In terrorism's crosshairs

Just hours after the massacre of Friday worshippers in a mosque on November 24, President Sisi was telling Egyptians in a televised address that the army and police will "avenge our martyrs and return security and safety with force in the coming short period." Air force jets pursued the terrorists, "killing those inside the vicinity of the attack," as it was announced by the government. The massacre of 305 worshippers in El-Arish in northern Sinai can hardly eliminate fear stalking the Middle Eastern and North African region. The attackers had arrived in five vehicles in El-Arish intending to carry out the deadliest attack in a mosque frequented by Sufis. Egypt is known for avenging such killings in the shortest possible time. Already in October, the Egyptian military had eliminated the leader of a fanatical group, Ansar al-Islam, which had killed a number of policemen.
Although no group has claimed responsibility for the North Sinai mosque attack, local affiliates of ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates have claimed previous attacks. Timothy Kaldas, a professor at Nile University in Cairo, has been quoted as saying by Al-Jazeera that the attack "fits the pattern of ISIS attacks." According to him, "potentially, it's another attack against Sufis in northern Sinai. Potentially, it's retaliation for tribes cooperating with the state in the crackdown on ISIS which is "more willing to target civilians, as we saw with a lot of attacks on the Egyptian Christian community last year."
In the case of Pakistan, too, Sufi shrines have in recent decades been a soft target of terrorists of various hues and shades for whom Sufis are heretics. There are sectarian terrorists who attack members of the Shia community with the same perverted fervour, likewise describing them as heretics and infidels. The back-to-back operations - Zarb-e-Azb and Raddul Fasaad - have broken terrorism's back. These two meaningful actions have also forced many terrorism apologists, including PTI chairman Imran Khan, to take a rational and realistic approach to a potential threat to the country's sovereignty. But the objective of restoration of complete peace and order is still the distant mainly because of the government's complacency in the implementation of the National Action Plan. The Army Public School attack in Peshawar in 2014 has led to creating unprecedented unity in the Pakistani nation against the practitioners of terrorism and extremism.
The Egyptian society that is also riven by deep political and religious differences must draw a lesson from the El-Arish tragedy: it is required to display a unified approach to the challenges of extremism and terrorism that have stymied, among other things, this North African country's economic and social development.