I arrived in Cairo shortly after Christmas of 1993. Most of the U.S. Embassy personnel were housed in an apartment complex in the residential area of Maadi, some twenty minute drive from the embassy. Although some people drove their personal vehicles to work daily, others took one of the several vans that the embassy provided as shuttle buses. This is a common practice in many of our diplomatic missions, and several months earlier, a shuttle van in Lahore, Pakistan had been ambushed by Muslim extremists and U.S. Consulate personnel riding in the van were killed and wounded. This particular incident was patterned after another similar incident that had taken place in Cairo a year earlier when a shuttle van on the way to the embassy from Maadi was ambushed. So, everyone was on the alert and instructed to never take the same route every morning, to alternate randomly your route to the embassy. Everyone was aware that an attack on Americans could take place anytime.
Most of the attacks seem to be directed at unsuspecting, innocent tourists! During my 2 1/2 year stay in Cairo, there were eight terrorist attacks on tourists in Egypt. That works out to roughly three a year or one every 3 1/2 months! I believe that people in America were not all that aware of the degree of violence in Egypt because the victims of these attacks for the most part were not Americans. But acts of terrorism took place in Egypt going back to the days of British occupation! In more recent history, the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by a soldier while attending a parade ceremony. The soldier, it turned out, was a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a group that was led by Omar Abdel-Rahman, responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. So, terrorist attacks were not confined to foreign tourists, they killed Egyptians as well.
Sometimes, it seems, the terrorists misidentified a particular tourist group and carried out an attack thinking they were attacking Israelis or Americans, their two most hated groups, when in fact they were killing people of other nationalities! At other times, they didn't care, as long as the victims were not Muslims, they were fair game.
In April of 1996 terrorists attacked a group of tourists that they believed were Israelis. They killed 18 and wounded a dozen others. It was a bloody massacre in Cairo in front of a popular tourist hotel, the Europa Hotel. The attack was carried out by four men armed with AK47s as they brazenly pulled up in front of the hotel in a VW mini van, got out and proceeded to gun down the tourists as they were boarding a bus that was parked in front. Two of the gunmen even chased some of the tourists into the hotel lobby and shot them there, on the lobby floor! The tourists were not Israelis! They were a mixture of Greek and Polish tourists, mostly Greek! Obviously, the information that the terrorists had was incorrect, but it didn't matter, since neither the Greeks nor the Poles were Muslim, so they were fair game!
There were a series of other smaller attacks, like four European businessmen that were gunned down in a Hotel Inter-Continental's (located across the street from the U.S. Embassy) dining room during breakfast. A gunman simply walked into the dining room, walked up to the table where the four men were eating breakfast, pulled out a pistol and shot them at point blank range. The terror group that carried out this murder simply explained that it was their way of cleansing Egypt of infidels! As I said, there were a total of eight reported terrorist attacks during the 2 1/2 year period that I was in Cairo. There were some that were never reported, or were reported simply as robberies gone bad!
The largest number of people killed in one attack took place in 1997, in Luxor, a popular tourist location, the famous Valley of the Kings. There, unsuspecting German tourists, 62 of them, were killed by a terrorist attack carried out like a military assault. The attack was conducted by members of Al-Ama'a al Islamiyya (The Islamic Group), the same group that assassinated Sadat and carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing!
Many people believe that Saudi Arabia is the center for terrorists, most certainly it seems to produce those who have money and finance terrorist groups. But Egypt does not take a back seat to anyone, not to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or any other place known to produce terrorists and terrorist groups. Egypt has the world's oldest Islamic university, the Al-Azhar University, founded in 970 AD. It naturally attracts a lot of people genuinely interested in Islamic studies, and no doubt also attracts some extremists, since some terrorist leaders are products of that university! The Muslim Brotherhood, a political party in Egypt and recently having had a president and control of the country, is not something to be ignored. It is a by product of Al-Azhar University and is considered a terror group. Egyptians are found almost in all of the major and minor Islamic terror groups. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the former second in command to Osama Bin Ladin, and now the head of Al Qaeda, is an Egyptian. There are Egyptians in leadership positions in various off shoots of Al Qaeda such as ISIS.
I don't wish to suggest or describe Egypt as a land of terrorists. But unfortunately, many terrorist groups do call Egypt their home and many terrorist acts have been taking place in that country. Once again, like in so many other countries, majority of Egyptians in general are wonderful, friendly people. Although most are Muslim and only a small percentage are Coptic Christians, the average Egyptian is not someone filled with hatred for foreigners or non-believers! The most popular and common expression that you will hear from an Egyptian when they meet a foreigner, are the words, "akhlan wa-sakhlan" ("welcome," or words to that effect!), spoken with a big, genuine smile.
No comments:
Post a Comment