So it happened back in 1952, after the army coup that ousted King Farouk. Egypt’s new military rulers at first welcomed the Brotherhood as crowd-pleasing fellow anti-imperialists, but soon came to see them as dangerous rivals. A wave of persecution pushed thousands of Brothers into exile, seeding fresh cells in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait and as far afield as Europe and America. Egypt’s brutal prisons hardened Islamists such as Sayed Qutb, a bookish Brotherhood ideologue. Before being hanged in 1965, he penned works that recast the Islamists’ struggle in stark terms of good against evil. His radical vision fuelled a new generation’s darker dreams of jihad, vengeance and martyrdom, not only in Egypt but across the Muslim world.
Anwar Sadat inherited Egypt’s regal presidency in 1970, but got off to a wobbly start. Fearing palace rivals and leftist intrigue as he sought to steer his country away from Russia’s chilly Cold War embrace, he made a tacit alliance with the Brotherhood. Its leaders were freed, its rank and file allowed to rebuild networks in mosques and schools. But when a breakaway jihadist cell, inspired by Mr Qutb’s writings and angered over peacemaking with Israel, shot down Mr Sadat at a military parade in 1981, a vicious backlash against the Islamists ensued.
Among its victims was a young, upper-class doctor named Ayman Zawahiri. It is said that while under torture in an Egyptian prison, the future leader of Al Qaeda revealed the identity of a close friend who was captured and killed. Released from prison, Mr Zawahiri fled to Afghanistan. The bitterness of his experience infected other Arab exiles and would-be mujahideen such as Osama Bin Laden. In the all-out war against global tyranny they came to envisage, utopian ends justified extremely violent means.
Back in Egypt the country’s new, military-backed leader, Hosni Mubarak, at first opted for a strategy of dividing the Islamists. The mainstream Brotherhood, having by now disavowed violence, was allowed a quiet space in politics and society so long as it kept its hands off the state. But at the end of the 1980s, Mr Mubarak’s secret police took action against the more radical Islamists who had begun to proliferate in Egypt’s now-sprawling slums and disadvantaged rural hinterland.
Mass arrests and fatal ‘encounters’ with the law spawned vengeful terrorist cells, such that by the 1990s Egypt faced a low-level insurgency. Amid the increasing violence, the state again turned on the Brotherhood. Tit-for-tat killings and terrorist bombings killed some 2,000 people, reaching a crescendo with the hideous massacre of dozens of tourists at Luxor in November 1997. That outrage helped prompt disavowals of violence from imprisoned jihadists, and instantly drained the sea of public sympathy for Islamist radicals.
In the ensuing calm Brotherhood leaders were again freed from prison, as were all but the most die-hard radicals. For the next decade Egypt’s Islamists shied from direct confrontation with the state. Instead they worked assiduously in mosques, schools, professional unions and charities, swelling the sea cup by spoonful as Egyptian society grew steadily more conservative, more religious and riper for Islamist control.
The latest cycle began with Egypt’s revolution in January 2011. Faced with huge crowds that had fought and won against Mr Mubarak’s police, the army leaders who had eased the president from power sought an ally to control the street. The only organised group that had survived Mr Mubarak’s oppressions was the Muslim Brotherhood. A fragile tactical alliance allowed the army to retreat from public view as the Brotherhood and its Islamist allies scored electoral victories, culminating with Muhammad Morsi’s capture of the presidency in June 2012.
But even as Mr Morsi and the Brothers moved to consolidate their grip, the hard core of Egypt’s state regrouped to resist them. Overconfident, the Brotherhood failed to sense a coalescing of fear and resentment among the large, economically and culturally dominant class of non-Islamist Egyptians. When it came last June, the backlash against the Brotherhood was swift, powerful and merciless. An army coup, backed by massive street protests, swept Mr Morsi and his followers from every official office. A rearguard effort to sustain resistance, with giant Islamist sit-ins and marches, was met by crushing armed force.
From the perspective of Egypt’s ‘deep state’, victory appears now nearly complete. Some 2,000 Brothers and varied followers have been killed. Thousands more languish in prison. Hundreds have again fled into exile. The organisation has been banned as a terrorist group; its assets and those of hundreds of affiliated institutions have been seized. Best of all, Egypt’s public has widely endorsed, if not applauded the crackdown.
Yet the cycle seems unlikely to end here. Just as naysayers warned six months ago, the force of the clampdown has provoked its own nasty consequences. Ugly resentment brews in slums and villages. In the northeast corner of the Sinai, an all-out Islamist insurgency rages, punctuated by guerrilla attacks and indiscriminate army raids in retaliation. In recent weeks the violence has inched closer and closer to the centres of power.
While the Brotherhood, decapitated by mass imprisonments, has officially called for continued peaceful protest, hotter heads are predictably demanding a tougher response. “Silence has killed us,” read the reproachful sign held by an Islamist activist at a recent rally in Cairo that was busted by tear gas and police gunfire. Groups espousing retaliatory violence have sprouted on the internet. Sporting such names as the Revolutionary Resistance Brigade, the Moltov Movement, the Execution Movement and Qutb’s Hawks, they have yet to claim specific attacks. Some internet groups say they have already set up active branches across the country, and built a database with names and addresses of security officers to be targeted in future.
Other Islamist radicals have already proved their murderous capacity. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdas (Companions of Jerusalem) a Sinai-based jihadist group that adopts the style and ethos of Al Qaeda, has declared war against Egypt’s army and police. It claims a string of well-planned bombings and assassinations over recent months that have targeted police stations, security headquarters and individual officers, including Egypt’s interior minister. A newer outfit, Soldiers of Egypt, has also begun to target security posts. So far, civilians have largely escaped the violence. But scores of police casualties have further hardened the security forces’ attitude. Despite a lack of evidence, officials place blanket blame for the violence on the Brotherhood.
It may be that this time Egypt’s security forces will prove determined enough, and the public supportive enough, to sustain the fight until their perceived enemies are bludgeoned into submission. But in another repeating cycle, Egypt’s hard men have stretched their remit to what many regard as self-destructive limits. The current crackdown now extends beyond the demonized Brotherhood to embrace dissent of any stripe, from leftist journalists to liberal reformers. Just as Mr Morsi committed the fatal error of alienating potential allies, his successors are steadily shedding friends and supporters. History may not forgive the mistake.
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http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2014/02/egypts-rulers