November 06, 2014
One of the most troubling aspects of the phenomenon of
militant Salafist-takfiri groups like ISIS is the appearance of smaller groups
across the Arab world that share ISIS’s ideology and methods, and in several
cases have sworn allegiance to it. This is no surprise. In the past 70 years or
so we have often seen similar local conditions and grievances in different
countries lead to the same kinds of reactions among local populations who often
use Islam as a motivating, legitimizing and mobilizing force. This happened
with Muslim Brotherhood-like groups since the 1950s, nationalist military
resistance movements like Hamas and Hezbollah, non-violent Salafists in the
last decade, and now the violent Salafist-takfiris like ISIS.
So today a combination of regional and
international countries fight ISIS in Syria-Iraq, while smaller militant groups
elsewhere are being fought by individual countries. These include the
Salafist-takfiris targeted in Lebanon by the armed forces and Hezbollah, the
Yemeni armed forces chasing down Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the
Egyptian government’s operations against Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, and similar
situations in Tunisia, Mali, Somalia and other countries.
The situation in Egypt is particularly significant,
because of the influence across the region that Egypt has always had. Ansar
Beit Al-Maqdis (ABM) came into being in Sinai and started military operations
against the government in 2010, after its members broke off from Al-Qaeda. It
has repeatedly attacked government and infrastructural facilities, like natural
gas export pipelines and military garrisons, and since the military takeover of
rule in Egypt last year it has attacked targets in and near Cairo.
Last week ABM killed 33 Egyptian soldiers and
officers in north Sinai. The government of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has
tried several times to hit and weaken the militants in their home territory in
northern Sinai, without much success. The latest operation against ABM during
the past 13 months includes heavy-handed actions against Sinai residents such
as many arrests and air strikes, collective punishment like curfews, and also
alleged incidents of kidnapping and torture that have resulted in the deaths of
civilians. This week, in response to the killing of the 33 troops, the Al-Sisi
government has launched a tougher new strategy that includes creating a buffer
zone along the Sinai-Gaza border that aims to reduce assumed links between ABM
and sympathizers in Gaza.
The zone will be 500 meters wide and will run
along the entire 13-kilometer-long Gaza border with the northern Sinai. To do
this, the Egyptian government a few days ago ordered hundreds of families to
leave their homes and relocate elsewhere, so that the homes could be destroyed
and the buffer zone established.
Human rights activists and others charge that
the Egyptian government is abusing its own citizens and denying them their
basic rights in forcing them to move without much notice and then blowing up
their homes. But a bigger issue also needs to be addressed in this matter. This
is whether such strategies and behavior by the Egyptian government will achieve
the goal of reducing or eliminating ABM and its terror attacks, or instead will
only make the problem worse.
This is a very localized version of a much wider
dilemma that is evident in the multi-national fight against ISIS, and has also
always been one of the problematic dimensions of George W. Bush’s “global war
on terror” against Al-Qaeda. The Israelis also have tried using buffer zones or
even occupying border regions in Gaza and Lebanon to reduce resistance strikes
by Lebanese and Palestinians against Israeli occupiers, but usually without
success.
The troubling aspect of this phenomenon for
Americans, Israelis and now Egyptians also is that a legitimate desire to
protect one’s citizens from terror attacks leads to greater anger and
resentment among citizens who were never part of the target groups like ABM or
Al-Qaeda. When heavy-handed anti-terror actions demean, kill, injure or ruin
the lives of civilians, some of these civilians end up joining the militant
groups, simply to exact revenge against those who attacked them.
It is very troubling to see the Egyptian
government carry out such policies, for it shows a total lack of understanding
about how harsh Egyptian state crackdowns, imprisonment and torture used
against mainstream Muslim Brothers in recent decades ended up radicalizing some
prisoners and pushing them to join or to create more militant groups like Gamaa
Islamiya, Al-Qaeda and now ABM. The thousands of jailed Muslim Brotherhood
members and civilians from northern Sinai are likely to repeat this pattern of
militant reactions to aggressive and often excessive state security actions. It
is bad news for the entire Arab world that Egypt is copying the American and
Israeli strategies that try to quell political violence, but use such harsh
tactics that they end up expanding and radicalizing the universe of local
groups that use political violence and terrorism.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in
the Daily Star. He was
founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for
Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On
Twitter @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by
Agence Global