'RETURN TO ISLAM', POOR ECONOMY PUT MUBARAK ON SPOT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706130007-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: May 5, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST"T
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706130007-1
ON E
`Return to Islam,' poor economy
put Mubarak on spot
By Martin Sieff
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
In the months before Egyptian
leader Anwar Sadat was assassi-
nated in October 1981, it was com-
mon talk in Cairo that the president
was overdue for a "heart attack. " Ib-
day his successor, Hosni Mubarak,
may be worrying whether people
are predicting a similar fate for him.
Last week's outbreak of funda-
mentalist Moslem rioting in the city
of Aswan, 400 miles south of Cairo,
raised old fears for Mr. Mubarak.
One of the 60 arrested was Omar
Abdel-Rahman, a blind preacher
who was tried for complicity in Pres-
ident Anwar Sadat's assassination.
Mr. Abdel-Rahman was found inno-
cent of the charges.
Government-controlled media at
the time described Mr. Abdel-
Rahman as the spiritual leader of an
underground fundamentalist group,
called Al-Jihad, or Holy War.
Mr. Abdel-Rahman was tried a
second time on charges of partici-
pating in a conspiracy to overthrow
the government, but was again found
innocent.
One Egypt affairs analyst de-
scribed Mr. Abdel-Rahman as "very
popular," with "a tremendous
revolutionary potential"
"His message of 'return to Islam'
is not directly political, but his fol-
lowers draw political conclusions
from it;' the source said.
"He certainly knows the
revolutionary potential of what he's
doing. He's probably close to the
groups from which Sadat's assassins
came," he said.
Mr. Mubarak already is uneasy
about the popular forces at work in
Egypt. When 22,000 policemen in the
Central Security Force rampaged in
a xenophobic orgy of destruction in
February, he had to fall back on De-
fense Minister Abdel Hamid Abu
Ghazala's army to put the mutiny
down and restore order.
The February riots were much
bigger than the food riots that
rocked Egypt in 1977 and helped
persuade President Sadat to launch
his peace initiative toward Israel.
They were the most widespread ex-
ample of unrest since the fall of King
Farouk and the monarchy in 1952.
Prior to the February riots there
already had been indications that
the president was uneasy about the
growing prestige and political clout
of the military. Eight months ago he
replaced several military men in his
cabinet with technocrats.
Then, in January, Suleiman
Khater, the Central Security Force
policeman who became a popular
hero after shooting dead seven Is-
raeli tourists (including two women
and four children) at Ras Burka in
Sinai last October, was found dead in
his prison cell where he was serving
a life sentence. President Mubarak
refused a public inquiry into the
case. In a remarkable interview, he
warned Egyptian opposition groups
of a "dangerous and frightening fu-
ture"
"If I have borne much:' the pres-
ident said, "there are others who
cannot."
Commented the influential
London-based monthly The Middle
East: "The opposition got the mes-
sage. For the first time, an Egyptian
president was not only admitting
that there were forces within the
system which might be outside his
control, but was using these forces
as a threat to silence the opposition.
The unmentioned bogeyman was
taken by many to be Defense Min-
ister Abu Ghazala."
Marshal Abu Ghazala, un-
doubtedly the No. 2 man in Egypt,
recently turned down Mr. Mubarak's
offer of the vice presidency because
he would then have to give up his
power base, the defense ministry.
The Central Security Forces mu-
tiny confirmed the wisdom of this
move. As recently as the Khater sui-
cide in January, most observers of
the Egyptian scene ruled out a mili-
tary coup as a serious possibility.
But now, as one Washington analyst
noted, "In a situation of increasing
loss of control, the army is crucial."
One leading British Arabist
pointed out that short of an assas-
sination like the October 1981 mur-
der of President Sadat, the only ways
for the regime to fall are by military
coup, or by crowd action in the
streets, with a Khomeini-like
religious-charismatic figure push-
ing things on.
Keeping such crowds under con-
WASHINGTON TIMES
5 May 1986
FILE
trol is primarily a policing problem,
the Arabist said.
"Nasser was very good at it," he
added. However: "Someone can lose
his nerve - as the Shah did and
then the whole thing becomes a
shambles"
He noted that the February mu-
tiny occurred within the police -
precisely the body needed to contain
any public unrest.
And while Defense Minister Abu
Ghazala is an obvious candidate to
lead a military coup, Mr. Abdel-
Rahman could focus popular dissat-
isfaction on the streets.
Observers regard these funda-
mentalists, of whom Mr.
Abdel-Rahman is probably the most
popular spokesman, as a greater
danger to the regime than Col. Qad-
dafi in Libya.
They note that Egyptian intelli-
gence has a proven record of suc-.
cess in infi ratiT ng and foiling.
iL byan espionage and terror organi-
zations on Egyptian soil. The Lib-
yans also have had to rely on their
own people infiltrating into Egyp-
tian society The Libvans have been
unable to attract the support in-
digenous groups within Egypt.
The malaise affecting President
Mubarak's regime goes deeper, how-
ever, than fundamentalist rhetoric
or economic recession. As one Wash-
ington expert noted: "Nothing he's
tried has come off. It's all been a
failure"
He instanced the slowness of
Egypt's reintegration into the Arab
world, the strain affecting the rela-
tionship with Israel, the failure of
the Egyptian commando rescue bid
on the hijacked airliner at Malta last
November when 60 people died, the
embarrassment Egypt suffered with
both the United States and the Arab
nations over the Achille Lauro hijack
affair last October, and the April
1985 coup in Sudan that toppled
Egypt's close ally President Gaafar
Nimieri and installed a pro-Qaddafi
regime that has signed a defense
pact with Libya.
Egyptian regimes, the analyst
pointed out, need to play major roles
on the world's stage, with grand ges-
tures, in order to attract popular
support, particularly if their eco-
nomic policies at home are failing.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706130007-1
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706130007-1
2
President Mubarak, after 4'h
years of power, has yet to leave a
mark comparable to that of his pre-
decessors, Gamal Nasser or Anwar
Sadat. His acceptance of Mr. Sadat's
peace policy with Israel enrages
Egypt's Sunni Moslem fundamental-
ists, who look to Iran's Ayatollah
Khoimeini, Shi'ite though he is, for
inspiration.
Mr. Mubarak served as a loyal and
self-effacing No. 2 for many years to
President Sadat. It was widely ex-
pected when he took over that he
would reveal qualities of toughness
and decision, just as Mr. Sadat him-
self had when he came out from un-
der the shadow of Gamal Nasser.
But he has failed to attract the
enthusiasm, or the imagination, of
the Egyptian people. Meanwhile the
economy goes from bad to worse and
Egypt increasingly flounders in its
foreign policy.
lbday, the portraits of Gamal Nas-
ser are reported to be widespread on
the streets of Cairo. This is bad news
for Mr. Mubarak. They were also
thick on the ground back in 1981,
when Mr. Sadat's time was running
out.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706130007-1