Dalia Ziada

Muslim Brotherhood managed to gain political victory in parliament by playing on the religious piety of the poor and illiterate citizens in rural areas…

The Egyptian people are widely celebrating Egypt’s restoration of its regional status, after the recent successful mediation for ceasefire between Tel Aviv and Hamas, and President El-Sisi’s pledge to reconstruct Gaza. Meanwhile, the Egyptian state has been gearing up for an equally challenging mission, but on the domestic level. This mission is about renovating the rural areas and improving life conditions for citizens living in rural cities, which represent more than 80% of the inhabited Egyptian geographic area. This important project is expected to enhance Egypt’s overall political and economic structure. But, most importantly it will undermine the social and economic gaps, through which radicalism, religious extremism, and political Islamism has leaked into the Egyptian society.

Earlier this week, the Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and the Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, discussed the workflow of the rural development project. El-Sisi directed the Prime Minister to “harness all of the country’s resources and spare no effort to render such a project a success”. The project targets a total of 4,584 villages, with an estimated budget of 700 billion Egyptian Pounds (about 45 billion US dollars), to be invested in upgrading the infrastructure of water, gas, and power supplies, in addition to building underground sewage networks and improving road services.

If you have ever visited Egypt, you know that there is a gap in economic and social development between urban and rural cities. The situation is even worse in distant and small villages in Upper Egypt, where citizens, for decades, have been suffering from poverty, illiteracy, and lack of basic governmental services.

Since the time of Muhammad Ali Pasha monarchy (1805 – 1953), most of the government-led social and economic development projects had been focused in the capital city, Cairo, and the Mediterranean coastal city, Alexandria. During this era, Cairo was labeled as the hub for arts and culture in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. European people used to flee their war- torn countries and migrate to live in the peace and glamour of Cairo and Alexandria.

In a shocking contrast to this, the Egyptians living in rural areas were declined their basic rights to live as equal citizens, with equal access to education and opportunities. They were mostly treated like slaves serving in the farms owned by the wealthy feudal lords, who were politically close to the monarchy. This huge gap between Cairo and the other rural governorates, in the regions of Delta and Upper Egypt, enabled the appearance of radical political Islamist organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which started its mission in the eastern city of Ismailia and slowly moved to other rural cities in the Delta until it became strong enough to challenge and threaten the lives of the ruling political elite in secular Cairo.

After, the Free Officers Revolution, in 1952, which ended the monarchy and established Egypt as an independent Arab republic, the situation of rural citizens changed a lot. The then President Gamal Abdel Nasser, with a communist mindset, built his legacy around empowering the poor citizens, especially the farmers living in rural areas. Actually, he took the farms of the feudal lords and gave it to the farmers who had been serving in them, under the monarchy.

Despite the euphoria this move created among the poor, at the beginning of his era, Nasser failed to provide the appropriate citizen education and infrastructure development that could have had empowered the farmers to benefit from their newly acquired farming wealth. As a result, many of those farmers sold their pieces of land for houses construction contractors, and then moved with the money to live in Cairo.

During Sadat and Mubarak era, which extended for about four decades, the rural cities became in a worse condition. Most of the governmental infrastructure and development projects focused on Cairo. Meanwhile, most of the farmers went on selling the farms given to them by Nasser and most of the youth in rural cities sought after illegal immigration to Europe via the Mediterranean. This created a huge and dangerous gap, through which radical Islamists intervened to radicalize the poor and illiterate citizens and recruit the youth suffering poverty, lack of education, and unemployment in villages far from the capital city.

In the 1990s, violent Islamist organizations, like Al-jamaa Al-Islamiya (The Islamic Group), established an empire of its own among the poor villages of Upper Egypt. Towards the end of Mubarak era, the Muslim Brotherhood managed to gain political victory in parliament by playing on the religious piety of the poor and illiterate citizens in rural areas, and also by providing them with basic health and food services that the government failed to provide, at that time.

In light of this history, El-Sisi’s national project for developing the infrastructure and citizen well-being in rural cities, derives its importance. The success of this massive project is expected to bring a lot of benefits to the economic well-being of Egypt, on the long-term. It will rebalance the demographic distribution between the urban and rural cities. Less people will desire to leave their rural cities and internally migrate to Cairo or internationally migrate to Europe, searching for better life conditions and work opportunities.

However, the most important, yet undeclared, outcome of this important national project is to fight against the religious extremists and terrorist organizations, who found a fertile soil for their radical ideology among the needs and despairs of the young people living in those less-developed and under-constructed rural villages. This simply means a more secure future for Egypt, if not for the whole Middle East and the Mediterranean regions.

Piece first published in Sada El Bilad.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

Agnes Callamard is known for her hostility towards Saudi Arabia and her silence regarding Iran and Turkey.

In this report, I will describe some of the most famous human rights organizations, their political backgrounds, financiers and goals. On closer inspection, you will find that all of them, whether it is Human Right Watch, Amnesty International, etc., are organizations that are close to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Human Rights Watch can be considered a highly suspicious institution, that has submitted to the orders from Qatar and Turkey, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Doha funds many human rights organizations and reports, that just serve to target certain countries. But not only Doha, George Soros is another sponsor of these organizations.

Amnesty International is also not a neutral and impartial organization, because of its known political and ideological interests, that go beyond any correctness and credibility. Amnesty International receives respectable financial donations, and this seems to be enough to give it sacred legitimacy. What is also interesting about Amnesty International is, that its funding streams are used by employees and former directors-general for personal purposes. Irene Khan, who received financial compensation of 600 million euros when she left the organization, that defends the interests of the world’s poor, leaves questions unanswered.

Susan Nossel, the director of Amnesty International, was the chief assistant to Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State and advocate of the so-called “Smart Power Policy”. She previously worked for the US Institute for Foreign Relations, one of the official interfaces for American intelligence services.

One of the best known financiers of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, is George Soros. He also controls the values ​​of Europe through the highest European judicial authority. Due to his influence, many European countries were forced to change their laws in order to implement an open society without borders. George Soros tries to put an end to the idea of ​​closed nations, and to enforce an open society without borders. Anyone who regards his ideas, and ignited revolutions as inhuman is considered an anti-Semite, and is classified in the category of fascists.

Many heads of state are of the opinion that George Soros, with his Open Org Society and countless NGOs, aims to destroy the world. His biggest critics include: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban and Benjamin Netanyahu. Most of the judges at the European Court of Human Rights belong to NGOs that are funded by the Open Society.

So what has George Soros got to do with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia?

George Soros, who supports the extreme left in Europe and America, also appears as an obvious sponsor of Antifa, makes no secret of promoting the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood. Wasn’t it he, who awarded the Tunisian Muslim brother Ghannouchi the Peace Prize? It is also confirmed, that he supports Muslim Brotherhood networks in Europe with financial grants.

As everyone knows, the Muslim Brotherhood sparked revolutions, bloody civil wars and the so-called Arab Spring, a movement that, under the guise of humanity, served Soros and his Open Society Foundation, as it drove millions of people out of their countries were then received by Ms. Merkel in Germany with open arms, which earned her the nickname – “Mutti”.

Now to Sarah Lea Whitson, Executive Director of DAWN and Human Rights Watch division in the Middle East. She was the first to spread rumors about the causes of Morsi’s death, and has a close relationship with Bin Jassim, a member of the Royal Family in Qatar. She has been interviewed on Muslim Brotherhood channels such as Aljazeera and Makmalin, and announced that her organization would campaign for the release of Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

The woman who holds a key leadership position at Human Right Watch is the group’s first defender of terrorism, and her main focus right now is publicly denouncing Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. It has been shown to be particularly supported by the American Democratic Party, which has close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. According to the media reports, Sarah Lee Watson received $ 100,000 for three reports, the last of which was about incitement to Egypt. Because of its ties with Qatar, HRW’s Middle East division has never condemned human rights abuses against foreign migrant workers in Qatar.

Hamad bin Jassim provided this woman with false reports of allegations, that Iraq and Syria possessed weapons of mass destruction. Her connection to the Muslim Brotherhood goes back to the time of the former President Hosni Mubarak, where she appeared constantly on the Aljazeera Network to polish up the image of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now we come to Agnes Callamard, she worked for Amnesty International from 1998 to 2001, then as executive director for the human rights organization ARTICLE-19. She is currently director of the Global Freedom of Expression project at Columbia University, and special rapporteur for extrajudicial executions, and sits on the Human Rights Council the United Nations. Agnes Callamard is known for her hostility towards Saudi Arabia and her silence regarding Iran and Turkey.

In 2013, human rights defender, Agnes Callamard wrote a special report calling on the Egyptian military to lift bans on five Egyptian satellite channels and other people affiliated with Hamas and jihadist Islamic parties. She considered closing channels of the Muslim Brotherhood, because they were necessary for so-called democratic discourse as a violation of freedom of expression.

Agnes Callamard also attended a meeting of the United Nations Human Council in September 2010 with Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Al-Banna, who was convicted of rape and sexual assault of minors in France. She called several times on the United Nations to work for the release of members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Before starting the investigation into the murder of Khashoggi, she worked with a number of international organizations and associations, to politicize the Khashoggi case as part of the campaign against Saudi Arabia. She ignored in her reports that Khashoggi’s article in the Washington Post was proven to have been directed and written by the Qatar Foundation International, and the American “Maggie Salem”, the foundation’s executive director. Agnes also aimed to use human rights reports on behalf of private human rights organizations to attack the Arab coalition and legitimacy in Yemen.

It accused both Saudi Arabia and the United Emirates of targeting civilians and ignored all human rights reports regarding the terrorist activities of the Houthis, who carried out countless extrajudicial executions in Yemen, and committed and continue to commit many human rights abuses that are simply overlooked. At the same time, Agnes is under criticism for her silence regarding the massive arrests of opposition activists and journalists in Turkey, which she also does not criticize. Your report on Khashoggi and the CIA report contain no evidence of the involvement of Mohammed bin Salman, but the wording in the international media gave the impression that, Mohammed bin Salman had commissioned the murder, or the report had proven it.

This extremely dubious 1-page report contains nothing, but assumptions and assessments, and ultimately even the human rights organizations and Ms. Callamard were disappointed that no direct evidence was found.

Muslim Brotherhood and Clinton Emails

As emerged from the Clinton emails, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supported the Muslim Brotherhood during the Arab Spring both financially, ideologically and with weapons, to carry out bloody revolutions in various countries. The result was countless cities and infrastructures destroyed, 1.4 million injured and dead, 22 million refugees and over 100 million unemployed. Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Lebanon, Libya and Egypt were particularly hard hit.

In 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood was successfully overthrown in Egypt and banned as a terrorist organization.

The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Egypt by Hassan Al Bannah, the British and the Freemasons, to help build the Islamic Caliphate worldwide. In fact, he went so far as to express his willingness to declare war on “any leader, party and organization” who fail to implement the Brotherhood’s programs.

In the 1940s, the Brotherhood’s “secret apparatus”, a paramilitary unit established by El-Banna, carried out serious acts of political violence. Those murdered included a prominent judge, the Cairo police chief and the Egyptian prime minister. In 1954 they tried to assassinate President Gamal Nasser.
Even after it was disbanded in December 1948, the Brotherhood turned to more violence, militarization and clandestine action. It remained in the grip of the secret apparatus for decades and encompassed the jihadist philosophy led by El-Banna and promoted by his student Sayyid Qutb.

Brotherhood splinter groups such as al-Takfir wal Hijra murdered thinkers who publicly criticized the group’s radical ideology. Tanzim Al-Jihad, founded by Al-Qaeda’s second husband, Ayman Al-Zawahri — a member of the Brotherhood, assassinated President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 after signing a peace treaty with Israel. These and other groups affiliated with the Brotherhood have also carried out terrorist attacks against tourists and religious minorities.

The Brotherhood also maintains links with terrorist organizations established by leaders within their “international network” outside Egypt. According to the report from 9 Bedford Row, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Aballah Yusuf Azzam, the three founders of al-Qaeda, were prominent members of the “international network”.

As in Egypt, the Saudi King Abdullah banned the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization in 2014, as did the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Syria and Russia.

The highest Islamic scholars of Saudi Arabia have officially justified and confirmed this decision again in 2020, pointing out that the Muslim Brotherhood does not reflect Islamic values, but only promotes riot, violence and terrorism.

What has the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been and still is diligently supported by the West, achieved in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Sudan besides civil wars, devastation and the emergence of ISIS?

Is it really only supported by the West to bring so-called “democracy” to these Islamic countries? Isn’t there a bigger, less “benevolent” concept behind this?

Anna Sacher is an Austria-based Independent Political Analyst and Commentator. She often writes for Millichronicle. She tweets under @RealthingUlli.

Waleed Alghamdi is a Saudi-based researcher and analyst. He writes about Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist factions. He tweets under @nofr2021.