How radical Islam haunts Egypt

Whatever other result the tragic crash of the Russian Metrojet Airbus A321 whose Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg Flight 9268 ended in the sands of Sinai, killing all 224 persons on board, may have, it has dealt a paralysing blow to Egypt’s economy. That might have repercussions on the wider course of Egyptian and West Asian politics.

Tourism is one of Egypt’s principal means of earning hard currency. Now, led by the British, tourists from other European countries are bound to shun the ancient land of the Pyramids. Indeed, if the crash was caused by the fanatical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terrorists, as reports indicate, it may have been an act of enmity aimed directly at the Egyptian state, its credibility in the West and its handsome revenues from tourism.

Ever since he seized power in a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected President, Mohammed Morsi, in 2013, Egypt’s current President, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has made no secret of his determination to wipe out all Islamists. Since Mr Morsi was the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Gen. Al-Sisi purged all his predecessor’s supporters, killing hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood cadres. Ostracised and persecuted, others rallied to the ISIS standard and became active in the ISIS affiliate, Sinai Province, which has been waging a bitter war against Cairo’s forces in the north of the Sinai peninsula.

The ISIS has now hit where it hurts most. Given latest trends, there is little likelihood of Egypt’s tourism minister, Khaled Ramy, realising his target of earning $26 billion by 2020. The main message conveyed by the panic exodus of visitors from Sharm is that Egypt is not safe for Westerners. Given the European media’s obsessive coverage of a crowded Sharm airport packed with thousands of stranded passengers desperate to get away, the resort isn’t likely to attract many Westerners in the near future.

The irony is that in no way did the crash indict conditions at Sharm el-Sheikh. Even British holidaymakers who fled as if Sharm had been struck by the plague say there was nothing wrong with the resort. It was comfortable and well looked after, and there was absolutely no security threat. The threat was not on the ground. It was in the air. If an ISIS bomb brought down the Metrojet, it could bring down any other aircraft taking off from any other airport in the world. The case is against flying, not against holidaying in Egypt.

The implicit accusation is that Egyptians are lax about security. Even after the rescue airlift began, a British man brandished a bottle of water on TV to say he had smuggled it through security. That confirms the supposition that Egyptian officials at Sharm missed the ISIS bomb. When the crash occurred, the ISIS promptly claimed responsibility. Initially, Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Hossam Kamal, ridiculed the idea. Cairo’s case was that the ISIS didn’t have the sophisticated equipment to shoot down the Metrojet. Nor would security at Sharm allow any explosive to be smuggled aboard.

The French investigators, who were examining the plane’s black boxes together with experts from Russia, Ireland and Germany, thought otherwise. They dismissed the idea of a technical failure in the air. Instead, they claimed to have detected sounds of a “violent, sudden” explosion from the black box. Meanwhile, American surveillance caught the “chatter” of ISIS operatives exulting in the tragedy.

None of this was public knowledge until President Sisi arrived in London on a visit that had been arranged much earlier. But it was while Gen. Sisi was actually in 10 Downing Street that David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, not only first publicly voiced the sabotage suspicion but also suspended normal flights to Sharm while laying on a series of special flights to bring back the 20,000 British tourists in the resort. Several thousand other Britons are holidaying in Hurghada and Luxor.

Listening to the stream of proclamations from the British Prime Minister’s Office, it sounded like another evacuation of Dunkirk.

After initially disputing the bomb theory, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin followed Mr Cameron’s lead. Only, he had — or rather, has, for the task is by no means finished — to bring back more than 80,000 Russian tourists. The Netherlands, Ireland and Germany had already grounded all flights to Sharm.

Further hammering a nail into the coffin of Egyptian competence, the British let it be known that only two months ago, a private British travel company’s plane with 189 passengers on board almost collided with an Egyptian missile above Sharm.

London wasn’t accusing Egypt of trying to down the British aircraft. Worse, it attributed the near-miss to Egyptian military’s incompetence. Further evidence of Mr Cameron’s scepticism was evident when Gen. Sisi let it be known in London that British intelligence and security experts had been based in Sharm for the last 10 months.

The Egyptians are understandably angry and disappointed at this turn of events. Russians account for 80 per cent of the tourist traffic to Sharm, Britons the remaining 20 per cent. Without them, there is little hope of earning even last year’s $7.3 billion (with 9.9 million foreign visitors), leave alone achieving the 2010 peak of 14.7 million tourists from abroad. Although criticised for his human rights abuses and heavy-handed suppression of civil rights — perhaps because of them! — Gen. Sisi inspired confidence in the West, and tourism rose by 3.1 per cent in the first six months of this year.

Now, Egypt has the option of either ploughing a bleak and lonely West Asian furrow or being drawn even closer into a Western-backed tacit military alliance. The former would bankrupt an already impoverished country; the latter could lead to political turmoil. Either way, it’s the ISIS’ revenge against the Muslim world’s premier nation-state.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author