IS attack deals blow to Egypt tourism

The claim by Islamic State (IS) of responsibility for the downing of the Russian airliner with the loss of 224 lives should not have surprised or stunned politicians and pundits across the world. IS is an offshoot of al-Qaeda which has on four other occasions tried and failed to bring down civilian aircraft since its operatives mounted the shockingly successful strikes against the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington in September 2001. These attempts were made in December 2001, 2006, 2009, and 2010.

The Egyptian IS affiliate of al-Qaeda shares the parent organisation’s two main military objectives: to mount deadly strikes on the West and seize territory on behalf of the IS “caliphate.”

IS’ Egyptian affiliate, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, “Supporters of the Holy House in Jerusalem” (Al-Aqsa mosque), launched a series of attacks on Red Sea tourist resorts popular with Israelis during 2004-06, killing 145 people. These operations were the first to be mounted by militant Muslims outside the Nile Valley and Delta regions of Egypt. Repression by the military quelled the attacks until 2009 when Hamas, the Palestinian movement ruling Gaza, initiated a crackdown on zealots who escaped into neighbouring North Sinai, a lawless land long neglected by Cairo.

Ansar staged more than a dozen attacks on the Egypt-Israel natural gas pipeline and several operations targeting Egyptian troops manning the border with Israel following the fall of 30-year President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Ansar received a boost from the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012-13, particularly after the elevation to presidency of the Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi. His removal in mid-2013 prompted the Brotherhood and the Sinai militants to mount an all-out campaign against the government.

This has led to the uprooting of the Brotherhood in most of Egypt but resulted in the escalation of Sinai attacks into a war of attrition. In 2014, Ansar declared its fealty as “Sinai Province” to IS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has made his capital in the north central Syrian city of Raqqa, once the capital of the empire of the legendary Arab ruler Haroun al-Rashid, a cultivated progressive ruler unlike the brutal, regressive al-Baghdadi.

Fearing that IS may have obtained shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, a number of airlines have rerouted flights to avoid Sinai. These include Emirates, Qatar Airlines, Lufthansa, and Air France-KLM. Due to the IS threat in Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, and certain areas of Kenya, many airlines no longer fly over these countries, fearing another incident like the shooting down, allegedly, by Russian-backed separatists of a Malaysian plane over Ukraine in July 2014.

For Egypt, this incident is disastrous. Timed at the beginning of the annual tourist season, thousands of bookings have been cancelled. Last year, Egypt received 6.6 million tourists, boosting revenues to $7.4 billion, a 45.3 per cent increase over the previous year.
In 2010, earnings had peaked at 12.5 billion. Tourism employs one out of every nine Egyptians in the workforce and accounts for 12 per cent of its GDP. Unemployment can drive poor men and women to join IS and its affiliates, exacerbating an already dangerous situation.

Impact on air travel
Whether proven or not, the IS claim of having downed the Russian flight over Sinai has implications for air travel the world over. Since the plane was not shot down, the supposition is that a bomb was placed on board before take-off. Screening of luggage and staff at airports will have to be stepped up dramatically, boosting costs which will be passed on to travellers.

While Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad — all targeted by IS ­— have long warned of the threat posed by its rise, the international community has stood by and done little to counter the jihadis. Instead, the goverments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the US, Britain and France, either boosted or tolerated IS, al-Qaeda’s official branch Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadi groups in the expectation that they would bring down the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.

However, these governments did not see that IS is an aggressive disease spreading across the world posing a danger to everyone. The bombing of the Russian airliner should be a wake up call. The US has increased its airstrikes against IS targets in northern Syria and proffered aid to an alliance of Syrian Arab and Kurdish forces seeking to drive IS from Raqqa, and ultimately from Mosul in northern Iraq, its most important conquest  and alternative base.

But the US efforts are bound to fail unless the Western powers, on one hand, join forces with Russia and Iran in the war against IS, Nusra and their allies, and, on the other hand, exert extreme pressure on Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to cease their support for these groups. IS offshoots and similar groups in Pakistan, Nigeria, Mali, and elsewhere also have to be tackled. The IS infection must be eliminated to prevent it from spreading from affected areas across the world.