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| Author: | Esther Pan |
|---|
August 1, 2005
Islamic opposition groups have been active in Egypt for decades. The nation's latest terror attacks--which killed at least sixty-four and injured more than 200 at the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh July 23--has again focused world attention on the activities of such groups. Two little-known organizations claimed responsibility for the Sharm attacks: the Abdullah Azzam Brigades of al-Qaeda in Syria and Egypt, and the Holy Warriors of Egypt, but experts say their claims are difficult, if not impossible, to verify. These groups might be offshoots of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist ideological and political movement that has renounced violence but spawned many violent splinter factions. The main terror groups active in Egypt--Jamaat al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad--are both Brotherhood offshoots. Either could have been involved in the recent attacks.
Through much of the last decade, Mubarak's government actively fought opposition groups: detaining their members, jailing their leaders, and cracking down on their finances. "The Egyptian regime really went after these people in a big way," Cook says. The crackdown was effective; it led to a period of quiet between the 1997 Luxor attacks and the October 2004 bombings in the resort town of Taba that killed thirty-four. During this time, tourism in Egypt--which brings in some $6 billion annually--experienced a resurgence.
The Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh bombings have led experts to believe that homegrown Egyptian extremism is on the rise again. A Bedouin tribesman from the Sinai region was arrested by Egyptian authorities in the fall of 2004 after admitting he sold the explosives used in the Taba attacks. Egyptian authorities clamped down harshly on Bedouin tribes after that, arresting hundreds of young Bedouin men. Human-rights organizations say many of the detainees were held for months without charges, and some were tortured. Officials say 139 of the men are still in jail.
Yes. In the days after attacks, the Egyptian authorities took DNA samples from the families of five Bedouin men from the Sinai region in order to try to match them with DNA of the suicide bombers. They also rounded up dozens of suspects for questioning, including more than twenty Bedouins. Some experts warn the mass arrests, on the heels of the harsh crackdowns in Bedouin communities in 2004, could have the contradictory result of inspiring future attacks. "There’s a clear linkage between repression and radicalization," Cook says. "Every repressive encounter leads to more commitment to violence."
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