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Friday November 21, 1997

Terrorism, a too-common enemy

Accounts of this week's massacre at a holy site in Luxor, Egypt, are beyond horrifying.

Islamic militants bent on the overthrow of Egypt's secular state systematically murdered at least 65 innocent people in cold blood. Among them were children.

Survivors tell of the gunmen shooting indiscriminately, often aiming at people's heads. When they ran out of bullets, they pulled out their knives and began slitting throats.

Such carnage has become all too familiar a sight in the Middle East, where terrorism has become a regular, and even expected, method of political expression.

As this week's mass killing and terrorist bombings in Israel earlier this year show, those extremists will stop at nothing in trying to achieve their aims.

Whether they are attempting to halt the peace process between Israel and its neighbors or expressing hatred for the tourists who boost Egypt's government, their motto is clear: the bloodier the better.

Because dissimilar political scenarios spawn terrorist actions, countries must formulate their own methods for dealing with the terrorist scourge.

Israel earlier this year found itself in the news with a botched attempt at assassinating a Hamas leader in Jordan. Many have lamented the failure of the operation, saying that wiping out extremists from the top down is the only way to stop them.

Egypt, for its part, faces fewer but more dangerous opponents after wiping out much of the Islamic militants' leadership.

The Egyptian government has had some success in gutting the extremists' funding, which analysts say weakened ties between the militants and their leadership in Europe.

The region can only gain from binding together to share information from its successes -- and failures -- in fighting terrorism. Terrorism is a common enemy -- no matter what its genesis.

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