Editorial
The Ugly Face of Terrorism Re-Emerges in Egypt

The recent series of terrorist attacks that Cairo has witnessed last month were reminiscent of the violent incidents that Egypt witnessed in the 1990's and the subsequent state of insecurity that significantly damaged Egypt's tourism industry--a major source of Egypt's hard currency income. The recent incidents carried out in Al Azhar area and in the Old Cairo district seemed to reflect a security failure notwithstanding the regime's claim that terrorism is a random phenomenon that is foreign to Egyptian society.

Official expectations in the Egyptian media which attempted to portray the perpetrators of theses attacks as isolated individual unaffiliated to any organized terrorist group finds little credibility among many Egyptians.

The state might have succeeded to eradicate the terrorist groups of the 1990's but failed to analyze and study the root causes which could very well be instrumental in reproducing new generations of terrorist organizations. There is no doubt that this new strain of militants is fed up by the wide-spread poverty, unemployment, corruption, political suppression and injustice, in addition to the current religious discourse that endorses and galvanizes the spirit of violence and that dominates both the media and the educational systems whether secular or religious. In short, the problem is fundamentally societal and can not be addressed only by harsh security measures.

The current eruption of violence is in fact a product of the persistence of authoritarian regime that has failed to provide for political and economic justice. Unfortunately, these latest incidents have been gleefully seized upon by the regime to justify extending the long-standing Emergency Law. Therefore, all political movements, regardless their ideology should coordinate their efforts to pressure for more political and economic reforms and simultaneously find a way out to combat the fanatic spirit which trapped numerous desperate young men who kill first themselves and other innocent people all for nothing.