ERRI DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT-ERRI Risk Assessment Services-Friday, December 26, 1997 Vol. 3 - 360
THE YEAR IN ALGERIAN AND
EGYPTIAN TERRORISM
By Steve Macko, ERRI Risk Analyst
Islamist extremists continued their reign of terror in Algeria in 1997, and there were also bloody terrorist attacks in Egypt.
More than 500 villagers were slaughtered one night in August by Algerian fanatics called the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). The casualty toll was the highest for any single attack since the country's Islamist insurgency began more than five years ago. 1997 was a particularly bloody year.
The terrorists staged dozens of raids in the fertile farm belt south of Algiers. Some of the targets were within walking distance of police and army bases, others within sight of the Algiers' skyline. All were marked by brutality; in most cases, the victims were hacked, slashed or stabbed to death.
Analysts like Brad Dilman, of the American University of Cairo, were at a loss to explain the motive for such savagery. Dilman said, "And that for me is the question I find difficult getting an answer to, because it is not clear. If one is trying to gain supporters in society, this is certainly not the way to do it. In fact, this is likely to alienate potential supporters for these radical Islamists. Other than perhaps demonstrating that the government does not completely control security in the society, I do not see what is to be gained by such brutality."
Professor Dilman speculates the terrorists were simply intending to shock Algerians, in a bid to polarize society and erode support for the government.
Analysts saw similar motives behind what proved to be the worst single terrorist attack in Egypt. It happened in November at the pharaonic temple of Queen Hatshepsut in the Nile-side town of Luxor.
Six gunmen opened fire on groups of tourists preparing to enter the ancient temple. Fifty-eight foreigners and four Egyptians were killed. The six gunmen were later killed by Egyptian security forces.
The massacre in Luxor and a September attack outside the Cairo museum that left nine German visitors dead proved a death blow for Egypt's tourism industry.
Egyptian academic Saad el-Din Ibrahim believes that may have been one of the aims of the fanatics of Egypt's Islamic Group (al-Gama'a al-Islamiya), and it was achieved at relatively low cost.
Ibrahim said, "So six people managed to kill 60 people. Probably with a couple-of-thousand dollars cost of firearms and machine guns and knives, they will cost Egypt one billion dollars in tourist revenues in the next three months, that is the height of the season."
The Egyptian and Algerian governments responded to the year's terrorist outrages with stepped-up security measures and an intensified manhunt for the Islamist fanatics.
Professor Dilman sees no early end to the violence in Algeria, but he believes the Egyptian government will be more successful, at least in the short term.
"The government in Egypt is much more stable, if you will, and exercises a great deal more control over the nation's territory," Dilman said. "And I think fighting terrorism in Egypt is much different from fighting a civil war or mass civil unrest in Algeria. So I think the task that the Egyptian government faces is much less daunting than in Algeria."
Professor Dilman and many other analysts in the region believe both the Algerian and Egyptian governments must do more to resolve the underlying political, economic, and social problems that breed support for the Islamist extremists. These analysts say if the problems remain, it is not a question of whether there will be more terrorist incidents; it is only a question of when.
(c) Copyright, EmergencyNet NEWS Service, 1997. All Rights Reserved. Redistribution without permission is prohibited by law.
The ERRI DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT is a subscription publication of the EmergencyNet NEWS Service, which is a part of the Chicago-based Emergency Response and Research Institute. This publication specializes in Security/ Terrorism/Intelligence/Military and National Security issues.
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