Kerdasa: State Policy Toward Rural Egypt and the Reproduction of Local Injustice

CASE ANALYSIS Kerdasa: State Policy Toward Rural Egypt and the Reproduction of Local Injustice Hani Awwad | December 2013 Kerdasa: State Policy Toward Rural Egypt and the Reproduction of Local Injustice Series: Case Analysis Hani Awwad | December 2013 Copyright © 2013 Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. All Rights Reserved. ____________________________ The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies is an independent research institute and think tank for the study of history and social sciences, with particular emphasis on the applied social sciences. The Center’s paramount concern is the advancement of Arab societies and states, their cooperation with one another and issues concerning the Arab nation in general. To that end, it seeks to examine and diagnose the situation in the Arab world - states and communities- to analyze social, economic and cultural policies and to provide political analysis, from an Arab perspective. The Center publishes in both Arabic and English in order to make its work accessible to both Arab and non-Arab researchers. Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies PO Box 10277 Street No. 826, Zone 66 Doha, Qatar Tel.: +974 44199777 | Fax: +974 44831651 www.dohainstitute.org Table of Contents Introduction 1 The Village Where the Memory of Persecution was Born 2 The State as a Guest: Kerdasa Village Narrative and Blaming the Outsider 8 Collective Punishment Against the Countryside: Kerdasa 12 Conclusion 15 KERDASA: STATE POLICY TOWARD RURAL EGYPT Introduction The violent break-up of the protest camps at Rabia al-Adawiya and al-Nahda on August 14, 2013 not only has dire consequences for the political process in Egypt, but it also indicates that heavy-handed security measures might open the country up to the possibility of civil unrest that might take on an extreme tribal, regional, or religious form. The Wiki Thawra site, a statistical database of the Egyptian Revolution, lists more than 295 instances of clashes in the month following the break-up of the two protest camps, ranging from clashes between groups of civilians, to others involving the police and army, armed attacks on public facilities, the violent dispersal of sit-ins, sectarian clashes and extra-judicial killings. During that month, the massacre at the police station in the town of Kerdasa—located in Giza governorate—stood out. A group of armed and masked assailants attacked this police station with live fire and rocket-propelled grenades. They killed 13 policemen in revenge for the breakup of the Rabia al-Adawiya and al-Nahda protest camps, when a number of local people were killed. This was not the only incident of its kind in Egypt. Wiki Thawra lists 68 similar occurrences throughout Egypt in which people took revenge against state institutions in response to locals being shot and killed by the security forces. The sheer bloodiness of the violence in Kerdasa and its subsequent coverage in the media marked it, and led the townspeople to endure a form of collective punishment. This analysis attempts to understand the reasons Kerdasa was different than other small and medium-sized Egyptian towns that were, until relatively recently, no more than villages. This is done through a reading of the social and historical background to the solidarity found among its people and how this was expressed before and after the July 3, 2013 military coup. Kerdasa is then presented as a paradigm for understanding the Egyptian security forces’ policy for dealing with rural Egypt.1 1 Parts two and three of this article are based on testimonies collected via email and telephone. Apart from Professor Sayyid al-Nazili, all of the witnesses preferred remain anonymous owing to the current security situation in Egypt. These people also provided links to videos on the Internet that document what happened in detail. I wish to thank my friend Mr. Mohammad Abbas, former member of the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, for his assistance in getting in touch with the people of Kerdasa. 1 ARAB CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND POLICY STUDIES The Village Where the Memory of Persecution was Born Kerdasa is situated in Giza governorate and is one of its oldest and largest villages. By the end of Egypt’s monarchy, Kerdasa was a rural center with a range of economic activities, in addition to agriculture. Kerdasa and number of other villages, such as Nahya, Atfeeh and Imbaba, constituted the semi-rural hinterland adjacent to the Greater Cairo metropolitan area. As a result of increasing urbanization these villages became administrative centers for the smaller villages that grew up around them. One could describe them as village centers, though, in fact, they are small towns. The rural centers adjacent to the city (the near Sa’id), among them Kerdasa, are distinct in being more influenced by and more connected to the social, cultural, and political momentum of the capital than the villages of the far Sa’id due to their geographical proximity to Cairo and their economic connections, which date back to the beginning of the twentieth century. This interconnection was particularly apparent in the 20th century when the people of Kerdasa established family workshops for the manufacture and sale of woven textiles. Increased levels of schooling enabled children to enjoy educational opportunities at college and university, and, consequently, to establish a place for themselves in the rising middle class. At an early period, prior to the coming of Nasserism, they were also able to establish educational, cultural, and political institutions, such as schools and political party offices, like the Wafd and the Muslim Brotherhood, while continuing to reside in the village.2 During Egypt’s monarchy, the chain of villages interposing between the city and the Sa’id enjoyed economic opportunities that were relatively independent of the state by living off the economic surplus of the urban center. They became small towns that were gradually 2 See Hilal, Politics and Government in Egypt, p. 240. According to Hilal, this differs to sections of the middle class in the more distant villages in the Sa’id that were forced to migrate to the city to escape the dominance of large landowners during the monarchy. These people established themselves before others and began new lives in the city. The difference between the kind of village considered by Hilal and villages like Kerdasa is that the latter gained some autonomy from the state via economic activity whereas the more distant villages were obliged to curry favor and form alliances with the authorities to obtain economic positions, as explained by Ahmad Zayid in his study of two Egyptian villages. See al- Zayid, The Political Structure of Rural Egypt, pp. 338-9. All of this took place years before Nathan Brown’s book that reaches virtually the same conclusions based on the village of Bahwat in Daqhiliya. See Brown, Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt, pp. 107-8. 2 KERDASA: STATE POLICY TOWARD RURAL EGYPT assimilated into the metropolitan area while maintaining their rural values of social solidarity.3 These villages produced the first “ideological generation” of youth for the Islamic Groups,4 foremost among them what the media termed the “1965 Tanzim” [fighting group] headed by Sayyid Qutb.5 These were the same young people who subsequently found themselves engaged in an ideological battle with the Nasserite regime. During the 1960s and 1970s, Nasserite and leftist movements grew up in the city centers and among students and employees of state-owned companies,6 while the Islamic youth grew out of the family-run or small- scale workshops and enterprises in the villages adjacent and attached to the cities. The young military state under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser targeted these villages as the breeding ground for political Islam. From there, and from inside the prisons, evolved the idea of “persecution” that holds sway over the Brotherhood until today.7 3 On the nature of the small town or urbanized village, see Tamari, “The Oppressive Culture of Small Towns,” pp. 39-40. 4 For example, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammad Bashendi and former Brotherhood secretary- general Mahmoud Ghizlan are from Kerdasa. The neighboring village of Nahya was home to Essam al- Erian and to the Islamic Jihad leaders Tariq and Aboud al-Zumr. Hossam Tamam, an Egyptian researcher of Islamic movements, points to the significance of the 1965 Tanzim as marking the birth of the ideological phase of the Muslim Brotherhood. See Tamam, The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 39. 5 Abdel Maguid, “The Brotherhood and Abdel Nasser,” 2006. This is suggested by those who documented the 1965 Tanzim of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmad Abdel Maguid states that most of the young people in the organization were “young members of the Brotherhood from various areas, most of which were in the governorates of Cairo, Giza, and Daqhaliya,” meaning the villages. For the following testimony, see al-Sarwi, The Muslim Brotherhood, 2004. The testimony of Abdel Maguid corresponds with that of Mohammad al-Sarwi who states, “Here you see the main spread of the Brotherhood as being in Cairo, Giza, and Daqhaliya, and in limited numbers in Alexandria and the other governorates.” 6 See Diyab, Revolts or Revolutions. 7 For example, we can trace the names of the villages that appear in Gaber Rizq’s book and other works which record the pursuit and uprooting of the Brotherhood Tanzim at the hands of the Nasserite regime. They share the same elements as we described above. These villages (some of which have become substantial towns) are: Mit Ghamr near Daqhaliya, Kafr Shukr and al-Zawamil near Cairo, Ayyash adjacent to Mahalla, and al-Bayda near Mansoura. Distinct from Kerdasa, as will become clear, city dwellers did not pass on a local story, and the names of the villages remained hidden away in the annals of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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