Everyone wants to know who perpetrated the Alexandria bombing, but the nature of extremist Islamist cells makes it difficult to know who ordered it, writes Ammar Ali Hassan* Hearsay doesn't hold a candle to firsthand observation. This thought crossed my mind as I scanned the façade of the Two Saints Church in Alexandria, the courtyard in front of it, and the façade of the mosque facing it, pausing at the stains of splattered blood, shards of broken glass and faces wrought with grief. As my eyes shifted back and forth between the mosque and the bereaved church, I thought of the countless acts of religious violence, their various modes and repercussions, and the motives behind them, struggling to find an answer to the question that preoccupies us all: Who could have committed this horrendous terrorist attack? The question becomes particularly elusive in a country that lacks transparency, and in which scholars, experts and observers suffer a chronic dearth of available information. On my return trip from Alexandria to Cairo on Tuesday evening, my head was swimming with different possibilities and unable to decide which hunches and impressions to follow. I needed more facts, more details. As soon as I got home, I turned on my computer and searched various websites in order to study the coverage of the incident while I was in Alexandria. On The Wall Street Journal website I came across an article entitled "Egypt's Prison of Hate". Its author, Bret Stephens, cites an article of mine in Al-Masry Al-Yom, appearing immediately after the bombing, in which I widened the scope of possible suspects to include the Israeli Mossad. Stephens's mind could not go there, of course. Instead, he charged that the Egyptian intellectuals and politicians that blame Zionism are turning their country into "a nation of political imbeciles". I smiled and thought, "The real imbecile, Mr Stephens, is the person who refuses to consider all alternatives and possibilities, regardless of how remote they might be." I contemplated the little information that I had gathered and combined it with the knowledge I had accumulated over years of observing Islamist political movements and reached the tentative conclusion that the terrorist attack in Alexandria does not depart from some fundamental parameters. THE DYNAMICS OF MARGINAL EXTREMIST GROUPS: No brand of socio-political protest movements have fissured and multiplied as prolifically as "Islamic" ones have, not only in the modern era but also throughout almost the entire course of Islamic history. Differences over interpreting Quranic scriptures combined with differing interests have bred successive waves of opposition, rebellion against authority and, sometimes, crimes against society. Many of these movements managed to overcome the adversities of cruel and prohibitive security conditions by digging themselves deep underground, by dissimulation, and by biding their time. Some of these movements develop sophisticated organisational capacities and acquire memberships consisting of tens of thousands of individuals from diverse occupational, educational and class backgrounds, and spread across a relatively large geographical area. Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya was such a movement. Others remain tiny fringe movements of the sort that emerge from a rift in a larger movement or that re-emerge after the facedown between a larger group and state authorities. During the past four decades, radical Islamism has tended to produce small, geographically limited organisations and with limited capacities. Nor do these recent creations possess significant doctrinal or theological assets to justify their existence or to define their relationship with society, the state or other Islamist groups. As a consequence, they generally vanish after the first major security clampdown or clash with security authorities. Merely to illustrate, here are some of the fringe groups that emerged in the last two decades of the previous century: Al-Samni, Al-Ahram, Jihad Al-Sahil, Al-Wathiqoun min Al-Nasr, Al-Ghuraba, the Ahmed Youssef Group, Al-Farmawiyoun, Al-Najoun min Al-Nar, Al-Amr bil-Marouf wal-Nahi an Al-Munkar, Al-Takfir Al-Gadid, Abna Al-Said, Al-Nadhir, Al-Tawhid, Al-Shawqiyoun, Al-Fatah, Al-Khalafa, Gonoud Al-Rahman, Al-Asaba Al-Hashemiya, the Group of 90, Al-Qisas Al-Adel, Al-Quraniyoun, Al-Gihad Al-Sahih, Al-Samawiyoun and Al-Qotbiyoun. Then a few more emerged following the turn of the century, such as Al-Wad and Al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, which was alleged to have been responsible for the three Sinai bombings at Taba, Sharm El-Sheikh and Dahab. The state of the radical Islamist movement in Egypt today is such as to favour the emergence of such fringe groups. The ideological retractions of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, embodied in the collection of pamphlets issued by the group's historic leaders under the title The Conceptual Rectification Series, and the disintegration of the Egyptian Jihad following its alliance with Osama Bin Laden under Al-Qaeda's umbrella sent shockwaves through the radical Islamist youth. In the past such youth would have been immediately drawn to Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya or the Jihad because of the profile these two organisations had built for themselves in society, and because of their comprehensive ideological outlook and long-range aims. This is no longer the case. The two organisations have lost their appeal to many of the radical youth who now turn to smaller groups as outlets for their rage. While major Islamist groups are easy to keep under surveillance, especially if they do not organise themselves into cells, like the Jihad, or prefer to remain partially above ground, like Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, the fringe groups are more difficult to unearth. They coalesce around small leaderships, confine their activities to a relatively small area and set simple objectives. Some, moreover, acquire considerable proficiency at operating underground, developing skills of deception and camouflage, often living in apparent conformity with their surrounding society so as not to draw attention to themselves. Another factor that propels towards smaller groups instead of larger ones has to do with funding. In the past, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya and the Jihad could receive financial support from abroad, from individual members or sympathisers, from similar organisations located elsewhere, from likeminded societies operating beneath the guise of charities, or even from foreign governments that sought to undermine the Egyptian regime or prepare the ground in Egypt for Islamic internationalism. Now, as the result of the feverish campaign spearheaded by the US to cut off the sources of funding for terrorism, it has become very difficult for such groups to obtain the quantities of money from abroad that would support a large organisation, enable it to expand geographically, fortify it against the state and fund operations against the government and society. Extremists, thus, have no alternative but to form tiny underground cells and to mount sudden attacks of the sort that occurred in Sayeda Aisha Square, Al-Azhar, Abdel-Moneim Riyad Square, the Zeitoun Church and the Sinai in the course of the last decade. Investigations into those incidents indicate that extremist groups that perpetrated them were organised in one of two ways. One was to form small cells, each numbering no more than a few individuals under the command of a cell leader who acted as the link to the group commander, or "emir" in the radical Islamist jargon. Al-Wad turned out to be such an organisation. According to investigations, it consisted of only three small cells that were organised in the manner that the Egyptian Jihad used to be for many years. The other way was to represent an extension of an international radical Islamist organisation based abroad. The case of the Hizb Al-Tahrir (Liberation Party) cell that was discovered in late 2002 revealed that its Egyptian members had been recruited in Germany and Lebanon. Fringe groups might be created as the result of Al-Qaeda incitement or ideas, yet not necessarily form a geographical extension of that organisation or receive orders or funding from it. Egypt has long succeeded in remaining inaccessible to Al-Qaeda, for which reason we have never heard of an Al-Qaeda related group in Egypt such as those that have surfaced in Iraq, North Africa and elsewhere. Yet, when "Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley" threatened the Orthodox Church two months ago, one of the Egyptian fringe groups (which may have turned itself into a sleeping Al-Qaeda cell) may have taken the cue and executed the crime against the Two Saints Church. SUDDEN SHIFTS IN THE PROSELYTISING ISLAMIST FUNDAMENTALIST TREND: This brand of fundamentalism has been allied to the Mubarak regime for decades, whether due to the convictions of its adherents that prioritise "obedience to the ruler," to the historic connection between religious conservatism and political despotism (a theme that can be traced through the histories of many societies), or to the inability of opposition forces to penetrate this trend, even if only partially, in order to draw it away from the camp of the authorities. In tandem with this alliance, the Coptic Orthodox establishment has also been allied with the regime, submitting the "Christian vote" as its offering to the regime at the threshold of every legislative election and pronouncing its blessings upon the ruler, his policy choices and even upon the "hereditary succession" scenario. It has long been the practice of the ruling establishment to use the proselytising Islamist fundamentalist trend and the Coptic establishment in its campaigns to contain the Muslim Brotherhood project and, simultaneously, to lash out at and debilitate the leftist and liberal trends with the aim of consolidating its own power. However, the proselytising fundamentalists have grown increasingly impatient with what they believe is the regime's tendency to shower favours on the church in exchange for the latter's sycophancy. They have vented their mounting anger in a number of protest demonstrations that originated in some mosques in Alexandria and Cairo, demanding that the church free Christian women who were said to have converted to Islam and whom the church has allegedly imprisoned in some monastery. Perhaps some of these protests took their anger further and either plotted or actually carried out the attack on the Two Saints Church. Or perhaps some extremists infiltrated the ranks of the fundamentalists and incited some of them to such violence. It is also conceivable that the infiltrators used them as a screen to perpetrate the attack. An infiltrator who used this fundamentalist trend -- which enjoys the approval and protection of the regime -- as cover would be relatively free from surveillance. At the same time, this trend is open to all without restriction, contrary to the politicised Islamist organisations that scrutinise the background of anyone that might seek to join it for fear of government planted moles. It should also be borne in mind that the wall between the "proselytising" Islamist and the Jihadist trends can easily collapse in some cases. The Saudi Arabian experience comes to mind. There, the fundamentalists have been allied with the state for decades, sharing in both political office and benefits. However, that did not prevent some members of the Wahabi fundamentalist school from turning against the ruling regime and committing terrorist attacks on Saudi territory against foreign and domestic interests. So again, we cannot rule out the possibility of some fundamentalist here responding to Al-Qaeda incitement against the church. A FOREIGN BID TO UNDERMINE EGYPT'S SECURITY AND STABILITY? The greater part of Egyptian national security rests on two cornerstones: the secure influx of Nile waters and the perpetuation of national security. The first is shaky at present due to the drive on the part of the upper countries of the Nile Basin to revise the Nile Waters Agreement. The second has been affected by several factors that have contributed to tensions between Egyptian Muslims and Copts, and which open a tempting avenue for any foreign party to assert pressure on the nervous system of Egyptian national security. If the director of Mossad confessed that his bureau played a central role in turning the Upper Nile Valley countries against us and in stirring sectarian strife, then -- contrary to Stephens's claim -- it would not be unjust to expand our scope of suspicion with regards to the perpetrators of the crime in Alexandria to include Israel. Consider, too, that Mossad is currently very active in Iraq and that there is nothing to prevent it from being behind the threats against the churches that were attributed to Al-Qaeda two months ago. There is no such thing as a cohesive Al-Qaeda organisation that hands down orders from some central command. Rather, it is a fluid collection of ideas and a convenient bugbear that various intelligence agencies have seized upon to do whatever they want and then to peg responsibility on this cause. There are numerous instances in which experts doubt that Al-Qaeda was actually behind a particular terrorist attack in spite of Al-Qaeda's claim of responsibility after the crime was committed. Even if a foreign party was responsible for the Alexandria crime, this does not exonerate domestic parties. Home grown terrorists could well have executed the crime on behalf of a foreign party without realising it, or while under the illusion that they were working independently and motivated solely by their own ideas and beliefs. Foreign intelligence agencies do not contact extremists directly. Rather they operate through a series of intermediaries who are not fully aware of each other's identity until the message reaches the person or persons who will implement the plan. In other words, there is no direct traceable link between the perpetrator and the mastermind. * The writer is a political analyst
