Egypt’s ‘Unknown Army’ Wages War in Islam’s Name : Extremism: The government seems paralyzed as nation faces an alarming wave of sectarian violence.

It started a few years ago in this verdant village of date palms, barley fields and slow-footed water buffalo. Maybe it started the day Gamal Farghali Haridi came home from the university with a beard and a new way of talking.

He spoke of God and how a good Muslim life ought to be lived. His friends grew beards too, and things started changing in the village. For example, the singing and dancing at weddings that once were a staple of social life here ended because Haridi said they were haraam --against religion.

Haridi formed a branch of the Gamaat Islamiya, a shadowy religious organization that killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The Gamaat became the law in Manshiet Nasser: Christian shopkeepers were assessed thousands of pounds for the privilege of doing business in the village. A man’s hand was broken when he was caught drinking alcohol after a warning. Beshry Khalil was attacked with iron pipes on the morning of Dec. 17 for the crime of having criticized Haridi, and his legs and right arm were left shattered.

Haridi, 32, a former government supply inspector, became known as the local “emir,” and his brand of Islam quickly became a reign of terror. In March, he accused a Christian of stealing some wood, and when the Christian refused to pay a fine, police say, Haridi and friends showed up with automatic rifles and shot the man and two others dead.

A showdown in the village came May 4, when Haridi’s quarrel with a Christian family erupted into a massacre, unleashing the worst sectarian violence in Egypt in more than a decade. Police say 13 Christians and a Muslim were shot to death in a 15-minute spree by Haridi and his gang of the faithful, who then fled into the fields.

Similar incidents of violence broke out in surrounding villages. Nearly 70 Christian shops were burned or ransacked; other Christians--doctors and shopkeepers--were murdered. A Christian was shot and then hacked up with butcher knives in nearby Sanabu. The Islamic “emir” in the village was shot to death by police after Friday prayers late last month, sending hundreds of Muslims into the streets to attack the shops of their Christian neighbors. In Cairo, a prominent journalist who had attacked Islamic fundamentalists in his writings was assassinated.

Egypt, the gentle giant that has been at once the most populous and the most stable country in the turbulent Middle East, is facing a wave of sectarian violence and a new assault by underground Islamic fundamentalist groups. Analysts say it is the most serious since Sadat’s assassination more than a decade ago.

“The events in themselves are scary enough, but they are indicators of some underlying trends that are even scarier. It is hard for me to be as optimistic about the future of this country as I was a month ago,” said a Western diplomat in Cairo. “The scariest fact is that the government seems relatively clueless about what to do. I don’t think they have a strategy for an intelligent struggle against violent extremism.

“There’s a lot of things happening now that the government doesn’t seem to be able to control,” he added. “You could ask the question, ‘Has the government lost control of Upper Egypt?’ It’s not an impossible proposition.”

Parliament member Milad Hanna, a prominent Coptic Christian, observed: “We’re fighting a new kind of war. . . . We don’t know the leaders, we don’t know where they are, and we don’t know the formation of their armies or even what instructions they have. But my reading is very simple: These unknown leaders, through the unknown army, have given directions to bring down the government of Egypt.”

Security officials in the communities of Upper Egypt, where the officially outlawed Gamaat runs clinics and displays posters criticizing the government and calling the faithful to public prayers, say there are indications that the group is receiving help from outside the country to acquire arms and ammunition.

A seizure at the Asyut railway station last month netted large numbers of automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades bound for the Upper Egyptian community of Girga, which has a large Coptic population. Anti-tank weapons were found in a separate seizure. So many guns have been smuggled across the border from Sudan and stolen from Egyptian military camps and factories that an automatic rifle that sold on the street in turbulent Dairut for 6,000 pounds a few months ago now sells for only 2,000 pounds, diplomats say.

Authorities have been alarmed by the reaction of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s powerful Islamic organization, which is the umbrella of official Islam all over the Middle East. Officially outlawed in Egypt, the Brotherhood is nonetheless permitted to operate and has elected several members to Parliament. Unlike the Gamaat, the Brotherhood has renounced violence since the 1970s.

But the group responded in an unsettling fashion to the assassination of journalist Farag Foda, a writer who had said that the government’s courting of “official” Islam, as represented by the sheiks of Al Azhar University, was an equally dangerous counterweight to the fundamentalists.

The government, the Brotherhood said, was partly responsible for Foda’s death because it allowed him access to the official media to “stab Islam in the heart. . . . This continued provocation and disregard for Muslim sentiments at a time when the whole world is hounding them with war . . . will lead to such incidents.”

President Hosni Mubarak, grasping for a strategy, has called for a new anti-terrorist law to strengthen an already-Draconian emergency law that has been in place since Sadat’s assassination, allowing authorities to hold suspected terrorists without formal charges for much longer than the 45 days permitted under current law. “The people of Egypt reject the conspiracy against their security and stability,” he said. “They draw a distinction between true religion and terrorism, which uses violence to terrorize and destabilize society.”

Because the existing emergency law has been used often in Egypt for long detentions of leftists and intellectuals as well as Islamic fundamentalists, the proposed new law has drawn widespread criticism. And political analysts say Mubarak could be further eroding his support within the Egyptian mainstream.

“The danger is that in its zeal to contain these fundamentalists, the government overreaches and starts treading on everybody’s rights and alienates everyone,” a diplomat said. “Whatever credibility Mubarak has is being progressively undermined by these actions.”

Upper Egypt, a vast region of farmland along the Nile River where it winds its way north out of Sudan, has always been a violent land. Blood feuds rage between families for decades over simple land transactions. In Dairut, a city just outside of Manshiet Nasser where almost everyone has a gun, there is an average of a shooting a day. “This is Chicago,” one police officer explained.

But what the past months’ events have revealed are the extent to which violence in Upper Egypt has begun to assume a religious cast and the level of support for a banned Islamic organization that not only killed a president 11 years ago but assassinated the Speaker of Parliament less than two years ago.

Political leaders, in interviews, said they were powerless to confront an organization that has offered meat to the poor, cheap medical examinations and help for students studying for exams--assistance programs the government has not provided. When the governor of Asyut province refused to reschedule payments required on government housing, the Gamaat stepped in to aid the poor. It offered financial help to families who couldn’t pay private-school fees.

“They have become like Robin Hoods,” said a sociologist who recently studied the Upper Egypt violence. “I was amazed. You ride in a taxi with people, and they all have stories about what they’ve done, about how their guns are better than the guns of the police. They say things like, ‘Don’t they have a fine sense of humor, the way they shot that doctor just when he had a bottle of medicine in his hand?’ ”

Haridi himself has become something of a folk hero. Since he fled Manshiet Nasser after the May 4 massacre, various stories of his fate have circulated. One had him appearing in Sanabu with an automatic weapon late last month, a day after Arafa Darwish, the Islamic “emir” of that village, was shot dead by police outside a Gamaat-controlled mosque. Other stories have him hiding in the stark, sandy mountains above the Nile Valley where Egyptian bandits have secreted themselves for centuries. Another says he drowned in the Nile. Another says he fled to Sudan.

The police say Haridi is still at large, and they warn of continued violence.

Large numbers of Christians and some Muslims have fled the villages where the violence has been worst, and those left behind are bitter toward the government for failing to protect them and for allowing the fundamentalists to become so powerful to begin with.

“It’s the government’s fault. These men stand 16 meters from the police station and hurl insults at Hosni Mubarak and (Interior Minister Mohammed) Abdel-Halim Moussa, and the police don’t lift a finger. If the government doesn’t take action against them, am I supposed to move against them as a citizen?” one man in Dairut said.

The owner of a Christian shop in Sanabu, one of 64 such shops destroyed after Darwish was killed by police, stood in the wreckage and spoke quietly. “There’s a feeling that the government is weak. They’re letting things go,” he said. “People realized what they could get away with, and they didn’t stop. All over south Egypt there are tensions now.”

Less than a mile away, in Manshiet Nasser, the mother of a 33-year-old Christian teacher who was shot to death in the classroom in front of his students wept quietly. His widow, six months pregnant, was angry. The dead man’s brother, Malag Gaddis Girgis, was resigned, saying: “Maybe even the majority of the people have left the village in fear. We would like to go ourselves, but where do we go?

“You can’t just blame the police,” he added. “There was a police general in the village on the day this happened. He went out and saw the bodies in the fields and cried with the rest of us. Later, he helped us lift my brother’s body into the ambulance.”

Not far down the street, the house of the Christian family involved in the argument that started the May 4 massacre stands only a few feet away from the Haridi family house. Three of the dead were shot outside the house. “We know all of the people who killed them. They’re from our village. They grew up with us. But lately they’ve been solving everything by force,” said a man whose uncle and brother were among the dead.

At the Haridi house, the director of Egypt’s military police force sat on a bench sipping a Coke. Three soldiers with automatic rifles lounged in the front yard. They were waiting for Haridi to come home. “He won’t be back,” a policeman said with a grin. “He’s in the mountains. He’s not coming home.”

At a side door of the house, where what’s left of the Haridi family shares the front room with two cows, Haridi’s stepmother, Nabila, shook her head and said: “We’re just trying to do the field work ourselves, putting the children to work. What fault is this of ours? It’s not our fault at all.”

In Asyut, capital of this Upper Egyptian district, Gov. Hassan Mohammed Alfi points out that one wall of his office is covered with photographs of former Asyut governors who, with the experience of combatting Egypt’s toughest problem under their belts, have been promoted to interior minister.

Alfi said he has found jobs for nearly 5,000 youths. He is also working on a reclamation project that will allot five farm acres each to 10,000 young people.

“Economics are very important. When you don’t find something to eat, you’re likely to turn to disobedience,” he said. “There’s no question there have been shortcomings on the part of the government in providing services, and this is why we want to improve it.”

At nearby Asyut University, known throughout Egypt for turning out new generations of young Islamic fundamentalists, Mohammed Habib, chairman of the Faculty Club, is also a leading official of the Muslim Brotherhood. He dismissed the violence of recent weeks as the work of “criminals” but warned of more trouble ahead.

“The organizations of the government have failed, they’re corrupt, and you can understand why many people are attracted to these groups as a result,” he said. “Whatever is negative about these groups, people will find themselves silent when they find there are more negative things about the government.

“There are now 4 million Egyptians unemployed,” he added. “These groups have been trying in their way to help people with their problems, and to some extent they have succeeded. But the government shows no mercy, nor does it allow God’s mercy to reach them.”

Speaking calmly and with a slight smile, the bearded Habib nodded. “No one can really ignore what may happen if a fire breaks out between Muslims and non-Muslims,” he said. “Anyone knows, Muslim or Christian, whoever lights the fire will be the first one to burn. But it may be the government itself which lights the match.”