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Journey to jihadist [Star, The (South Africa)](Star, The (South Africa) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Photos of the Islamic State fighter show a fearsome-faced man in black with a full beard and an assault weapon. He died on an Iraqi battlefield, blown to pieces by a bomb, fellow fighters say. But like any number of Islamist militants, this jihadist was once a very different person. Ahmed al-Darawi had been a young political hopeful in Egypt. A 38-year-old father of two, he loved fashion and soccer. In his twenties, he had been a police officer, then a sports marketer. But in the years since Egypt's 2011 uprising, in which he was an idealistic participant, he morphed from a prominent rights activist into a die-hard fighter for Islamic State. The news last month of his death shocked friends and colleagues. But his transformation from aspiring parliamentarian to battle-hardened jihadist has underscored the myriad ills driving thousands in the region to take up arms in the name of one of the world's most feared militant organisations. Islamic State now holds wide stretches of territory in Syria and Iraq. "How sweet life is between the Qur'an and my Kalashnikov," reads a February 24 post from a Twitter account researchers believe belonged to Darawi. His story reflects the devastating path the Arab world has taken in recent years: from the promise of democratic rebellion to the horrors of sectarian conflict. The inability of Arab governments to "address social ills and give their citizens a sense of national identity" in the wake of the Arab uprisings has turned many like Darawi to the embrace of Islamic State, said Kamal Habib, co-founder of the Egyptian militant group Islamic Jihad. Habib has since renounced violence and works as an Islamic scholar. He said Islamic State offered the disenfranchised the hope of a just society based on Islamic, not civic, principles. "They think the IS will give them the respect they don't get as nationals of their own countries," he said. "It gives them structure and a place where they can search for meaning. It's an alternative to the failed states we see now." Although Darawi appears to have adopted the jihadists' goal of a pan-Islamic state before he died, he had been a central figure in the web of activists that emerged from the revolt in Cairo's Tahrir Square. As a former cop, Darawi served as a key liaison between pro-democracy demonstrators and interior ministry officials whom they wanted to implement police reform. Darawi had resigned from the police force in 2007 in protest against the deep-rooted corruption he said permeated it. "I want to tell you that you're part of the people. Don't be an enemy of the revolution," he said to Egyptian policemen in 2012 during a television appearance on a private satellite channel. In those heady days of optimism and political freedom, Darawi decided to run for parliament. But the seat he contested was granted to a long-time supporter of the regime Darawi had sought to oust, amid widespread accusations of fraud. A court ruling to dissolve Egypt's first freely elected legislature later that year angered Darawi, his brother said. The last time Darawi was politically active, colleagues said, was when he campaigned for a moderate Islamist politician, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, in the presidential election in 2012. "He was a big believer in the idea that 'Islam is the solution', but not through taking up arms," said Sherif Hassan, a sports journalist who knew Darawi when he worked at the multinational telecommunications firm Etisalat. But political infighting and polarisation had begun to tear at the unity that marked Egypt's rebellion against a repressive regime, and the ideological rifts between Islamists and their liberal and leftist counterparts deepened. It was then that Darawi, while critical of the Muslim Brotherhood group that swept to power, began to express increasingly Islamist positions on political and social issues, activists say. Darawi withdrew from the political scene, telling colleagues he planned to travel to the US for medical treatment. By then, the rebellion in Syria had morphed into a bloody armed conflict that eventually would collapse into an even deadlier civil war. And the Islamist groups that flourished here in the post-uprising period already were facilitating the travel of Egyptian fighters to the battlefield. Turkey, which shares a border with Syria and whose government is sympathetic to the rebels, acted as the primary conduit for militants seeking to join the revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Researchers say hundreds of Egyptian militants are now fighting in Syria and Iraq, if not more. But why Darawi finally decided to leave Egypt for the life of a militant remains a mystery, family members and friends said. Hassan, the journalist, saw him on a flight from Cairo to Istanbul in June last year. He said they chatted about the growing opposition to Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader who would be toppled by the army just a few weeks later. "He seemed indifferent" to the political situation in Egypt, Hassan said. A few months after that, online posts show, Darawi would surface as the commander of a rebel brigade in Syria's Latakia province. He assumed a nom de guerre: Abu Muadh al-Masri. His brigade, the Lions of the Caliphate, eventually pledged allegiance to Islamic State. A post from Darawi's alleged Twitter account on February 14 expressed frustration about the lingering nationalism hindering the establishment of a cross-border Islamic state. "How can it be a caliphate," the post reads, "everyone refuses to be ruled by anyone but someone from their own country." "How will we liberate al-Aqsa (the Muslim holy site in Jerusalem) if they say we will apply sharia but not infringe on other's borders," it continues, in a swipe at the Islamist movements that confine their politics to the domestic arena. The anonymous author of an account of Darawi's time in Syria and Iraq that was posted to the same Islamist site that announced his death last month said Darawi struggled to finance his brigade after the coup in Egypt against Mursi. The Egyptian government's crackdown on Islamists disrupted the flow of cash to Syria, said the author, who described himself as a fellow jihadist. It was five months after Mursi's overthrow, in November last year, that Darawi and his fighters defected to Islamic State. Darawi's brother Haythem said his family received an anonymous call telling them he had died in May. Researchers say it is not uncommon for Islamic State to officially announce a fighter's death weeks or even months later. - The Washington Post The Star (c) 2014 Independent Newspapers (Pty) Limited. All rights strictly reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |