Democracy with a Bite

By William E. Smith

Sadat cracks down hard on an unfocused but growing opposition

"In Egypt you will find an island of love, friendship and democracy--an open country with happy people who have hope for the future." So said Anwar Sadat just two years ago. Today the President of Egypt might have trouble locating many knowledgeable Egyptians who would endorse so sanguine an assessment of the national life.

Concerned by rising militancy among Islamic fundamentalists who object to his secular and pro-Western policies, Sadat has launched a crackdown on dissidents of all persuasions. Over the past two weeks, more than 1,600 of the regime's most vocal opponents--Islamic and Christian militants, political activists, lawyers, journalists, professors--have been rounded up and imprisoned, to stand trial beginning this week. The charges: fomenting sectarian sedition, undermining stability, or simply violating the measure Sadat pushed through last year, known as the "Law of Shame," that makes it illegal to propagate rumors damaging to the state. Fifteen religious societies have been disbanded, virtually all dissenting publications have been closed down, independent mosques have been "nationalized," and Pope Shenouda III of the Coptic Christian Church has been exiled to a desert monastery.

Sadat, with his usual candor, called the wave of arrests a "purge." It was also one of the riskiest gambles he has taken during his eleven years in power. At first he seemed undaunted by the effect that the campaign might have on his reputation abroad as a world statesman. But then he took the unusual step of summoning Egyptian and foreign journalists to his home village of Mit Abu el Kom to explain his action. At the press conference Sadat declared: "I am facing fanaticism on both sides, and I am trying to remedy it." Alluding to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran that overthrew the Shah, Sadat insisted he faced no similar threat. Said he: "Don't fear that we will have a Khomeini here." He insisted that his government was based on democratic principles. "Democracy, when it bites, has fiercer claws than dictators" because "democracy defends the mass population of the country."

When a U.S. reporter asked whether he had consulted President Reagan about the crackdown beforehand, Sadat rightly dismissed the question as impertinent, later adding, in bitter jest: "In other times, I would have shot you, but it is democracy I am really suffering from as much as I am suffering from the opposition."

To prove his contention that he was supported by "99.9%" of Egypt's 43 million people, Sadat hastily called a nationwide referendum. As he had predicted, over 99% of the 11 million Egyptians who went to the polls endorsed Sadat's call for "national unity."

Sadat had alleged in a weekend address following the arrests that an elaborate conspiracy was under way aimed at undermining his authority. Sadat fears that his secular enemies are hoping to bring him down not by a coup (he firmly controls the army) or at the polls (where he seems invincible) but by fomenting trouble between the Muslim and Christian communities in the hope of creating national chaos. In his speech, Sadat accused both religious and political enemies of "conniving together" to exaggerate several recent incidents of unrest, including a domestic quarrel between a Muslim family and a Christian family last June that had led to three days of clashes and at least 17 deaths. The event itself was unimportant, said Sadat, but was exploited by the regime's religious opponents as well as two legal opposition groups. The national security, declared Sadat, demanded the detention and trial of those who stirred up religious strife.

It quickly became obvious, however, that the President's targets were not limited to those specific troublemakers. The net had simply been spread too wide for Sadat to argue that the campaign was anything but an across-the-board attack on the opposition. Also rounded up by police were a number of political figures and other notables--including Journalist Mohammed Heikal and the elderly head of the now-defunct New Wafd Party, Fuad Seraged-Din--who obviously had no connection with the incident in June. At the end of his address, Sadat ordered the suspension of seven opposition publications and the transfer of 67 journalists from state-owned newspapers and broadcasting services to less sensitive posts.

Then, to the surprise of his audience, Sadat declared that he had revoked a 1971 presidential directive affirming Shenouda as the leader of Egypt's 6 million Coptic Christians, who form 14% of the population. Sadat accused Shenouda of failing to assist his government in quelling sectarian strife. Among the detainees were eight Coptic bishops, 13 priests and 125 alleged lay activists, as well as 55 secular dissidents and intellectuals.

But the real target of Sadat's sweeping clampdown is the Islamic fundamentalists, who object to his eagerness to bring Western business into the country and to his dealings with the Israelis. Among the Muslims seized were Omar Telmissani, 75, head of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, and Dr. Hilmy Gazzar, leader of militant student groups, along with 28 of his lieutenants. Later, an additional 54 Islamic activists were arrested in Alexandria.

A total of 40,000 independent mosques, which had operated without government supervision and were often the centers of denunciations of the Sadat regime, were "nationalized," meaning that their imams (preachers) are to be replaced by "enlightened," government-sanctioned Islamic leaders. Complained one fundamentalist: "Every Muslim has his favorite sheik and his favorite mosque. How is he going to feel when he goes to pray on Friday and finds a government employee there instead?"

Sadat was widely criticized abroad last week for demonstrating so vividly that Egypt is not a fully realized democracy --which of course it is not and has never been. Sadat has long dreamed of establishing real democracy in Egypt, even though he has at times felt obliged to put security and order ahead of political freedom. When he sees a threat to his regime building up, he does not hesitate to hit back hard. He did so in 1971 and again in 1978, and he is doing so now against the threat, however unfocused it may be at present, of a Khomeini-style fundamentalist revolt in the Cairo streets.

Sadat's current difficulties do not stem specifically from his country's poverty, or the widening gap between the haves and have nots, or the astonishingly conspicuous consumption by the very rich, although these are all elements. It is rather that, in the face of a concatenation of problems, including the phenomenal rise of Islamic fervor in recent decades, Sadat badly needs another triumph to keep the disparate elements of opposition from coalescing into a critical mass. He became an instant hero in October 1973 when he sent his army across the Suez Canal to drive back the Israelis. He caught the popular imagination again when he went to Jerusalem in 1977, and the following year when he signed the Camp David accords.

The momentum of those accomplishments may continue, to some degree, until next April, when Egyptians will celebrate the final return of the Israeli-occupied Sinai to their control. In the meantime, internal pressure will mount on Sadat to demonstrate the validity of his policies toward Israel, preferably in the form of some sort of self-determination for the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Sadat is committed to this goal. "This is my fate," he has told TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn on several occasions. "I have accepted my fate."

Sadat believes that this goal can be achieved only by direct influence from the U.S. As he is fond of saying, "In this game, the U.S. holds 95% of the cards." Indeed, one explanation for the timing of Sadat's crackdown is that he wanted President Reagan, in his talks with Prime Minister Begin, to press Israel to settle the Palestinian issue and thus strengthen Egypt's position in the Arab world. The Reagan Administration, in turn, realizes the importance of Sadat's role in the region. Says one top State Department official: "Sadat is the keystone of our policies." Thus, however secure Sadat may appear to be at present, his continuing troubles are a call for haste.--By William E. Smith. Reported by Nathaniel Harrison and Robert C. Wurmstedt/Cairo

With reporting by Nathaniel Harrison, Robert C Wurmstedt/Cairo

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