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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER 4, 1981
PAGE 11
The impact of the October 6 assassination of President Sadat is still very
evident in Cairo. Soldiers armed with rifles affixed with bayonets are
found everywhere, in front of public buildings and on the many bridges
across the Nile. At some intersections, two or three can be seen behind
sandbagged positions.
Not that they look that alert or menacing, but
they're present, just in case. But in case of what?
Few realize that shortly before Sadat's violent death, Egypt was on the
verge of a civil war, orchestrated by Soviet agents who wanted Egypt to go
the way of Iran. The Kremlin had never forgiven Sadat for expelling 17,000
Soviet military advisors in 1972 and putting Egypt into the Western, speci
fically American, camp.
It took Moscow years to get even, but by the summer of 1981 they had found
Sadat's--and Egypt's--main weak point. This was not hatred of Jews and Is
rael, but rather that of inherent religious disunity within Egypt itself.
Among Egypt's 41 million people, seven per cent are Christian Copts, who
are descendents of the original Egyptians. The Russians stirred up latent
Moslem distrust of the Copts into a type of holy war to rid Egypt of the
Coptic "infidels."
An intercepted message to Moscow from a Russian agent supposedly read: "We
can count on mobilizing at least ten million militant Moslems. In provok
ing trouble between Moslems and Copts and escalating the confrontation
through a massive distribution of tracts and tape-recordings we can create
a crisis combining the emotions of Lebanon and Iran. Sadat will be shaken,
his image irreparably damaged and an internal religious explosion will
sweep everything before it."
On June 20, Islamic commandos attacked Copts in three quarters of Cairo,
disemboweling priests with meat knives and violating women. Eight Coptic
churches went up in flames. The next day, pamphlets printed in advance
called on true Moslems to rise up and destroy the impious enemies of Islam.
Coptic anger was naturally rising--exactly as the Soviet agents hoped,
planned, and knew it would. Retaliation by the Copts would lead to further
Moslem attacks and hopefully--from Moscow's viewpoint--Egypt would be en
gulfed in flames, with the government collapsing.
President Sadat at first refused to take the report of Soviet strife
seeding seriously, but he knew there had to be a reason why the Moslems and
Copts, who had been on generally good terms throughout his reign, were sud
denly at each others' throats.
Finally convinced of foul play, Sadat cracked down hard. Out went the
Soviet Ambassador, six top Soviet diplomats and hundreds of soviet techni
cians and their families. Religious leaders were rounded up in an attempt
to defuse the sectarian strife. Things returned somewhat to normal--until
a handful of �tirred up religious fanatics finally got to the president. As
the author of the intelligence newsletter "Special Office Briefs" reports:
"The foundations for a terrible murder had been laid--by the Soviet Union."
One gets the impression that sectarian hatreds in Egypt are still just be
low the surface. One of the drivers assigned to our party in Cairo, himself
a Copt, remarked about how "the Moslems hate us."