Ashmawy's arrest and likely effects on al-Qaeda

Hostility to ruling regimes, both in the East and the West, is the basic idea on which political and operative Islam has been founded. Islamist movements oppose regimes, regardless of whether they follow a liberal policy line or a socialist one. There has never been amity between Islamist movements and the ruling regimes anywhere and at any point in the history of these movements (1).

Sayyed Qotb throws light on the views of political Islam about a wide range of things, including culture, religion and society, in his secret book, "Threads of a Plan".

Our group, Qotb says in the book, is not a section of society or a section of Arab or international societies.

"We are not subjects of the local government, but a new entity that grows up independently," Qotb says. "By swearing allegiance to the supreme guide, the members of the Muslim Brotherhood agree to follow a leadership that is different from the leadership of the people, a state that is different from the state of the people. By this allegiance, we drop the requirement to obey the government of the people and substitute it with the requirement to obey our emir (2)."

To convince its members to do this, the Brotherhood must have the strength to protect itself throughout its growth. It also must be able to achieve its goals once it is a fully-fledged movement (3).

The theoreticians of political and operative Islam view change as a daunting mission. They believe that as time passes, ruling regimes in the Islamic world imbue everything in this world with their anti-Islamic culture. This is why they believe that this problem would not be solved without the presence of a new generation of mujahedeen (4).

This is the reason why, the infiltration of national armies is the Muslim Brotherhood's most preferred tactic. The movement works to attract the elements of national armies to it with the aim of using their expertise and getting military secrets from them.

The goal of the group is to weaken existing national armies and create parallel militaries that back it in its struggle against national states on the road to controlling these states.

Strategic target

The Brotherhood wanted to effect change by infiltrating the army. This might have stood behind the decision of late president Gamal Abdel Nasser to end the Brotherhood's presence in the army and police in the mid-1950s.

The Brotherhood's refusal to recognize the July 1952 revolution precipitated this move on Nasser's part. Nasser would have allowed the group to operate normally for five years in return for this recognition.

The failure of the Brotherhood's leadership to show up to tell Nasser whether they accepted the proposal or not, gave the Egyptian leader the impression that the group conspired against him in secret. A subsequent investigation by Nasser's intelligence officials discovered the presence of a number of pro-Brotherhood cells inside the army. That was in October 1954. He managed to disband these cells before they formed opposition inside the army (5).

In the mid-1990s, the Islamist movement assassinated a large number of senior military and political figures. It also staged a number of bomb attacks. These violent actions came in response to the disbanding of the secret apparatus of the Brotherhood by Nasser. Worse still, a new group emerged within the Brotherhood to demand retaliation and effecting change, even by means of a military coup. This group was led by Sayyed Qotb.

A member of the new group, namely Ulwy Mustafa, succeeded in recruiting a number of army officers. They included Essam al-Qamari and Abdel Aziz al-Gamal. This opened the door for the second attempt by the Brotherhood to infiltrate the army in 1966. Nevertheless, the security agencies succeeded in sabotaging this infiltration and arresting al-Qamari and his colleagues (6).

This encouraged Jihad movement to hammer out an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. The assassination of president Anwar al-Sadat in 1981 was the most successful outcome of this alliance. The late president's assassination was carried out by a group of army officers commanded by Khaled al-Islambouli. The group also included Aboud al-Zomor, a cousin of al-Islambouli.

Terrorists raising their combat skills

Islamist movements continued to believe that they could effect change by recruiting army personnel and planning the assassination of the head of the state for a long time. This plan, however, came against a hard wall when an attempt by Palestinian officer Saleh Saria to recruit students of the Military Technical Colleague was foiled in 1974.

Such an activity was not enough to effect the required change. One of the reasons for the failure of the aforementioned attempts to make the change the Islamists dreamed of was that all these attempts depended on the recruitment of a small number of army personnel. This did not have a major influence on the military establishment. It also failed in creating a parallel military force to the national army.

Nevertheless, two former army officers who joined the Islamist movement succeeded in taking the military capabilities of the movement many steps forward. One of the officers was called Abdel Aziz al-Gamal. This man was instrumental in ameliorating the military capabilities of the al-Qaeda branch in Syria, which was known as al-Nusra Front and is now known as Tahrir al-Sham. He cooperated in doing this with Ahmed Salama Mabrouk, a cofounder of Jihad Organization in Egypt. Mabrouk also supervised the work of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Egypt (7).

The second officer is Hesham Ashmawy who was angered by some administrative measures that were taken against him as an army officer. Ashmawy shifted to Takfiri thoughts and turned later against the army to avenge himself. Both al-Gamal and Ashmawy played a big role in pushing the military capabilities of al-Qaeda forward.

Both of them supervised al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan; Syria; Sinai, and Libya. They trained a large number of terrorists in combat; the making of explosives; sniping, and assassinations.

In fighting against the central state, these former army officers had a vision for what should be done after the downfall of this central state. They also had a plan to weaken this state by staging an extended war of attrition against it.

Jihad Movement, which was headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, staged two operations inside Egypt only, namely an attack against the convoy of the late prime minister Atef Sedki in 1993, and an attack against the former interior minister Hassan al-Alfi in the same year (8).

The assassination of Sadat was exceptional and it took collaboration from a large number of Islamist movements for it to happen (9).

Al-Gamal and Ashmawy made successes in Syria and Libya only because of the chaos reigning in these countries. The presence of a huge security vacuum in these countries gave the chance for terrorist groups to thrive in them.

This opens the door for the presence of terrorist organizations that challenge states (10) and stage major terrorist attacks. The Karm al-Qawadis attack in Arish in October 2014 fell into this model. Thirty policemen and army troops were killed in the attack. A large number of the arms of the troops was also seized by the terrorists.

The presence of former army officers within terrorist groups also gave these groups the ability to upgrade their planning and attack capabilities. This helped them target the command centers of the security and military establishments. This can explain the ability of these groups to attack security directorates and the headquarters of military intelligence as well as senior security figures (12).

Daesh as an inspiration model

The success of former Iraqi army officers to overrun massive areas in their country and declare an "Islamic State" inspired some Egyptian army officers. The coming together of former army officers and Islamist leaders under Daesh's umbrella produced a rare mix (13).

Ashmawy believed he could copy the same mix in Egypt. He sought to found a new organization and attract those escaping the 2013 dispersal of the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in which was staged in support of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. Ashmawy also worked to recruit a number of army officers to his organization.

Daesh succeeded in capturing the northwestern Iraqi city of Mosul and turned it into a launch pad for its operations in Iraq and Syria (14).

Ashmawy did not score similar successes in Sinai, thanks to the strength of the Egyptian army. This was why he decided to move to Libya, seizing the state of unrest there. He believed he could achieve his original goal in Egypt by building his power base in Libya and then returning to Egypt.

Ashmawy's tactic

The presence of former army officers within terrorist organizations contributed to making small armies of these organizations (16). This added to the challenges faced by security agencies in their crackdown on these organizations.

Ashmawy learned a lesson from Daesh's tactics and operations in Syria and Iraq. Like in the case of Daesh, operations by Ashmawy's group depended on the presence of huge firepower against army and police concentrations (17).

When staging attacks at a distance, Ashmawy's group used booby-trapped vehicles and suicide attackers wearing explosive belts, exactly like Daesh did (18).

References

(1)     Sayyed Qotb – "Islam's Battle against Capitalism"

(2)     Rifaat al-Saeed and Adel Hussein – Debate on moderation and extremism

(3)     Ahmed Adel Kamel, the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood's secret apparatus

(4)     Fathi Yakan – Basics of Operational Vision of Islamists

(5)     Suleiman al-Hakim – Secrets of relations between Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood

(6)     Elaph – Interview with Ayman al-Zawahiri

(7)     Maher Faghali – Former army officer released from prison by Mohamed Morsi

(8)     Mohamed Moro – Jihad Oganization: Thoughts, Roots and Policies

(9)     Fouad Zakaria – Facts and Illusions about Contemporary Islamist Movements

(10) Ansar Beit al-Maqdis Group – Conquest of Retaliation for Muslims

(11) Ansar Beit al-Maqdis Group – Claim of responsibility for attack against Cairo Security Directorate

(12) Ansar Beit al-Maqdis Group – Claim of responsibility for the killing of Homeland Security officer Mohamed Mabrouk

(13) Rifaat Sayyed Ahmed – Daesh, the Caliphate of Blood and Fire

(14) Haitham al-Mana'a – Daesh Caliphate: Migration from Illusion to Blood Lakes

(15) Hesham al-Najjar – Hesham Ashmawy, the architect of terrorism and the no. 1 wanted person in Egypt

(16) Explanation by Abu Musab al-Sori of Robert Taber's book "War of the Flea"

(17) Abdullah bin Mohamed – Strategy of Regional War in the Levant

(18) Abdullah bin Mohamed – Strategic Note