Zawaya

Hostage-taking: An epiphenomenon?

By: Mohamed Bergaoui

In recent years, tourism has become a problem area. If epidemics and other pandemics were the main evils of a time almost gone, terrorism is now the main handicap for an activity that has become over time an essential component of the economy of more than one tourist destination.

Aware of this importance, terrorists are striving to hit where it hurts. Just like globalisation has affected almost all countries of the world, terrorism has “tried” not only to affect the maximum number of countries, particularly those whose economies are centred around this sector, but also to diversify its methods.

Today, we can confirm without any risk of error that various tourist destinations have been hit by terrorism at one time or another: Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Greece, France, Spain, Indonesia, and so on. Initially, these attacks resulted in multiple cancellations for tourist destinations. Increasingly convinced over time that no country is immune to this new phenomenon, tourists philosophically accepted this new reality, and cancellations have become rare or even non-existent.

If the attacks that were carried out in more than one destination causing several deaths among tourists have only temporarily tarnished the image of the destination, what impact will the recent hostage-taking operations have on the economies of Tunisia and Mali?

After all, these few and isolated epiphenomena had no effect on Tunisian tourism, that is still going strong, with more than 7 million tourist arrivals recorded in 2008 compared to 6.76 million the year before, despite a fall in Austrian customers during that same period, due to the fact that the only hostage-taking recorded was of two Austrian tourists.

As for Mali, with its poorly developed tourist sector (around 4,000 hotel beds) which is an important component of the economy (5% of GDP), the risk is much greater for a good reason: hostage-takings are more frequent and likely to inflict a heavy blow to the economy that considers the tourism sector as a source of wealth and a provider of employment.

However, Mali is not the only country in the African continent under the threat of hostage-taking. Niger, Sudan and Mauritania are also concerned. By spreading a climate of insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, these kidnappings may jeopardise many economies. Dealing with hostage-taking requires a genuine dialogue between concerned governments; a dialogue that does not seem to be ready to be carried out.