Why once similar conflicts in Egypt and Algeria now differ

FOR half a century Egypt and Algeria, the two giants of North Africa, have shared similar fates. In 1956, Gamel Abdel Nasser's Egypt attacked European colonialism at Suez, even as Nasser lent material and moral support to the guerrillas fighting the French in Algeria. With independence in 1962, the new Algerian state imitated Nasser's Arab nationalism and his alliance with the Soviet Union.

Like Nasser, Algeria's first president, Ahmed Ben Bella, cracked down on Islamic fundamentalists. Their respective successors, Anwar Sadat and Houari Boumedienne (both military officers), would later see the Islamists as useful allies.

Sadat's peace with Israel interrupted this friendship, but the two governments again found common cause in the early 1990s, when both were threatened by Islamist rebels.

The Egyptian government's war with the Gama'a Islamiya and Jihad movements reached its height in 1993, the same year Algerian fundamentalists began carrying out assassinations and massacres on a large scale.

In both countries, the army responded with mass arrests, torture and summary executions. Cairo and Algiers concluded a security pact, under which they exchanged advice and intelligence data, particularly about the Arab veterans of the war against the Russians in Afghanistan who lead the guerrilla movements.

President Hosni Mubarak and President Liamine Zeroual are so close that when the Algerian head of state founded his own political movement last month he called it the National Democratic Party, after Mr Mubarak's ruling party.

Egyptian fundamentalists still have the power to kill; in a recent attack, 12 Coptic Christians were murdered. But the violence is now confined to upper Egypt, and even Islamist sympathisers say the danger of war on an Algerian scale has passed.

"There is no possibility that Egypt will become like Algeria," Mr Magdi Hussein, the editor of tee Islamist-leaning newspaper, As-Shaah, said. "We saw the utmost violence we could see here in Egypt over the past three years.

In Egypt, with a population of 60 million, about 1,000 people have died as a result of the Islamist rebellion. In Algeria, with less than half Egypt's population, the number feared dead is approaching 100,000. Why are conflicts that once seemed so similar turning out so differently?

Dr Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the director of the Ibn Khaldoun Social Research Centre in Cairo, claimed Egypt has a "higher level of civility" than Algeria. "I don't mean Egypt is more civilised or better," he explained. "I mean we have a tradition of settling conflicts peacefully and respecting the rights of others. In Algeria, there is a belief stemming from the [1954-1962] war of independence that force is a way to solve problems."

The notion of the state is more deeply entrenched in Egypt. Modern Egypt was established by Mohammed Ali Pasha in 1805; Algeria did not become an independent country until 157 years later. "Despite the Egyptian government's clumsiness, it is not a soft state," Dr Ibrahim said. "It gets its act together and in time it prevails. Rebellions in Egypt have always been intense - to get the message to the rulers - and short, because people need stability to survive."

The Nile River is Egypt's lifeline, and virtually the whole population lives along the river or in the delta. This has allowed the army to segment the country, thus blocking the guerrillas' movements. Unlike Algeria, there are no forests or mountains for rebels to hide in. The sugar cane fields of upper Egypt, their only shelter, are uprooted, burned or patrolled by helicopter.

In Egypt, the mainstream Islamists are moderate and the fringe groups are violent. In Algeria, the opposite is true. The Muslim Brotherhood, which still constitutes the main Islamic group in Egypt, will celebrate its 70th anniversary next year. It renounced violence in 1971. By contrast, the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was founded in 1989 and declared jihad or holy war on the "infidel state" three years later. And the FIS has been strengthened by a legitimate grievance.

"The Algerian Islamists won the first round of the December 199 parliamentary election," Mr Hussein Ahmed Amin, Egypt's former ambassador to Algeria said. "They were robbed of the fruits of their victory when the army cancelled the election. The Egyptian Islamists cannot make the same claim."

Egyptians believe that they are by temperament more moderate than Algerians. "Most Egyptians prefer dictatorship to bloodshed," a newspaper editor, Magdi Hussein, said.

Mr Amin agreed: "Algerians are much rougher than Egyptians or their neighbours in Morocco and Tunisia. They are good-hearted, but even in their daily dealings they are harsh, tough, devoid of the softer ways of a civilised people. This is mainly because of the hardship they endured at the hands of the French."