WASHINGTON, April 26 (UPI) -- Terrorist groups, like serial killers, tend to conform to patterns of behavior, and the striking similarity between Monday's terror bombings at the Egyptian beach resort of Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula with two previous attacks in the same area over the past year and a half tell a lot about the terror group responsible -- and its limitations.
The bombs that killed at least 24 people and wounded dozens more were uncannily similar to the previous attacks. As with the far more serious attacks at Sharm e-Sheikh in July 2004 that killed 88 people and wounded 110 more, these attacks were made in Egypt. They were made in beach resorts in Sinai. They deliberately targeted Egypt's lucrative tourist trade. And they targeted beaches that are usually heavily frequented by Israeli holiday makers.
The attacks also served sobering notice that for all its efforts, Egypt's usually highly efficient security services have so far failed to crack the cell responsible.
For public consumption, the Egyptian authorities have blamed Bedouin operating in Sinai as either the instigators or the enablers of the real plotters who helped the attack masterminds to organize them.
There is good reason to be skeptical of this assessment. Sinai is lightly populated and the Bedouin have not been a serious irritant to the Egyptian government. The multiple-bombing nature of the attacks, rather, points to an al-Qaida affiliate being responsible. And it may well be that the group in question operates from within Cairo itself and carefully orchestrates its occasional attacks in the Sinai beach resorts through cut-outs.
The attacks, as we noted in a United Press International analysis following the July 2005 Sharm e-Sheik car bombings, also appear clearly aimed to try and destabilize the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak by wrecking Egypt's tourism industry -- its main source of foreign earnings.
The pattern of multiple and simultaneous bomb attacks aimed at killing and maiming as many civilians as possible has also been a mark of al-Qaida affiliates in recent years around the world -- especially the 2004 Madrid and 2005 London bombings. The Sharm attacks came only a few days after the July 7 multiple bomb attacks on the London subway and bus systems. And the latest Dahab attacks came only a day after the latest media message Sunday morning from al-Qaida's leader Osama bin Laden.
However, the pattern of the attacks also reveals the limitations of the organization involved. Unlike the insurgents in Iraq, they are not capable of launching several, or dozens or even only one attack or bombing per day. They have so far only managed three such focused attacks over 18 months.
Furthermore, the attacks have not been increasing in scale or intensity just they have not been increasing in frequency. The July 2004 Sharm attacks killed 88 people. The latest attacks in Dahab killed little more than a quarter of that number.
Random factors and good or bad luck always play their roles in such figures. But the insurgents' capabilities in Egypt, at least so far, show no sign of metastasizing. They are, for example, not remotely as significant as the surprisingly impressive showing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's most recent parliamentary elections in December.
Therefore, although the Egyptian security services clearly have not broken the Sinai resorts bombing cell yet, they have in general managed to keep the lid on violent Islamist extremism in their country. And, as with the remarkable success of Saudi Arabia's security services in smashing al-Qaida's operational infrastructure in their country, that achievement is a highly significant one and should not be underestimated or overlooked.
The security records of both nations and their security services, along with that of Jordan, suggests that supporting well-established, conservative Arab governments with veteran, experienced security services remains the best way to prevent the spread and metastasizing of Islamist radical extremism across the Middle East.
