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A possible end to Islamic Jihad
In October 2004, three explosions rocked Egypt's red sea resorts killing 33 people, mostly Israeli tourists. Despite an official Egyptian denial, Israel and other Western governments were quick in blaming these attacks on al-Qaida. They associated the attacks with an audio tape broadcast on al-Jazeera which emerged a week earlier urging Muslims to attack the interests of "crusader America" and its allies across the world. The voice in the tape sounded similar to that of al-Qaida second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In the tape, Zawahiri urged Muslims to defend the Palestinians and to resist Israel. Not surprisingly the attacks were seen as a response to Zawahiri's call, especially since Taba was the last town returned to Egypt after the 1979 peace treaty with Israel and most of the major hotels in the area were subsequently built with Israeli capital and mostly frequented by Israeli tourists. The speedy denial of responsibility by Egyptian Islamic groups and their condemnations of these attacks were seen as further proof of the rapprochement that has taken hold between the Egyptian government and the Islamic groups in recent years. Indeed the attacks at Taba were the first of their kind in Egypt since the shootings outside the Hatshepsut Temple near Luxor in November 1997 in which 58 foreigners and four Egyptians were killed. The Luxor attack was blamed on al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya that was headed by the blind sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, who is currently serving a life sentence in the US for his involvement in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and other planned attacks. Following the Luxor attack, many al-Jama'a leaders - some of whom were serving jail sentences in Egypt - issued a public statement urging their followers to halt all operations and to renounce violence. This public declaration effectively signaled the end of the latest round of the long-running war between the Egyptian government and radical Islam. The latest conflict started in 1992 and by 1997 it had cost the lives of more than a thousand people; most of whom were informers and security officials. The Egyptian state has fought a long and bloody war with radical Islam. From the days of the Egyptian Monarchy to the current autocratic reign of Husni Mubarak, different Islamic groups have consistently tried to wrest control of the state from the secular nationalists and their allies. The Islamists' most spectacular success came in October 1981, when a militant cell led by Lieutenant Khaled al-Islambouli assassinated the then President Anwar Sadat. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-02-15 |
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