On Feb. 16, a bus transporting tourists was attacked in Taba, Egypt, when a suicide bomber boarded the bus and detonated his device. The blast reportedly killed the Egyptian bus driver, two South Korean tour guides and one South Korean tourist.
Taba is a small town on the Sinai Peninsula that sits on the Red Sea and is located across the border from Eilat, Israel. The bus that was attacked was transporting a group of South Korean tourists from St. Catherine's Monastery, a popular tourist attraction located at the foot of Mount Sinai, into Israel. The tourists in the group were reportedly members of a Korean church group who were on a tour of holy sites in Egypt, Israel and Turkey.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis claimed the attack in a statement posted to the prominent jihadist forum al-Fida, which is one of two normal distribution channel for communiques from the group. This is a strong indicator that the group was indeed responsible for the attack, even though attacking foreign tourists represents a change in the group's demonstrated targeting philosophy. In its attacks inside Egypt, the group has focused primarily on attacking security and intelligence forces and has purposely attempted to avoid targeting civilians.
In the statement, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis claimed that the attack against the "tourists heading to the Zionist entity" was part of its "economic war campaign" against the Egyptian regime, which the group accuses of plundering the wealth of the nation and using the money to fund attacks on Muslims living near the border with Gaza and to protect Israel. The statement closes by threatening that the group will target the regime's economic interests everywhere.
Egyptian jihadists have a long history of attacking tourists, going back to the 1980s, and from 2004 to 2006 we saw significant suicide bombings against tourists in Sinai, specifically targeting tourist resorts in Taba, Sharm el-Sheikh and Dahab.
However, as we noted a few weeks ago, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has exhibited a higher degree of terrorist tradecraft than the groups behind the previous attacks on tourists in Sinai and they have demonstrated the ability to not only attack in Sinai, but also in mainland Egypt.
Attacks Against Egypt's Tourism Sector
Egypt's tourism industry is important for the government because it has traditionally comprised some 12 percent of the Egyptian economy and employs approximately 5 percent of the population.
As noted above, attacks against tourists in Egypt are not a new phenomenon by any means: A succession of Egyptian militant groups has posed an intermittent threat for decades. Over the past decade, we saw three high-profile bombings directed against tourists in Sinai: one in Taba and Ras Shaitan in October 2004 that killed 34, another in Sharm el-Sheikh in July 2005 that killed at least 64 and the last in Dahab in April 2006 that killed 23.
In previous decades we saw attacks like the bloody November 1997 attack by Gamaa al-Islamiya in which a team of attackers armed with small arms killed 62 at the Dayr al-Bahari archeological site near Luxor; 58 of the victims were tourists. In 1985, a gunman killed seven Israeli tourists in Ras Burqa in Sinai.
In February 2012, we discussed how the brief kidnapping of two American women in the Sinai Peninsula hurt an Egyptian tourist industry that was already reeling from the unrest of the Arab Spring, which began in January 2011. The kidnapping of the American women occurred at a bad time for the Egyptian tourist industry because it came on the heels of a shooting incident two weeks earlier in Sharm el-Sheikh, in which a French tourist was killed and a German tourist was wounded, and the kidnapping of Chinese construction workers in El-Arish two days earlier. According to the Egyptian State Statistics Ministry, tourist revenues for 2013 were down dramatically, to roughly $6 billion from nearly $10 billion in 2012. The unrest and violence in Egypt clearly impact the country's tourism industry.
Since mid-2011, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has become the most active and deadly terrorist group in Egypt. Initially, the group focused its attacks on Israel and conducted a string of rocket attacks targeting Eilat from Sinai as well as a number of bombing attacks directed against natural gas pipelines running from Egypt to Israel.
In August 2011, the group conducted an armed ambush of an Israeli bus on a highway near Eilat that resulted in the deaths of eight Israelis. The Feb. 16 attack in Taba was therefore not the first time that Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has targeted a bus transporting civilians, merely the first such attack in Egypt.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has launched numerous attacks against buses transporting Egyptian security personnel using roadside bombs, suicide vehicle bombs, small arms and rockets. This long history of attacks against buses initially caused us to wonder if the Feb. 16 attack was a case of mistaken identity and not an intentional attack against tourists, but the group's statement has put any such doubts firmly to rest: It has clearly stated that it has changed its target set to include foreign tourists.
Implications of Latest Attack
Since 2001, we have seen a procession of jihadist groups established in the Sinai Peninsula that organized and then began to attack tourists and other targets. These groups were not very sophisticated, and the Egyptian security forces were able to quickly mobilize to reduce the threat posed by such groups by killing or capturing their leadership.
During that time, we witnessed some occasional attacks in mainland Egypt, such as the February 2009 attack at the Khan al-Khalili bazaar, a popular tourist attraction. The attackers used two rudimentary pipe bombs and only managed to kill one French woman. Six days later, an American expatriate living in Cairo was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant in the same bazaar, but survived the attack. However, these attacks on the mainland have been rare, quite simplistic and have not been able to generate mass casualties. These jihadists have simply not had the tradecraft or reach to conduct spectacular attacks in mainland Egypt, far from their bases of operation in Sinai.
That is one of the things that has alarmed us about Ansar Beit al-Maqdis: Not only has the group been active in Sinai, but it has also demonstrated the capability to conduct sophisticated operations against hard targets in central Cairo like the Egyptian interior minister and the Cairo Security Directorate building. Indeed, as it was conducting the vehicle bombing of the Security Directorate it was also in the process of planning the assassination of Gen. Mohammed Said, an aide to the Egyptian interior minister, who was shot four days after the bombing. This means that should Ansar Beit al-Maqdis decide to do so, it has the capability to mount a wider and more sustained campaign of attacks against tourists than the other groups we have seen in Egypt in recent years.
If Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has the ability to strike hard targets in central Cairo, it can also easily strike soft tourist targets in Cairo or even moderately secure sites such as hotels and museums in the Egyptian capital and the adjacent tourist zone in Giza. Should it choose to do so, its attacks would likely involve more than pipe bombs or knives and would likely result in mass casualties.
There is one other important consideration regarding Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and attacks on tourists. In late January, the group released a video to the jihadist forums in which members of the group used what appeared to be an Igla-class surface-to-air missile to shoot down an Egyptian army helicopter. The Igla is a relatively modern man-portable air-defense system comparable to the American FIM-92 Stinger. Egyptian authorities seized eight Igla-S missiles (NATO designation SA-24) in Sinai in September 2011 that were believed to have come from Libya. It is not known if the missile used in the January attack was from the same lot, or even the same model of Igla. Earlier-model Igla-1 missiles (NATO designation SA-16) have also been seen in the region.
While many tourists like the South Korean group travel through Egypt by bus, because of the spread-out nature of Egypt's tourist sites, ranging from Dahab and Mount Sinai to Alexandria, Giza and Luxor, it is not unusual for tourists to not only fly to Egypt but to fly within Egypt to visit the various sites. This means that tourists not only are vulnerable to armed assaults, but to bombing attacks but also to attacks against aircraft.
Currently, it is difficult to assess the intentions of Ansar Bait al-Maqdis and how much effort it will put into its campaign against the Egyptian tourist sector. Indeed, to date it has only conducted one relatively simple attack against a soft tourist target in Taba. However, given the group's demonstrated capabilities and reach, it can certainly inflict serious damage against tourists should it decide to do so. With Egypt's tourism sector already suffering from a wary traveling public, just the threat posed by this group may be enough to have a substantial impact on Egypt's tourism revenues.
It is also telling that the group threatened to attack the regime's economic interests. This might indicate additional attacks directed at the Suez Canal, Egyptian natural gas fields and other economically important activities.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has also apparently cooperated with a number of other, smaller jihadist groups. For example, on the day of the Security Directorate bombing, another group called Agnad Masr conducted three smaller bombings against police targets in Giza. If such groups follow the lead of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and begin to target tourists in places like Giza, we could see a range of attacks, from more sophisticated to simple, directed against tourists.
A sustained campaign against tourists would also bring foreign pressure on the Egyptian regime to focus more effort on combating the group. Presently the regime is devoting a great deal of its attention to combating the Muslim Brotherhood, and those efforts have affected the regime's ability to bring more forces to bear against Ansar Beit al-Maqdis; indeed, the group has thrived in the chaotic environment created by the military's ouster of former President Mohammed Morsi.
Aside from increased pressure from the government, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis' economic warfare strategy presents other risks for the jihadists. Their long-standing policy of attacking security forces and avoiding civilian casualties has helped them gain recruits and has not overly tarnished the group's public image. Indeed, many people are hostile to the security forces and are sympathetic toward those who attack them.
However, should Ansar Beit al-Maqdis' economic warfare campaign be seen as deeply hurting people's livelihoods, and if the group begins to kill more civilians in attacks on soft targets, it is quite possible that it will succeed in souring public opinion against it, as we've seen jihadist groups do in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen and Syria. As seen from these prior examples, once the people turn against a militant group, it greatly aids the security forces' efforts to neutralize the group.
