EGYPT: Egypt's terrorist group Gama'a, whose 1,200 victims included 58 tourists atLuxor, has become moderate. Siona Jenkins in Cairo explains why
For most Egyptians it was a sight that bordered on the surreal. Splashed across one of the country's semi-official news magazines, al-Musawwar, one day last month were pictures of the imprisoned leaders of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the country's largest and most violent terrorist group, smilingly shaking hands with the publication's editor-in-chief.
Many of the bearded Gama'a men wore the red jumpsuits of prisoners under sentence of death. The man they were greeting, Makram Muhammed Ahmed, had survived an assassination attempt by their organisation a little over a decade earlier.
The 19-page interview with Mr Ahmed, along with equally long articles in two subsequent issues, was just as unexpected. The men who had spearheaded a decade-long campaign of violence to overthrow the Egyptian government issued an apology for the crimes which their group had "committed against Egypt."
Why a state-run publication would rehabilitate the Gama'a so dramatically at a time when most of the world is busy cracking down on Islamist groups is a matter of intense debate in Cairo.
The jailed leadership of the Gama'a first offered a cessation of violence in July 1997, only months after it had masterminded the massacre of 58 tourists in Luxor, but it was rejected as a ploy by the government.
The Gama'a maintained its ceasefire despite initial opposition from some exiled leaders. In January, just four months after the September 11th attacks, the organisation published a four-volume tract called The Correction of Concepts, which discussed the religious justification for its non-violent approach.
"Initially there was a lack of confidence on the part of the government," explained Montasser az-Zayyat, a lawyer with close ties to the Gama'a.
"There had been too much fighting, too much blood. But by reconsidering the ceasefire in such a way, with a journalist like Makram Muhammed Ahmed, who has close ties to the security establishment and to people in power, the government is showing its confidence in the initiative."
Although few believe the Egyptian government has made a deal with the Gama'a, analysts in Egypt and in the London-based Arabic press have suggested that the articles could be preparing the ground domestically for the release of some of the imprisoned militants.
"I think this is an endorsement aimed at Egypt's political class, most of whom have never accepted the Gama'a's ceasefire," said Hisham Qasem, head of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights and publisher of the English-language Cairo Times newspaper.
In recent months Egypt has been stung by accusations in the US press that its authoritarian style of government feeds militancy. It has also been upset by opinion pieces by columnists such as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who lumped Egypt together with Saudi Arabia as a place where "those who inspired the hijackers are religious leaders, pseudo-intellectuals, pundits and educators."
"This is a deliberate message from the Egyptians to the Americans," Dia Rashwan, a widely respected expert on Egypt's Islamist movement, told The Irish Times.
"The Americans think that even if Islamists change their ideas, they are still Islamists, but the Egyptians see things differently and are sure that the Gama'a al-Islamiyya has transformed."
Formed in the turmoil of Egypt's university campuses in the 1970s, the Gama'a al-Islamiyya grew into a vast network that provided help to millions of Egypt's poor. Its conservative religious message was sympathetically received by a population that had seen few benefits from secular government. In the late 1980s, it began a campaign of violence that ended with the deaths of more than 1,200 people, among them policemen, politicians, Christians and tourists.
By the time al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya's jailed leaders first announced its ceasefire five years ago, the organisation was in tatters. Widespread revulsion at the brutal massacre of 58 tourists in Luxor a few months earlier had alienated much of their remaining grassroots support in Egypt.
"The police crushed them," said Hisham Qasem. "They used mass arrests, torture and extrajudicial killing. I don't approve of their methods, but they broke the organisation."
In his office at al-Musawwar, Makram Muhammed Ahmed has seen countless journalists and diplomats since the articles were published.
"I have been an opponent of theirs for years - they even tried to shoot me," he told The Irish Times. "But this \ is a good thing. Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya is a big organisation. When we get rid of its violent ideas, this will affect Islamic groups all over the world."