EGYPT - The Campaign Against Terror - Part 4.

Egypt, perhaps the closest Arab ally of the US, has been caught up in a storm of negative publicity since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. A combination of factors, ranging from the fact that the ringleader of the hijackers was Egyptian to the deteriorating environment in the Palestinian territories complicated and constrained Egyptian diplomacy. The rapidly deteriorating image of the US in the Middle East has made things difficult for the regime of President Husni Mubarak, in terms of domestic public opinion.

Critical observers in the US have written against Egypt's "ambivalent" posture after Sept. 11, saying that it did not provide the kind of high profile support that was needed in the aftermath of the attacks. Others have noted that while Egypt did indeed keep a low profile after Sept. 11, this did not mean that its co-operation with the US in the campaign against terrorism was ambivalent. They note that, in view of the deteriorating Middle East peace process, public sympathy for the US was balanced by their perception that America was on Israel's side in the Arab-Israeli confrontation.

Such domestic political compulsions had obliged the Mubarak regime to keep a low profile, but it provided extensive intelligence and other forms of practical support after Sept. 11, in view of its extensive experience in combating against Islamist organisations such as Al Jihad, Gamaa Al Islamiyya, Tafkir Wal Hijra, etc. In fact many of the cadres of these groups have associations of one type or another with Al Qaida and could be said to have shared similar motivations and objectives (see following).

From Egypt's perspective, the top priority at present is the deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian situation. According to APS sources, Cairo regards a resolution to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence in some ways as being more important than the "war against terror" in Afghanistan and increasingly in other parts of the world against Al Qaida simply because, if the situation gets worse or continues much longer in the same vein, it would only lead to the strengthening of the Islamist movements. The war against Al Qaida may be won in terms of disrupting the organisation and capturing or killing its main leaders, but other similar organisations will take its place and members of the Al Qaida who do survive will migrate to such organisations and share their expertise.

Meanwhile, Egypt's ability to offer high profile support to the American campaign against terror will be affected by the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian violence. In terms of domestic political sentiments, the Mubarak regime cannot afford to support America's campaign against terror on the one hand and stay silent over the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation on the other - with Egyptians generally regarding Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a "war criminal". This would only boost the popularity of the radical Islamist groups, which Egypt managed to deal with after a difficult phase of violence during the 1990s.

A return to militant violence on a large scale is something that the regime wants to avoid at any cost, as it would undermine all the social and economic liberalisation measures which the government has put in place over the past few years. Today Egypt is regarded as an "indispensable" power in the region. Few political or economic projects focusing on the Middle East as a whole would get off the ground without the co-operation of Cairo. In many ways, Egypt has become the primary ally of the US in the area, in some ways even more valuable in geo-political terms than Israel.

Under the umbrella of Pax Americana, and with strong diplomacy from Egypt, the peace process had crossed several milestones - including peace accords leading to a working relationship between Israel and the Palestinians (between 1993 and 1996 in particular) as well as a peace treaty between the Jewish state and Jordan. By contrast, the militant groups in Egypt were on the upswing in the early 1990s. They were energized by demonstrations of mass support for their slogan of "Islam is the solution", at a time when the Arabs in general felt they were on the receiving end of Western "neo-colonialism" as a result of the Gulf crisis and the US-led assault on Iraq.

Before Sept. 11, the militant groups were in a defeated state. The political leaderships of several groups were in disarray, with several top leaders killed, imprisoned or in exile. The government had thwarted all efforts by the radicals to regroup and to move into mainstream politics, with minimum backlash in terms of public opinion. Several of the top militant leaders were in exile (some in Afghanistan) and, APS pointed out in early 2000, were "preparing for the next wave of radical Islam which could hit the Middle East in the medium-term". The events of Sept. 11 demonstrated the accuracy of that forecast, with the ringleader of the hijackings being an Egyptian named Mohammed Atta and the right hand man of Osama Bin Ladin - the main accused in the WTC/Pentagon attacks - also being an Egyptian by the name of Ayman Al Zawahiri.

For Egypt, the main difficulty arising from the campaign against terror will be in trying to maintain balance between (a) what its main external ally, the US, would want in terms of co-operation against militant groups and in terms of maintaining stability in the region; (b) what the governments of the Arab and Islamic Worlds want in terms of maintaining a "unified" posture against "anti-Islamic" trends as well as in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation; and (c) what domestic public opinion wants in terms of a satisfying response from the regime to the American targeting of Afghanistan, the undeclared war between the Israeli government of Sharon and the Palestinian Authority, and the imminently expected US assault against Iraq.

Keeping a balance between these three - sometimes conflicting - expectations has already proved to be very tricky. On the American side, there is criticism that Egypt is not being as enthusiastic as it should be about the war against terror. Countries in the Arab and Islamic Worlds, on the other hand, have called on Egypt to sever its ties with Israel and snub the Americans. Domestic opinion is highly inflamed, in view of the daily television broadcasts of violence in the Palestinian territories, and public anger may well explode if the US carries through with an attack on Iraq.