[Debate] More on Khairat El-Shater

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

An article written before the announcement of Khairat El-Shater's
presidential candidacy, but it's still interesting.  Beware of a
talented community organizer, in Egypt or the USA. . . .

<http://bit.ly/HdaXBM>
Meet the Brotherhood’s enforcer: Khairat El-Shater
Why Khairat El-Shater is the most important figure in the Muslim
Brotherhood for more than five decades
Amira Howeidy (Ahram Weekly), Thursday 29 Mar 2012

The name and face of the Muslim Brotherhood leader, businessman
Khairat El-Shater, has dominated the political sphere for weeks now,
and for good reason.

The multimillionaire has unrivaled leverage within the organisation
and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, and enjoys
enormous influence over the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau and Shura
Council, the two highest bodies within the group. But what has really
gripped the attention of pundits and the media have been the slew of
leaks from the Brotherhood that El-Shater may be the organisations'
candidate for president, despite earlier promises that it would not be
fielding a nominee.

The obsession is justified. At 62 it is El-Shater, and not the Supreme
Guide Mohamed Badei, who really runs the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ask anyone in the organisation why the leadership is at war with
Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, one of the group’s most popular figures
until he broke rank, announced his candidacy for the presidency and
was immediately expelled, and the answer is El-Shater.

Why did the Brotherhood punish Abul-Fotouh’s supporters within the
organisation and expel those who joined his presidential campaign?
Because of El-Shater.

Who has been the driving force behind the Brotherhood’s tactics and
public discourse since Mubarak’s ouster? It is El-muhandis - the
engineer - as El-Shater likes to be called. He was, after all, once an
assistant professor at El-Mansoura University’s Faculty of
Engineering.

Today El-Shater is at the centre of the Brotherhood’s as yet
unresolved, will they, won’t they field a presidential candidate saga,
and has been instrumental in pressing for a vote of no confidence in
the Kamal El-Ganzouri cabinet against the military council’s wishes.
It is also likely, though not certain, that El-Shater is behind the
Islamist monopoly of the 100-member assembly elected by parliament to
draft a new constitution.

The Brotherhood’s Shura Council, the 100 plus elected body that
purports to set the group’s strategies and resolve any outstanding
issues, met for eight hours on 27 March yet failed to reach a decision
on fielding a presidential candidate. It is scheduled to meet again
next Tuesday to address itself to the same issue. Insiders, though,
know it’s not the Shura Council that will ultimately take the
decision, but El-Shater.

El-Shater has emerged as the Brotherhood’s most powerful figure since
the Nasser regime’s 1954 crack down on the group. But how?

Nasser’s mass-arrests, execution of its leaders and life-time jail
sentences, almost broke the organisation.

By the time its surviving leaders were released from prison by Sadat
in the early 1970’s, the Brotherhood was weak and lacking structure.

The entry into the Brotherhood of young and vibrant leaders of the
Gamaa Islamiya (Islamic Group), including iconic student union figure
Abul-Fotouh, energised the group, and by the early 1980’s, in the wake
of Sadat’s assassination, Mustafa Mashour, the Brotherhood’s deputy
supreme guide, was able to restructure the organization’s hierarchy
along the lines that continue to prevail.

Dubbed the Brotherhood’s “hawk”, Mashour, who was imprisoned for 20
years under Nasser, enjoyed “historical” legitimacy, having joined the
group’s paramilitary wing in 1940. He solidified a system that
favoured members known for their religiosity, knowledge of Islamic
jurisprudence and commitment to their organisational group.

The Gamaa Islamiya youth who joined the Brotherhood were soon at the
forefront of the organization alongside historical leaders, whereas
El-Shater didn’t appear on the scene before the 1980’s. At the age of
16 he was a committed member of Nasser’s Socialist Union’s youth wing
in his hometown of El-Mansoura.

According to novelist Mohamed El-Makhzangi who went to school with
him, El-Shater was at a young age the head of one of the Socialist
Union’s neighbourhoods, as their structural units were called.

El-Makhzangi describes him as “sharp, polite, terribly neat and a good
student”. He was “tall, thin and almost translucent because he was a
tad fair”, an image difficult to square with the bearded, portly
figure the public knows today as the Brotherhood’s strongman, someone
who has spent 11 years in prison.

El-Shater left El-Mansoura, where his father was a prosperous
merchant, to study engineering at Alexandria University, which he
joined during the height of the anti-Nasserist sentiments that
followed the 1967 defeat.

No longer a Nasserist, he participated in the 1968 student anti-regime
demonstrations, was arrested and then served in the army for two
years. He resumed his education and after obtaining a master’s degree
took a teaching job at El-Mansoura University.

El-Shater’s website says he was part of the Islamic movement in Egypt
in 1967 and “was affiliated with” the Brotherhood in 1974, the same
year as Abul-Fotouh and the Gamaa Islamiya leadership. But Ibrahim
El-Zaafarany, a leader in the GI section at Alexandria University
before joining the Brotherhood in the mid 1970’s, insists El-Shater’s
involvement in the group dates to the 1980’s.

Like many dissidents El-Shater left Egypt in 1981 before Sadat’s
clampdown on the opposition. He reportedly lived in England for
several years before resurfacing in Egypt as a Brotherhood member in
the mid 1980’s.

Although Mashour initially didn’t trust him with organisational
responsibilities, El-Shater seems to have gained his confidence. He
bonded with Brotherhood figures Mahmoud Ezzat and Mahmoud Ghozlan,
both members of the Guidance Bureau. El-Shater then became in-laws
with Ghozlan when the latter married his sister.

The trio, as some insiders refer to Shater, Ezzat and Ghozlan, forms
the heart of the Guidance Bureau.

In 1995 El-Shater became head of the Brotherhood’s Greater Cairo
sector, an administrative but important position that saw him
overseeing organization and communication across a large area. In the
Brotherhood’s structure Greater Cairo includes Giza, north, east,
south and central Cairo.

He quickly devised what a Brotherhood ex-member who requested
anonymity describes as a “parallel” organisational structure to that
laid out by Mashour, creating opportunities for talented members who
don’t meet the ancien regime criteria of religiosity, historical
legitimacy or knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence.

By then El-Shater had built a personal fortune, some of it in
partnership with Hassan Malek, a businessman from a Brotherhood
family. The two formed a computer information systems company,
Salsabeel, which Mubarak’s security apparatus raided in 1991.

El-Shater’s interest in upgrading the performance of the group drove
him to form a unit for administrative development, which provided
training in time and strategic management. As his businesses
flourished across diverse sectors - furniture, fabrics, tractors, car
manufacturing, chemicals and management consultancy - El-Shater’s
leverage in the group also grew.

In the words of a young Brotherhood member who was close to him, the
“engineer” had, over the years, formed an “organization within the
organization”, gaining the loyality of many members by employing them
in his various companies.

His profile, which combines wealth with power never existed before in
the Brotherhood’s history and as one insider put it: seems fitting the
Gamal Mubarak era.

Following the deaths of Supreme Guide Mashour (2002), and his
successor Ma’moun El-Hodeibi (2004), both powerful leaders who
exercised strict control, Mahdi Akef took over.

According to El-Zafarani, Akef showed less interest in administrative
and organizational matters and allowed El-Shater to assume greater
responsibility, including control of the Brotherhood’s finances.

It is no secret that El-Shater successfully invested the group’s
funds. To avoid security monitoring he devised creative ways to expand
his own wealth and that of the group, leading to ever greater overlap
between his own business interests and the Brotherhood’s finances.

When the Mubarak regime clamped down on the group in 2006, referring
El-Shater, Malek and other leaders to a military court for money
laundry, the Brotherhood’s financial situation wasn’t affected, though
Shater and Malek received seven-year jail sentences.

Either it was impossible to trace the group’s financial transactions,
or the authorities simply didn’t want to go that far.

Insiders say El-Shater was being “punished” for not keeping his part
of an “understanding” reached with the security apparatus in 2005
ahead of the parliamentary elections. El-Shater is said to have
promised to limit the number of candidates the Brotherhood was going
to field, only to renege on his promise in the face of pressure from
the organisation’s rank and file.

El-Shater’s business empire continued to flourish even while he was in jail.

A fellow prisoner says he used his money to get his way in Tora prison.

He would send a “gift”, a refrigerator, say, to a State Security
Intelligence officer in order to secure improved prison conditions.

During his detention El-Shater was able to keep weekly appointments at
Qasr El-Aini hospital where he went for regular checkups and to see
business associates and other people who didn’t want to meet him in
prison.

It was very much business as usual for El-Shater from his prison cell,
whether controlling his businesses or getting his way with the
Brotherhood. In 2009 he even managed to have Abul-Fotouh voted off the
Guidance Bureau.

El-Shater was released last March, less than a month after Mubarak’s
ouster. More than 200 delegates from around the world have flocked to
meet him to discuss politics, investment and the future. He’s been
roaming Asia and Gulf to talk about investment and finds the economic
successes of Turkey, South Korea, Brazil, Singapore and Malaysia
admirable. Al-Ahram Weekly has also learned that he’s been meeting
with senior officials and ex-officials in the industrial and
investment sectors, clearly to prepare for the Brotherhood’s near
future role in the government.

In two important TV appearances with his friend, Al-Jazeera anchor
Ahmed Mansour, last October and in February, El-Shater denied any
interest in becoming prime minister.

“It’s not an option and I’m 62. We have a system capable of supporting
any government.”

Speaking in a slightly high-pitched voice, El-Shater claimed that
Brotherhood has a “comprehensive” vision to rebuild Egypt and achieve
its “renaissance” on the “basis of an Islamic frame of reference” but
right now, the focus was on “the security vacuum and saving the
economy”.

Up front, or behind the scenes, it’s still unclear how El-Shater would
run Egypt.

-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>