Marginalized Violent Internal Conflict In The Age Of Globalization: Mexico And Egypt

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Summer, 1999 by Dan Tschirgi

Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981 was an immediate and serious setback for all militant Islamic groups. Government security forces carried out sweeping arrests and major clashes with militants took place, particularly in Upper Egypt. The Gama'a, however, survived and continued to mobilize support throughout the decade.

During the same period, as Hosni Mubarak gingerly pursued Sadat's liberalizing direction through steps that included reducing consumer and agricultural subsidies and decontrolling prices, the burden of poverty increased throughout Egypt's rural and urban areas.(42) Upper Egypt remained the poorest region. While "ultra poverty" was particularly high in Asiut, rural Upper Egypt continued to be the country's poorest agricultural area.(43) Additional regional misery hit after the 1986 downturn of Middle East oil economies reduced possibilities for migrant labor.(44) The 1990-91 Gulf Crisis, of course, produced a massive return of Egyptian workers from that region as well as deep uncertainties regarding that labor market's future. However, the worst fears of peasants seemed confirmed in 1992, when after a debate that had raged since 1985 the government enacted a measure that would effectively repeal statutes governing tenancy after a five-year grace period. Known by opponents as "the law for throwing out tenants from their land," this step profoundly disturbed what the rural poor considered "an important basis of a moral and political order."(45)

The Gama'a's major anti-government campaign developed in early 1990s. No single event marked its beginning, but by mid-1992 there was no doubt that Egypt's government was facing a sustained offensive. Press accounts of the developing straggle revealed the extent to which the group was rooted in the rural countryside. The following, relating events in "a tiny village in Upper Egypt," is typical of such reports:

Since March, clashes between villagers and security forces have claimed two dozen lives. Farming is the only occupation...the district boasts few jobs and fewer public services. . . . It is fertile soil in which to recruit ardent young men for the Islamic Leagues [Gama'at al-Islamiyya], with their aura of romance and their programmes of spiritual betterment and practical activism.

In recent years the membership of such leagues has swollen into the thousands. In a dozen villages league enthusiasts have made themselves into enforcers of order and the providers of service.(46)

Significant portions of Egypt's public agreed with the Gama'a's stated goals and values, though not with the means it chose to pursue them. This could hardly have been otherwise in a country where it is widely believed that were free elections held the non-violent, but banned, Muslim Brotherhood would emerge as the government's most serious challenger. The Gama'a's portrayal of the government as undermining Egyptian national and social values also found an echo in the hardships and frustrations of a population harried by growing economic disparities, cultural penetration and sharp changes in regional politics and Egypt's international standing.(47)