Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding (CCDP)

This article explores the contentious relation between the absence of democracy in the Middle East and the use of armed violence by Islamist groups in light of the Arab Spring. Its main objective is to decipher the evolving positions of former and current groups who used or promoted violence and to relate them to broader academic debates on violence and democracy on the one hand, and deradicalization on the other. This research demonstrates that the large majority of former Islamist militants in Egypt reject any sort of violence in post-Mubarak Egypt, even if they have not all renounced their religious legitimization of violence in the past. Second, it reveals that even if they maintain a religious opposition to democracy in Egypt, the opening of political opportunities and their progressive joining of the political process has favorably led most of them to accept democratic practices in reality. Third, it adds that the voice of those currently promoting violence in Egypt has been marginalized and that their main alternative has been the promotion of armed violence in Syria; and last, it stresses two potential security threats unrelated to the opening of political opportunities in post-Mubarak Egypt and to the general debate on democracy and violence. First, local grievances in Sinai have led to violence in the past and are still to be dealt with. Second, the current political deadlock can potentially lead to localized and specific armed activities that could start a cycle of violence. This research is based on field research in Egypt and uses repeated interviews of leaders and members of the two main former militant groups, al-Jama῾ah al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) and Jama῾ al-Jihad (the Jihad Group) as well as interviews with militants of the salafi jihadi trend and their supporters in Cairo.

Muhammad Omar Abd al-Rahman is the eldest son of Shaykh Omar Abd al-Rahman, the blind shaykh who led the Egyptian former militant Group al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) before his arrest in 1993 in the United States. Muhammad spent most of his life outside of Egypt and shared the journey of many figures of contemporary Islamic militancy. He joined the Afghan jihad in 1988 before moving to Sudan in 1992 and returning to Afghanistan in 1996. Until 2001, he lived in Afghanistan with members of the Islamic Group and al-Qaeda. In 2001, he survived the U.S. invasion before his arrest in Pakistan in 2003. Eventually, Muhammad was subjected to the American rendition program and sent to jail in Egypt. He was finally released in 2010, a few months before the Egyptian revolution. He discusses his background here with Jérôme Drevon, PhD Candidate at Durham University.

This research theorises militant groups' meso-level evolution from their emergence to their potential non-violent transformation. The central argument of this thesis is that the timing of militant groups' adoption of violence in semi-authoritarian regimes is crucial in accounting for their subsequent ideational and organisational evolution, according to a path-dependent model. When a militant group predates its legitimisation of armed violence, the time period preceding the latter encourages low-risk activism mobilising patterns, which are defined as safer modes of mobilisation that are not directly opposed by the state and therefore do not entail high individual costs. These mobilising patterns  facilitate the creation of strong horizontal ties between the group's leaders and the development of  collective group identity shared by its leaders and members. These three factors collectively ease the internal legitimisation of shared horizontal and vertical organisational norms, which respectively refer to the norms uniting the leaders of the group and the norms uniting the leaders to their followers. Theses norms include the normalisation of the prerogatives of the group's leadership, an internal culture of consensus and shared decision making processes. These factors subsequently shape the group's evolution, whose possible non-violent transformation becomes contingent on the ability of its leadership to exploit external macro stimuli or internal learning processes, and to draw on the group's collective identity to internally legitimise a new strategic direction. Conversely, the second type of militant group is defined by its members' immediate engagement in high-risk activism forms of mobilisation, defined by their high individual cost caused by their intrinsically violent nature (e.g. staging a military coup). The combination of early ideational justifications of violence and its associated mobilising patterns fuel internal factionalism and hinder the legitimisation of internal norms of decision making and the consolidation of a controlled collective group identity. This mobilising pattern often sparks splits over any new tactical and strategic issues which may arise overtime, and eventually impedes the successful consensual transformation of this type of group in changing macro circumstances. This theorisation of militant groups' evolution is applied to the Egyptian Islamic and Jihad Groups. This thesis is based on a social movement theory framework. It is a qualitative small-n comparative case-study research using field research and interviews with numerous leaders and members of these two groups.

Following the overthrow of Husni Mubarak, al-Gama‘a al-Islamiyya and members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad created two political parties. This article investigates these groups’ organizational dynamics and internal dialogues in order to
uncover the rationale of their political participation after the January 2011 uprising and its internal ideational legitimization. Based on interviews with leaders and members of these two groups and their political parties, this article argues that these formerly violent insurgent groups embraced nonviolent participation in democratic politics through an internal reassessment of the political opportunities afforded to them by Egypt’s brief political opening.

This chapter investigates the emergence and evolution of the Salafi radical milieu in Egypt. This is defined as the social structures composed of supporters and sympathisers of the militant groups, providing them with both logistic and moral support. This chapter establishes that the Egyptian Salafi radical milieu has been constructed in two successive phases. The first takes place between the 1970s and the 1990s. During this time, milieu-construction is better understood through meso-level study of its composite networks and organisations, since these had a virtual monopoly on the relational diffusion of frames and on micro-mobilisation. The second phase is set in the 2000s, with non-relational diffusion of radical frames through new means of communication fundamentally affecting the expansion of its milieu, and informing its development as internally more diverse and individualised. This came to subsequently shape the post-2011 developments. This study is based on eighteen months of intensive field research, undertaken in Cairo between 2011 and 2014. The research includes a prolonged political ethnography with diverse groups of Salafi jihadi supporters in Egypt, as well as semi-structured interviews with leaders and members of two former militant groups in Egypt: the Islamic Group and the Jihad Group, and of their political parties.

This article investigates the adoption of Salafi jihadism by young Egyptians and its repercussions on their mobilization in the Syrian jihad after 2011. This research demonstrates that Salafi jihadis mostly were raised in religious families and argues that the post-9/11 US-led wars triggered the exploration of an alternative to non-jihadi Salafism. This exploration was facilitated by: (1) the inability of mainstream Salafism to face the post-9/11 challenge; (2) the absence of local militant groups; (3) the availability of an alternative literature on the Internet; and (4) the shared religious creed of jihadi and mainstream Salafism. This research contends that online socialization created an internally diverse Salafi jihadi milieu that regulated these youths’ mobilization in the Syrian jihad after 2011.

This research analyses the comparative institutionalization of the strategies of three major components of the Egyptian Islamist social movement family: the jihadis, the Muslim Brotherhood and the salafis. It uses historical institutionalism to amend rational choice paradigms and to investigate the constraints and opportunities posed by these actors' past trajectories on their subsequent strategic choices. This article argues that 1981 and 2011 were two critical junctures that have shaped these actors' ideational and organizational construction through path-dependent causal mechanisms regulating their mobilization and socialization processes. It contends that these mechanisms have shaped these groups' evolution and mediated the institutionalization of their strategies.

This article analyses the evolution of the jihadi social movement (JSM) in changing environmental and factional circumstances. The author argues that internationalist groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State seek to become hegemonic in the JSM vis-à-vis nationally focused jihadis. Yet hegemony is associated with changing modes of organisation that can weaken centralised organisational control and exacerbate internal divisions. Moreover, the post-2011 expansion of Islamist local governance presents new expectations that jihadi groups set up local structures of governance, which can alter their internal dynamics and cannot endure as long as their allegiance to internationalist groups remains. This analysis illustrates the prospective choices of the components of the JSM after 2017.

This chapter argues that the 2011 Egyptian uprising and the 2013 military coup have destabilised the Egyptian Islamist SMF in contrasting ways. The liberalisation of the political process after 2011 stimulated the institutionalisation of loosely organised movements, challenged the organisational cohesion of established Islamist groups, and empowered Islamist constituencies through the development of new repertoires of contention. The subsequent removal of President Mohamed Morsi from the MB has marginalised established Islamist groups, challenged their organisational control over their constituencies, and impeded the development of political alternatives to armed violence.

„The Fates Behind the Numbers“ offers a perspective on the Kosovo Property Agency, set up in the aftermath of the war in Kosovo to resolve property disputes, by giving a voice to the claimants and respondents involved in the cases adjudicated by the institution.

Industrial zones are criticized in the Arab region and beyond. The problem is much worse in the occupied Palestinian territory because the zones help Israel “normalize” its occupation, as Al-Shabaka Programme Director Alaa Tartir sets out in this trenchant commentary. He calls on the Palestinian youth movement and civil society to use the issue in a call for a completely different approach to development under occupation.

For Palestinians, agriculture is more than a source of income or an economic category in budgets and plans. It is tied to the people’s history, identity, and self-expression, and drives the struggle against Israel’s Separation Wall. In this brief, Lebanese activist, author, and agronomist Rami Zurayk joins Al-Shabaka Policy Advisors Samer Abdelnour and Alaa Tartir to tackle the almost spiritual significance of the land to the Palestinians and the deliberate Israeli efforts to break the link between farmers and their crops.