Twelve Egyptians and six foreigners were killed in three explosions in theEgyptian Red Sea tourist resort town of Dahab on April 24, 2006.
Dahab, which is popular with Western and Israeli low-budget tourists, was alsopacked with Egyptians enjoying a public holiday at the time of the explosions.The terrorists struck on Sham el-Nessim, a traditional holiday which marksthe beginning of spring, and a day before the Sinai Liberation Day whichcelebrates Israel's withdrawal from the peninsula in 1982. The blasts cameone day after a new audiotape of Osama bin Laden disseminated by the AlJazeera TV channel had accused the "crusaders" of the West ofwaging a war against Islam in many parts of the world and had called forpreparations to wage a jihad against external forces in the Darfur region of theSudan.
The nature of the explosive devices is not yet clear. Mr Mohamad Hani, theGovernor of the south Sinai region, was quoted as saying that the explosions were the work of suicide bombers, but the Egyptian televisionquoted other witnesses as saying that the explosions were caused by remotecontrolled devices.
No organisation has so far claimed responsibility for the explosions. The AlGama Al Islamiyah, which used to be active in Egypt in the 1990s, had indulgedin targeted attacks on foreign tourists, but its activities had withered away inrecent years. However, there has been a revival of terrorist strikes in touristresorts in the Sinai region during the last two years.In October 2004, 34people were killed in attacks on the Sinai resorts of Taba and Ras al Sultan. In July last year, 67 people were killed in Sharm-el-Sheikh. The April 24, 2006,strike is the third attack in a tourist resort in the Sinai area.
All the three incidents involved three explosions each. The previous incidentsinvolved the use of car bombs, which caused more fatalities. This time, no carbombs had been used and hence the smaller number of fatalities. The previous twoattacks were also on Egyptian national holidays. The Egyptian authorities had attributed the Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh attacks to a small Sinai-based grouporiginally led by a man of Palestinian origin and with radical Islamist views.However, they were not forthcoming about the conclusions of their securityofficials, who had investigated the previous explosions.
The state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram said preliminary enquiries pointed tothe involvement of a group calling itself Tawhid wal Jihad (Unification and HolyWar) in the explosions of April 24,2006. It said that three suspects fromthe organisation, who had been detained before the explosions in connection withthe earlier investigations, had confessed during their interrogationto plotting attacks against tourists in the southern Sinai area.
There have so far been no definitive indications of the involvement of either AlQaeda or any of the other member-organisations of the International IslamicFront (IIF) in any of these three terrorist strikes in the Sinai area, whichseem to have been of an indiscriminate nature, directed more at the touristeconomy of the region than at any foreign nationals in particular.
Acts of economic terrorism are not the unique characteristics of Al Qaeda or theIIF or any of the other jihadi terrorist groups. Many domestic terroristorganisations had in the past attacked economic targets. In this connection, onecould refer to the explosions organised by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) inthe financial district of London in the 1980s, the instructions given byPakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to the Babbar Khalsa, a Khalistaniterriorist organisation of Punjab, to target the Bombay High off-shore oil rigin the early 1990s, which they did not carry out, the Mumbai explosions ofMarch,1993, which were carried out by a group of Muslims recruited by DawoodIbrahim, the mafia leader, and trained by the ISI, against carefully-selectedeconomic targets, the attacks on oil pipelines in Assam by the United LiberationFront of Assam (ULFA) and attacks on economic targets by the Maoists in Nepaland India.
Economic terrorism particularly became the vogue in the 1980s and thereafter.The terrorists resorting to economic terrorism tend to calculate that the stateswould be more inclined to concede their demands when threatened with majordisruptions of their economy than when confronted with large civiliancasualties, but with no economic damage. For the last two years, the PakistaniLashkar-e-Toiba (LET), which is a member of the IIF, has been talking of theneed to attack information technology companies in Bangalore, India's SiliconValley. Its calculation is that attacks on economic targets in areas, which arethe favourite destinations of foreign investors, could cause a serious set-backto India's aspirations of emerging as a major economic power and make the Stateamenable to conceding the demands of the jihadi terrorists.
Since the International Islamic Front (IIF) was formed by Al Qaeda, inassociation with other jihadi organisations, in 1998, trans-national economicterrorism, which tries to target the economies of a number of countries, hasbecome a matter of increasing concern to counter-terrorism agencies. The need tomake the economies of the US and its allies bleed has been a frequentlyrecurring theme of Al Qaeda, the IIF and other international jihadi terroristorganisations.
The post-9/11 explosions by different pan-Islamic jihadi organisations inBali, outside a Jakarta hotel, Mombasa, Aden (on a French oil tanker), Casablanca, Istanbul and the Sinai area of Egypt and the attacks onforeign experts working in the Saudi oil industry in May,2004, and therecent foiled attack on the biggest Saudi refinery complex are part of thistrans-national economic jihadi terrorism, which targets the economies of morethan one country. All these incidents have till now been in the Islamic world,particularly in Muslim countries identified by Al Qaeda and the IIF ascollaborators of the US.
The jihadi terrorists' war against the US-led troops in Iraq and Afghanistan isonly one part of their global jihad to achieve their pan-Islamic objectives. Theother part is their continuing acts of economic terrorism. In his video-tapedmessage disseminated before the US Presidential elections of November,2004,Osama bin Laden underlined the importance of hitting economic targets,particularly the flow of oil. This has been a recurring theme in thepropaganda of Al Qaeda and the IIF since then. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden'sNo.2, has been speaking of the need to target the oil supply to the West. In hismessage disseminated in the beginning of March,2006, al-Zawahiri said: "Muslims have to inflict losses on the Crusader West, especially to itseconomic infrastructure, with strikes that would make it bleed for years."
Till now, Al Qaeda and the IIF have not been able to acquire acapability for sustained acts of economic jihadi terrorism in any of the Westernhomelands--either in the US or in West Europe. Economic terrorism can succeed inits objective only if it is sustained. Sporadic acts of economic terrorism,which the world has witnessed so far, did not have any enduring effect. Theeconomies of the targeted countries suffered a temporary set-back, but showedremarkable resilience in coming out of it pretty soon.
Economic jihad, to be enduring and effective, requires a large and well-knitnetwork of clandestine cells in different nerve centres of the Westerneconomies. Neither Al Qaeda nor any of the other organisations of the IIF havesuch a capability presently in the targeted countries. Even acts of maritimeterrorism can be effective in seriously damaging the international economy onlyif they follow in a chain one after the other. An isolated act ofsuccessful maritime terrorism in the Malacca Straits or in any other choke pointwould create serious difficulties, but of a short duration and the economies ofthe affected countries could recover from it.
Al Qaeda, the IIF and other jihadi terrorist organisations are unlikely to developa strong economic jihad infrastructure in any of the Western homelands even inthe short and medium terms, if not in the long term. They have, therefore, onlythree ways of seriously damaging the economies of the targeted countries in aneffective and enduring manner. The first is by stopping the supply of oil tothem either by capturing power in major oil-producing countries such as SauiArabia, Iraq, Iran and Nigeria or by disrupting the flow of oil throughsustained acts of terrorism directed against the oil infrastructure. The secondis by disabling the communication infrastructure, which they can do anywhere andfor which they do not necessarily require a presence in the targeted countries.The third is through sustained and continuous acts of maritime terrorism
Al Qaeda has been able to disrupt the flow of oil to the rest of the world fromIraq, but it has not so far succeeded in its repeated attempts to disrupt theoil supply from Saudi Arabia. It has a short and a medium-term objective inSaudi Arabia. The short-term objective is to disrupt the flow of oil to theinternational market from that country. It has tried, without success so far,two ways of doing this--by denying the services of foreign oil experts to theSaudi oil industry by targeting them for attack as it did in 2004 and by frontalattacks on the oil infrastructure as it tried to do recently. Fortunately, itsattempts have been effectively thwarted so far by the Saudi security agencies.Its long-term objective is the capture of power in Saudi Arabia. The threat tothe flow of oil from Iran is not so much from the jihadi terrorists as from thestate itself resorting to economic state terrorism as a reprisal for itsdenuclearisation.
While Al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist organisations have shown a remarkablecompetence in using the Internet and other modern means of communication forfacilitating their acts of jihadi terrorism, they have not yet demonstrated acapability for causing a major disruption of the economic activities of theworld through synchronised attacks on the communications infrastructure. Thisdoes not mean that they are not trying to acquire such a capability.
Much has already been written about the dangers of maritime terrorism. Thesedangers remain present, but controllable through international co-operation.
Most of the successful acts of economic jihadi terrorism till now--whether inIndonesia or Kenya or Morocco or Egypt or Turkey--have been directed atthe tourist infrastructure. These attacks have had many motives--not all of themnecessarily economic. One of the motives is a desire to kill Westerners andIsraelis at places where they congregate and are least protected. Anotheris to spread demoralisation by highlighting the inability of the state toprotect the targeted people--whether locals or foreigners. A third is todemonstrate their power and reach to their own community in order to keep up theflow of new recruits.
The real economic victims of jihadi terrorism directed at the tourisminfrastructure are the local Muslims themselves as one saw in the latestincident in the Sinai area of Egypt on April 24. Attacks at the tourism centresare the easiest to carry out. It is a low-cost way of attracting attention tothemselves from their own community as well as from others.
Attacks on the tourism infrastructure cannot be easily prevented, but attacks onthe oil and communications infrastructure and on maritime shipping can beprevented through effective physical security and international co-operation.How to further improve upon what has already been achieved should constantlyengage the attention of counter-terrorism experts and policy-makers.