(To be published in Arabic for Arabi21)
Any would-be militant group in Egypt, or elsewhere, finds immediately that it needs funding. Fighters need weapons and ammunition, they need equipment, they need places to stay, they need food; and obviously, they cannot really hold down a steady job to fund their armed activities.
The exciting, dramatic, glamorous image of the urban guerrilla fighter becomes suddenly a great deal less appealing when you realize that this strategy is an endlessly costly affair.
Armed struggle is a swirling vortex that sucks in money all the time. Once you shoot your bullet, you can’t shoot it again, and reloading is not free. As IRA leader Michael Collins famously said, “Bullets don’t grow on trees”.
The promise of a quick solution by means of violence fades very quickly when the means of violence require, basically, an unlimited budget.
This conundrum inevitably sends aspiring militants searching from door to door, hat in hand, for financial support.
Because we are talking about people who, generally, approach matters in a simplistic and impatient manner, they will tend to seek support from rich donors, whether states or private individuals.
Here it needs to be said that the easiest way for power to seize control of a revolutionary movement is to arm it.
When your support is coming from either rich nations or rich businessmen or Gulf shaykhs; it should be obvious that they are supporting their interests, not your cause.
Your insatiable need for funding will make it easy to rationalize that you can use their money however you wish and ultimately avoid the pitfalls of dependency. You can tell yourself that you will be able to outsmart their motives in the end, so that you can continue to justify accepting their support. But this is a rationale of desperation, not reason.
Successful guerilla movements do not begin as guerrilla movements; they begin with grassroots organizing.
They build community support first; they develop networks among the population to provide safe houses, intelligence, and, of course, financial aid from individuals and small businesses.
Armed resistance is eventually engaged by the consensus of this support network. It must be this way, because violence, obviously, increases risk and endangers the society.
If a group tries to undertake armed struggle without the consensus of the local population, the population will turn against them; and, frankly, they should.
You cannot legitimately claim to be defending the rights of the people, struggling to liberate them from tyranny, trying to protect them against oppression, while simultaneously ignoring them; or worse, having contempt for them.
You will say, “The people are afraid; they are scared to be accused of financing an armed group”. Well, that is a perfectly rational fear, and the only way to overcome that fear is to cultivate in them the conviction that your group genuinely cares about their welfare, and that you will not undertake armed action without their consent and support, and that you have a clear vision of how armed action will indeed triumph.
The hard work of revolution cannot be bypassed. There is no way around the necessity of building grassroots support. Armed struggle requires more, not less, work in this area, but unfortunately, most of the young men drawn to this path are drawn to it by their impatience, and this impatience prevents them from doing the practical work which is the only way this path can ever lead to victory.