In a recent march, political forces were surprised by banners declaring the birth of the armed Nubian ‘Katala’ Movement to confront discriminatory policies. It is the first time that the Nubia, Egypt’s largest ethnic group, took to the streets to address their issues.

Demographically speaking, Egypt’s Nubians total five million according to unofficial reports, since the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics do not provide any clear figures on ethnic or religious minorities.

In a recent march, political forces were surprised by banners declaring the birth of the armed Nubian ‘Katala’ Movement to confront discriminatory policies. It is the first time that the Nubia, Egypt’s largest ethnic group, took to the streets to address their issues.

Demographically speaking, Egypt’s Nubians total five million according to unofficial reports, since the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics do not provide any clear figures on ethnic or religious minorities.

Though spread all over Egypt, Nubians are mainly in southern Egypt between the governorates of Aswan and Qena, which were submerged with the construction of the High Dam in the late 1960s, causing internal as well as external migration, as large numbers of them have specifically migrated to the United States and France.

Nubians: O Brotherhood: We are not invaders

“We supported the Freedom and Justice Party in the parliamentary elections and their chairman in the presidential election to defeat the remnants of the old regime,” said 50 year-old Awad Abduzzaher, Katala founder and owner of El-Seif Contracting Company in Aswan Governorate, “but our reward was an ungrateful statement made by Essam el-Erian, one of their leaders, who incarnated the character of archaeologist Zahi Hawass, falsely claiming that the Nubians are invaders from Ethiopia. When he was asked to apologize, he said he had apologized to the head of the Nubian Club in Cairo and that he was not required to apologize to every Nubian.”

The Nubian Issue, as it has come to be known, resurfaced during the last 10 years of Mubarak’s rule against the background of their renewed demands, regarding the unfair compensations for their sunken lands in Lake Nasser in the 1960s. Their attempts to restore their rights were mainly made through filing lawsuits to go back to lands around the lake, the closest to their sun lands, or fairly compensate them so that each family would get independent housing. Mubarak’s regime greatly procrastinated, either due to poor capacities or poor development policies in the south, which prompted many lobbies of the Nubian society abroad to threaten of the internationalization of the issue.

The million-member march of the Sharia and the Nubian community

It is more than lapsus linguae of a Brotherhood leader, according to Katala founder, and goes beyond the education crisis in an organization and forces that do not know history. “In his speech,” explains Abduzzaher, “President Morsi said ‘the Nubian community in Egypt’ as if we had been expatriates. Then, in a TV interview, regulator of his party in Cairo, Hussein Abdulqader, described the Nubians as barbarians, accusing us of advocates of secession and ignoring the fact that the Nubians are the origin of the Pharaonic civilization in the south and the closest and the most maintaining ethnic group of the Egyptian culture. We speak the oldest language which has been alive for 10,000 years.”

When asked about Katala’s relation to the current political scene, Katala’s Chief Executive, Osama Farouq said: “After showing the Islamic power in Cairo University Square weeks ago, we became sure that the crowd and its slogans antagonized the diversity of Egyptians and threatened their modus vivendi and culture. True, the Egyptians rose up the following Tuesday to prove a different scene, but the Nubia, unified in three large tribes, will make the same response we did to the Hyksos thousands of years ago. We will cut off the hands of those who insult us. If the Brotherhood confronts the Egyptians with an armed militia like that at the presidential palace, they will be promptly be responded to by a militia known for its strength by everyone all over Egypt. Katala in our language means ‘battle’ or ‘fighter’, and after the Brotherhood’s takeover of all executive, judiciary and parliamentary powers, we can but take up arms.”

Brotherhood’s recognition of their ignorance of the Nubian issue

Farouq says the movement comprises ten senior gunmen supervising the recruitment process of the Nubian volunteers at home and abroad. “Thousands of people in the Aswan Governorate villages have supported us. Since all people in Upper Egypt hold arms, we currently depend on our own heavily abundant weapons. It should be noted that any attack on our white revolution, which is part of all the Egyptians’ revolution against the Brotherhood’s fascist tyranny, will be confronted decisively. Their party headquarters which are defended by security and executive apparatuses will be our first targets,” Farouq said.

Muhammad Bastawi, a member of the ruling Freedom and Justice Party and a founder of the General Nubian Union (GNU), acknowledges the mistake of his party’s leadership and believes that the establishment of the movement was a result of his party’s provocation, even though the party has Nubian members, such as MP Jamal Hanafi for the Cairo Qasr Annil constituency, describing his party’s leaderships as ignorant regarding the Nubian issue. Hanafi attributes that to the non-teaching of Nubian history and the Brotherhood’s insensitivity, which has made them question the Nubians’ affiliation with Egypt, suggesting that such practices have reflected the formation of the presidential chancellery, since none of its 20 members is Nubian or Bedouin, or from Sinai or Upper Egypt, which are the ethnic and racial components that should have been considered.

Doubts regarding arms and reliance on politics

With a lot of political bitterness, the GNU head, Hani Yusuf, doubts the movement’s size, suggesting that it is difficult to establish a Nubian armed movement since the Nubians’ political struggle is known to be peaceful and with its own political approach in pressurizing the Brotherhood government. They have declared that they refuse to approve the constitution for which the people are being polled now because the Brothers and the Salafists who control the Constitution Constituent Assembly refused the Nubian demands regarding the constitution. They did not even replace or try to compensate human rights activist, Manal Tibi, their representative to the assembly, which confirms their exclusionary intent against an essential component of the Egyptian people, whose only demand was teaching the Nubian civilization in school curricula.

Between those skeptical of the movement capacity and its actual presence and those who say its demands should be increased, the Nubian’s spirit of struggle for 100 years against the Islamic rule at its infancy and eventually had to convert to Christianity, seems to be repeating history.