His cabinet and government reforms hes vowed to reengage with the world to fight corruption and create jobs and polls have just closed in the past northern mountain district as voters take part in the first state and federal elections under a new constitution sunday marks the first phase of the vote across twenty two districts the next spot happens in ten days. Inside story starts now. With the the earth. An unprecedented attack on a mosque in egypts sinai region has killed more than three hundred people including twenty seven children why has the Sinai Peninsula become a security nightmare for the government and does there need to be a new approach to dealing with this is inside story. With. With. Hello welcome to the program has a criminal and cowardly thats how the egyptian president described an attack on a sunni mosque on friday the fact that his sisi has vowed to respond with what he calls brute force more than three hundred people were killed in whats seen as the worst attack in egypts modern history it began with an explosion inside a mosque in the town of beit added men women and children with and shot by all men as they tried to flee since coming to power three years ago president has been fighting an insurgency by armed groups in the sinai is some of what he had to say about the attack as it had this these tragic event act of terrorism will make us more robust more strong know what battle against terrorism. We cannot be intimidated i will resolve cannot be dented we will remain more united when this event the army will take revenge and they will restore order and security with an iron fist in the following days. Of the attack was in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula the entire sinai was occupied by israel from one thousand nine hundred sixty seven until nine hundred eighty two bedouin tribes in the region have always shown their anger against the government for its failure to address poverty and unemployment since the term or that followed the arab spring in two thousand and eleven the area has become a hotbed for armed groups and sort of bait this which has pledged allegiance to ice or has been active in the region it now calls itself sinai province and has taken control of a large part of the sinai which has been under a state of emergency since october twenty fourth. Lets bring in our guests now joining us in berlin is akhmed dowie a Senior Research at the center for middle eastern and north african politics at the Free University of berlin in athens timothy kouddous a nonresident fellow at the institute for middle east politics and in london after visiting fellow at the center of conflict security and terrorism at Nottingham University welcome all of you let me start with you egypts presidency c. Is promising a robust response to this. Brute force overwhelming force as its called is that the rights response particularly in the long term. It isnt the right response on its own yes need to have a robust response to this sort of terrorism and if necessary it has to be a military response but the rhetoric that hes used to revenge is not the right one it should be one of justice so the perpetrators of this crime need to be need to be tracked down they need to be brought to book and they need to be punished if theyre captured but it must be done proportionately so just rhetorical statements both verbal and indeed behavioral are not enough one of the things that concerns me is that the Egyptian Army in the last few hours claims to have destroyed our initial drum and other facilities well if they had known about these facilities surely they should have destroyed them earlier and not wait for this event to destroy them as a source as a statement or as a rhetorical statement of behavior so i think we have to be very careful the the Egyptian Military and the Egyptian Government doesnt overreact we must react proportionately and firmly but with justice in mind rather than revenge to the cow does this kind of crackdown work or does it risk fueling the problem of extremism there even further. Well i think to echo. My colleagues statements that first of all one has to really review with a degree of skepticism claims by the government of what theyre able what theyre destroying what theyre not destroying we dont have a mechanism for independently verifying their claims and as he said if we already knew about the if they already knew about those areas they should be taking them but beyond that i think that the issue is that what does it really mean in terms of something new there already has been a military campaign against isis for years now and at the conclusion of all of that we have this massive attack yesterday so clearly that that strategy alone is inadequate and there needs to be a review of that strategy one this more sophisticated and is able to win over the loyalty and support of the local population rather than. Antagonize them with draconian curfews and round ups and people getting killed in the crossfire because the government isnt being careful enough i think that its its important that there be a step back in looking at what has worked and what hasnt because clearly the strategy of a strict strict military and brutal response has been promised by the president hasnt been enough so what else can they do what would be more productive. Why have the people whove done this chosen to go off to. Muslims in particular why damn. Well that is one of the puzzling things about this attack which is which is not usual in many respects. One idea or one suggestion is that targeting sufis this village. Is a stronghold of sophys in in sinai and last year in november. The Islamic State if the state is indeed the the sinai province is indeed the perpetrator they kidnapped a sufi. Follower last november and beheaded him soon after they issued a warning to sue fees in sinai that they will be that they are blasphemous and that the Islamic State would not allow them to continue practicing their type of islam in sinai so this is one theory why this attack happened in this way but on the other hand this village road. Is mostly inhabited by members of one particular tribe the second largest tribe in sinai so arca and this is the first time that we get this wholesale attack. Was so many People Killed before they were targeting specific persons either because of the religious differences or sufis or whatever or christians or targeting those people from the tribes in sinai who are known to be collaborating with the government this is the first time that that that the war. Extends to such a massive attack on civilians in such large numbers and the worry here is that this would trigger some kind of tribal warfare in sinai and the whole tribal dynamic this is one of the weakest points of the strategy of. Government in sinai not just at the time of during these years but already from ten fifteen years ago the strategy of the government the Egyptian State to manage the tribal structure in sinai i think has been an abject failure. Whats your take on the the target here the people who were attacked here is it because they were muslims as as has been suggested or is it more to do with the fact that they are perceived to have been supporting the governments actions in this region. Well we cant really answer that question with any certainty as now another of us for this stage know precisely who is behind us and why they appear to have done this and its very likely to be. Almost certainly a political motive and the religious or sectarian elements are just the figley an excuse for conducting these attacks it doesnt matter where they were sufis whether theyre christians whether theyre another sunni group these people who attack soft targets innocent civilians in order to do what they think will work for them and that is to produce shock and horror so in many ways the identity of these people is an irrelevance its just an excuse to mitigate some of their the worst excesses of what theyre doing with the the reason has to be political and given the number of groups operating in sinai i think what we have is a political and security problem that has got out of control and its a problem that the Egyptian Government needs to reevaluate its approach i dont for a moment suggest that the Egyptian Government isnt taking this seriously i know that the it is i worked with Egyptian Security people briefly in the past and i know theyre very serious about this and theyve made great efforts to understand the six trimix and what i think they need to do now is to make great efforts to understand their own Security Culture and see how they can improve and adapt it to produce success because the efforts of so far not produce success. It timothy given. The reaction to this particular attack the revulsion at so many innocent people being killed. Could this be perhaps a turning point. Maybe not in the government response but certainly in Public Opinion by by sweeney im against squarely against the extremists i mean to be perfectly honest with you the egyptian public by and large is pretty pretty clearly opposed to the militant groups and extremists from quite some time ago i mean when you hear people talk about terrorism in egypt its pretty unequivocal in their condemnation and disdain for it they see it as not only a threat to their security but also a threat to their livelihood these sorts of attacks damage the economy damage the attractiveness of egypt as a place to visit as a place to do business and they recognize that so i dont know that its a turning point in the sense that there was much to turn the public has been against this for quite some time with obviously some exceptions. I think what what what this does though is it brings into relief just how far this can go. Now the when you when youre able to basically to attack a mosque and attack worshippers so indiscriminately. And perhaps justify that based on members of their tribe or of the state perhaps based on. Members of the mosques core being sued fees. Or both its i mean the two arent mutually exclusive then it becomes very possible that youre going to be able to justify all sorts of violence against the the entire egyptian population everyone can be rationalized in this sort of model and so thats a very scary prospect as the kind of repertoire of potential targets for isis continues to grow with these these growing numbers of civilians that they see as fair game so thats quite quite of a great deal concern. One hundred but why is big why has it been so hard to eliminate these groups and does there need to be on a whole new approach to the way the government responds to it. The government has been trying recently to enlist the support of the tribes in its war with Islamic State and so far it has not been very successful we have to really appreciate the delicate tribal structure in sinai and how this structure has been largely made redundant by the behavior of the government and by the behavior of the Islamic State. The tribal structure is very important tribes are key in terms of governance of this part of egypt and when we when we see that the people who belong or who are fighting for the Islamic State they themselves many of them come from the same tribes that are now being attacked and this explains the kind of dilemma that these tribal leaders are in and the government is in its very difficult now to this in tangle this very messy situation in sinai what it seems that the tribes are divided amongst themselves so you get some young good radicalized members of the four main tribes in particular that ive been and so arca some of them are now both of them now are fighting against each other some of them have grievances against the government and the way the government has been neglecting sinai for so many years have joined the ranks of the islamists and others who used to work as muggles now are currying favor with the government and are trying to support the government in its fight with the Islamic State and i think that is now if you asked before about a turning point i think the turning point is not in the opinion of of the people against the opinion of the people in egypt against islam so i think the real turning point now is that this this conflict between egypt and the Islamic State is taking more and more a tribal they mention and this i think is going to be really problematic in the future. Whats your view on this how does the tribal dimension in sinai play into this because when when were talking about this these are grievances that go back to go back in the sinai region to well before. Time yeah absolutely i mean i think its points are excellent on this and the reality is that the northern sinai in sinai more broadly the population that from there has been neglected by the government for decades. I mean ive literally heard bedouin joke that they were better off when the israelis occupied it which is pretty kind of remarkable thing to hear someone say. You have a lack of medical infrastructure have a lack of educational infrastructure. A lot of the tourism jobs didnt go to the to the locals it goes to people coming from mainland egypt that are coming into sinai to work and so when the government started cracking down on the on the illegal trade in contraband that also affected the livelihoods of a lot of people there. And kind of created more tension within those communities economically as it became harder and harder to make a living and so in that context the government is trying to win the trust of these of these communities and present a wide array of challenges and now with this attack theres two possible reactions one is that it increases the resolve to fight back because of such an egregious attack on them but the other possibility is that its such a scary thing to have experience that might make them think twice about working with the government given that this sort of retaliation could be expected. Its been said that you can kill a terrorist but its much harder to kill an idea and you alluded to this earlier that the Security Response by itself is not going to be enough here does does there need to be. More attention played to the grievances of people there that weve been talking about there the economic and social problems in the region. Yes indeed of the doubt attention will only come about when the gyptian government and the gyptian security structure. Escapes the worldview in which its imprisoned and this is not a problem with the Egyptian Government and the options because the structure the us europe and everywhere in the world we all have a worldview in which we operate its only when there is a crisis and we are confronted with failure or if somebody comes in from the outside with a different world view and shows that the egyptians how they can do things differently its only then that things will change and a real part of that will be to address the grievances which in turn arise to some extent by the way or out of the way in which the Security Forces operate if you have Security Forces who are being inspired by their leader to take a robust approach to take revenge then you can very easily see how situations might arise that would actually increase rather than reduce the grievances in the local area and this is why you get this extremism built up and the civil population is sandwiched between the terrorists and the government rather than being protected by the government and reducing the chances of extremism so i think that we do need for the Egyptian Government and the Egyptian Security forces to accept that theyre doing the best they can theyre making great deal of effort but its not working and for them to change and and succeed theyre going to have to change the way their approach this problem and to do that they should consider outside help not because theyre not worthy of solving it themselves as i said when i was working for the u. S. Army. And the u. S. Government in iraq it was easier for me and others who were on the outside to show where the u. S. Was failing and to be able to show them ways hold improving their counterterrorism and counterinsurgency effort and that shouldnt be seen as any sign of weakness or failure of the government you just need for them to recognize that they need to do things differently to achieve different results timothy youre nodding in agreement to much of that but do you think that thats likely to happen at this point. Honestly you know i mean i would love to see it happen though i would tend to the not i think that i think i think that hes actually right also that this is a this is this is also a global problem i think that the way the people in vision Counter Terrorism is overly reactive and overly looking at through a security prism thats thats militaristic and that depend on the use of force without considering the other variables and how they could work and theres a lot of conversations about countering violent extremism. But they havent gotten very far in terms of really affecting the fundamentals of how states engage with these challenges and you can understand it from a from a public from a public pressure perspective for a politician to have to stand before their people after an attack like this and say well we need to think about this reasonably and how can we approach it be a lot of people also are going to be demanding revenge a lot of people are going to be demanding the use of force and it takes a really strong leader to be able to kind of help reframe that conversation and and move things in a more productive direction but also we have to keep in mind that in the in the case of egypt its a country that has a Security Apparatus that has a long history of using repression and violence and torture to achieve its objectives be they political or security and so its a retraining. And to transform in reform the way that they say they see their role and to see which tools are our best to use is a very long and difficult project and i dont feel that the dynamics currently in the government are right for that to happen. I havent a doubt if we just take a broader look at thi