The warrior of all Egypt is with you

It is a battle for honor and dignity, a battle to build and protect homelands, a battle to besiege and subdue the forces of treachery and betrayal. Your grandparents and fathers fought it before, and now it's your turn. You are not alone in the midst of that battle. All the Egyptians are behind you, around you and with you. They support you and strengthen your back. God is with you, and the good people from the sons of Egypt pray to the Lord Almighty to protect you, grant you success, and help you. The best soldiers of the earth are your soldiers, so do not give up and do not despair.

We know, Mr. President, that the price that Egypt is paying now, in terms of pure blood, martyrs, widows and orphans, is not only to protect its national security, you said that more than once, but for the stability of the entire region, including Europe and the whole world. We also know the size of the conspiracy that was hatched, and its chapters are still being seen, against Egypt, the Egyptians, and the region as a whole. Although the June 30 revolution stopped the march towards the division of Egypt, this conspiracy in which the terrorist Brotherhood was implicated to its ears, its black spirit is blown over and over again. The process of partitioning Libya, Yemen and Syria has already begun, and now they are trying to demolish the fortifications of security in our country to make us lose confidence in our army and police in preparation for tearing us apart and scattering our unity.

We also know that their plan is not a product of today or yesterday, but rather dates back to 1973, when the Egyptian armed forces defeated Israel in a war that is the most honorable in Egypt's modern history.

On that day, it became established for all those parties that Israel is not safe from danger, and that at any moment it could be exposed to an existential danger. The victory achieved by the Egyptian army could be repeated, and in the case of the union of Arab armies, Israel could become a mere memory, which these parties could not allow at all.

We know that their scheme was based on the fragmentation of the Arab countries from within, so that there would be no major Arab state, and therefore there would be no Arab army that could consolidate its strength in the region or represent a “deterrence” force for the expansionist projects of the Zionist state.

We also know that these parties have reached the peak of their dream after the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolutions, which were installed by the terrorist Brotherhood as the Trojan horse on which these forces will rely to redraw the region again.

We are also sure that the fingers of these parties are still playing in the region. They stopped a little after the June 30 revolution, which postponed the project to re-divide the region for a while, but they are now rearranging their cards to resume the implementation of the scheme again.

What is happening in Yemen and on our western borders in Libya is not far from what we refer to and you always refer to, Mr. President. We know that we are facing a really big conspiracy involving many parties for the sake of Israel’s eyes.

It is an open confrontation that Egypt is waging with a number of the most important and most dangerous intelligence services in the world, in addition to the international organization of the terrorist Brotherhood and its allies, the aim of which is to bring Egypt to its knees and humiliate it in response to what this great people and its army did on June 30, 2013, when it came out to announce the demolition of the pillars of the conspiracy and the dream of re-division of the region in the sea.

We know all this, Mr. President, but what do we do? Shall we be satisfied with the traditional measures of curfews in the areas of events, declaring a state of emergency, declaring mourning and popular anger towards what is happening, while terrorism claims dozens of the lives of our children every day? The battle with terrorism is not a traditional war battle, Mr. President. Whoever considers it or fights it in this sense, or with tools such as those used in those wars, such as planes, mortars, and tanks, loses. The war of terrorism is based on information and the way to deal with it and analyze it, and the decision taken in light of it, and how to implement it in innovative ways and personnel at the highest level of training.

It is not the gun, nor the size of the fire, that determines the framework of the battle. Withholding logistical support is one of the ABCs of confronting terrorism. As long as money is poured into them through intermediaries in the region, and I mean here the terrorist Hamas movement in particular, and as long as training, supplying weapons, providing hiding places, drawing plans, and covering up operations continue, without punishment, our sons will continue to pay the price with their blood every day.

Kill them wherever you catch them, and drive them out, do not take mercy or pity, and make them suffer as we suffer. Punishment must affect everyone who provided logistical support for these despicable criminal operations, from the leaders and cadres of the terrorist Hamas movement, to everyone who financed in Doha and Istanbul, because he who is safe from punishment continues to misbehave.

Here we are not inventing the wheel, as we have extensive experience in confronting terrorism, whether from what we suffered of it in the 1990s or what we experienced at the beginning of the second millennium, and on both occasions we brought terrorism to its knees and forced it either to declare a cessation of violence and lay down arms unconditionally, as happened with the Islamic Jihad and al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya groups in the 1990s, or flee and hide for many years, as happened with the al-Tawhid wal-Jihad organization in 2006.

Old realities

In a previous article by me after the Karam al-Qawadis incident, I explained the Egyptian experience in confronting terrorism in the 1990s. The problems besieging the security apparatus at the time, 1990-1994, were confined to two main problems: the first was the lack of an integrated information base on terrorist organizations, their internal formations, their external extensions, their means of financing, and those who provide logistical support to them, and the second was the absence of a policeman trained in this type of operation that started in Egypt at that time.

Within about six months, the security apparatus, over which Major General Ahmed Al-Adly took responsibility at the time, and I mean here the State Security Investigations, began to rearrange its cards, taking advantage of some relations abroad, where information has a specific price and an open market and available to all. The war was as it is now, directed and supported from abroad, so information was purchased, compiled, classified and accessed through it to an integrated map of terrorist groups covering the entire region.

Coinciding with that plan, large groups of the best officers in the State Security Investigations sector were sent at the time to a number of countries that were famous for having specialized units in combating this type of crime, to form what were later called “counterterrorism forces” to come in 1994. The security apparatus took full control of the initiative, and the index completely changed in its favor, by succeeding in inflicting a number of fatal blows, which made the terrorists lose their minds and made them flounder through plans and operations that completely exhausted them.

The matter did not stop there, as the confrontation during that period included the submission of 120 cases to the Supreme State Security Prosecution and the military courts, which included more than a thousand accused members of terrorist groups, 94 of whom were sentenced to death, 70 of whom were actually executed.

Many operations against public figures and tourist places were also thwarted, and hundreds of members of those groups were arrested, which prompted the Islamic Jihad organization to take a decision at the end of 1995 to stop armed operations permanently in Egypt, followed in 1997 by al-Jama'a al-Islammiyya's decision to lay down arms and stop military operations.

Now, it seems as we watch the same scenes that we talked about above, that we urgently need to develop urgent solutions to this phenomenon, inspired by the experiences of the recent past.

We must urgently implement four main steps, which are, in their entirety, the necessity of the moment, if we are to win this battle:

First: Expediting the issuance of a terrorism law, on the basis of which terrorist groups and their allies will be tried.

Second: The establishment of emergency state security courts to consider these cases to achieve prompt justice.

Third: Establishing a National Council for Combating Terrorism that draws plans, defines goals, and coordinates among all institutions concerned with confronting the phenomenon of terrorism.

Fourth: Developing and implementing a comprehensive reform plan for the security apparatus, foremost of which is the abolition of all laws restricting security work that were imposed on the National Security Agency under the rule of the Brotherhood.

Without that, Mr. President, we will continue to bid farewell to our children every day, without making those who planned, executed and financed those despicable operations pay the price for the crimes they committed against Egypt and the Egyptians.