Introduction

Egypt is the most strategically imperative country in the Middle East. As the most populous Arab country, it has been a major target and victim of terrorism since the early 1980s, when a terrorist group called Al-Jamāʿah Al-Islāmiyyah assassinated President Anwar Sadat in October of 1981. Since then and to this day, Egypt’s security and stability have been in jeopardy. After the outbreak of the Arab Uprising in 2011 and the collapse of the state’s security establishments, terrorist groups, i.e., Al Qaida, and the Islamic State (IS) have regarded Egypt as a safe haven to kill civilians and combatants. This explains why the Egyptian authorities kept using counterterrorism as an excuse to suppress the opposition and silence the dissenting voices that called for political reform and respect for the human rights of Egyptian citizens. In fact, modern Egypt has a long history of both human rights violations and being under the attack of terrorist groups. This book argues that due to the authoritarian and semi-military nature of Egyptian regimes over more than six decades, there is a discernible pattern of dealing with domestic political and security threats.