Beyond the outrage

By Amr El-Choubaki

---

The recent terror attacks are markedly different to anything that has taken place before in Egypt. Both Al-Jihad and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya had doctrines and adopted military tactics. They challenged the state and lost, since then most of their leaders have been killed, arrested, left the country or else repented.

The new terrorists are young, alienated and motivated less by a collective desire to change society than a wish to vent their own outrage. Some want to strike against the Israelis, others against a regime they denounce.

The group that struck in Taba may have had some expertise but recent attacks in Cairo have been bungled and amateurish. The perpetrators of these attacks do not belong to a cohesive group though, in the case of Taba, they may have emulated Al- Qaeda's cell structure. In the Al-Azhar incident, and last week's attacks, though, there is no evidence whatsoever of organisation. What we are facing is a random mosaic of violence, fed by inner city depredation and enacted by the impressionable.

As such this new brand of terror is worrying not because it might destabilise the country, as happened in the past, but because of what it says about the erosion of the moral fabric of our society. And the iron fist of the security services is unlikely to be an effective defence against this erosion. When a young and promising engineering student becomes a suicide bomber, and sets out to take innocent lives in Al-Azhar, we must all ask ourselves what has gone wrong.

This week's soapbox speaker is an analyst at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.