Egypt: Taking On the Wrong Enemy; Mubarak has devoted more effort to crushing secular political opponents than to fighting Islamic extremists.

Byline: Joshua Hammer

They moved under cover of darkness. Batons in hand, visors over their faces, black-uniformed troops charged toward the Judges' Club, a social gathering spot for magistrates in downtown Cairo. For a week hundreds of protesters had gathered there in solidarity with two magistrates who have accused ruling party hacks of rigging last year's parliamentary elections. Now the judges were facing possible prosecution, and pro-democracy forces were outraged. As the protesters held hands and chanted antigovernment slogans, the club-wielding cops fell upon them, beating many and dragging 60 to jail. The following day, thousands of security forces sealed the High Court, arresting even more demonstrators as troop carriers rumbled through the city center. "This is Mubarak's democracy," said one young protester who witnessed the crackdown but did not want his name used for fear of retribution.

Egypt seemed on the threshold of a new era last September when President Hosni Mubarak, 77, broke with 24 years of dictatorial rule by holding the country's first multiparty presidential elections. The Egyptian strongman made the concession under pressure from the Bush administration, which maintains that transforming autocratic Middle Eastern regimes into secular democracies can help to tamp down Islamic radicalism. There was never any question who would win. Mubarak swept 84 percent of the vote and his ruling National Democratic Party captured 324 of 444 parliamentary seats. But the campaign, with strident anti-Mubarak protests in Cairo and other cities, raised new hopes for freedom of expression and an enduring political pluralism. Now Egypt is in the midst of a vicious crackdown--"a backlash," says one Western diplomat, against pro-democracy forces. Opposition leaders have been arrested, protests have been squashed and Mubarak has shown no indication that he'll remove the country's draconian Emergency Laws, put into place after Anwar Sadat's 1981 assassination.

Criticism by the United States, which gives Egypt $1.8 billion a year in military and other aid, has been muted. During a February visit to Cairo U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said only that transforming one-party states into democracies was a "process" that "takes time." After the victory of the radical Hamas movement in the Palestinian elections, and the strong showing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's parliamentary vote, many Egyptians share the perception that the Bush administration is rethinking its commitment to Middle Eastern reform. "The whole thing was a charade," says George Ishaq, coordinator of Kifaya (Enough), which has organized dozens of anti-Mubarak protests. "The U.S. prefers stability to democracy." Some Egyptians believe that Mubarak's repression may even have contributed to last week's bombings in the beach resort of Dahab, killing 24 people. The Interior Ministry, they charge, has channeled most of its resources into pursuing secular pro-democracy activists rather than fighting Islamic terrorists holed up in the Sinai Desert.

Mubarak's most spectacular attack on democracy has been the prosecution of Ayman Nour, the main opposition candidate for president last year. A former member of Parliament, Nour founded the al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party in 2005 and ...