Sinai: Digging for the Roots of Terror

It's tempting to package terrorism in simple terms to make sense out of what seems incomprehensible, or to score political points as when President Bush calls Al Qaeda terrorists and Iranian-backed Shiite radicals two faces of the same threat. But a new report by the International Crisis Group illustrates why it is a mistake to oversimplify terrorism. The IGC report isn't about Iraq, Iran or Lebanon, but the eastern wedge of Egypt called the Sinai Peninsula. In the past three years, terrorists have struck tourist resorts along the Egyptian Red Sea coast three times--in Taba, then Sharm el Sheikh and then Dahab, resorts that draw hundreds of thousands of sun worshippers each year. More than 100 Israelis, Westerners and Egyptians were among the victims.
Press speculation supported by official spin suggested that the attacks were part of Al Qaeda's global terror campaign. The IGC report, Egypt's Sinai Question, starts off by correctly noting that facts about the perpetrators and the attacks are scarce. Based on the known identities some of the attackers and a review of political factors, however, the IGC sketches the possibility of a complex picture. The terrorists were Sinai bedouin in a group led by a local dentist and an Egyptian of Palestinian origin who was a law school graduate. The Palestinian had worshipped in a Sinai mosque that preached jihad sermons. The bedouin came out of a Sinai community that has roots in the tribes of Arabia and experienced systematic discrimination from the Cairo government. The group's members were apparently aroused by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violence in the nearby Gaza Strip abutting the Sinai. The initial bombing of the Taba hotel frequented by Israelis may have been motivated by the Palestinan cause. On the other hand, the subsequent attacks in Sharm el Sheikh and Dahab may have been carried out as a grudge against the Egyptian government--including anger over mass arrests following the Taba attack.
Bedouin discontent, Palestinian connections, radical Islam--it's pretty hard to solely blame Al Qaeda, much less the other side of Bush's extremist coin, Iran. The IGC's main recommendation is not more war against terrorism but a comprehensive social and development plan to "transform attitudes" and address what it says is "the Sinai question."
This week's suicide bombing in the Israeli resort of Eilat, only a few miles from the site of the Taba bombing, may be another indication of the need to further deal with the roots of terrorism in Sinai. The bomber, from Gaza, appears to have crossed into Egypt and then into Israel using the Sinai as his transit ground. The Egyptian police will want to learn whether he had any help from local Sinai residents.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo