"Strifes will arise through the period. Watch for them near the Davis
Strait in the attempts there for the keeping of the life line to land
open. Watch for them in Libya and in Egypt, in Ankara and in Syria,
through the straits about those areas above Australia, in the Indian
Ocean and the Persian Gulf."
-Edgar Cayce
===================================================================
The Evolution -- and Spread -- of Roadside Bombs
Two female Canadian peacekeepers from the Multinational Force and
Observers (MFO) suffered slight injuries Aug. 16 when a roadside bomb
exploded near their vehicle in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Although the
device itself was rudimentary, the method of attack suggests that
tactics passed from Chechen militants to Iraqi insurgents to Afghan
fighters have now made their way into the Sinai.
Egyptian officials said the improvised explosive device (IED) that
injured the Canadians was a gas stove filled with explosives, which
could have come from discarded armaments left over from the 1967 and
1973 Arab-Israeli wars. The Egyptians also found traces of TNT at the
scene, and suggested it might have been used to maximize the impact of
the blast. The device, along with a second one that also failed to
explode, was hardwired to a detonator -- meaning it was not remotely
detonated.
North Sinai Gov. Ahmed Abdel-Hamid has suggested the bombs were meant
only to send a message -- not to kill. We disagree with that
assessment.
By putting the explosives in a metal container, the attackers sought to
create shrapnel and to increase the deadliness of the blast. In other
words, the bomb was designed to kill -- even if the bombmaker was no
expert. If the perpetrators just wanted attention, they could have
placed the high explosives in a bag or a burlap sack. Secondly,
investigators found two devices. One bomb is a message, two is an
attack.
The blast occurred near the MFO camp at Al Gorah, about 22 miles from
the north Sinai town of Al Arish. Egyptian security has carried out
intensive investigations of Bedouins in this region after bombings in
Taba in October 2004 and Sharm el-Sheikh in July. The bomb, then, could
have been a misguided attempt by local Bedouins to discourage further
investigations in their area -- though the incident has led Egyptian
authorities to detain more Bedouin suspects in a further crackdown.
A group calling itself Egypt's Mujahideen -- one of three groups that
claimed responsibility for the Sharm el-Sheikh attack -- also claimed
responsibility for the Aug. 16 bombing. In an Internet statement, the
group also identified Hammoudi al-Masri as its general commander.
The fact that the attackers employed a roadside bomb in the MFO attack
suggests that tactics used in the Iraqi insurgency are spreading
farther than Afghanistan, where U.S. troops already are reporting
increasing encounters with roadside IEDs. In the early phases of the
Iraqi insurgency, roadside bombs were crudely made, not very powerful
and hardwired to their detonators. The Iraqis themselves learned many
of their tactics from militants in Chechnya, where suicide bombers and
roadside IEDs made from artillery shells and other military ordnance
have been widely used against Russian forces since the beginning of the
second Chechen War in 1999.
As militants from one battlefield travel to other conflict-ridden
regions, their tactics cross ethnic and ideological lines. As the
insurgency in Iraq developed, and U.S. countermeasures evolved, the
insurgents began making larger, more powerful bombs that could be
detonated remotely. As Islamist militants continue to gain experience
in insurgent warfare in Iraq, their skills will spread to other groups
in the Middle East. There is every reason to believe, therefore, that
the small bombs in the Sinai will eventually evolve into larger, more
sophisticated -- and consequently more deadly -- IEDs.
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