Tourists shun archipelago after terror warnings

Since the US State Department recently warned Americans about travelling to Zanzibar, the decorative Maasai warrior at the entrance to Bluebay Beach now orders guards to search all vehicles before they enter the resort.

But these days, few cars even come to Zanzibar’s south coast where the dazzling white sand beaches once drew draw visitors to the legendary archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the coast of East Africa.

The travel warning, followed quickly by others from Britain, Canada, Norway and Italy, dealt a severe blow to Zanzibar’s burgeoning tourism industry just as the high season was getting underway.

“We are in deep problems because of these alerts,” said Peter Flueckiger, general manager of the 172 bed Bluebay Beach. “Yet, we’re much safer here than in London. It’s an overreaction.”

The State Department said it had received information that ”a terrorist group may be planning an attack on an unspecified location frequented by Westerners” on Zanzibar, including “restaurants, clubs or hotels.”

Deputy Police Commissioner Juma Mtumwa said that when the government of the semi-autonomous Zanzibar region asked the security adviser at the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam on the mainland about the warning, he told them he sent out the alert on information received in a phone call.

Apparently as a result of the call, police picked up four Saudis and a Pakistani for questioning, but released them after finding no reason to hold them, Mtumwa said.

“It is very sad. Tourists are now made to believe they are at risk if they visit here,” Mtumwa said.

Most of the several dozen resorts and hotels on Unguja, or Zanzibar, as the main island is popularly known, are keeping only skeleton staffs. Tourism is Zanzibar’s second source of income after the export of cloves.

Fears of terrorism have hung over the region since August 7, 1998, when attackers connected with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network blew up the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam, killing 12 people.

A nearly simultaneous attack on the US Embassy in Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya killed 213 people, 12 of them Americans.

Last November, a car packed with explosives rammed into a hotel on the Kenyan coast frequented by Israeli tourists, killing 13 people on the ground – 10 Kenyans and three Israelis. At the same time, unidentified assailants fired two missiles that missed an Israeli aircraft loaded with tourists taking off from nearby Mombasa airport.

Rising extremism among young Muslims in Zanzibar and Pemba, the second island, concerns local Muslim leaders as well as Tanzanian and foreign officials. On Pemba, some residents reportedly celebrated after al-Qaida’s Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

But Mtumwa said Zanzibari authorities are not aware of any terrorist threats or Muslim fundamentalists.

“We are aware there are opposing forces within Islam in Zanzibar ... these forces are trying to make an issue out of the appointment of a mufti,” he said. “But it’s not to the extent that they can be called fundamentalists.”

Salum Mohammed Hamisi, the imam at Forodhani mosque in Stone Town, the old Arab quarter that is also the urban centre of Zanzibar, called terrorism “a terrible thing that has nothing to do with Islam.”

He said had discouraged Muslim youths from demonstrating against the travel warnings.

“We want tourists to visit our islands because the government is making money,” Hamisi said.

But at the luxurious Serena Inn on the edge of Stone Town, Amir Abdalla at the front desk said occupancy at the 102 room hotel was down to 30% from the normal 80-90%.

Wandering through Stone Town, Colin MacKillop of Maryland, saw only a few Zanzibris dozing in doorways where there would have been dozens of tourists finding their way through the warren of streets.

“It all feels so empty,” said MacKillop, who had been planning his visit, which also included climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on the mainland, for the past year and a half.

After the warning, nine members of the climbing group begged off the Zanzibar trip, leaving only MacKillop and his friend, John Fuston, 35, of Virginia.

“It didn’t stop me,” MacKillop said. “I feel very safe here. Zanzibar people are very peaceful.”

In the past decade, tourism has become a mainstay of the economy of Zanzibar, a repository until the mid-19th century for the Indian Ocean slave trade that was ruled as an Omani sultanate until independence in 1963.

After a violent rebellion in 1964 in which the Omanis were expelled, Zanzibar united with mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania.