By Diaa Rashwan * With the US strikes on sites in Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the international confrontation between Washington and its ally, Israel, on one hand, and the radical Islamist groups, on the other, has moved on to new footing. The intensification of the confrontation is not entirely the product of recent events. Yet while its roots can be traced to earlier developments, the immediate past has also contributed to its ultimate definition. Evidence has come to light over the past two weeks confirming that the "International Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders" was responsible for the bombings of the US embassies, as I suggested a few weeks ago on these pages (Al-Ahram Weekly, 12 August). The most important evidence has been four statements claiming responsibility for the bombings, one from the Islamic Front and the other three from the "Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites". The virtually simultaneous release of the four statements leaves little doubt that the Islamic Army, as I had anticipated, was the Front's new paramilitary wing, formed at the end of last February, and that it undertook the two operations. In addition, the four statements appeared to have been composed and printed on the same computer: their font and general layout were the same. The ideas, details and wording were very similar, indeed almost identical in places. All the statements contained an explicit threat to strike at US interests worldwide. If these similarities confirmed a relationship that was previously only conjectural, and underscored the determination of the new Islamic Front and its paramilitary wing to continue confronting the US, another statement, issued by Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, has added another dimension to the conflict. The title of the Gama'a statement was "Your crime will not pass without punishment", in reference to the US strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan. In addition to its vehement condemnation of the American strikes, the statement contained three points worthy of note. First, it called upon "the Muslim people to express their anger and to stand in solidarity with our people in Sudan and Afghanistan" by "surrounding the American embassies in our countries so as to force the rulers to close them down and to expel the missions of spies inside them". The call is consistent with the Gama'a strategy of open mobilisation combined with underground paramilitary activity. Other members of the Front, notably Jihad, engage only in underground paramilitary activity. Second, the statement called upon the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) "to convene an urgent meeting in order to adopt the appropriate resolutions to protect the Muslim peoples from American domination". This, too, is consistent with the strategy of overt mass mobilisation, even if the appeal was directed to an official government organisation, which the Gama'a, prompted by the confrontation with the US, was recognising and addressing openly for the first time. The third and final point signals a major shift in Gama'a strategy. According to the statement, "a billion Muslims can become human explosives, equal in destructive power to the weapons of destruction and annihilation possessed by the Americans." The Gama'a has never before issued an internal fatwa (religious opinion) sanctioning suicide operations; Jihad, in contrast, issued such an opinion long ago, and its members have participated in such operations, notably the assassination attempt on the former Egyptian minister of interior in 1993 and the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan in 1996. If this reading is correct, a shift in Gama'a ideology and strategy will become obvious in the near future, particularly during the coming phase of the militant Islamist confrontation with the US. Why should the Gama'a make this shift, particularly since, prior to the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings, it took pains to refute any association with the Islamic Front? Most probably, the escalation in the showdown between the US and the Islamic Front compelled the Gama'a leadership to issue this statement prior to rejoining the Front or participating in its operations. In part at least, the move could be seen as compensating for the leadership's explicit dissociation from the Islamic Front at the height of the recent confrontation. The declaration contradicts the Gama'a's recently adopted policy of giving priority to fighting the "external enemy" -- the US and Israel -- over its confrontation against the Egyptian government. The shift in strategy, therefore, could be seen as a way for the Gama'a leaders to save face vis-à-vis both the other groups in the Front and its own members, who may have perceived in the leadership's declaration a failure to fulfil its Islamic duty. Nevertheless, the Gama'a statement issued in the wake of the Sudan and Afghanistan bombings does not imply that it will organise operations against US and Israeli targets inside Egypt. Over a year ago, the Gama'a claimed it had ceased its calls for violence inside Egypt, and it has since sought various means by which to convince the government of its sincerity. It would be unlikely, after all this, for the Gama'a to embarrass the Egyptian government and contradict itself. In addition, the group's resources, depleted by the battering it has received at the hands of the Egyptian security forces, do not permit it to engage in such operations at present. At any rate, the situation, in the wake of the US strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan, seems to forebode a protracted war of attrition, as US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has predicted, or another Vietnam, as Osama Bin Laden has threatened. The situation today, however, takes root in the series of developments that has affected the Islamist movement over the past two years. Perhaps the critical juncture that marks the beginning of these developments was the April 1996 Sharm Al-Sheikh summit, which took place in the wake of the Palestinian Hamas suicide bombings in Israel, and of which the primary goal was to safeguard the peace process from the threat of "Islamic terrorism". The significance of the summit was twofold. It was the first such international event to link the most complex issue in the Arab and Islamic worlds -- the Arab-Israeli conflict -- with the Islamist trend in such a manner that the Islamists, as represented by Hamas, emerged as the primary opponents of Israeli aggression and unequivocal US support for Israel. Second, the summit concluded with the creation of what appeared to be an international front, centring around the US and Israel, formed to confront what summit participants termed Islamic terrorism. This development may well have inspired Islamic groups to counter with a front of their own. The years that have elapsed since that conference, during which the growing belligerence of Israel under the Netanyahu government has enjoyed unstinting US support, have increasingly turned Arab and Islamic concern toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. Islamist groups in various countries, particularly in Egypt, were also compelled to turn in that direction. In addition, America's Middle East policies, particularly regarding Iraq, as well as the growing US military presence in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, felt as a keen humiliation by the mass of popular Arab and Islamic opinion, have sharpened the focus of Islamic groups on US and Israeli targets. Nor can we rule out the idea that popular acclaim for Hamas operations against Israeli targets has fired the Islamist groups' enthusiasm for engaging in similar operations against US and Israeli interests. Simultaneously, one surmises that the battering some of these groups have received from various security forces, particularly in Egypt, has rendered them too weak to pursue their confrontation against the state and society. This would tend to reinforce their motives for striking at US and Israeli targets abroad, while simultaneously renouncing acts of violence within their own countries, whether officially as is the case of the Gama'a, or for all practical purposes, as is the case of Jihad. Perhaps the fact that this trend coincided with Bin Laden's ideas reinforced the orientation against "the external enemy" and enabled the members of Islamist groups to organise the attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Since he appeared in the militant Islamist arena, Bin Laden has called for a confrontation with "enemies" outside the Islamic nation. Perhaps because of this orientation, he has never been the recognised leader of an Islamist organisation; rather, he has coordinated the actions of the various Islamist groups on international issues that concern them, in Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Albania. Bin Laden, unlike all other radical Islamists, has never called for the "establishment of an Islamic state" in his home country. His battle has always been global -- against the "enemies of Islam" -- and he has sought to expand the scope of this battle along the broadest front possible. One suspects that the economic and political connections of Bin Laden's family inside Saudi Arabia have prevented him from directing his attention to that country. Perhaps, too, the fact that he surfaced in the Islamist movement for the first time during the war in Afghanistan can account for his external orientation. In any case, Bin Laden has been to the Islamic movement what Trotsky was to the Communist movement at the beginning of this century, in terms of his call for a comprehensive, permanent revolution transcending the boundaries of the state. In contrast, the other groups have been more consistent with the Leninist model, in their call for a single-state Islamic revolution as a base from which to extend the revolution. These developments have converged to pave the way for the establishment of a powerful front of Islamic groups around a cohesive political and ideological framework. This front and its orientation against "external enemies" were consolidated by the presence of many of the groups' leaders in Afghanistan with Bin Laden, as well as his financial resources and the unlimited support he accords the international activities of the Front's members. In this way, the Front acquired the practical means of organising the operations in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. In the wake of the US bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan, the Front will no doubt seek to expand its scope of activities, include new Islamist groups, and intensify its attacks on the US and Israel in various parts of the world. Today, the entire globe is the arena of operations for militant Islam. *The writer is managing editor of The State of Religion in Egypt Report issued by the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
