Bloodbath at Luxor

EPA

THE carnage was abominable. With savage efficiency, the killers sprayed arcs of gunfire into the throng of tourists outside the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Luxor, then lingered to finish off survivors with knives—and to dance over their victims' bodies. They left 62 people dead—all but four of them foreigners—and the Egyptian government scrambling to stem the haemorrhage of its own credibility as well as of Egypt's vital tourist revenue.

The massacre at Luxor on the morning of November 17th was the bloodiest terrorist attack Egypt has ever witnessed, and the most shattering since religious fanatics killed Anwar Sadat at a military parade 16 years ago. The six gunmen slipped through successive security cordons into a crowded site that should have been recognised as an obvious target. They escaped from the scene unscathed, to be tracked down and killed in the desert some two hours later.

Hassan al-Alfi, the minister of interior who had recently claimed that he was close to stamping out Islamist radicalism, paid for police incompetence with his job. But the killers' effortless breach of tight security is not Egypt's only problem. One obvious, immediate casualty is the tourist industry which was clambering out of a three-year trough caused by earlier attacks. Now it will slump again—just as investors were pumping millions into it. But tourism, although important as an employer, represents less than 5% of GDP. And Egypt's economy is in its best shape in decades.

Much more seriously, Monday's explosion of terror can be seen as an indictment of the one-dimensional way in which the Egyptian government has handled extremist groups. Radical Islamist opposition to the Egyptian state, based on an ideology that brands all but the most puritan interpretation of Islam as infidel, burst into violence in the early 1990s. But after an initial wave of assassination attempts and hit-and-run attacks on tourists, the insurgency had been squeezed into a slugging match between police and small bands of rebels deep in the Upper Egyptian interior.

Ordinary Egyptians have paid a price. Civil liberties have diminished. Democratic institutions have withered. But, to the Egyptian establishment, the containment of the radicals vindicated the strong-arm methods used to deal with them. These included the arrest and detention of over 10,000 suspects, the use of torture and the trial of hundreds by military courts that allowed no right of appeal. Since 1992, 91 extremists have been sentenced to death, about two-thirds of them already executed. Sketchy police information indicates that the Luxor killers were members of a branch of Gamaat Islamiya, based north of Luxor at Asyut, and had been on the run for two years. Earlier this year, imprisoned leaders of the Gamaat and its sister organisation, al Jihad, issued a statement calling for a ceasefire, which the government ignored. Harsh sentencing continued. After the massacre, the Gamaat issued another—but highly conditional—ceasefire call.

A hand-written leaflet found on the body of one of the attackers showed his state of mind:

We shall take revenge for our brothers who have died on the gallows. The depths of the earth are better for us than the surface since we have seen our brothers squatting in their prisons, and our brothers and families tortured in their jails.

Egyptian analysts say that the personal nature of this vendetta may reflect the state's success in breaking the radical groups' organisational structure. With most of their leaders either dead, in exile or in jail, the remaining activists have turned ever more desperately violent.

Condemned by all

Shocking as the incident was—and the fear of a repeat performance is great—the Egyptian government is in no immediate danger. The terrorists have very little support. In Luxor, villagers spat on their bodies. In Cairo, opposition parties issued a joint statement blasting the murders. Although religious fervour is strong in Egypt, only a tiny minority find any justification in the zeal of the Gamaat Islamiya. Listen to the twisted logic of the group's leader, Talaat Fuad Qasim, interviewed before his disappearance in 1995 (he was probably nabbed by Egyptian agents in Croatia): “Tourism is an abomination, a means by which prostitution and AIDS are spread by Jewish women tourists,” he ventured. Destroying it is one of the group's strategies for destroying the government. “Besides,” he added, “it doesn't cost us very much.”

Outside Egypt, Islamist groups ranging from Hizbullah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza and the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria condemned the attack. Visiting the scene of the crime, President Hosni Mubarak hinted that unnamed foreign hands were responsible. He promised even tougher security measures.

This meets with general approval. But others worry. “This is not just a security problem, or one that can be blamed on outsiders,” declared an Egyptian journalist in heated discussion in a Cairo café. “We have to recognise it is all our institutions, from schools to courts to the press and the political system, that have created these monsters.” A prosperous Cairo butcher echoed this sentiment. “The government is to blame for [the young gunmen]. These boys are so poor and so hopeless that they would do anything if you gave them a hundred pounds [$30].”

Unfortunately, efforts to give them more hope could fall victim to Monday's terror. With the economy doing well—it is expected to grow by 5.3% this year—the government had at last begun investing in education and other social services. But the plunge in tourism could set this back. If it does, the blinding poverty of Upper Egypt will endure to produce another generation of violently misguided youths.