Has Egypt Cut a Deal with al-Qaeda?

Has Egypt, America's strongest "ally" in the Arab world, cut a deal with al-Qaeda?

A report in October's Atlantic Monthly suggests that the Mubarak government may have done just that �" and for that reason has been removed from bin Laden's hit list.

As America focuses on Iraq and growing instability in Iran and Saudi Arabia, perhaps Egypt could turn into America's worst nightmare.

In the Atlantic's cover story, "Pharaohs-In-Waiting," the magazine reveals that Egypt could be ripe for revolution.

Worrisome is the shaky hold on power of Egypt's two-decade-old leader, Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's role in the Middle East can never be underestimated.

Its population of 70 million contains one-fourth of the Arab world, and Cairo remains its political and cultural vortex.

Mubarak is not so much an innovator as a survivor. He has survived several assassinations, but is so afraid of a successor that the job of vice president has remained vacant since he left the post when Anwar Sadat died.

Meanwhile, Mubarak's regime has been buffeted by growing calls for democracy among the young and elites and, on the right, by religious extremists.

Mary Anne Weaver writes in The Atlantic Monthly that on a recent visit to Cairo she discovered how far Egypt has gone.

"I was struck more than ever by how Islamic the city has become. Large numbers of women now wear headscarves or hijabs; some wear veils. Many men sport full Islamic beards."

The Egyptian government seems to have gotten the message about the growing Islamic force.

The Atlantic reports that the government-controlled Egyptian press is fueling anti-Semitic and anti-American thinking.

Mubarak has also distanced himself from America and her policies, despite the fact that Egypt receives more foreign aid than any other country except Israel â€" $2 billion a year.

Mubarak criticized America's invasion of Iraq and suggested it would create a hundred bin Ladens.

Mubarak has also worried Egypt's elites.

With no successor, his son, Gamal Mubarak, a 40-year-old businessman, is being groomed for the president's position.

Meanwhile, Egypt's powerful generals, the Atlantic reports, "are not pleased."

Mubarak's game plan may be to appease the growing Islamic fundamentalism at the expense of the United States.

This year, as a gesture of good will, Mubarak freed 861 Islamic radicals held prisoner â€" of the more than 15,000 Islamacists detained in Egyptian prisons.

Interestingly, the magazine also notes that Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, the Egyptian-born Al Zawahiri, issued a message recently that called on continuous attacks on Americans throughout the Arab world.

But, he made clear, bin Laden's followers should make no attacks against Americans in Egypt.

Another coincidence: In one of bin Laden's recent TV broadcasts made over Al Jazeera, he "called on Muslims around the world to repel the US invasion of Iraq. As he had sometimes done before, he cited a number of countries whose regimes should be overthrown. Egypt had usually been on the list. This time, it was not."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Al-Qaeda
Middle East

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