square is once again a busy intersection of crowded roads in downtown Cairo, often jampacked with smoke-belching cars and buses.
Mubarak took charge of Egypt after Anwar Sadat’s assassination, staving off ferment and turbulence. Similarly, Sisi has taken charge of Egypt at a time when it stands at the crossroads of history. His single biggest challenge is to stop Egypt from becoming just another radicalised Arab state.
For that, he is willing to do whatever it takes. The task by no means is an envious one.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)