Mubarak Takes Over

By William E. Smith

Commited to Sadat's foreign policy, he must now restore confidence at home

For more than six years he had been Anwar Sadat's closest aide and heir apparent; last week he succeeded his slain mentor as President of Egypt. As the People's Assembly chanted, "Long live the Arab Republic of Egypt," Hosni Mubarak, 53, took the oath of office and pledged, as he had done immediately after Sadat's death, to follow his predecessor's policies. "This is my fate," he said, "to stand before you in his absence. Egypt is stable. The greatest tribute we can pay him is to follow his course." Mubarak affirmed Egypt's support of the peace treaty with Israel, assured his countrymen that the Israelis would keep their promise to withdraw from the easternmost portion of the Sinai by next April, and promised to work for a comprehensive Middle East settlement. He defended the loyalty of the armed forces and warned his adversaries that if they broke the law they would be dealt with "unmercifully." "There is no difference between Muslim and Christian," he declared. "We are all of the same caravan. Let us always ask what we can give to Egypt, not what we can take from it."

The reaction, from both Egyptians and foreigners, was generally favorable. On Tuesday, Mubarak had won 98.46% of the vote in the national referendum that elected him President. In his address to parliament the following day, he spoke with authority and emotion, seemingly making a conscious effort to transform himself from an understudy into a national leader. "He has an important trait," said one former parliamentarian. "He listens, and in this part of the world we need a leader who listens."

There were a few incidents of unrest in the country, though nothing to equal the 36 hours of bloody fighting between Islamic fundamentalists and security forces that had taken place late the previous week in the southern city of Asyut, where at least 100 were killed. After a gun battle in a Cairo suburb, police arrested two men whom they accused of leading the rioting in Asyut. At Cairo International Airport, two bombs exploded in the baggage hold of an Air Malta jetliner that had just arrived from Libya, killing an airport worker and injuring a dozen others.

In an atmosphere of deliberate calm, Mubarak launched a purge, including the transfer of hundreds of army officers and civil servants of "fanatical religious tendencies" to less sensitive posts, and an investigation of the failure of military intelligence to detect the presence of the armed assassins who gunned down Sadat. He also authorized the "preventive" arrests of several hundred known civilian extremists of both the left and right and asked the People's Assembly for legislation imposing the death penalty on anyone found guilty of unlawful use of firearms.

After pondering how best to demonstrate its support of post-Sadat Egypt, the

Reagan Administration decided on a military response. At the end of his trip to Cairo to attend Sadat's funeral, Secretary of State Alexander Haig announced that the U.S. was ready to accelerate and increase the supply of arms to both Egypt and its southern ally, the Sudan. Furthermore, said Haig, the U.S. would take part next month in a "very extensive joint military exercise" with Egyptian forces. The Pentagon also sent out two AW ACS planes to patrol the skies of Egypt and the Sudan against possible Libyan attack, and was considering a bombing run on Egyptian desert targets by U.S. B-52 bombers.

Haig described the U.S. supply buildup as merely a "sign of reassurance," adding: "There are indications of increasing Libyan activity and threats to peaceful nations in the region." Haig also talked in Cairo with Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiri, whose border villages have been strafed by Libyan planes. Nimeiri says he fears a Libyan invasion, although some European diplomats in Khartoum believe the situation is not as serious as he has portrayed it.

The Reagan Administration's show of "reassurance" was greeted with little enthusiasm by America's principal Western

European allies. One Western European ambassador in Washington described the plan as encapsulating "all that is wrong with American foreign policy" and described as a "caricature" the notion of sending out B-52s to bomb the sands near the Libyan-Egyptian border. Another Western diplomat said flatly: "The means employed by this Administration are completely disproportionate to the intended effect. They nullify it." In Bonn, officials privately called the approach heavy handed, fearing that it would attract attention to U.S. interests in Egypt, fan further Islamic unrest and lend substance to Soviet charges that the Egyptian government is an American puppet. Right on cue, the Soviet press accused the Administration of "crude interference" in Egypt's affairs and insisted that the U.S. was "feverishly stepping up war preparations in the Middle East."

Even some Israelis felt that the Administration's response was out of step with reality. Asked a high-ranking Israeli intelligence official: "What are Mubarak's main problems? A pre-emptive strike by the Libyan army? Nonsense. The main danger for the Egyptian regime is within Egypt; the real challenges are poverty, hunger, the opposition groups, and the imams preaching at the mosques."

As the week passed, precious few additional details came to light concerning the Sadat assassination. One theory remained unchanged: that the assassins were members of a small, violent Islamic fundamentalist group, Takfir wa Hijra (Atonement and Holy Flight). An outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, Takfir wa Hijra was responsible for the abduction and murder of one of Sadat's former Cabinet ministers in 1977; now it is implicated not only in the killing of Sadat but in the rioting later that week in Asyut.

Takfir wa Hijra is only one of an unknown number of fanatical Islamic groups that permeate wide sections of Egyptian society. Says Political Scientist Ali E. Hillal Dessouki of Cairo University: "My hunch is that there are many groups of ten or 15 people, organized into very small cells. They are clandestine, secretive, underground and not public. They are certainly amassing weapons."

The roots of the fundamentalist resurgence lie in the social dislocation that has swept the Arab world, and Egypt in particular, over the past two decades. Says

Arabist John Williams of the American University of Cairo: "These groups appeal to those who don't think they are getting their fair share of the benefits of modernization." Fundamentalist tendencies are most entrenched in the lower middle class and in Egypt's universities, where they have mushroomed over the past four or five years. Says Dessouki of the converts: "These are people who are neither urban nor rural, who are overwhelmed by city life and feel alien to it. They are a very precarious class."

Many of the Islamic groups have at their center a powerful leader. In the case of Takfir wa Hijra, it was Shukri Ahmed Mustafa, who was hanged by the Sadat government in 1978 for planning the murder of the former Religious Affairs Minister. To his followers, the charismatic Mustafa was an almost omnipotent authority on religious as well as personal matters. "Even after the death sentence had been handed out," wrote Sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim in a study of the group, "Mustafa's followers would not believe that the government could take his life." Like many other fanatical Muslims, Takfir wa Hijra members seek to return to a purely Islamic society, and are willing to use violence to achieve that goal.

In all likelihood, the shock of Sadat's murder will impede the rapid growth of the fundamentalist movements for the time being. But, as one Egyptian scholar cautions, "the huge base of sympathizers, which may number in the millions, is still in place." Almost everyone agrees that the militants lack the power to seize the government, but they do have the capacity to cause endless trouble. Security crackdowns, such as Sadat's roundup of 1,600 assorted opponents last month or the arrests last week, could easily backfire. So could the Reagan Administration's plan for a spectacular display of American military power, another pointed reminder to the fanatics of Egypt's Western connection.

Thus one of the most pressing matters for Mubarak's government is to determine to what extent militant Muslims have penetrated the army. The government has not revealed whether the assassination plot extended to the level of colonels or higher, as many believe; whether the Libyans or the Soviets provided assistance; or whether any of Egypt's exiled nationalists were involved.

But the government is obviously apprehensive. In the parade two weeks ago at which Sadat was shot, all the troops except the assassins carried weapons without ammunition. At the funeral four days later, the honor guard was equipped with rifles from which even the bolts had been removed.

--By William E. Smith.

Reported by Jack E. White and Robert C. Wurmstedt/ Cairo

With reporting by Jack E. White, Robert C. Wurmstedt

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