By Diaa Rashwan * The simultaneous bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam has provoked intense speculation into the nature and ramifications of the incident itself. What is the current nature of radical Islamist groups? What is the relationship between their actions and the general orientation of the Islamist movement as a whole? The identity of the perpetrators alone has raised numerous questions. The day following the explosions a previously unknown group calling itself "The Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites" claimed responsibility for the bombings, calling the bombing of the embassy in Dar es Salaam the "Masjid Al-Aqsa Operation", and the bombing of the embassy in Nairobi the "Holy Ka'aba Operation". No other group has issued a pronouncement that could invalidate this claim, which, to many analysts, makes it likely that the previously unknown group was indeed responsible. On the other hand, evidence surrounding the operations also points to the "Islamic Front for the Jihad (struggle) against Jews and Crusaders", which was established last February. The founding charter of this group bears the following signatures: Osama Bin Laden, the well-known Saudi multimillionaire and Islamist radical; Ayman El-Zawahri the leader of the Egyptian Jihad group; Rifai Ahmed Taha, member of the Shura (Consultative) Council of the Egyptian Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya and the group's actual leader according to Egyptian security sources; Mir Hamza, secretary of the Pakistani Society of Ulemas (religious scholars); Fadl Al-Rahman, leader of the Pakistan-based Ansar Movement; and, finally, Abdel-Salaam Mohamed, leader of the Bangladesh-based Jihad. During the last US confrontation with Iraq the members of this front declared that its aim was to fight Americans and Israelis everywhere in the world, an aim based on their jointly pronounced fatwa (religious decree) that "the death of Americans and their allies, whether civilians or non-civilians, is a duty incumbent upon every Muslim." The Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings appear to fit perfectly with this declared aim. Another factor that points to the Front's responsibility for the recent bombings is Osama Bin Laden's lengthy record for supporting violent Islamic extremist groups and organisations. He has also frequently threatened to strike at American targets and is suspected of direct involvement in certain operations, notably the 1995 and 1996 bombings of US military installations in Saudi Arabia, which claimed the lives of five and 13 US soldiers respectively. US sources also claim that Bin Laden was interviewed on American television and openly threatened to launch violent attacks against US targets around the world. Further implicating Bin Laden in the recent bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were the hastily concocted statements by officials in the Taliban-controlled area of Afghanistan where Bin Laden resides. The statements were made even before suspicions turned to Bin Laden, giving the opposite impression of the message they were intended to convey: a denial of Bin Laden's involvement. Further implicating Bin Laden is the fact that the statement issued by the Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Sites claiming responsibility for the bombings describes Bin Laden as a source of inspiration, referring to him as the "warrior sheikh" whose pronouncements constitute a legal basis for declaring an Islamic jihad against the enemy invader. Bin Laden's name figured among those of five other religious figures -- four from Saudi Arabia and one, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, from Egypt -- whose religious decrees were cited in the statement. All of these decrees demanded the withdrawal of US forces from Saudi Arabia. Because of Bin Laden's activities, the Saudi government stripped him of his nationality in 1994. That the Islamic Front may be responsible for the US Embassy bombings last week is also supported by the fact that, on 4 August, three days before the bombings, the Egyptian Jihad group, also a part of the Islamic Front, issued a statement threatening to retaliate against the US for its role in the arrest of four members of the Jihad who had fled to Albania and their extradition to Egypt. The dossier of Jihad operations inside Egypt and abroad dates from the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat in 1981 and extends through the assassination attempts on a former Egyptian prime minister and a former minister of interior to the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad. The extreme radicalism of the group, its heavy emphasis on the duty of jihad, and its highly secret underground paramilitary structure also render it a likely candidate. More significantly, reports on the close relations between the Egyptian Jihad, represented by its leader Ayman El-Zawahri, and Bin Laden, both of whom reside in Afghanistan, strongly suggest the likelihood that they collaborated in the recent bombings, and this in turn lends greater weight to the suspicion that the Islamic Front was responsible for the recent bombings. Another piece of evidence pointing to the Islamic Front is the short interview conducted by Al-Murabitun, the mouthpiece of the Egyptian Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, with Rafai Ahmed Taha about 10 days before the Nairobi-Dar es Salaam attacks. The interview was featured on the home page of the Gama'a's site on the Internet and not, as is its custom, under a subsidiary page that the browser would have to open in order to read. Secondly, the interview was published on the site before it appeared in print, again contrary to the usual practice. These technicalities underscore the significance the Gama'a attributed to the interview with Rafai Ahmed Taha, indicating its desire to disseminate the contents of the interview to the broadest segment of the public interested in its positions. The interview itself contained a number of arresting points. However, Taha's main thrust was to deny that the Egyptian Gama'a was part of the Islamic Front. He went on to claim that the Gama'a was never even invited to participate in such a project and that, if it had received such a proposal, the decision to join would be made by the Gama'a leadership. Yet, Taha is known to be one of the more extremist hawks in the Gama'a and the presence of his signature on the Islamic Front charter had aroused the opposition of other Gama'a leaders. It is highly unlikely that he would later deny these facts and deny the existence of any proposal to the Gama'a to join the Front unless the Gama'a had a strong reason for his doing so. In addition, while the six-member Islamic Front proclaimed that its aim was to fight Americans and Israelis, Taha, in his interview, took pains to stress that the Gama'a had no intention of participating in any front against the US. In this denial he made no mention whatsoever of Israel. The most logical explanation for this interview and the prominence which it was given on the Gama'a's Internet site was that the Gama'a had got wind that the Front was about to mount a major operation against American targets and that it wanted to distance itself from any involvement in this operation so as to avoid being the object of extremely violent retaliatory actions by the US. This interpretation of the Taha interview gains in cogency in the context of the Gama'a's current policy directions in general. The Gama'a leadership, both in Egypt and abroad, is clearly seeking to formulate a new philosophy for action that rests upon the renunciation of violence inside the country against the government, civilians and tourists. It would be logical for the Gama'a, whose entire history is founded upon radical violence, to countervail the transformation in its orientation inside Egypt through a strong affirmation of its former radicalism and violence against the "enemies" abroad, notably the US and Israel. Clearly, however, the Taha interview contradicts this hypothesis, suggesting that the Gama'a has powerful motives militating against such a countervailance. If, as the previously cited evidence suggests, the Islamic Front is responsible for the bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, then it is likely that the previously unheard of Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Sites is its paramilitary wing. In addition, the nature of the formation of the Front and the way the operations were carried out suggest that the Egyptian Jihad, with its technical and operational expertise, and Bin Laden, with his international contacts and financial resources, were the prime agents in these operations, with lesser roles accorded to the Asian Islamist organisations enlisted in the Front. Furthermore, the size of the explosives and the manner in which the operations were carried out suggest that the decision to strike these US embassies and the preparations for the strikes had been made a long time before the US authorities engineered the extradition of the four Jihad members from Albania to Egypt. It is likely, however, that it was the Egyptian Jihad that chose the timing of the operations so as to coincide closely with the deportation of the fugitive Jihad members. If this group was so instrumental in carrying out the operations within the overall framework of the Islamic Front and the "Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Sites" it may well have been accorded the right to set the date for the implementation of the operations and the right to issue a warning to the US three days in advance so that it could attest to its capacity for retaliation. These conjectures, in conjunction with the extent of American losses, point to a forthcoming confrontation between the US and the Islamic Front. One can easily anticipate a violent and multi-pronged US response to avenge the lives of the American victims in the bombings and the affront to its dignity. One can foresee special military operations inside Afghanistan and Pakistan with the purpose of arresting those the US believes are responsible for the incidents. Washington may also exert strong pressure on several European governments in order to force them into handing over extremist Islamists residing in their countries. As for the Islamic Front, having entered into such a decisive confrontation with the US, it will most likely not be able to back down. On the contrary, in its expectation of powerful retaliatory strikes against it by the US, it may feel compelled to anticipate these strikes by mounting further operations against US and Israeli targets, since, regardless of its actions, the price it has to pay remains the same. * The writer is the managing editor of The State of Religion in Egypt Report issued by the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
