Trouble on The Nile

By Bruce W. Nelan

PEOPLE WALK THE STREETS OF Cairo these days peering over their shoulders. Tourists wonder if a bomb might be hidden in this bus or that corner cafe. Egyptians never know when they might be caught in a gun battle between radical Muslims and the police. "I don't worry about myself," says a native Cairene, "but I do worry about what could happen to my family." The peace of the capital is threatened by Islamic rebels seeking to ignite a civil war.

In the grimy streets of Cairo's Imbaba neighborhood, Islamic fundamentalists have taken charge, running protection rackets and intimidating the police. Gun battles have disrupted the southern city of Asyut as heavily armed police raid the havens of militants. Terrorists have set off bombs in the cities along the Nile, where tourists, foreign residents and Egyptian Christians are usually the targets. The violence ignited by extremists and police retaliation has killed 116 people in the past year, 29 in the past month. In a brutal campaign to put down the militants, the government has rounded up thousands of suspects and ordered almost 100 held for military trial. If they are found guilty of complicity in terrorism, they could be hanged.

Could Egypt be going the way of Iran? That question will be on the mind of both Bill Clinton and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak when the two men meet in Washington this week. Though fundamentalists are at odds with all the secular Arab governments of North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, Mubarak is a special target. His country has not only made a separate peace with the archenemy, Israel, but has also joined the Western alliance in the Gulf War and continues to work closely with the U.S.

Radicals of Egypt's Islamic Group would like to do to Mubarak what their fanatic brothers did to the Shah of Iran: topple him and install a purely Islamic government. They even have their own Ayatullah equivalent: Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who calls passionately for Mubarak's overthrow from mosques in the U.S., including the one in New Jersey where some of the suspects in the bombing of the World Trade Center worshipped.

In spite of the rising violence, Mubarak confidently asserts that he does not consider the Islamists a serious threat to his government. "The situation is not that unstable," he told TIME's Cairo bureau chief Dean Fischer last week. Radical Muslims who oppose peace between Arabs and Israelis, Mubarak is convinced, are working to bring down his government. He is certain they are directed from Iran. "There is no doubt," he said. "The Iranians have said that if they could change the Egyptian regime, they would control the whole area." He says fundamentalists recruited from several Arab countries are being trained in Sudan, which has an Islamic government almost as unyielding as Iran's. "The Sudanese deny it, but there are training camps there."

Western experts do not dispute the President's claims entirely. But Egypt would face a fundamentalist threat even if Iran and Sudan did not exist. Homegrown poverty, overpopulation, poor housing and rampant corruption would almost certainly stir radicalism and unrest without any agitation from outside.

Mubarak believes that tough law enforcement is the only effective response. "The police are taking the initiative," he says, though he rejects accusations that they are using excessive force and firepower. Critics charge that the tough antiterrorism laws and shoot-first police tactics are only undermining democracy and feeding resentment.

Mubarak dismisses the potency of Sheik Omar's preachings from the U.S. "He thinks he is another Ayatullah Khomeini," says Mubarak, "but there is a great difference between them. The followers of this so-called sheik are less than a tenth of 1% ((of Egyptians))."

The link between domestic discord and regional strife is clear to Mubarak. As a key broker in the Arab-Israeli peace process, he is eager to see the talks resume on April 20. He conferred with Syrian President Hafez Assad and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat before taking off for Washington. He got Arafat's proxy for an attempt to resolve the impasse over 400 Palestinian fundamentalists Israel deported to Lebanon last year, the issue that has stalled negotiations for months. From Assad, Mubarak obtained a commitment to the "full peace" Israel seeks in exchange for returning the occupied Golan Heights to Syria. "I don't want this chance for stability in this part of the world to pass," he said. If it does, "it would be very dangerous for those who want to cooperate with the Americans."

Mubarak is well aware of the difficulties in persuading his people that things will improve. If the religious fundamentalists can convince enough Egyptians that they will fare better under them than under the current government, then the future is certain to hold more violence and strife than Mubarak -- or Washington -- could have imagined a few months ago.